Road-tripping to Sedona via London (bridge)
[Lake Havasu City, AZ]
Boris and I had been wanting to do a trip together for a while, and packed schedules left us with Thanksgiving weekend as one of the few options. Flying over this holiday is notoriously expensive, and Boris had been wanting to take his new car on a longer drive, so we decided to head to Sedona, AZ by car.
We had Thanksgiving lunch plans with friends of his, so the late start meant we had to split our 9-hour drive to Sedona in 2. Lake Havasu City, AZ, turned out to be a good place to stop in overnight. It is a small town of around 50,000 and it’s fairly new – it was first established after WWII. We arrived here pretty late (around 10 pm), so we didn’t see anything outside our hotel.
On Friday morning, however, we took a quick stroll around the main (and only?) attraction here, the London bridge. It is called that because it actually came from London. It was disassembled there, then shipped here and assembled again for the cool price of $7,000,000 (that was in 1968, 5 years after this city was incorporated). A statue of the city founders stood at one end of the bridge.
We continued towards Sedona, and we knew we were getting close when we saw the San Francisco peaks near Flagstaff pop up in the distance.
Getting close to Flagstaff!
Just before reaching Flagstaff, we headed south to Sedona on Arizona route 89A, the scenic route into Sedona. It took us through Oak Creek canyon and it was absolutely gorgeous. As we were approaching Sedona, we started to see the red cliffs that this little town is very well known for.
We arrived in Sedona the next day (Friday) and spent a few hours in the center of town. While walking around, we smelled some amazing BBQ, but couldn’t locate the origin. We asked a shop keeper, and he directed us to a little alley where we found the Outlaw Grille. It’s a very laid-back, self service place but the food was great! Downtown Sedona looked like the quintessential small Southwestern town. Most of the shops offered Southwestern-style paintings, clothing and jewelry. Fall was in full swing and the changing leaves on the trees were beautiful!
We checked into our Bed & Breakfast, the Adobe Village Inn, and enjoyed a nice sunset on our balcony.
Enjoying the patio of our hotel
In the evening, we went for dinner at Che-Ah-Chi at the Enchantment resort. It was already dark when we got there so we didn’t get to see much of the grounds at the resort, but the restaurant was fantastic. We both laughed like crazy when we were discussing Boris’ family. We were talking about his uncles and I joked that, in addition to having an uncle named Pepe, he should also have an uncle named Coco – to which he said that he did! I am not sure why I found this so funny, probably because I was thinking it’s a silly Latin American stereotype about names, but it turned out to be true!
As we were leaving the restaurant, we walked around just a bit. The resort is barely lit, which made it challenging to navigate but allowed us to look up at the sky and see the stars in all their glory! As a matter of fact, the entire city of Sedona has been taking steps to reduce light pollution. In 2014, it earned the designation “Dark Sky Community” and joined only 7 other communities in the WORLD.
This is my first time here, and Boris hadn’t been here in more than 10 years, so we’re both excited to explore more!
