Was windy yesterday, as in ‘could hardly open car door to get out’ type of windy, but today was worse, even at 6 am as I struggled out of the hotel to photograph some trains. The sun was rising and the trees were almost at right angles and I knew today was going to be another challenge in the long list of challenges on this tour. We left early, having heard the weather channel warning of winds of 60 mph around lunchtime. Had thought about visiting the Petrified Forest National Park and decided to do that –maybe would never get another chance. So we braved the force nines and were flabbergasted. What a thing to have missed. The rainbow colours of the ‘painted’ desert were stunning even though to take photographs I had to lean back on Neil and even then we were both at risk of seeing the rock formations very close up. Blues, pinks, dark greens, creams maroons-so beautiful – thought we could never see anything to match that but we were wrong. Driving into Sedona we saw huge red rock buttes towering over the Santa Fe -type adobe buildings.

Painted Desert and Petrified Forest

 

We checked into our ‘last two days of holiday’ hotel – fabulously low key but lovely. We had the ‘Purple Lizard’ villa and all I can say is if you need a bit of spoiling this is the place to do it. We arrived windswept and tired but the checking in was quickly dealt with and we were guided to our room in which bread was baking. Later home made biscuits were left at the door. The pool was cool and the hot tub was hot massaging away nearly all the aches and stiffness. Everything about the villa including the layout was geared to make you drift from room to room as though you owned the place. The bed was inside a sort of rattan nest that you climbed into. We deserve this, we thought, as we drank wine and felt so so good. Later we watched a DVD John had given us of the Bonzos performing at the Bilzen Jazz and Pop Festival in Belgium in 1969 with Deep purple , Moody Blues, Soft Machine, Brian Auger and so on. God we were young. We found the CD player had an iPhone dock so we drifted into the night listening to it shuffling through Neil’s song library.

The Villa