Sedona fire

I spent the weekend in Jerome, and on Sunday Greg and I decided to go hang out in Sedona for a few hours. We strolled around Tlaquepaque, which is an artsy, open-air shopping place modeled after old-style Mexican markets. Greg and I both used to sell jewelry there, and it's always fun to see what kind of stuff is popular now. I was taking a picture of this tower when I looked to the right and saw smoke billowing overhead.


I went running into Cocopah to get Greg. (Cocopah is a bead store that sells kits to the designed-challenged, but every once in awhile they have some great prices on individual beads. Like yesterday, big pieces of cinnabar for $3.) I calmly stammered, ummm, there's a big fire. And the store owner goes, oh no, that's like miles away. !!!! Ok, to me, "miles" is not a huge distance to cover, and I think fires agree.

So we kept shopping. About an hour later we headed out b/c it was just too hot. Even 7 degrees makes a difference when it's over 100, so we were heading back up the hill to cooler Jerome. Suddenly we could see the source of the fire - behind the hills, looking like it was out in the middle of nowhere.
We pulled over to take pictures and get a better look. So did about 10 other carloads.

Later, after dinner (the Haunted Hamburger - props to Matthew for the best burger and service ever), we sat and watched the smoke, at this point, way out in the distance, and started seeing bright orange flames. By the time it was very dark, the flames covered the entire side of a hill. It was very disconcerting.

This morning I headed back into the valley. Apparently the fire raged on, although all I could see was a small bit of smoke and the haze that covered the red rocks.

Here is the CNN link.