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PART 1: We're on the Road Again...
PART 2: Virginia and DC Hello
PART 3: Emergence from the Wild
PART 4: Hello from the Road
PART 5: California Dreamin' Part 1
PART 6: California Dreamin' Part 2
PART 7: Sedona as a New Age Tourist
PART 8: Sedona to South Florida; The Road Home


Part Seven; Sedona as a New Age Tourist

Dear friends,
Although we've been back home in Hollywood Florida for a month, I still want to share with you some of our time on the road home. Sedona is special. Enjoy.
Ginger

The Burning Desert

We headed east across the Arizona border into the very hot desert. I was glad we had decided to forego all the canyon explorations in this weather and do it another time. But since I'd been watcfhing weather reports in Sedona, I knew the weather there was better.  But first, Quartzite, site of crystal and gem shops. Since all of the rest of Quartzite's RV Parks were along the interstate, we drove 6 miles south of the small city to an out-of-the-way RV park so that I wouldn't have to hear I-10 traffic all night long. Everything was seemingly uninhabited flat hot desert with a little scrub, and we saw no buildings or other vehicles. Finding the virtually unmarked road off to the right was a cinch compared to figuring out what was the RV park and what was just more desert, as there was no landscaping anywhere. But there was a small cleared area and a tiny building with the laundry. Property lines were barely discernable from one another in this very small  community of maybe 20 people, far from the main access road. The setup reminded me of my childhood, when I and other girls and boys would "play house." This usually involved marking off the rooms in the dirt and discussing floor plans. Considering the number of floor plans we designed, at least one of us should've become a home designer. Well, all the properties along this road were marked off the same way. The few palms, saguaro cacti, and desert scrub shrubs were nature's landscaping around the few permanently parked RV's and small doublewide modulars.


We couldn't find the park and so we wandered around these poorly marked areas. Finally, a friendly burly red-headed fellow in a truck came to show us the way. He took us to the acting park manager, who was curious why we would go out into the boonies in this heat for only one night. This was a place that doesn't see any travellers besides the full timers, except during winter season and the mineral and gem show. Our arrival had obviously been a topic for days there, as everyone associated with the park came out or peeked out of their trailers to see us. We must've been the biggest action in their area all week! None of the individual RV  sites were long enough to accomodate our 42 foot trailer, so we parked sideways and took up four or five spaces. The water coming from under the ground through the hose was already hot, so no need to turn on the hot water heater!

After we encamped, we drove back to Quartzite to check on one of the major sister shows to the Tuscon Gem and Mineral Show in January. Satellite shows, such as the one in Quartzite, bring money to the vendors who don't get in the big show and to the town. There were a few mineral shops along I-10, and we stopped to explore them. But it simply got too hot to look at the merchandise, displayed as it was outdoors on large, long tables in the sun. The sun burned my legs and I had to keep jumping, turning, and otherwise moving. No fun, although we saw some stunning pieces of rock, crystals, and petrified wood. So we returned to the RV. The temperature finally got bearable by bedtime.



New Age Tourist Destination

The next morning, we drove out of the RV park with the residents waving goodbye at the crazy tourists (us), and drove east to Phoenix, turning north there towards Sedona. The land changed, becoming hillier, then mountainous. Gradually the temperature moved down from over 100 degrees into the 90's as we ascended. We took the Cottonwood turnoff and headed north into Sedona. Finally, when we passed a large hill, we came across a breathtaking view of downtown Sedona, nestled under the grand colorful and stately mountains (see Sedona view, below).


Sedona's Backdrop

This wouldn't been the moment for some majestic music, because wow! I could certainly tolerate living here and seeing this level of beauty every day! I could understand why this is the only new-age tourist destination spot anywhere on the planet. The dimensions were astral in their incredible expanse. A person living here had to be connected to the grandeur of nature somehow. I've always noticed that when we found a beautiful place, that the property values were very high, and not necessarily with so-called "spiritual" or "sensitive" people. Everyone, somewhere, craves a connection with beauty and nature, and this satisfies the soul. But with those "unconsciously" adoring nature were many nature oriented spiritual people. Alternating between real estate offices and T-shirt shops were new age stores and shingles annoucing psychic readers.

The RV Park was beautiful too, nestled down along the banks of Oak Creek and with towering oaks hanging overhead, we had a welcome respite from the heat we'd been through. Temperatures were in the 80's but by now, it felt even cooler by comparison. Except for a little yapping dog, it was peaceful and quiet. Over the several days we were in Sedona, we walked through the RV Park and up the road beyond it to see the beauty and enjoy the views that I couldn't seem to get enough of. We looked around for souvenirs and I found a few items, including a very cool looking Sedona shirt. Hey it's fun being a tourist! I don't normally get to play that role because I'm seldom in a place I want to be touristy about.



Visits with Friends

While in Sedona, we visited Jade Wahoo Grigori, a shaman I'd met back in South Florida where he had come and done events and shamanic healing session a few years ago. I had thought that I'd want another shamanic healing with him. However, we were both involved in watching the pay-per-view showing of Lazaris' Pain Workshop and the healing processes were so intense that I decided I was at the limit of my change-ability. So we called him up and visited him for a half hour at his place in Sedona, with a view to die for (just kidding). Jade was born to two shamans - one Native American and the other Asian. So he blends the two in his beautiful work. See his website at http://www.shamanic.net. He takes people on tours to Peru, Macchu Picchu and ayahuasqueros for sacred plant experiences. The info's on the site. I would love to go but I won't until my blood pressure normalizes high enough. Of course, there's always coca leaves to chew, which the natives use to enhance oxygenation at high altitudes.

We also visited our friend David Lowell (see http://www.davidlowell.com), who I met originally at a John Perkins workshop on shamanic power and shapeshifting (see http://www.dreamchange.org for more info on John). David was a healer using various modalities learned from many different powerful people around the globe. He had settled on Sedona as a place to live because the latest teacher he was studying with, Dr. David R. Hawkins, was there. David was enthusiastic with the Dr.'s work, starting with Hawkins' famous "Power Versus Force" book. Hawkins has a system of calibrating all emotions on a 1 to 1000 scale starting with the most painful and powerless ones at the bottom and ending with love at 500. Then from there to 1000 is transcendent and higher perceptive places known usually to the greatest masters. People live at a certain level of mastery which is reflected in their "calibration number." One can work on releasing themselves from duality and limitation by increasing their calibration in various ways. Anyway, I may not have truly grasped the magnitude of the man, for I didn't get any rush of energy when I watched him on video at David's place. If we had known earlier, we could've attended a Hawkins workshop that was being held next door to the RV Park while we were there, in a wonderfully serene workshop space called the Sedona Creative Life Center.



Our Vortex Tour

Sedona is not complete without a visit to some vortexes. Jade recommended a friend of his, Bruce Orion (yes, that's his real name) to give us a personal escort to some of the neat sites. There are several vortexes, identified in the '70's by psychic Page Bryant, a big, controversial psychic figure I knew back in Florida during my spiritualist days in Tampa. The feminine sites are low, near water and have a nurturing feel. The masculine sites are by peaks or near high pinnacles of various mountains. The first site we experienced was Altar Rock (see composite picture below), a feminine low site in the area known as Indian Gardens.

Altar Rock Scene

The whole area was magical (see the view from the path to Altar Rock below), and I felt like spending a long time here. Then we went to the famous place where all the best known pictures of Sedona are taken. Since you can google better pictures of this area than the ones I took, I am not including any here. There were interesting fluctuations of energy in waves and the rocks by the stream were also in waves. Along the path, Bruce showed us what Ephedra looked like - it was growing all over the place! And he knew medicinal uses for some other plants. We saw some beautiful agave plants in full bloom. A very tasty sweetener is made from this plant. I was in heaven. Finally, I'd found someone who knew the local flora and fauna!


Altar Rock Path

Finally, we went to the place known as Airport rock, a very high site behind the Sedona airport. From this place, one has a commanding view of the whole valley and is high and juiced on the vortex energy. Looking way down into the valley, we saw the Oak Creek corridor or small canyon, marked by bright green trees, winding its way through a fairly flat and well shrub and tree-covered valley between very high imposing and colorful rock mountains, the signature of Sedona. Famous are Cathedral Rock and Courthouse Rock - hard to tell which is which, and as the story goes, the government wrote them down wrong, so now the original Cathedral Rock is Courthouse Rock and vice versa! (see picture below - your guess is as good as mine!)


Courthouse and Cathedral Rock

Then we also got the story about the first man and first woman, a unique rock structure amongst the boulders. It's very telling; evidently its' assumed that men and women have not been getting along since day one! Maybe it's that Mars and Venus thing. But I hope one day they resolve their standoff! (see picture below)

First Man and Woman

We had such a good time in Sedona, but our tourist experience was cut short because we had subscribed to the Lazaris pay-per-view workshop, and needed to marathon our watching of it, since we had some trouble with reception prior to Sedona. So the last two days, we spent much of our time in our RV. But we had seen enough. We had walked in amazing local beauty, visited the local art galleries and enjoyed the people-watching. We could easily have spent another few days there, but it was time to continue our arrive-home-early push, and we had a workshop planned in Texas.

Next Time; Southeastward Ho!