We decided to return to Woodland Trails Resort in northern Minnesota once again, for year #3. At this point, it’s almost like coming home – familiar location, beautiful setting on Strawberry lake, lots of friends, and great people to work for. Each year we say we are not coming back since we want to travel, but WT is a good place to relax and get grounded.
Leaving Tucson on April 17th, we headed for Prescott Valley for a few days. We stayed at the Fairgrounds RV Park which turned out to be one of the nicest parks we have stayed in. Nothing in the way of activities but it was clean, had large sites and it was well located to see the area.
Our first side trip was to Sedona. There was 2 routes, one was over the mountains, the other around the mountains. On recommendation of the park office, we took the mountainous route. Wow! Picturesque with a lot of switchbacks, it was reminiscent of the road to Mt. Lemmon in Tucson. It was a bit of a “white-knuckled” trip but beautiful all the same. We ate lunch at a very nice restaurant in Sedona, the Mariposa Latin Inspired Grill which had great views of the surrounding red and gold hills. The restaurant was filled with unusual but beautiful artwork made from glass and framed like a picture. After finishing our tour of Sedona we traveled back home, this time the long way, around the mountains.
The next day went went to Prescott, which we actually liked a bit better than Sedona. We ate lunch downtown then went to the Chamber of Commerce office for some area information. What a coincidence – the Chamber director was the same person who was director back in Rochester Hills, Sherri Heiney! We had a brief reunion and she told about the area and that she and her husband John had realized their dream of moving to the Prescott/Sedona area and really love it there. Nice to see her again.
Mary found a couple nice bead stores to restock her supply. She is really getting good at designing and making jewelry. (Actually, good enough to have her own website at www.mddesigns.biz. Check it out!
The next day we were on our way to one of the most anticipated stops on our trip, the Grand Canyon. Mary had never been there and it had been about 64 years since I was there, so we were excited to see it. We stayed in Cameron, about 45 minutes east of the canyon then made the trip the next day. We sort of hit the “perfect storm” of visitors since we were there on a Saturday and it was Earth Day. We did finally find a place to park, and the trip was definitely worthwhile! We stopped at Navajo Point and Mather Point, what a view! If you haven’t been there, put it on your must-see list.
The only damper was Mary feeling tired rapidly from what we thought was an allergy or maybe Desert Fever. Whatever, we hope she snaps out of it soon.
Tomorrow it’s on to another high point on our trip, Bryce Canyon.