Sedona Airport Vortex, Watching the Sun Go Down
I do not want to be insensitive, or to offend anyone who understands vortex energy and has experienced it in Sedona, and finds him/herself consequently “on the path.”
In fact, I do not consider myself an insensitive person, so although I am by nature a little skeptical, I was willing to give vortex energy a chance.
I never experienced it.
In fact, every time someone started talking about vortex energy, I had a hard time keeping my face straight.
I DO believe in positive energy, and in energy, and how we interact with one another.
It may be a language misunderstanding; I do believe in holy places, and I have experienced the feeling of knowing I stood on holy ground.
Sedona is reputed to have special energies, and special sites for this energy. I only know this much because I went to a blog called LovesSedona.com where they explain the energy sources and where to find them and how anyone who comes within a quarter of a mile and has any sensitivity at all will feel the energy of the vortex.
We were near every one of the four vortexes; right at one. I felt awe at the beauty of Sedona, unending awe at this beautiful place. We met some wonderful people. But a special energy? I guess I am just not sensitive enough, but I allow that YOU might be, so I refer you to LovesSedona.com, from which I share the following information about Sedona Vortexes and their energy:
What is a Vortex?
A vortex is the funnel shape created by a whirling fluid or by the motion of spiraling energy. Familiar examples of vortex shapes are whirlwinds, tornadoes, and water going down a drain. A vortex can be made up of anything that flows, such as wind, water, or electricity.
The vortexes in Sedona are swirling centers of subtle energy coming out from the surface of the earth. The vortex energy is not exactly electricity or magnetism, although it does leave a slight measurable residual magnetism in the places where it is strongest.
There are four main energy vortexes in Sedona. The subtle energy that exists at these locations interacts with who a person is inside. The energy resonates with and strengthens the Inner Being of each person that comes within about a quarter to a half mile of it. This resonance happens because the vortex energy is very similar to the subtle energy operating in the energy centers inside each person. If you are at all a sensitive person, it is easy to feel the energy at these vortexes.
If you are planning a trip to Sedona, here is a map to help you easily locate the four main energy vortexes. On the map, a diamond indicates the location of a vortex. Although the Sedona area has many hiking trails that only a vigorous hiker can enjoy, the vortexes are all easy to get to, and no strenuous hiking is required to get to any of them.
One of the Sedona traditions is to go up to the airport and watch the sun go down from the airport viewpoint. It is supposed to be a very special Sedona experience. This is what it looks like in low season. There are probably three hundred and fifty people here to watch the sun go down, take selfies with the sun going down, take photos of your friends with the sun going down, etc.
When you go, there are many many many many people, in fact if you have ever been in Key West to catch the green flash of the Key West sunset, you will have a deja vu feeling. This is a very funky kind of gathering, everyone is there, locals, tourists, probably a pickpocket or two.
We got there just in time to park, walk over, and catch the sunset. Sedona is laid back and has a wonderful sense of humor about all this, and individual Sedona residents volunteer to be The Ambassador, who shows up and maintains some order and good will as the people stream to the viewing place and then stream back to the parking lot.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it is going to be chaos once the sun goes down. As everyone else is watching the last gleams of the sun (and it is getting pretty chilly, I might add) we head for our car to head back down the mountain before the teeming hoard. The Ambassador on this night is a very tall woman, dressed as a Sheriff, I think, but a Sheriff in a dress. She is very good at keeping order.
We have made reservations for massages while we are here, and are trying to find where it is. When we get our confirmations, it is at a different location than we thought, so we have to find it again. I am confused because the lady says it is nearer to where we are staying than the original site, and the place where we think we are going is almost next door to the hotel. After a while, I figure out that where we have reservations is NAMTI, and the spa near us is NAMASTE, not the same. NAMTI is only a block away, we find it and we know where we will be going tomorrow.
A totally great day in Sedona, Arizona.
The Red Rock Barbecue in Sedona, AZ
This restaurant was a lot of fun. The sun is low in the west, and our tummies are still on Pensacola time; Arizona is on God’s time, which is the same as Pacific Coast time, as they do not go on daylight-savings time. So we are a little early, but that is fine, we have other plans for later in the evening.
We snag a wonderful table out on the deck, a table with a wonderful view of Sedona’s red rocks, and also of the parking lot and our car, and a mini drama taking place. Someone hit a car and didn’t stop, and the Sedona police had caught the guy who did it and were working out the details with the victims, and getting the insurance (or not) information from the very remorseful hitter. Oh well, none of our business!
What is not to love about this view? We sit with our drinks, just soaking it all in. We are so delighted to be in Sedona, and to be able to spend some time here. This is a place we want to take some time in. We explore now, but we also know we are coming back.
AdventureMan loves to try pulled pork. We had to take pulled pork home!
I tried the rib tips; there was so much, I had to take rib tips home, too.
The management and service here were great, so friendly, happy to tell us about local lore, special things not to miss. We had a great long dinner, very mellow.
The Southwest Inn in Sedona
When you look for a hotel in Sedona, there is a confusing profusion.
“Sedona has been discovered,” my best friend from college tells me. She named her daughter Sedona, and she is one of the reasons Sedona is high on my list of places I want to experience. She had described Sedona in glowing terms, some forty years ago.
It took forever to figure out where we wanted to stay. We don’t like bedbug motels, and neither do we like resorts. We don’t like paying for services we don’t want, and we don’t mind paying for services we do want. We like relatively small, and we like our privacy. We are introverts. We want to experience Sedona.
After a lot of research, we chose the Southwest Inn in Sedona, and it worked for us. We had a lovely spacious room with a balcony, very quiet, in a part of town where we were only about five minutes from any where we wanted to go.
As we drove in, we loved it. There were hummingbirds dive-bombing the tree where we parked, and we watched the as we unpacked the car. We had an upper level in a two level building, so we had to haul our goods up stairs, but I had my FitBit and I needed the credit for stairs; we didn’t mind the stairs. We loved the brown adobe finish, and the private balconies with the views of the red rocks.
Breakfast was in this cheery, sunny breakfast room at the top of the entry building. They had home-made breakfast burritos, frozen, and two microwaves in which to heat them up, as well as pastries, cereals, fruits, juices, coffee, tea, water – one step up from continental breakfast, and it is included in your room. Many people take their breakfast back to their room to eat out on the balcony.
The hotel had a hot tub and a nice swimming pool and lounging deck, which we never used our entire time in Sedona. We kept intending to, but there was always too much to see and to do!
Our room was fine, spacious enough, good sized bathroom, but I didn’t take a photo and it wasn’t special enough that I can remember a single detail, other than the lovely balcony and the view, and oh, yes, it had one of those Southwest corner fireplaces, very fun. It was fine; it housed us well, and you can spend a lot more in Sedona and get a lot less. We wanted Sedona style, and we felt this fit the bill; it fit in well with local aesthetics, and it was quiet and modest with little luxuries, but without excessive showiness.
We also liked the management, very laid back, and very thoughtful. The room had nice things in it – bathrobes to wear to the pool, a nice coffee maker, the fireplace for cooler evenings. When I needed more shampoo, the man at the desk gave me a big container and asked if I wanted conditioner, too. They had a large, elegant dispenser of cool lemon water in the lobby, as well as coffee and tea all day long. There was a graciousness to it all that I liked, a generosity of spirit. They were very helpful telling us about things we needed to do (join the crowd at the airport vortex to watch the sun go down, for one) and the roads we needed to take. We followed all their advice, and it paid.
Our hotel was full of European hikers, families and people who, like us, look for a good value for the money.
A New Day, New Mexico, Tombstone and Tucson, AZ
The sky is blue and the air is sparkling clean as day dawns in El Paso, TX, which we made a stop on our journey in honor of a series we are totally addicted to called The Bridge. I understand it has been cancelled, but it’s premise was that there was a lot of horrible crime in Juarez because law enforcement authorities on both sides had given incentives to keep the ugliest crimes on the Mexican side of The Bridge, and US drug enforcement personnel at the highest levels protected drug flow into our country through tunnels and trucking. Fascinating, although in truth, sometimes AdventureMan and I looked at each other and asked “What just happened?”
We have a short driving day today, but a stop at Tombstone, the site of the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Well, not really the OK Corral but the alley next to it. We read Mary Doria Russel’s book Doc, about Doc Holliday, and then Epitaph, her book about Wyatt Earp, and they made it so real, we wanted to visit just to pay tribute to Mary Doria Russel’s research and wonderfully readable books, which take legendary characters and makes them fully human.
Up early, to catch the sunrise reflecting off the windows of El Paso:
We feel so safe, the parking lot is full of Homeland Security personnel vehicles. Although it is a Sunday morning, many are eating breakfast and heading out to guard the border:
It is a totally different day from the rainy mess we drove through all day from San Antonio to El Paso. The sky is so blue and the air is so clear and we are thoroughly enjoying this day:
As we leave Texas, AdventureMan points out that the underside of the overpasses are painted in Southwestern colors, and there are graphic designs on the pillars. The Highways are beautiful! Someone put a little extra thought into making them memorable.
There is a cross gleaming high on a bare mountain, and I am trying to imagine how they got it up there, and how they engineered it so it would be stable and stay there:
Welcome to New Mexico!
As we are paralleling the border, there is another security stop:
We really wanted to buy something at this shop, but the baskets were all made in Pakistan! We have Pakistani baskets! I finally left with just a CD of new-age sort of Indian mystical music, soulful flutes, shaking bones, you know the kind, to put us in the Southwest frame of mind. It’s one of the few things we bought for ourselves on the trip.
Homeland Security: Your Tax Dollars At Work
This is a difficult post to write. I’m a patriot. We served our country many years, Cold Warriors. We believe in the United States of America.
What I saw on our southernmost border on the Rio Grande makes me uncomfortable. We have put a lot of money into making sure illegal aliens don’t get through.
I can see a lot of good reasons for good border security. And having said that, what I saw stepped right over the line of “good border security” and teetered precariously on “oppressive.”
One of the Benson-Rio Grande Valley Park employees told us that if we want to see the Rio Grande, go to (some restaurant that has a view of the Rio Grande) or to this County Park called Anzalduas Park, and he told us how to get there. We drove and drove, couldn’t find it, but there was a cop parked on the road, so we asked him and he told us we were almost there.
As we reached Anzalduas Park (which is right under the Anzalduas Bridge, which goes over into Mexico; no, we didn’t have our passports, so we didn’t cross, maybe next time) and approached the park, it was a very odd park. It’s all excavated out, with a very very bare landscape, and some steep climbs. At the gate are some really heavy duty sliding guard gates. It’s not a very welcoming park.
We got down into the park, drove down to the boat landing, and there were about twenty cars parked there, and they were all security vehicles. There was a big party going on, it was a Friday and some families and children were playing and the loudspeaker was all in Spanish. I couldn’t see any Homeland Security guards, only the cars, maybe the guards were sitting inside. Maybe they were at the party 🙂
The Park employee at Benson – Rio GRande Valley Park had told us that on weekends, across the Rio Grande, is a swim club, and the Mexicans are swimming all the time, just feet away from the American side, but there are all these signs saying the waters are dangerous. The waters seemed very calm, but sometimes there are dangers that are not so obvious.
That’s just a lot of cars providing border security in this park.
You can see the Mexican side swimming club; just yards across a very narrow Rio Grande:
Here is another view of those heavy gates that bar the park in off hours.
We had been told this is a very popular park, full of people all the time. I am glad to hear it, glad that people are not intimidated, and use this beautiful little park for parties and celebrations, just as we use parks all over the USA.
Benson – Rio Grande Park and the National Birding Center
The National Butterfly Center wasn’t opening until ten, and we decided to watch the sun rise over the Rio Grande. We had read you could see the Rio Grande from Benson – Rio Grande Park, so we got there by 0630. The park was closed, but campers told us people are allowed to walk in; you pay at the honors post, so we did. This is the only place on the whole trip I sprayed myself thoroughly with mosquito repellant, as mosquitos love me, especially at dawn and dusk. It’s one of the smartest thing’s I’ve done.
Walking into this park was a thrill. The birds are so excited about the sun coming up, and there is this huge, raucous clattering of bird cries. As we get further into the park, there are also owls calling to one another, WHOOOO-OOOOOOO, WHOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO; we can’t see them, but we can hear them, and it is thrilling. We keep walking to get to where we can see the Rio Grande, but all we can really see is almost the Rio Grande.
So before you go any further, remember, it is really dark, and I am shooting under the worst conditions. It is early morning, cloudy and foggy. I’m just sayin’ . . .
Benson – Rio Grande Park is part of the Texas Birding Trail, and later in the morning, like around 8, so not late, just later, all the bird watchers in the world start to arrive. They are looking for migrating birds, and they have their lists and huge bird-watching telescopes. We are not those birders. Mostly, I can identify cardinals, and blue jays. I can identify a raptor. I’m not a real birder, just a bird appreciator. These guys that come, they are SERIOUS birders, and they travel to Mission, TX to set up camp and tick off as many birds as they can, like in the movie The Big Year. This is either the National Birding Center, or a national birding center, and as day broke, hundreds of birders flocked into the park.
This is a part of the Rio Grande, but not really, it is a side-stream sort of Rio Grande place. The park guides told us if we really want to see the Rio Grande, there was a great restaurant you can see it from or you can go to Anzalduas Park, and told us how to get there. It was cloudy; I never did get a sun rising over the Rio Grande.
Campers are allowed to do ‘primitive camping’. I didn’t know what primitive camping was, but as it turns out, it’s what we used to do when I lived in Alaska. You bring everything yourself, you hike with everything on your back. There may be some paved areas, or minor structures, but you have to have brought everything you will need with you. No cabins, or things like that. There are, in this park, public restrooms and public showers. This shower is too public for me!
The floor is also covered with roly-poly bugs. Honestly, I am not born to camp. I applaud the park for having public restrooms in a place where it is simply impossible to keep the bugs out, but I cannot imagine walking on this floor in bare feet. There were some very brave primitive campers finishing up as I entered the restroom; they had showered and were brushing their teeth and they looked really happy. I am happy for them (shudder) and very thankful for a hotel with linens on the bed and hot water and no bugs!
Almost alone in the park, we managed to get turned around. I did my 10,000 steps before eight in the morning, and I was wearing the wrong shoes, so when we found benches at a bird feeding area, I was happy to sit down. There were glorious birds everywhere, and then, the happiest volunteers I have ever met came along in a little golf cart with bird seed and peanut butter, and put out breakfast. They were having the time of their lives, and gave us all kinds of good advice about Mission, Tx.
Early morning, low light and the birds wings are going faster than my camera can capture.
A little while later, the “tram” came by and we hopped on, happy for a ride back to the entry. It was a couple weeks before our blisters healed!
Coffee Call in Baton Rouge
We are going to grab a bite of breakfast before we check out of our Baton Rouge hotel, when we catch sight of the line, the very very long line, and people are carrying plates of rolls and cups of coffee back to their room; there is no place to sit and eat because the conference room is all set up for the final meeting of the conference.
LOL, no, we are not going to stand in line for breakfast. I know just the place to go; I found it earlier on TripAdvisor, but with breakfast included in our room, I hadn’t a hope of getting there. But it is nearby, and just what we need! We check out, and head for Coffee Call.
The minute we walk in, we love this place. There are businessmen reading the paper, sipping their coffees, there are families with children who have put several tables together, there are all kinds of people just kicking back and enjoying this place.
We figure out that we have to go up to the front to order our coffee, tea and beignets 🙂 but because we are about to hit the road, we also order sausage biscuits for a little protein.
The beignets are loaded with powder sugar. As we get ready to go, I go into the ladies room to wash hands and find another grandmother, trying to get powdered sugar off her two grandchildren, LOL.
The Coffee Call gave our day a great start and sent us on our way with smiles on our faces 🙂
Meeting For Lunch on the Bayou Texar
We are having a streak of amazing weather, cool cool nights with lovely mornings and warm, but not steaming afternoons. Yesterday, on the way back from lunch, we saw a gathering of hundreds of pelicans on Bayou Texar, munching away on whatever was plentiful at that neck of the Bayou. I really like pelicans; refugees from another era, looking like little pterodactyls . . .
Why Not Pensacola?
Big article in AOL news about Dan Gilbert going to Silicon Valley to pitch moving their offices to Detroit because it’s way cool.
Excuse me?
While I appreciate his loyalty to Detroit, the things he is pitching all apply to Pensacola – AND. And in Pensacola you don’t have harsh winters. And in Pensacola you are minutes from one of the most beautiful sugar-white sand beaches, uncrowded, in the world. And Pensacola is family oriented. And Pensacola has affordable housing. And Pensacola has a way-cool culture, with parades, symphony, ballet, opera, theatre and restaurants, and world class National Naval Aviation Museum. And people spend thousands of dollars to come visit Pensacola when they could be living the dream – in Pensacola.
Dan Gilbert is a powerful man – in Detroit. Now he wants to convince Silicon Valley to move to America’s Motor City where they’ll have wide open offices, inexpensive living, and access to amazing talent.
Gilbert, the chairman of Rock Ventures and the owner of Quicken Loans, owns 60 buildings in downtown Detroit that house 12,000 employees. He is also an active backer in startups and has been inviting small companies to come bloom in Detroit over the past half-decade.
Why should you move to Detroit?
“The perception doesn’t do it justice. You have a huge talent pool,” said Gilbert. “And the people are way cooler.”
Gilbert believes that the Midwest work ethic isn’t a myth. He said that, despite the rumors to the contrary, the city has an innovative city government and, thanks to his extensive purchases in Detroit, there is space to spare for new startups. He is also working hard to reduce blight around the city, ensuring that city doesn’t look like it does in the popular “desolation porn” that characterizes the city.
The result is a smaller, more compact city that allows smaller companies to gain a foothold in the tech economy.
The city is, arguably, entering a period of renaissance. Thanks to Quicken Loans and Gilbert’s work in the city, most of the blight has been converted to cheap office space. While it does still seem like a wasteland to the average graduate, we saw a city reborn when we visited in 2012 and things are improving immensely.
In short, he said, Detroit is all about opportunity.
“We have great bones,” said Gilbert.
Detroit has good bones? Pensacola has office space, room to grow, a population of workers that can be trained to fill high tech jobs, several colleges, a university, and low stress living. It’s such an easy sell.
Wayfaring Stranger and James Lee Burke in the Heat of August
Just in time to save August from being my most hated month EVER, a new James Lee Burke novel, Wayfaring Stranger.
LOL, escaping from the relentless heat and humidity of Pensacola, I enter the heat and humidity of Burke country, ranging from the oil fields in Louisiana to the desolate social scene of Houston in the 1950’s.
I got hooked on James Lee Burke in a very cold winter February in Wiesbaden, Germany, when I came across a book called A Morning for Flamingos. I like mysteries, but this was a mystery by a poet! When I read about the what an approaching thunderstorm looks like when you live in a little cabin in New Iberia on Bayou Teche, I was lost. I-don’t-know-how-many books later, I’ve been to New Iberia, had lunch by the Bayou Teche and explored Burke country.
Louisiana is soulful, all those little roads, and sugar cane factories (think True Detective, here) but, (sigh) no matter how colorful, no matter how beautiful, the Louisiana in James Lee Burke’s books is better. He’s been there longer, he has the eye to see that heron, that shiver of wind over the water, that glint of pure evil in a bad guy’s eye. I know you think I am blathering on, but kinda-sorta the Dave Robicheaux detective series are all pretty similar, what changes is the particular social injustice. So this is what hooks me – Burke’s relentless battle against injustice, by writing powerful books that get read by a lot of people, and the elegant prose and philosophy he inserts to lift it way beyond the run of the mill mystery book.
The Wayfaring Stranger is the best yet. It’s not one of the Robicheaux series, it’s part of a Holland series, lawmen whose Texas lives and challenges we’ve read about in previous books. Wayfaring Stranger is the story of Weldon Holland (Burke tells us in an after word that Hollan – no D – is an old Texas family name in his line) who lives with his grandfather and runs into the real Bonnie and Clyde. Fast forward and he is fighting in the Ardennes, and the only reason you have faith he will survive is that there are so many pages ahead of you . . . he and one of his men trek, hop a train, and end up in a deserted death camp, where they find one survivor – a woman. The three of them are surrounded by fighting armies and find safety in a local farm’s cellar.
Oops. I’ve already given away that Weldon survives the battle. It’s hard to write much more without giving too much away. It’s a powerful story, powerfully written. It’s about good men and women and weak men and women and how sometimes an evil person can surprise you with a goodness.
Warning. Once you pick up Wayfaring Stranger, you’ll need a block of time so you can just go ahead and finish it. You won’t be putting it down.
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