We went to the movies yesterday, saw “Super 8”, really good movie, make sure you stay for the credits. We then drove to Uptown Sedona on the other side of town. This is where most of the tourist shops are, lots of galleries, restaurants, touring companies, stores, souvenir shops and all kinds of “buy me” places. Lots of western statues all over town, very nice. Where we are staying, called West Sedona, there are more resorts and businesses. In between there’s about 2 miles of nothing. Again, the weather at night is wonderful, it’s breezy and goes down in the 60’s.
This morning we got up too early to go to the train station for our tour so we went to the Coffee Pot Restaurant for breakfast first. They boast “101 omelets” and they all looked good. It’s called that because right behind it is a rock formation that looks just like a percolator.
From there we went the 25 miles to Clarkdale where the Verde Valley Train leaves from. First we stopped at Tuzigoot National Monument where there’s indian ruins and then we stopped at a housing development in Cottonwood just to be nosy and waste time. The lots were $100,000 and the houses about $279,000. Similar to FL houses, but the lots were small, and the houses were close. We thought they were expensive for what you got. Gave the real estate lady somebody to talk to for a few minutes though and killed some time for us.
The Verde Valley Train started in the 1950’s as a way to get ore (mostly copper) from Clarkdale to Perkinsville. Clarkdale is now still a town because of the railroad and Perkinsville is a ghost ranch with a population of between 3 and 11, depending on who you ask. The train has 10 enclosed air conditioned cars and 6 open air ones and goes 38 miles at a leisurely pace from Clarkdale to Perkinsville, then the 2 locomotives move to the caboose, trade off as they call it and it pulls us back to Clarkdale. It goes through the Verde Valley, which follows the Verde River in the canyon and also goes through a 680’ man made tunnel that goes completely dark because it turns in the middle. The ride takes 2 hours up and 2 hours back. There’s food and drinks on board and a guide talking the whole way, pointing out Sinagua Indian ruins, cliff dwellings, wildlife (we saw hawks, a bald eagle and beaver dams) and rock formations that look like everything from the Budweiser frogs to a Mack truck to a guardian angel, etc. Locals have way too much time on their hands to come sit out here and name rocks. Nice soothing music the whole time too. The way back was quiet and between the setting sun, the breeze and the clickity clack of the train it was almost too hard to stay awake.
Too tired to cook, we went to the Red Planet Diner which, to our surprise, had an alien theme. Everything in the place was alien related, it was really a fun place. They had a seat at the counter that read “the person in this seat is in the alien mafia” and another that said “we can’t take checks from earthlings”. From there we went back to Uptown Sedona and walked around. Beautiful night again and on the way back we saw the most incredible sunset ever. We stopped at the trailer and put the fridge on so tomorrow we can load our food and it’ll be cold. Can’t wait to get on the road again.