I am the anti-Sedona.

Well, maybe not entirely. But the trip was a complete bust. The drive was closer to three hours than two from Pete's place. The pictures we'd seen of the potential wedding venue must have been some years old, because it had sprouted fancy sculptures in places that make it completely unusable for our purposes. The park I thought would have better hiking turned out to have a 3/8 mile nature trail, and that was it. The views were beautiful . . . where you could find them, because mostly, you were knee deep in yuppie strip malls.

New Age pilgrims, I expected. Yuppies and their larvae, I did not.

Oh well. My mother is going to call our next tier of three choices for wedding venue--all shaded courtyards appropriate for an evening or after dark wedding here in Tucson--in this next week, with an eye to their policies on lighting and candles and music and fees. It's not that I can't make phone calls from work, it's that where I work, we tend to stay so busy that I simply forget to. So I enlisted her assistance. Also, it looks like we've found an afternoon that will actually work for all five parties invited (or suckered?) into the poofy dress expedition: me, my maids of honor, and both mothers (bride's and groom's). So I'm at least feeling a little more positive about things than I was when we left Sedona.