Tripometer – 11982 mi
Gas Gauge – 908.875 gal
Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ
Lodging – $28
Cans of OFF – 4
After a call to Rancho Sedona this morning we realized that we were likely not going to secure a site within the city of Sedona for the weekend. Not wanting to be stuck in a hotel for the whole weekend, we quickly phoned the casino RV Park and made reservations until Sunday. Kelly worked until around noon (late checkout) and we packed up and moved everything to the Distant Drums RV Park about 10 minutes up the highway. Wow, were we wrong about this place.
We’ve seen a lot of RV Parks on our trip. Good to bad, most parks leave something to be desired. The Distant Drums RV Park was fantastic. We checked in with the wonderfully friendly staff at the front desk and were led to our campsite by an employee in a golf cart. The site pad had been raked and the concrete pad swept before our arrival. The view of the surrounding valley from our site was better than most views we’ve experienced and our site was a little removed from most of the sites in the RV park, making for some well needed seclusion. We could not have been happier. Over the next few hours we discovered that not only were we about 40 feet from the individual shower / bathroom combinations (a huge luxury on the road) but also the coin laundry and dog park! Most amazingly, this RV park was charging only $28 per night, simply an unheard of rate for a site with electric and water. We’re probably going to spend more than a few nights here and we’re both kicking ourselves for spending two nights in a hotel 10 minutes away.
After Kelly finished working with a fantastic cellular connection, we drove into Sedona to get the lay of the land. Our first stop in town was a small store called the Clear Creek Trading Company. We had plans to investigate a good part of town tonight but this one store occupied us for well over an hour. Neither of us have ever seen such a tremendous collection of neat things. The store sells a large variety of Indian goods; leather, furs, skulls, music, instruments, beads, blankets, jewelry, books, knives, and even Jackalopes. We simply got lost in this store. Paul’s favorite bin in the beading section was labeled ‘Assorted Vertebrae’. This is not your average bead shop! If this is an example of the things we’re going to be seeing during the rest of our stay in Sedona, we’re going to have a great time here.
Returning to camp we spent the remainder of the evening unpacking the trailer for an extended stay and enjoying cable TV for the first time since we left home. Little things like a news channel playing softly in the background are enough to make us feel like we are home in a way that we haven’t felt in a long time.