DECEMBER 15, 2013.

This is another post about interesting people I’ve met along the way. As I’ve stated, one of the compelling reasons I had for taking this trip was to meet and talk to interesting Americans. I want to meet folks whose backgrounds aren’t parallel with mine. I want to learn what they think, what they believe and why. I want to hear their stories. Here’s an interesting couple I met along the way.

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Page Springs RV Resort, near Sedona. We were camped right on Oak Creek, which runs through the park.

Oak Creek runs through the campground at Page Springs, Arizona…near Sedona.

Page Springs RV Resort was the campground for our stay in the Sedona area. It turned out to be a nice place and we had a site right near Oak Creek, which runs through the campground and past the restaurant up the hill and “next door.” (I’ve got a separate post about it: “Up the Creek Grill.” Very special!) When we arrived, it was immediately obvious that our rig was really too big to fit into any of the sites at the park. However, the camp host Diane, a nice gal with fiery red hair and a sweet disposition, insisted that she could fit us in. “Just let me guide you into your spot.” Well, Florence has become pretty good at giving me hand signals but Diane insisted, so…after all, it was her campground.  She was right, we slid into that spot like a hot knife through butter. We enjoyed our stay in Page Springs so much that we extended our stay for an additional week. There is so much to see and do in Sedona that we could have spent a month and not seen it all. But, back to Diane. The day we were leaving, we went to the Office to say good-bye to her. We’d become kind of chummy  and wanted to thank her personally for making our stay so enjoyable. We learned something about her that was pretty unique. She plays a special type of Caribbean island steel drum, one that’s larger than a bongo but is played in a similar way. It’s called a Symphonette Hand Pan. These drums were originally developed on the island of Trinidad and it’s a big deal to find and buy one. They sell for about $1,600 and are hand-tuned when manufactured. The tuning on Diane’s drum is called Quest, a new musical scale. “Each note resonates with the individual chakras and can be used for balancing, meditation and healing.” So that’s our new friend Diane, a delightful new-age hippy interesting American.