Mine took a more southerly route down from I-40, coming out at the little hillside town of Jerome, which is a little west of Cottonwood, southwest of Sedona.
I only saw one “living thing” near the road, and it was long after I started and where there was nothing in the form of any human settlement I could see in any direction, but here was this large domestic mutt of a dog - looked healthy even if a little shabby and had no interest in me or coming to me when I stopped and got out and tried to call him to me. He gradually just trotted off away from the dirt road. I saw no person before that or any time after that until I got into Jerome.
We did stop in Jerome first, before going on down to Sedona. I bet it was the same road. Did wind your way up a mountain, and in the distance, at the peak of the mountain, you could see a kind of pass or a cut-thru in the trees? Coming down towards Jerome, was there a old scary fenced-in compound, kind of shoddy...with a lot of signs telling you to keep out?