A Love Letter to Sedona

Just recently I visited Sedona for the second time in my life.  Second time around and I’m still hypnotized when I drive along Highway 89 and a wall of majestic red rock set in relief by the bluest sky, greets me as I slowly turn a bend.  It’s the equivalent to a show opener that gobsmacks you into awe.  I’ll save my impressions of Sedona for another time, as this place tends to rob the language of  any words to justify what a magical place it is.  Today, I’ll talk about a more pedestrian experience.

See, as beautiful as Sedona is, it’s also effing expensive!  Take my visit to their organic supermarket, New Frontiers Natural Marketplace.   This place makes Whole Foods look like a run down bodega.  I’m talking about those dimly lit, rat infested bodegas with a 3-inch thick plastic cage surrounding the cashier.

Only go here when you’re super hungry, have no other choice, and you just hit the lottery.

Let me set this up: I just wanted a fruit salad.  I’d just returned from a grueling hike and I wanted something healthy, sweet and filling.

When I went to the hot foods/deli counter section, I asked the employee if they had any prepared.  She sadly admitted that they didn’t have anything and that I would have to buy my own fruit and cut it up.   When I explained I was staying at a hotel and that I didn’t have a kitchen, she kindly suggested I buy some fruit and she would make the fruit salad for me.

At the front of the store I picked up some ruby deep strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, a Colorado peach (which, for the record, tastes like a regular peach, but I think they had to justify the $4.99/lb cost), a pink apple and a plum.  $18 dollars later, I walk my 4 lb bag of fruit back to the deli section, and after 20 more minutes the lovely young lady emerges from the back with a 2 lb. container of finely chopped, brightly colored fruit salad.

“By the way”, she says with an innocent smile, “I had a few of your strawberries.”

Bitch, you just ate your tip.