Blazing Arizona

The Chapel of the Holy Cross -- another energy vortex, supposedly -- sits 200 feet above the Sedona valley. Its unmistakable facade is a 90-foot cross rising from two sandstone crags. Artist and philanthropist Marguerite Brunswig Staude, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed and built the chapel in 1956.

Inside it's cool and quiet, with hundreds of candles flickering in red glass holders. The wall behind the altar is glass, overlooking scenery that some feel is the most beautiful in the country. Giving a sermon here must be tough -- how can you compete with that view?

Seven miles north of town, homesteader Frank Pendley settled in what is now Slide Rock State Park in 1907. Pendley devised a clever irrigation system to water his apple farm that's still in use today, and he eventually built rustic cabins for visitors along Oak Creek Canyon, even before the road was paved. Westerns such as "Broken Arrow" and "Gun Fury" were filmed here in the 1950s.

Most visitors aren't here for a history lesson, however. The center of activity is the slick stretch of stone that gives the park its name.

Children squeal down natural waterslides as their mothers sun on the multicolored rock ledges and admonish them to be careful. "It's always a madhouse here in the summer," says ranger Brian Boggs. "We get thousands of people a day from all over the world -- Europe, Asia, Mexico." In high season, he adds, when the parking lot fills up, the park can only let in a car once another vehicle leaves.

Walk-ins, however, are welcome, and we enter to find a day at the beach, high-desert style, complete with folding chairs, coolers and towels lining the water. There's as much Spanish being spoken as English, with snatches of Japanese and German as well.

"Come on, man, do it!" says a tattooed teenager, goading a friend into leaping off a cliff along a deeper section of the creek. The resulting splash almost drenches Teresa Rosas, a college student up from Tempe, Ariz., for the weekend with some friends.

"It's just ridiculous down there now," she says, referring to the heat. "This place is such a relief." They've also come to shop and spend an afternoon at one of Sedona's many spas.

We're having too much fun sliding down the rocks into pools to notice the sky until it's almost too late. Dark clouds sneak up the canyon and unleash a biblical torrent with thunder and lightning. The canyon empties like a sinking boat, and dozens of muddy cascades turn the creek brown with runoff.

It's a 15-minute walk back to our car along the rain-slick highway. By the time we get there, the sweltering afternoon is a distant memory, and we scramble inside, shivering. As we drive back to our hotel, I reach forward and do what I hope I never will again. On a late July afternoon in Sedona, I turn on the heater.

Julian Smith last wrote for Travel on the Grand Canyon.