Having enjoyed Sedona a decade earlier with Steve’s parents, we decided to spend half a week revisiting Sedona and booked a casita at Enchantment. He had loaned me a book, In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest by David Roberts, which I had planned to return to him on another Rimtours trip planned for the winter of 2005 in the Phoenix area.Ī month before that Phoenix trip, Rimtours called up to say we were the only two signed up and it was cancelled. Our guide, Mike Smith, was a white-haired ponytailed older man who could outride all of us put together. But when pressed, he had no idea which issues Kerry had supposedly flipped or flopped on, making it clear he was mouthing something he had heard from the media. There were only 2 other guests on the trip, a female journalist working at the Boston Globe and a callow 20-something year old man-child who dismissed Kerry as a “flip-flopper”, making a waggling motion with his hands when speaking of him. The reason I know it was in 2004 is that it was during the Kerry campaign for President. Rimtours offered an alternative trip, near Bryce and Zion National Parks, a trip we actually did with them 16 years ago. The riskiest part of the trip seemed to me to be the van ride to and from the campsite, which would require us to be masked and sanitized.Ī week before our scheduled departure, wildfires broke out in southern Utah and northern Arizona, closing the North Rim. Rimtours had a whole set of new Covid-19-specific procedures in place. The North Rim isn’t very visited (compared with the South Rim) and biking and camping are open air activities, so this seemed our best bet for an active, reasonably safe pandemic trip. I hadn’t mountain biked in ages, but I had been riding regularly to work, while Steve had resumed mountain biking during the spring. Steve’s rejuvenated back after his spinal stenosis surgery in March made camping and mountain biking viable activities for us again and Rimtours had a 4-day Grand Canyon North Rim trip going during our time off, a Sedona sign saying now was the time. We had wanted for years to do a mountain biking and camping trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with an outfit we know, Moab, Utah-based Rimtours, but somehow had never done it. Half of our group postponed to the following year, while Greg, Steve and I, steering around existing plans for a Philippines diving trip in June 2021, opted to reschedule to 2022.Īs with our cancelled spring trips to NYC, we made plans to spend our time off in Sedona, our red rock refuge. The original plan, 2+ weeks on a small group photographic exploration of Namibia in southern Africa, led by British photographer Martin Bailey, was dashed months ago when Covid-19 upended the entire world and suspended international travel. This trip was a third time’s the charm Plan C, as the coronavirus pandemic laid waste to our original summer international vacation plan and wildfires redirected our consolation prize domestic plans. George, Utah, gateway to the Bryce and Zion region of southwest Utah. With the Audi Q5 packed as though we were never returning home, we headed northeast towards St.
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