This morning we packed up our bags and headed to the car early to try out Layla’s Bakery in West Sedona for some fresh sourdough avocado toast, a ham and cheese croissant, and lavender oat latte. Jen’s been leaning into the lavender here in these parts all week.
Then we headed to the Airport Mesa vortex and Jen hiked up to the top in sandals…I wasn’t nearly as confident and changed into my hot-ass socks and clunky hiking shoes…and then watched enviously as she walked around the rock barefoot, like a guru, all that good energy just mainlining into her skin. We brought our stones and crystals and used our newly acquired vortex-finding skills to look for twisted junipers and feel for static under our fingers.
Some folks up at the top asked us what we knew about vortexes and we told them about our trip to Rachel’s Knoll and the Peace Park yesterday…and shared everything they needed to know to visit some accessible vortexes without having pay premium for the jeep tour.
And then we sat up there for a bit to “charge up” ourselves before our drive home.
After the vortex, we headed to a little farmers market we’d spotted on the side of the highway. We got some roasted poblanos and fresh pickles from local farmers while a musician played the didgeridoo from his shaded tent for tips and an old hippie tried to sell us $30 petrified yak cheese to take home to our doggos.
We declined on the dog yak cheese but stuck around to hear a few stories about his trips to San Diego and then headed across the street to the local Whole Foods for a quick trip to the facilities before our long drive home.
This Whole Foods felt far more granola than grandiose, and yet had a full wine bar inside, where we spotted the exact bottles we bought at the wine store last night for a much cheaper price…we vowed next time to be a lot smarter to avoid the ridiculous “tourist tax” in town…being from a tourist town ourselves, you’d think we’d know better.
We stopped quick at a thrift store because Jen’s always looking for pretty dresses and then a kitschy souvenir shop because I wanted a Sedona patch for my hiking backpack. We gave the souvenir shop girls at the counter our $20 day pass to the creek, which is good thru next week, in case they wanna use it.
We drove out of town the same way we came in and were sad looking at the majesty of the red rocks fade into the distance behind us with nothing but miles of brown-grey desert ahead. We listened to Trevor Hall, Ayla Nereo, and the Desert Dwellers on Pandora to try and sustain the vibrations and feeling of zen as long as possible. To keep Sedona alive just a bit longer, we started recalling our favorite things about the trip.
One of our favorite flavors on this trip was the fresh, spicy chimichurri we had at our fancy dinner Wednesday night. Our server let us snap a photo of the recipe so we can make it at home.
Another was the ricotta, peach and pancetta pizza we had yesterday. We calculated we could totally recreate those flavors this summer on the grill.
Another favorite flavor of the trip was the matcha, green tea, mint libation I ordered after our hike to the Devil’s Bridge of Vertigo Terror.
It’s so simple, could we possibly recreate this for a sippable summer evening by the fire pit with our village people? Truth be told, it can’t be done without the key ingredient: Chakra Vodka. But where could we find this deliciously unique spirit? It was nowhere to be found in town. Turns out, Chakra Vodka is not made in Sedona, as we thought, but rather in a magical place just outside Phoenix called Cave Creek, AZ.
We were headed that way anyway and googled to learn they have a tasting room with bottles for sale open today, so we decided to make a detour onto the super fun-sounding Carefree Highway to pay them a visit.
Carefree Spirits has all kinds of fun flavors…we knew we couldn’t do a tasting…but we were sooo interested and love supporting small and local businesses. I don’t even like/drink vodka very often, but these flavors are just next level interesting.
-Red Apple & Ginger Root
-Peach & Hibiscus
-Pineapple & Rosemary
-Honey & Lemon Balm
-Lychee, Coconut, & Jasmine
-Grapefruit & Lavender
– the one we came for: Green Tea, Mint, Matcha
Bonus points for being named Chakra, having aesthetic rainbow bottles, giving us free stickers, and connecting each varietal to one of the seven chakras it supposedly activates (Root, Sacral, Third Eye, Heart, Throat, Solar Plexus, and Crown).
We were the only people in the place and chatted with the two ladies serving samples about the distillery and how they make it and why they don’t sell these babies in California.
We took teeeeny sips of each to see which ones we should take home with us, knowing we still had 4.5 hours of driving ahead. We got the green tea, the grapefruit, and the lychee coconut.
And then we looked through their cocktail list and saw one called Orange Blossom made with something called Cara Cara Orange & Vanilla Balsamic Vinegar…?! Vinegar in a cocktail? What does that even mean?
Well, wouldn’t ya know, next door is an olive oil company that makes their own evoo blends, honey, spices and like 50 different varieties of basalmic vinegars, including a whole bunch of sweet ones.
Now, to know Jen and me is to understand and accept that we are sooo slutty for charcuterie, always on the hunt for interesting cheeses, weird nuts, and things to dip crusty bread into. Our life has become a daily scavenger hunt to farmers markets and off the beaten path olive-bar speakeasies for the best stuff to put out on a board before dinner.
We said our thank yous to the Chakra chicks, responsibly left the remainders of our spirit samples, bagged up our liquid booty, and headed straight next door to the freakin promised land of charcuterie slut heaven: The Cave Creek Olive Oil Company.
These people are serious about balsamic and evoo. If Jesus was around, I think he’d make a special trip to Cave Creek and make friends with them and trade recipes…I wouldn’t be surprised if he started including their balsamic concoctions to go with all those generous wine and bread miracles he’s pretty famous for.
Damn, everything we tried was freakin delicious and the owner was super friendly and gave us a ton of samples. She was tickled that the Chakra mixologists used her balsamics in their drinks and said she’d gone over to try them and was really impressed with how creatively people are using her products.
She said some dude combined her green chile olive oil with her red raspberry balsamic vinegar on smoked ribs a few months back and won first place in a bbq competition.
I freakin love hearing stories of people doing something they love…and the reward for working from your heart is that sometimes people share how the thing you created on your path somehow helped them on their own path. It’s absolutely beautiful when the ripples come back to you in the form of a compliment.
But we had to get back on the road…and the rest of it was undeniable desert. A hot, dusty road where even the native cactuses looked forlorn and miserable.
We stopped for gas in a town called Gila Bend that had a slightly haunted-looking retro UFO diner and a stray motorhome parked along the main drag that could have been a film location for Breaking Bad.
And in Gila Bend it was 117 degrees in the shade. It was the hottest temperature I have ever felt in my entire life, including times I had to put my face in the oven to stick a toothpick in the brownies.
I was outside pumping gas for maybe 5 minutes and finally now understand how someone can actually die from the heat. I have no idea how any living thing other than reptiles can survive in conditions like that…I didn’t see any homes with pools and no human life anywhere in the whole town other than us foolish outsiders pumping our gas, dumbstruck and mystified by the sensation of being literally melted alive by a ferocious sun, while standing very still in the shade contemplating our life choices to take a road trip through the desert during the hot season.
It stayed 117 from Gila Bend all the way through to Yuma. It calmed down to a breezy 109 until we hit San Diego county coming up from the sand dunes and windmills.
It’s probably not surprising that a half hour from home we were certain that the only thing that sounded good besides gallons of ice cold water to drink was raw, cold, amazingly unheated sushi. So we ordered takeout from our fave place near home and finally rolled the windows down to welcome the cool SoCal “how-ya-doin”: our typical summer evening of 75 degrees and sunny.
We loved our time in Arizona and also it felt good to be home. We drove through our neighborhood with fresh eyes tonight…and talked about that vacation phenomenon where you come back from a new place and everything just looks and feels a little different from when you left…like you’re seeing it almost as an outsider, still in vacation exploration mode.
It’s funny to think that just this morning we were sitting on top of a vortex. The doggos were happy to see us, we decided not to tell them about the expensive yak cheese we didn’t buy for them.
After our last full day of this vacation together, it’s time to rest in our own space tonight, feeling significantly changed and inspired after our adventures in the desert.
