WEEKEND GETAWAY: SEDONA

No One Wants a Cure for RED ROCK FEVER Caught on a SEDONA SOJOURN

SOMETIMES A TOWN CHARMS A VISITOR so thoroughly that an otherwise level-headed tourist becomes wistful, given to sighing and memorizing street maps like love poems. I succumbed to such a spell during a summer weekend I spent with my spouse and his parents in the comely community of Sedona. Its small-town friendliness resembled the cozy towns of my childhood, and the area includes all of the culture the grown-up me desires: original art, fine restaurants, eclectic shops, compelling history, Technicolor scenery and enough interesting characters to fill a book.

I'm not the only one of the town's 4 million visitors a year who, at trip's end, reluctantly return to life in a lackluster suburb. Some tourists actually act on their feelings and spend their days house-hunting. The locals have a name for this behavior: Red Rock Fever.

“We lose a lot of guests because they decide to move here,” said Linda Steele, proprietor with her husband, John, of the Territorial House Inn, a bed and breakfast whose upscale cowboy décor fits guests like a pair of custom-made boots. “That is one of the problems of doing this type of business in Sedona.” One woman became a regular guest only while overseeing the construction of her new house.

Perhaps a town named after a woman pioneer — Sedona Schnebly — can't help but break hearts. For some, Sedona's charms spring from its scenic vistas, a grace apparent on our initial drive through the tall red rocks that clasp the town like the setting around a jewel. I could see why movie producers filmed more than 60 Westerns there, beginning with an adaptation of Zane Grey's novel Call of the Canyon in 1923.

Sedona's muse is insistent. German sculptor and surrealist painter Max Ernst heard the call in 1946. In 1965, local talent founded the Cowboy Artists of America at a restaurant now dubbed the Cowboy Club. Today roughly 200 artists work and exhibit in Sedona. Galleries, featuring everything from traditional woven rugs to modern glass art, line the main road into town.

At his gallery, we met Robert Shields, the wunderkind mime known for the popular 1970s television show "Shields and Yarnell." He moved to Sedona to nurture his artistry away from the soul-sucking entertainment industry. "Being a ceramicist, I was immediately taken with the rocks looking like pots and stoneware," he recalled. "It took me on a wild ride." His Sedona stores include the Robert Shields Design Studio, where the colorful inventory of jewelry, whimsical figures and paintings reminded me of the aftermath of a paint explosion in a toy factory.

Leaving there, I committed the worst sort of nostalgia — inventing a fake childhood ritual — when I dragged my husband and in-laws into a candy store. I couldn't help it: an intoxicating caramel and chocolate aroma wafted from the Sedona Fudge Factory, fully formed from the pages of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. Caramel apples paraded like soldiers in a window, while a teenager stirred a bewitching brew of tan goo in a copper-clad cauldron. I stood in line with a man who lamented that the women in his life — originally from the area — are sweet on the shop's offerings. "This is about the only thing my wife and mother-in-law talk about," he said.

"Is the fudge good?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I'll tell you after I have some."

He didn't stick around to offer me a verdict, but a sugar rush is best experienced firsthand, and the luscious amaretto fudge provided a sweet fix. Later at L'Auberge de Sedona, a French-style restaurant and inn, we indulged in seafood, quiche and rich desserts, while lingering on a terrace shaded by leafy oak trees and watching ducks primp in Oak Creek. That evening, we feasted on dinner at the Heartline Café, where owner-cum-chef Charles Cline served up entrees like locally caught trout, pecan-encrusted in an artful presentation that looked too good to eat.

In between eating, we shopped. If Coronado had discovered the Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village, styled after a community in Mexico, he would have stopped looking for the Seven Cities of Gold. My in-laws bought us a rainbow-colored goblet at the Kuivato Glass Gallery, which specializes in contemporary art glass. At the Mountain Trails Galleries, we watched artists Ken Rowe and Susan Kliewer breathe life into clay, from which they would cast bronze sculptures. Kliewer sculpted the bronze portrait of Sedona Schnebly that stands in front of the city library.

That evening, I wanted to catch a show — A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by the troupe Shakespeare 2000 — at the new $9 million Sedona Cultural Park. Its outdoor amphitheater faces a grassy seating area near one of four Gateway Visitor Centers, a natural preserve and an arts education center. Unfortunately, nature had other plans. Thunder and lightning drowned the musicians' warm-up, and rain spattered the audience. An usher handed us paper towels to dry our chairs, but less hardy souls fled. Someone seated behind us heckled the deserters. “The rain should stop soon, why are you so pessimistic? Your glasses are half empty!”

“Not for long,” quipped a soggy sufferer.

Our comic proved right. We received a raincheck for another performance and headed for a nightcap at Steaks & Sticks, a pub and pool hall at Los Abrigados Resort, before retreating to the Sky Ranch Lodge for the night. The lodge's mesa-top location near the Sedona airport offers a perfect place for watching birds and planes.

On the way to breakfast the next morning, we spotted a flock of tourists scrambling up a hill off Airport Road. Our map marked this spot as the most accessible of Sedona's natural electromagnetic centers, or vortexes, which New Age spiritualists and alternative healers believe endow the Red Rock region with positive energy.

We gained a unique view of Sedona's sandstone formations on an excursion with Pink Jeep Tours — that is, during several points our noses pointed straight down at the rocks as our jeep lurched down steep rock staircases. Pink Jeep Tours is the oldest such touring outfit in Sedona and, in addition to the ride of a lifetime, guide Michele Jones regaled us with tidbits of information about the area's plants and geology. We learned that the rock around the town is called Coconino sandstone, and the vivid color stems from iron oxides. A lighter band, called Fort Apache limestone, indicates where the ocean floor once hung out. “We call it the bathtub ring of Sedona because it runs all the way around us,” said Jones. “About 240 million years ago, this was all flat. Then the ocean came in and receded, leaving these rocks.”

We learned even more at the Sedona Heritage Museum, built originally in 1930 as the home of Walter and Ruth Jordan. Tucked on what remains of their large apple orchard, the house's knotty pine interior provides a cheerful backdrop and the kitchen seems as if caught in a time-warp. Each of the assortment of knowledgeable volunteers shared their how-I-came-to-Sedona story. One whisked my in-laws off on their own special tour, leaving my husband and me to stroll hand-in-hand through the galleries. We soaked up stories about life in Sedona from the 1870s to the 1950s, a period that included filmmaking, cowboying and apple-harvesting. We reconvened with my in-laws in a nearby building, where Darlene Wills, president of the Sedona Historical Society, fired up the old 40-foot-long apple-processing machine, which clacked noisily as it sorted baseballs and softballs by size.

By late afternoon, we had nearly run out of weekend, but decided to squish one more diversion into our itinerary, even though it meant driving home at midnight. So many people had praised our rained-out musical that we wanted to try again and see if the rain stayed away.

As a small-town girl, I'm always amazed to see people at big-city events congregate nervously in tight knots with those they already know. In contrast, when we returned to the Sedona Cultural Park for the second night in a row, several people we'd met only that weekend chatted with us. The stage's proximity to our seats made us feel like part of the production, and the actors even invited us to share their shelter when showers resumed. We huddled together near the footlights, joking with strangers, before the rain subsided enough for us to venture back to our seats. After the show ended, a man to my right said, “You folks are coming to our opening night party, aren't you?”

We couldn't stay. Our obligations propelled us home to water plants, feed our pet and go to work. My husband squeezed my hand and smiled in sympathy. “I'm sorry we can't move here,” he whispered. I smiled back.

Maybe someday, when I write my best-selling novel, we'll retire early and make our home among Sedona's enchanting red rocks. Until then, we'll savor its spell on weekend visits. AH