Sedona

In the latest crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, South Korean automaker Kia Motors Corp.'s redesigned 2006 Sedona minivan achieved the best score the group has ever awarded a minivan. With the institute's top rating of "good" for front-, side- and rear-impact crashes, the Sedona outscored even the popular Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna models, long the industry leaders in crash safety ratings. The nonprofit, Arlington, Va.

A jury in Arizona convicted a bestselling author and self-help guru Wednesday in the deaths of three clients during a sweat lodge ceremony in 2009 that was intended to help participants overcome adversity to reach their full potential. After hearing four months of testimony, the eight-man, four-woman jury deliberated for fewer than 12 hours before finding James Arthur Ray guilty of three counts of negligent homicide. The panel acquitted Ray of the more serious charges of manslaughter.

For thousands of years, the high, arid San Luis Valley has spawned tales of the strange and the fantastic. Native Americans called it the Bloodless Valley, setting aside their weapons as they made vision quests up sacred Blanca Peak, the great sentinel of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains whose bony spine winds dramatically from southern Colorado to Santa Fe, N.M. Later inhabitants noted a peculiar energy attributed to a combination of wind,...

I love the anticipation I feel when I arrive after dark somewhere I've never been before, and can only imagine what my surroundings will look like in the morning. After a late night arrival at the new Doubletree Resort in Sedona, however, I awoke to disappointment: Out the window of our Southwestern-themed suite, instead of seeing Sedona's famous red rocks, mentioned in the ad that had lured us here with its $149 introductory rate, I saw only a parking lot.

My first impression of Sedona was that this peculiar little Arizona town, halfway between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, shouldn't be a town at all. With its towering red rock formations, hoodoos, buttes and spires rising out of the crimson earth into sapphire skies and its canyons and mountain forests of pinyon and juniper, Sedona is entirely too majestic for people to actually live there.

When the day wanes out here, the red rocks get up to their tricks. Their hues deepen. Their shapes shift in the creeping shade. And once the sun falls from view, they harden into jagged silhouettes. Some of these rocks are half a mile high. It's a tough act to follow. But Sedona is trying. Eager to lure visitors for longer and to stand apart from Phoenix, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, Sedona is raising man-made attractions left and right.

Seventy years past its mining prime and half an hour's drive from Sedona, this old town clings to the dusty slopes of Cleopatra Hill. If Sedona swings, Jerome saunters. And if Sedona is charging into the future at 100 m.p.h., Jerome is advancing "down around 2 to 5 miles per hour." That's the considered estimate of David Comeau, 44-year-old proprietor of Trader Antiques on Hull Avenue.

The minivan is the Muzak of the car world--unexciting, even bland, but seemingly everywhere. That's because, like elevator music, minivans get the job done without offending many people. They carry kids, car-pool the co-workers, cart copious amounts of cargo home from the local GargantuaMart and, outfitted properly, can make family vacation road trips a joy instead of a nightmare.

VISITORS to Arizona's high desert quickly exhaust their superlatives. Once they get beyond "stunning," "awe-inspiring" and "the artwork of God," many stumble trying to articulate how they feel amid the red cliffs and wind-sculpted rocks. "There is a definite energy here," says Steve Segner, who opened a 12-room inn here two years ago. "You just feel something's different. When you're looking up at 300-million-year-old cliffs, it puts things in perspective."