I Feel Like a Phoenix -- Rising From Arizona!

Dianna has thick blood, like all good Germans. And as a thick blooded woman, she has no patience for the heat. So last weekend, the two of us made haste for Sedona, Arizona, about two hours north of Phoenix and about 20 miles south of Flagstaff.

Sedona’s higher elevation makes it a little cooler than the Valley of the Sun. Sedona sits about 4,400 feet above sea level, where as Phoenix is at about 1,100 feet above sea level. It’s still in the high 90s and 100s in Sedona, but nothing like the 116 degree Fourth of July last week. And at night, the temperature in Sedona dips to a dry, cool high-50s range. Beautiful.

Primary objectives:

1.) To have a fancy, shmancy meal Saturday night;

2.) to enjoy a physical hike during the day.

Secondary Objectives:

1.) Not get taken in by the obvious tourist traps;

2.) To terrorize the staff at the King Ransom’s Hotel with wild antics.

I’ll kill the suspense here and tell you, yes we accomplished all of these goals.

The hiking took place in Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness. This is red rock country, and I’m not talking about that cheap, fake opium people used to smoke in college. I’m talking buttes, sculpted pinnacles, windows, arches and slot canyons. It looks like Mars had a garage sale and Sedona bought up a ton of its furniture.

There are dozens of trails in the area, but we decided on Brins Mesa trail, which has a trail head just north of Sedona. The trail climbs among agave, prickly pear cactus and pinyon pine trees about 600 feet in approximately a sixth of a mile to a -- you guessed it -- a mesa top. Wilson Mountain as it‘s known.

A nasty fire burned over 1,500 acres on the mountain last year. The pinyon pine and juniper trees were twisted and scorched. The blaze was started by a transient who let his cooking fire get out of hand, according to a state Web site.

That dude must be a hardy “transient” to make his home in the desert. I mean, the guy is hardly alone out there.

The wilderness area supposedly is filled with coyotes, bears, mule and white tail deer, javelinas, a relative of the European pig, and even mountain lions. But the only thing stupid enough to traverse the mesa during that summer morning and afternoon, was Dianna and I.

After eating a couple of sandwiches under the shade of a pinyon pine in a sandy little dry wash, we headed back up the mesa. This is when one of the first monsoon storms of the season started rolling across the mountains toward us. As a man once said, “assummmm.” I didn’t want to be on that mountain when the lighting started forking down.

We made it back to the car before the rain hit, but we marched to the tune of thunder. Dianna, once again not acclimated to the heat, had a wee bit of an overheating problem, but nothing a little AC and a chilled Gatorade couldn’t fix.

Thankfully, I had made our dinner reservation for 8 p.m. This gave Dianna an hour or two to nap and me an hour or two to drink Oak Creek pale ales, without having to rush.

(Next time on Lowbrow Truth Serum: Mike gets saucy with a waiter, Dianna gets kicked out of the hotel swimming area and some pre-teen children staying in the room next door get a late-night audio lesson on drunken, wet body slapping.)

An agave.