Thursday, April 20. Today was another day where our friends and we had different itineraries. They were planning to visit relatives in Prescott, about 60 miles west of Sedona, while we were going to ride the Verde Canyon Railroad, which starts in Clarkdale, a little less than halfway (23 miles) along the route to Prescott.
Since our excursion wasn’t scheduled until 1 p.m., and because I thought Sig and Cathy would want to get going early in the morning, while I was still at home prior to the trip I went to the internet to see if I could use public transportation to get from our Sedona motel to the railroad station. I suspected it might be difficult, but as it turned out I found it would involve only two regional bus rides, as the town of Cottonwood, about halfway between Sedona and Clarkdale, operates an extensive transit system (extensive in the sense that Cottonwood has a population of less than 12,000 people–which is greater than Sedona’s 10,000). A service called Verde Lynx operates 7 days per week between Sedona and Cottonwood with about a dozen weekday round trips (roughly every 45 minutes to an hour during base periods), taking about 43 minutes for a one-way trip from end to end. There are 15 stops, including several in downtown Sedona and one was close by our motel (see http://cottonwoodaz.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1224).
The City of Cottonwood also operates a local system, called CAT (Cottonwood Area Transit - http://cottonwoodaz.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/135) that consists of a network of f