Hello Zane Grey

We left Gold Canyon on April 1 about 11:00 for a short 2 hour drive to Zane Grey RV park just outside Camp Verde.  Unfortunately before we even left the outskirts of Phoenix, road signs were warning us that Hwy 17 was closed due to a crash.  Given that 17 is the only road leading us to Camp Verde and any detour would take us an hour out of our way we decided to stick with 17 hoping the crash would be cleaned up long before we arrived.  Turns out that was probably the wrong decision and our 2 hour trip turned into a 4 hour drive, most of it spent sitting motionless on the Interstate.  We weren’t alone and with no options at that point we waited.  

We got to Zane Grey about 3:00 and checked in.  We love this little park.  Its very quiet and with lots of large trees it is so different from the large RV parks of southern Arizona.  Much more like the provincial parks back home.  I was looking forward to the hiking trails down by the creek through the huge Eucalyptus trees.  To my disappointment a flood came through the area in mid February and took out most of the trails.  Years of sediment, sand, trees and composted leaves were wiped away in a matter of hours and left in its place were large rocks and boulders which were previously hidden.  Still a beautiful park but miss those trails.  

Day 1 found us driving through Cottonwood and on to Sedona.  We visited the downtown area which has lots of very nice and very expensive shops.  From there it was on to Tlaquepaque, a artsy shopping area, for lunch and some more window shopping. 

Downtown Sedona is a very pretty area

Lots of little shops and cafe's

Bronze statues of every sort on the street corners

The views are fantastic regardless which direction you look. 

The gardener has been busy. 

The restaurant at the back of the building on the right provides great views.

One of many courtyards

After browsing around downtown we were off to Tlaquepaque.  It is an outdoor shopping area with restaurants, shops and art galleries all housed in adobe style buildings with great gardens.  We don't buy much here but we do have our favourite restaurant and its so peaceful walking through the courtyards and gardens.   

Even has its own chapel.  

The entrance to one courtyard had 2 very large ornate doors.
Very cool. 

That was it for day 1. 

Finally found a good spot for wifi in our RV Park in Moab so hope to get caught up before we head north.  Still have lots of pictures to load and edit and I am running seriously low on hard drive space on my MacBook Air.  50mb per picture chews up the hard drive pretty fast.

New MacBook Pro on the list for this summer and going to get at least a 1TB drive.