One of the world's great drives

No one could ever say that Sedona is not spectacular with its glory of red cliffs and mountains.

It is America’s answer to the Australian Olgas. But it has a township and hotels and a tourism industry. I can’t say it has fantastic cuisine. This is our second time here and, as at the first, the best meals have been breakfast at the Adobe Grand Villas which brags a French chef called Jacqueline.

She has something special on the go every day, embellished by Jacqueline’s colourful commentaries on this and that.

At this stage of our 6-month epic road trip around the USA, we are on a tight time schedule. We have not hurried on the trip, tending to drive only moderate distances on driving days and making driving days one out of every three. This has enabled us to pace ourselves with sightseeing and domestica, rest and play.

But we have a date in Las Vegas. My friend Rachel is flying down from Portland to share the experience of discovering Vegas. She is booked into the Stratosphere and we into the Vdara. All we have to do is to get there. It’s a long drive. I'm drugged up on antivirals and analgesia and don't feel too bad.

And, if anything is going to keep one's mind on the higher planes, it is grand landscape. We are embarking on one of the world’s beautiful drives.

Out of Sedona, one winds through those red mountains with towering rock faces and mighty canyons. Dramatic and breathtaking.

All the superlatives come out to meet the might of those natural formations. Striated with rich colours. Deep and dramatic. It is like a mini grand canyon.

Betwixt and between the grand rock displays are trees, taller trees than we have seen for a while. The first roadside walls of trees. They grow up on the hillside and it is clear they are a vital resource. Neat piles of long logs await collection here and there.

Up and up we go to an undulating plateau. More pine harvests. White fences and neat properties.

We swing into Interstate 17 north.

Past Mormon Lake, Flagstaff, Kokomo National Forest - miles and miles of forest.

Eventually the vegetation opens out to reveal brown granite and a plain with homes and small holdings.

I note the lack of sheep. I think sheep would love this pasture. But America is not sheep country.

Instead a sign says Bearizona Wildlife. Another sign points to the Grand Canyon exit. Not for us today. We’ve done that.

We pass Williams, founded 1881, Gateway of the Grand Canyon.

There’s a volcanic vista out there with desert junipers. It reminds us of Santa Fe.

More prairie. More juniper. A lot of juniper.

Wide open spaces. Cinder cones and mountains on the horizon.

Passing Ash Creek and Ash Fork, a modest but dignified little community out here.

The open plateau reveals layers and layers of distant mountains.

Back on Route 40 now. The old Route 66.

Farms here and there, lots featuring caravans. We ponder the ubiquity of the caravan on the American landscape. Not just for the grey nomads but as instant homes in remote places. Some beside houses maybe as extra rooms. Some just out there as houses. Some are just left there. I wonder how many there are, what are their stories.

Trucks are dominating the road again. We’re close to Seligman which looks very inviting nestled in among trees. Then I see the sign for the Roadkill 66 Cafe.

We drive on by noting some fairly miserable cattle out there on bare field.

There’s a cemetery at the roadside. Lots of flowers and people fussing over graves.

But the road is really nasty, rough and rumbly.

We rumble onwards uncomfortably. The ranges ahead have a serrated profile. Bruce thinks it is like a bandsaw.

We enter Mohave Country.

Tumbleweed rolls under the car.

Wonderful outcrops of boulders.

An old truck is parked on a hilltop with sign advertising 40 acre lots of land for sale - as mango ranches,

Well, I never. No signs of mangoes out here.

It’s The Purple Heart Trail according to a road sign.

And another vast, vast open plain stretches ahead of us and around us, lightly flecked with distant settlements.

There goes Kingman with its airport and prison.

Signs for Arizona 66 and Loop 66. Sign for Terrible’s Service Station.

And Route 66.

Only 68 miles to Las Vegas.

Signs offer exits to Los Angeles and Loughlin.

We forge onwards, past Bullhead City which is scattered across the plain.

Little yuccas are appearing on the rocky hill slopes, stunted mesquites, little tufty grasses.

A town called Chloride is a wide sprinkle of caravans and fibro homes across the tufty blue grasses in the shadow of the mountain.

Incongruously, here comes a mighty sign advertising Alpaca Imports - the world’s largest alpaca store.

Mangoes, alpaca - you just never know what you’ll find in these deserts.

Now it is small, stumpy cactus, saguaros, little chollas, and another range of volcanic hills around us.

Cactus seem to like this elevation, between 2000 and 3000 ft, says Bruce.. This is an old rift zone. It is busier than it looks. There are about 20 or 30 letter boxes clustered at the roadside, one track and no sign of habitation. They must be out there somewhere.

Further along there are some ramshackle houses. Native American settlement, says Bruce, Mighty mountains ahead, brown with white striations. They make Bruce think of coco-swirl ice cream.

Dry washes roadside. And joshua trees start to appear. Bruce loves them.

Look how the little joshua trees look like little people standing out there in the landscape, he says.

Three cop cars are at the roadside around a car and some people. That’s a lot of police.

There’s not much here. Just an odd little pit stop, a bit like Baghdad Cafe.

We wonder at what drama must be unfolding as we zip by, checking our speed..

There are one-acre lots for sale. I can’t imagine what one would do with those.

Caravans, trailer homes, a couple of homes built semi-underground.

This is the Colorado Plateau desert, says Bruce.

It is vast.

On the horizon is a hill with a pimple on the top.

Bruce says it’s a nipple. I chide him.

Little purple cactus are out there.

One can’t take in the scale of the plateau. This is a lot of land.

It doesn't agree with the camera. The photos look drab, yet the landscape inspires. I give up trying to snap and just drink it in.

Top of faraway mountains seems to be lying smooth and low - until we start to make our descent.

The road takes us down to the Colorado River, down, down, down…

Rugged red mountains now and power pylons.

Here comes the mighty Hoover Dam.

We drive right over it, almost without realising.

We look for the exit to take us to see the dam. Where is it? Did we miss it?

Now we are passing Lake Mead, a shimmer of deep blue, a mighty mirror of water.

What about the dam?

Finally a sign. We pull off and find ourselves backtracking, backtracking, miles we have already covered.

How weird is this?

Finally, we give up, turn back and head for Boulder City, a sleek resort community of lovely houses all looking back to the lake. Palm trees. Pencil Pines. Topiary. Very salubrious.

Then we swing past a big mall and a huge strip of Indian ticky tack businesses.

And there’s the world biggest alpaca

imports store. Not very big at all.

There’s a Pro Gun Club, a casino, bail bonds, wedding chapels, more bail bonds, pawn shop, traffic traffic, smoggy air, billboards, burbs, burbs.

This is it.

Hello Vegas.

Arizona the beautiful

Dear old Phoenix. We love you again. We love our Tempe at the Buttes Marriott which is nestled right in and on a splendid old butte. Was there ever a more magical place for a resort hotel? Our room opens onto the beautiful gardens and steps up to the pool. The pool winds around the butte; two large pools joined by a channel, looking up to a waterfall and cactus

-covered rocky butte slopes. The mood is easy.

My back is annoying me. A sort of rash is appearing. Hmm, says Dr Bruce. That looks suspiciously like shingles. But I had the Zoster vaccination, say I. Hmm, says Bruce. It doesn’t work on everyone.

Onwards, we must go. We are scheduled to be in Sedona and the election is tomorrow. Arizona has not been too fiercely covered in

Trump posters. It is John McCain’s comfortable electorate. But the media has been a foment of political bile of the most unprecedented ferocity. The campaigns have hit a gutter low. Trump is at home, chanting and bellowing with fire and brimstone and evangelistic fury. His speeches are tantrums. It boggles the mind that so many Americans are sucked in. But they have been on the Fox political hate diet for years now. They have been conditioned to the hatred of Clintons and heavily marketed with the concept of an evil political elite which wants to take their guns away. They are not politically savvy. They are gullible and jealous. Trump feeds these emotions. He struts the political stage like a superstar, giving speeches in front of his parked Trump plane. Hillary erudite and experienced, ripe for the role of president, has a huge burden of mistakes behind her, sexism and misogyny all around her, and now, at the 11th hour, the FBI of all things, throwing a new email scandal in her path. Everything is very stressful and dangerous. We hope there will be a good TV in Sedona for us to watch the election unfold.

It’s a big smoggy out there in Phoenix today. 91 deg F. We whoosh along the speeding 10-lane highway out of town, past schools and industry, past oil tankers queued on rail lines. Palms and eucalypts dominate the urban vegetation. We run the gauntlet of relentless commerce on the highways; big, colourful, prosperous, cheerful.

It’s a good highway. Past the University of Phoenix and towards rows of perfectly pointy volcanic mountains and basalt boulder fields.

Burbs with mesquite. Hillsides with saguaros.

We wind upwards into mountains and as we gain elevation, we gain density of cacti until they reach wow factor.

Chollas with the saguaros. Bruce is in heaven. The chollas are blooming.

Desert plants. Adobe-style housing settlements. Those lovely adobe colours.

We are at 2000ft elevation.

The road narrows. The trucks take over.

A sign identifies a mesa as Table Mesa. Bruce thinks this is hilarious. Mesa means table. It is Table Table, he laughs.

The earth has been changing colour. Now we are in sandy limestone. It’s not volcanic here. It is part of the Rocky Mountain uplift, explains Bruce.

We cross Moore’s Gulch and gasp at the spectacle of the sea of saguaros and chollas in the dry creek bed.

Now at about 3000ft, it seems to be a sweet spot for saguaros.

And we are right inside the rolls of the mountains.

More mesas and a large, widely-spread community appears. Black Canyon City. It has a real wild west look to it. One expects to see tumbleweed.

Oh, and a little town called Bumble Bee. Cute.

We keep climbing, amid trucks groaning in low gear and wanting to pass each other.

There’s Horsethief Basin Recreational Area. There’s a name that tells a story.

The saguaro cacti are suddenly gone. The slopes are covered with pretty little prickly pear cacti.

And now we are on a desert plateau. No cactus at all.

Scenic View, says a sign.

Vending Machines, says the sign beside it.

Not my sort of view, say I.

We thunder on amid our friends, the long-distance truckies, past roadside boulders Bruce identifies as a’a lava flow. See, he says, there are two kinds of basaltic lava flows: a’a and pahoehoe. The names come from Hawaiian.

Low scrub lies sparsely on the slopes as a mountain range unfolds itself softly.

We pass Bloody Basin Road. Pale boulders.

A sign to Agua Fria National Monument.

An overpass. A settlement. And back to wide open plains. Low mesquite. No cactus. Lots of a white flowering desert plant we can’t identify.

No services. No nothing.

We are on our own out here, apart from the trucks, of course.

Just vast desert landscape.

Elevation 4000ft.

Yellow dry expanse. Small hills.

A little higher and miniature prickly pears appear again and then, suddenly, a riot of desert juniper.

Green bushes all over. Even a couple of cottonwoods out there.

Signs invite trucks and caravans to pull off here and check their brakes.

And down we wind into a steep, steep valley.

Cars are hooning down like idiots.

Skunk smell. Poor little critter, probable clobbered by a car.

This seems to be Fort Verde State Park.

Red mesas stretch out far ahead across a vista of limestone hills.

This land was once under a shallow sea, says Bruce.

Dead Horse State Park, says a sign.

We take a turnoff. West 260. Oh, look at that Wendy’s Restaurant, disguised as a handsome adobe dwelling. Trees. A treescape with hints of autumn hue. Trump signs.

Sign: Guns. Buy, Sell, Trade. Rental Archery.

Mini storage.

The road goes ahead towards those limestone cliffs Bruce loves.

We can see the rich red striations of the Sedona mountains far ahead.

And here comes a town called Cottonwood. 3320ft elevation. Established 1879.

Sedona is not far away. Over the Verde River with its cottonwoods. Past the Coconino National Forest.

Black cattle. Yellow grass. Prickly pears. Junipers. Sign: Beware of deer. And suddenly a brilliant vista as the red-rock country appears, that glorious rich red rock streaking across the landscape. Yellow cottonwoods, lush vegetation, cactus… Sedona City Limits.