Enough said, really – here it is on Vimeo in widescreen HD (opens in a new window). Enjoy!

Anyway, once I arrived at the convention I pretty much put the camera to rest except for two times.  Even then, I didn’t shoot much – but here are some of what I got.  Thanks for being “unhip” with us.  To quote two 80’s bands…”it’s hip to be square” (Huey Lewis and The News) and “we’re through being cool” (Devo).

I won’t say much and let the images speak for themselves. 

It is tough to get mojitos in a lot of places as they don’t always have fresh mint.  So I enjoy them when I can!

Finally, just like the Phoenix rising from the fire and ashes, the unhip roadtripsters will continue on…

Most likely we’ll post a few more pictures when each of us has had time to edit properly, and I have about two hours of video footage to download and knock into shape!

So stop by www.unhiproadtrip.com occasionally if you can – or subscribe to our RSS feed – we’ll have some more stuff for you over the coming weeks…

Actually it was more abut the people we met – the tour guide at the Tuzigoot monument and the local in Jerome – than the landscape and locations, though those were fine too. You’ll get to meet these people in the video of our trip…From Sedona we drove west towards Prescott, stopping off at the Tuzigoot National monument on the way. Built by Sinagua Indians and inhabited from roughly 1000 to 1400 AD, Tuzigoot is a pueblo village built on a prominent hilltop in the valley. Nobody knows why the village was abandoned, long before Europeans appeared in this part of America.

From Tuzigoot we climbed up into the mountains to the old mining town of Jerome. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by having visited ancient towns and villages in Europe, but I found Jerome a bit disappointing. It has a spectacular location, but a lot of the 19th century buildings now contain tourist souvenir shops, which rather spoils the atmostphere. Even so, we found things to photograph!

These stickers were on an old VW camper van:

And here’s a panorama of the view from Jerome across the Verde Valley (click to open larger version)

Today’s travels started in Sedona early in the morning, we traveled toward Tuzigoot where we had a chance to see some historic ruins.  From there we headed to the old mining town of Jerome, to Wickenburg, and to our final destination in Care Free, Arizona.  Why does that town name sound so good!

Anyway, here are some images.

Sedona’s McDonald’s – the “all American restaurant”!

The volunteer tour guide who gave us an amazingly informative tour.

Some of the sights from Jerome.

A local from Jerome – who’s lived there for forty five years!

This seemed like a great place to eat – but it was closed.  Maybe next time.

Then there was an old VW van with lots of interesting bumper stickers all over.

It showed its age in some spots…

Then there was the chimney at the top of one of the old buildings.

Well, that concludes my perspective on our road trip.  It was great – looking forward to the next one.

I guess if you think of Penn & Teller, I’m pulling my best imitation of Teller right about now!

Movie anyone?  Winslow has that “earth stood still” feeling to it.  Forever rembered for the Eagles song, long past the glory days of Route 66.

After Winslow, we headed to Montezuma Castle National Monument.  Now, Chris has already explained the misnomer so I won’t bother.  Let’s just say that we were both very happy to not suffer from his revenge!

This is a six image panorama.  I’ve avoided processing these as my laptop takes FOREVER to do them.  I have been doing them all along – this is the first one I’ve processed. 

Next…rocks, red rocks, BIG red rocks.

So, that’s about it for today. 

See you all tomorrow.  Same blog channel – maybe same time.  Thanks for tuning in – and supporting our non-sponsors!

Along the way, we visited Winslow, Montezuma’s Castle, Slide Rock State Park, and various locations in and around Sedona.First stop out of Holbrook was Winslow, a town whose two main claims to fame are being a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad, and the subject of a lyric in Jackson Browne’s song “Take It Easy“, made famous by The Eagles…

So like all good tourists do, we stopped to get our picture taken “standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona”, and checked out the railroad.

And here we are! Just to prove that we really did this trip and took all these photos (except for this one of course, which was taken by a fellow tourist).

The mural behind us has an “Eagles” reference…

He’s taller than I am…

Next stop after Winslow was Montezuma’s Castle, which is not a castle nor was it built by Montezuma. Good name!

It is in fact an Indian cliff-dwelling built some time between 1250 and 1400 AD.

While we were there, I was asked by one of the Park Rangers to take a photo of a rare hawk which he had just spotted in one of the trees. The longest lens I had was my 135mm so you will need to have good eyesight to tell that this is a sharp-shinned hawk… (I swear I am not making this up)

After Montezuma and his hawk we meandered back north along SR-179 to the Sedona area. Which has rocks. Big ones. Red ones.

On the way we encountered some old-school photography – a guy shooting film in a view camera.

I kept expecting a giant space mothership to appear and Richard Dreyfus to pop out of the undergrowth ready to get on board for a close encounter…

(that scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was actually shot at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming)

It’s very difficult to show the sheer scale of the scenery in photographs. These are big tall cliffs!

Johnny helped me edit these tonight on my laptop.  Johnny as in Johnny Walker Black!

So, enough words (Chris took good care of that) – how about some pics…

Our day started here…

Then we went here…

Then to this big hole here…

After the big hole in the ground, we went here.

There I saw this…

Finally this…

This…

…and that.

That’s it for today…more tomorrow.  Same blog, about same time…

Originally we had planned to end up in Flagstaff tonight, but we fell short of our target and finished up in Holbrook – read on to find out why….

US60 is an amazing road which snakes its way through the mountains and canyons…

That lump sticking up in the middle is “Becker’s Butte”…

When we arrived in Holbrook, our original plan had been to turn left and head to Flagstaff via Meteor Crater. However, looking at the guidebook we noticed that the Painted Desert was nearby and would make a great place to shoot in the hour before sunset.

So we altered our plan and headed west along I40 so as to visit Meteor Crater in early afternoon.

The crater was formed by the impact of an 150ft wide meteor about 50,000 years ago – and it’s an amazingly spectacular place – especially with the winter snow still on the ground.

(click the image to see the panorama full size)

This image was taken in the visitor centre grounds. I just liked the feeling it gave of an outdoor art gallery (click the image to enlarge):

Then we turned around and headed back east along I40 through Holbrook to the Petrified Forest National Park, and were rewarded with these views of the Painted Desert….

I know it looks warm and sunny but it was freaking cold, let me tell you!

And to finish – sunset on the road back to Holbrook…

We traveled from Phoenix out towards the north-east and basically followed the Apache Trail over the mountains to our first night’s stopping place in Globe AZ.

The road out of town – towards the Superstition Mountains and the start of the journey…

This place was (a little disappointingly) built as a movie set, but it does have a real live blacksmith working there who demonstrates the old traditional skills.

It even has a photo studio! – no not really – it just has the sign…

And fire buckets…

In the desert you would expect to see cacti – and we were not disappointed:

Moving on, we ventured ever deeper into the mountains along the Apache Trail…

“Moonrise over Hernandez”?