Red Rockin’ : Sedona Is Trying to Entice Visitors to Linger by Offering More Than Just Its Majestic Rocks

When the day wanes out here, the red rocks get up to their tricks. Their hues deepen. Their shapes shift in the creeping shade. And once the sun falls from view, they harden into jagged silhouettes. Some of these rocks are half a mile high. It’s a tough act to follow.

But Sedona is trying.

Eager to lure visitors for longer and to stand apart from Phoenix, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, Sedona is raising man-made attractions left and right. Perhaps because the area’s inherited gifts are so conspicuous--the rocks, the oak and sycamore that congregate in the canyons, the Anasazi ruins that lie a few miles away, the waters that rush through the panoramic scenery of nearby Oak Creek Canyon--the Sedonans have been thinking big.

In and around a city of just 7,720 residents, you can now see the landscape via Jeep (six companies, at last count), plane (two companies), balloon (three companies), horse (one company), helicopter (two companies) or mountain bike (two companies).

Meanwhile, the New Age trade in crystals and “vortex tours” is holding firm, recession and skepticism notwithstanding. (Though scientifically unproven, a vortex is said to be a place where people can feel the force of spiritual energy from the Earth.) And locals say the number of art/jewelry/clothing/gift galleries, now more than 40, has doubled since 1989. In one block of storefront displays, I counted 22 howling coyotes.

In addition, the region’s first factory outlet mall, just down Highway 179 in Oak Creek, is approaching its second birthday. A handful of luxury resorts, built amid runaway ‘80s optimism, have survived early struggles to lure the wealthy with six-course meals and one-on-one fitness training. Jerome, a nearby mining town gone bohemian, is drawing more and more day-trippers. The Verde River Canyon Excursion Train, which begins its daily journeys up and back down the Verde Valley from Clarkdale, half an hour’s drive from Sedona, is now 17 months old and gaining riders. All in all, the area now sees an estimated 3 million visitors annually.

This can all get a little excessive. Consider Robert Schultz, a 25-year-old cowboy poet and retail promotion specialist who stands before Sedona’s Lone Wolf Traders shop, holster on his hip, Stetson on his brow, snapping whip in hand, talking up the store and folksily urging tourists to “be good, or else be good at it.”

Just up the street, 60-year-old cowboy entrepreneur “Wild Bill” Lamparter stands at the entrance to his Cowboy Corral shop, looping his lasso around a plastic steer’s head and scoffing at the competition.

“The guy just moved into town,” says Lamparter of his younger counterpart. “He probably just learned how to crack that damn whip,” added Wild Bill, who opened his store two years ago.

Still, the Sedona-Oak Creek Canyon Chamber of Commerce wants more visitors, and wants them to stay longer. The chamber’s executive director, Frank Miller (a former television executive who fled Century City in 1990), this spring persuaded 52 local businesses to kick in money to further promote the place as a multiple-night destination.

“When people come here and spend four or five days, they tend to respect Sedona more,” said Miller recently. “It’s the people who come here for two or three hours to have something to eat and go to the bathroom who won’t care as much . . . They’re the ones who are more inclined to throw that ice cream wrapper on the ground. They’re getting in the car and going somewhere else.”

If you’re a devotee of all that is rustic and remote, you’re reaching now for a rough-hewn pencil with which to write Sedona off. Hold on, at least for a minute.

The city is hemmed in by federally protected forest land. It can grow only so much more, and the prevailing theory seems to be that growth will level off in coming years, leaving a population of 20,000 or so in the greater Sedona area.

“It may get dense right here,” says Joe Green, owner of Canyon Country Mountain Bikes in the uptown area. “But you can still go up in these mountains and find things no white man has ever seen . . . I’ve lived four years in the valley, and I’ve just scratched the surface.” Just a few years ago, Green noted, visiting geologists discovered an ancient Indian pot that ended up in the Smithsonian.

If Joe Green, Frank Miller and company are right, Sedona may remain an island territory of galleries, restaurants and hotels, surrounded by red rocks and desert scrub. Sagebrush and sophistication, cheek by jowl. A city could do worse, and so could a traveler.

I covered the rocks by air, foot and Jeep. They not only look new every hour, but from every angle. If you catch them after a spring rain, their reds go dark, slick and shiny. Hike among them in white sneakers and you go home with a renewed sense of your insignificance on the planet . . . and pink footwear.

The view from the air may have been the best bargain of the trip. At the controls of a well-traveled Cessna, Jack Seeley, the founder of Sedona Scenic Air Tours, took me and another passenger for a 12-minute zip around the neighborhood. We circled Cathedral Rock, squinted down at the ant-sized people atop the earthen arch of Devil’s Bridge, and assessed various properties said to be owned by Sedona celebrities: actresses Jane Russell (now residing elsewhere) and Sean Young, for two, and mime Robert Shields of Shields and Yarnell fame.

Seeley, who has been flying out of Sedona’s modest, mesa-top airport since 1979, offers several tours, including one for $150 a head (three-passenger minimum) that takes in Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Canyon de Chelly and various other sights. Other companies at the Sedona airport offer further variety, most notably Arizona Helicopter Adventures, which for $295 will take a couple aloft, deposit the pair on isolated Doe Rock with dinner and a fully set table, and return a few hours later.

But for an introduction to the lay of the land and a lesson in desert scale--not to mention the absolutely unimpeded view of Sean Young’s alleged roof--Seeley’s bottom-of-the-line tour suited me fine. It cost $15.

The itinerary of my hike was simpler. Following a well-used

rock-climber’s route, I scrambled most of the way up Bell Rock, known for its symmetrical shape and often named as one of the area’s vortexes of spiritual energy. The path led across seamless rock faces and through tree-choked crannies, yielding high and wide views.

Looking out over the valley, it was easy enough to understand why the Anasazi Indians chose to settle here centuries ago, and why Theodore and Sedona Schnebly, formerly of Missouri, made the same decision in 1902. (That year, they opened the

area’s first post office, and named it for Mrs. Schnebly.)

But I began this hike too late. Soon the light was failing and 20 yards of steep and tricky climbing remained ahead. I gave up. Clambering down and wondering where all that spiritual energy was now that I needed it, I arranged a handful of pebbles as a question mark. No answer so far.

Jeep tours, however, are what most visitors think of when they arrive in Sedona. The streets teem with brightly colored four-wheel-drive vehicles for hire, and half a dozen companies offer tours, including one that lets you drive.

Pink Jeep Tours claims seniority. Founded in 1959, the company offers excursions at prices from $15 to $47, depending on geography and time taken. The company’s oldest route, the Broken Arrow, features an up-close look at Submarine Rock (it looks like the Nautilus in the Disney version of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”), and a steep drop down a stretch of dirt road called “The Road of No Return.”

Bouncing along the dirt path, passengers hear about the plants and animals of the desert, how Walt Disney may have taken inspiration from some of the rock shapes, and where scores of Westerns were made in the area over the last 70 years.

“This is the biggest plateau in North America,” said guide Cody Victor at one stopping point, pulling into a clearing. He pointed beyond the lines of Arizona cypress, juniper and pinyon to the most imposing rock face on the horizon.

It was half a mile high, he told us, and continued through New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Standing in bunches around him, passengers from Maryland, Indiana and California listened as he made his way through the standard speech. Then came one of those moments that give hope to all those who want to transcend tourism and sense a bit of the natural world.

“Hey, Cody,” interrupted another guide, and called for quiet. And echoing across those Arizona cypress, juniper and pinyon, we heard the howls of one, two, three, perhaps half a dozen unscripted wild animals. Coyotes. Yelping Arizona coyotes, and not a price tag in sight.

Then it was back to Sedona civilization, where not only do coyotes carry price tags, but Spring Rain (the environmental fragrance, not the meteorological phenomenon) runs $4.95 for a quarter-ounce on the shelves of a shop called Dorine Daniels.

At L’Auberge de Sedona, one can pay $45 (fixed price) for a six-course creek-side dinner. An art lover can buy a three-foot-high bronze of John Wayne or a two-foot stainless-steel rendering of Kokopelli, the ancient figure who has been described as the Native American answer to Kilroy. (Wayne’s price: $7,500; Kokopelli’s: $180.) The Old West--and most of the new West, for that matter--was never so posh.

At Tlaquepaque, a shopping plaza modeled after the craftsy Guadalajara suburb of the same name, 40 shops peddle clothes, art, rugs and gifts amid fountains and tranquil Spanish Colonial architecture.

Next door at Los Abrigados, well-heeled guests circulate among 174 suites, a restaurant, tennis courts and a man-made pond. In the Sedona Suite, which rents for $235, guests get a gas fireplace, bar, microwave, two televisions and a private spa on their patio.

The Chamber of Commerce counts about 1,350 hotel rooms in and around town. Counting Los Abrigados, I looked in on four of the fanciest.

At Enchantment Resort, a half-hour drive outside town, in isolated Boynton Canyon, the rooms look out, and up, at a canyon wall that turns red-orange in morning light. (Sunset, which throws golden tones onto the rocks and earth around Sedona proper, is relatively dull in Enchantment’s corner of the canyon.) The hotel bar exploits the same view with 20-foot-high glass walls, and a dozen tennis courts and three croquet courts are nearby. The rooms, decorated in Southwestern hues with wood beams, Mexican tile work and large balconies, start at $185 for one bedroom, double occupancy. Tennis instruction programs designed by coach Nick Bollettiere are a big selling point, as are one-on-one fitness training sessions from Body By Jake.

At L’Auberge de Sedona, cottages near the murmuring creek begin at $245 nightly (double occupancy), but rooms in L’Auberge’s nearby Lodge and Orchards operations run as low as $115 and still stand within earshot of the ducks on the creek, with balcony views of Snoopy Rock.

At the Arroyo Roble Hotel’s Resort Villas, guests rent two-bedroom, two-fireplace, 2 1/2-bath units with full kitchens, patios and balconies. Rates are $225 for a one-night stay, but fall to $175 nightly for four or more days. The Arroyo Roble hotel proper, which fronts on Sedona’s main shopping street, offers fewer luxuries and starts at $95 a room.

You can pay less. I stayed at the Matterhorn Motor Lodge for $64 a night. The view was spectacular and it was in the middle of the uptown shopping area. But bargain-seekers be forewarned: You won’t get any incoming calls after 10 p.m. at the Matterhorn, because management doesn’t staff the desk overnight.

It’s unclear exactly how many restaurants there are in Sedona these days, but the number must be well above two dozen.

My first meal was at Oaxaca, a Mexican restaurant with blue corn tamales and an upstairs balcony. The tortilla chips were colored red and green, a bad sign, I thought at first. But they turned out to be warm, fresh and flavorful, as was the enchilada entree.

At Rose Buds, a year-old restaurant with a long imported beer list and still more panoramic views, I got a good cup of coffee and a full briefing from manager Edrea Baldwin behind the bar. While she spoke, the bronze John Wayne stood on the counter, looking mean enough to kick an Asahi beer to the floor at any moment.

“When it rains, you get rainbows over the rocks here. When there’s lightning, the thunder shakes these windows,” said Baldwin, who arrived with her husband from San Francisco four years ago. “It’s breathtaking.”

For breakfast, many locals favor the Coffee Pot Restaurant (on Coffee Pot Drive, of course), which offers a menu of 101 omelets and dates back to the 1950s, a venerable vintage among Sedona businesses. The morning I was there, the place was packed with a full spectrum of patrons: at one booth, a cooing young couple, consulting maps; at the next, a gaggle of black-shirted young bikers, tattooed spiders crawling on their biceps.

The nearby Pietro’s Classic Italian, which opened last August and aims for the dinner crowd, seems popular with locals, too. Owner Ted Blutter, a refugee from the garment business in New York, circulates among the tables and has enlivened the walls with colorful paintings by Robert Shields, the erstwhile mime. I liked the tortellini with mushrooms and peas. But there are lots of restaurants I didn’t get to try, and I may be prejudiced in Pietro’s favor.

Shortly before my dinner there, I took a walk along the creek, just off Red Rock Crossing Road, to shed civilization and see those rocks from one more angle.

Along the creek side, the air was cool and the rushing water hummed. Twilight gleamed on the side of a cabin just up the hill. Just upstream, I could see a single green-capped fisherman leaning against a droopy tree. He drew on his cigarette, cast, and while the day’s last light left Sedona, he checked his line for tension. Nope. No tension. He was willing to live with that, and so was I.

GUIDEBOOK

Sizing Up Sedona

Getting there: Southwest, America West and Delta airlines fly daily from Southern California to Phoenix. Round-trip coach fares run about $100. From Phoenix, the drive north to Sedona on Interstate 17 and State Route 179 is about 115 miles. Travelers bent on avoiding that drive can fly Phoenix-Sedona on Air Sedona (800-535-4448), which offers five flights daily and charges $90 per round trip. By car from Los Angeles, it’s a nine-hour drive (460 miles).

Where to stay: The Arroyo Roble Best Western Hotel and Resort Villas (400 N. U.S. 89A, P.O. Box NN, Sedona, Ariz. 86336, 800-528-1234 or 602-282-4001). Seasonal rates (Feb. 15-Nov. 30) of $95-$105 for rooms and $175-$225 for villas.

Enchantment Resort (525 Boynton Canyon Road, Sedona 86336, 800-826-4180 or 602-282-9000). Rates are $185-$460, March 1-July 7.

L’Auberge de Sedona (P.O. Box B, Sedona 86336, 800-272-6777 or 602-282-7131). Seasonal rates (Feb. 29-Nov. 14 and Dec. 23-Jan. 1) are $245-$365 for cottages, $150-$170 for Lodge rooms and $115-$160 for Orchards rooms.

Los Abrigados (160 Portal Lane, Sedona 86336, 800-521-3131 or 602-282-1777). During April, May, September and October, rooms are $205-$260 and $1,000 a night for accommodations in its Old Stone House.

Matterhorn Motor Lodge (230 Apple Ave., Sedona 86336, 602-282-7176). Rates are $64-$69, March 1-Nov. 30.

Where to eat: The Coffee Pot Restaurant and Sedona Sports Lounge (2050 W. U.S. 89A, 602-282-6626) serves breakfast all day, with omelets from plain ($3.50) to crab, shrimp and cheese ($8.95). Dinner entrees, which include soup or salad, run $6.95-$9.25.

Oaxaca Restaurant and Cantina (231 N. U.S. 89A, 602-282-6291) offers Mexican entrees from $7.95-$17.50.

Pietro’s Classic Italian (2445 West U.S. 89A, 602-282-2525) offers dinner entrees, salad included, from $11.25-$18.95.

Rose Buds (320 North U.S. 89A, 602-282-3022) leans toward steak and seafood and offers dinner entrees, with soup or salad, from $8.95-$18.95.

A popular day trip: The Verde River Canyon Excursion Train (P.O. Box 103, Clarkdale, Ariz. 86324, 602-639-0010) travels a 38-mile standard-gauge line between Clarkdale and Perkinsville. The four-hour round trip from Clarkdale (half an hour’s drive from Sedona) begins at 1 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. Starting in June, departures move to 10 a.m. Tickets: $29.95 for adults, $17.95 for children under 12, $46.95 for first-class, which includes a glass of champagne, appetizers and a seat in a lounge car.

For more information: Contact the Sedona-Oak Creek Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 478, Sedona, Ariz. 86336, 602-282-7722.