Day 243- Drive Phoenix into Prescott to Sedona thru the Mountains

The View from behind the wheel- Joe’s blogging today!

We rose on Tuesday morning to my Alarm clock at 7am. We typically don’t sleep in that late but, it’s been a challenging week and the extra sleep was needed. It’s move day today and we needed to be out by 9am for multiple reasons. Jenn has client calls, we needed to fuel up the Rig and today was our day to explore Prescott, AZ.

Prescott is a small town about 1.5 hours southwest of Sedona and we planned to check it out on our way to Sedona today. We all need to eat and clear all the countertops before we travel and that is always “exciting” if you know what I mean. Some small plastic guide snapped off the awning while it was being pulled in and the yoga mat got caught in a bed slide while bringing it in. It was a nutty morning and I think I lost my cool once. I’m getting a little annoyed by the constant repair jobs all over the RV. I must have fixed 1 or 2 items in the rig everyday for the last 2 weeks. It just seems like everything is breaking all the sudden.

Jenn said to stop saying that I don’t want to fix things and stuff will stop breaking. I’ll let you know how that goes in a few days.

We got out of our campground at 9:30am, fueled up with Diesel at truck stop a block away and we were rolling towards Prescott by 10am. It took us two hours to make it to Prescott and the road up through the mountains was incredible. You slowly climb up out of “the valley” (which is what they call the area of Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale) at an altitude of about 1000 ft. all the way up to Prescott which is at 5300 feet.

At a few points I could get the RV above 45 mph because of the steep incline. We rolled into Prescott around 12:30pm and found a quiet dead end street to park the rig. We’ve done this a few times in different cities and detached the Jeep to explore. This time I forgot to drop a pin where I parked the rig. That will come up later. Lol.

We drove into Prescott’s village area and was surprised to find a very cool walkable town. The Whiskey Row buildings are one of the main draws in town. It is a string of about 15 building on a long block that all filled with small shops, bars, restaurants, antiques stores and art galleries. There was even a hotel that we needed to walk through to get to the Bistro where we ate lunch. St. Michael’s hotel.

We enjoyed lunch and spent another hour exploring the town, hit the post office to mail out a few things, grabbed a coffee and some lemonade at Raven’s Coffee house and made our way back to the Jeep to get underway towards Sedona. That was when I realized what I did. I forgot to make a note of where I parked the RV. I usually pin the spot on Google maps to make it easy but, it was a little chaotic when we jumped in the Jeep earlier and well, I forgot. Whoops.

We found it after retracing our route into town but, it cost us about 15 minutes. It’s all fun and games until you lose your home!

Now came the climax of our day. We drove the RV over a huge mountain range on Scenic route 89a into Sedona. I’m not sure how high we climbed but, there was snow up in them hills. It was a 1 hour drive that covered 28 miles of twisting turning, switchback laiden narrow road that was an exciting experience in a 42ft. motorcoach. We had to detach the Jeep because they don’t allow vehicles longer than 50 feet through the pass.

Jenn gladly followed me and throughly enjoyed the drive. The views where breathtaking and several times I held my breath while passing cars coming in the opposite direction. I was so close to the edge of the cliff during the drive that I was definitely white knunkeling it a bit. Wouldn’t you?

The drive through the mountains ended with us in Jerome, AZ. We were still descending down the mountain but, now we were on super narrow roads with raised sidewalks, traffic, buildings that were built right up against the road and switchbacks that were impossible to make in the rig without crossing over the double yellow line.

I made it out alive and we are now safely in a town called Clarkdale where we will be camping for the next 2 days while exploring Sedona.