Life's Adventures

Blogging about life's adventures and the next book...

Adventures past, present, or future. And the next book--as it happens. 

This week we had a food gift card adventure. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound like adventure, but I love road trips which this was. For the last year, we've been fairly homebound with FDW's various medical issues (a whole different adventure he would not appreciate me blogging about). We missed the wedding anniversary weekend and an overnight trip for my birthday. As a result of celebratory dates, we received gift cards to several restaurants. I came up with the idea to hit the road for a couple of days and eat our way through the drive for free.

San Francisco Peaks

The largest of the giftcards was for Chef Dahl's restaurants in the Sedona area.
These are high end establishments. We aren't the white table cloth and crystal chandelier type people so we settled on Butterfly Burger...gourmet of course. We also had Panera, Chili's, and Texas Roadhouse in my wallet. Our intentions were Panera for lunch the first day with dinner at Butterfly Burger. Second day we'd do Texas Roadhouse for lunch and Chili's for dinner back in Payson on our way home.

Mistake number 1: don't bother calling or checking locations. Just head out. 

Not too far out of Sedona, I started Googling where Panera's was located. Surprise! No Panera's in Sedona. Okay, no worry. We'll drive on to Flagstaff, get a good view of the snow covered peaks, and  eat there. We took the freeway route, and I Googled the location on the way.

Hand-tossed pie

Mistake number 2: don't assume Flagstaff has a Panera's. Apparently, the sandwich place is only big in the valley and Prescott.

Changed the plans. We headed to Chili's because we knew where it was in Flagstaff. I then called Butterfly Burger because I was feeling like things were
going wonky. And they were. Back to mistake number 1. Butterfly Burger's recording said they were closed on Wednesday. What?! Good thing Chef Dahl has more than one restaurant. We decided on Pisa Lisa featuring upmarket wood-fired pies.

View from our deck

Our hotel was actually in Oak Creek Village, right next to Sedona. In fact, you can't really tell them apart. Pisa Lisa had a location just up the block. The Sedona Village Lodge where we spent the night was so quaint, yet roomy and nice. They allowed doggies, for a hefty price, and the location was beautiful. But then, the whole area is spectacular. On the very short drive to Pisa Lisa, we passed Butterfly Burger with a lit open sign in the window. What? After burgers at Chili's, we couldn't. Frank had to hold me back from marching in there and blasting them for an erroneous phone message. As it turned out, the pizza and wine were fantastic. We had no trouble spending the $90 in giftcards.

Oak Creek Canyon

The next morning, we lounged in the room feasting on pastries. Since we had to go to Flagstaff for a late lunch at Texas Roadhouse, we took the scenic drive along Oak Creek through the canyon. The last time we did that was decades ago. The leisurely drive brought back memories of when the creek was more accessible for fishing, slide rock wasn't a park but a stop along the road for high school and college kids, and picnics. 

Oak Creek

We hadn't planned on a Flagstaff to Sedona to Flagstaff trip, but I'm glad the food gift card fiasco happened. A simple drive to Sedona turned into an adventure up north.

Sedona behind us

Along Lake Mary, headed home