Sunday at the Ranch With John

There are worse ways to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon than swinging lazily back and forth on a tire swing strung up under a massive sycamore tree in a quiet Arizona canyon, the sound of a gushing stream nearby. Almost grazing the ground and hung on rope that looked to have been tied and retied again over the years, the swing belonged to John McCain, who stood several dozen yards away, carefully monitoring giant slabs of pork ribs on a smoking grill.

It was an idyllic scene, and one that might have made the Democratic contenders envious. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fight it out for their party's presidential nomination, campaigning well into the night, McCain has been lying low. On Friday the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee took a break from the campaign trail in Texas and flew to his weekend cabin outside Sedona, Ariz., about two hours north of Phoenix.

On Saturday McCain hosted his staff and several of his top supporters, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former senator Phil Gramm of Texas, for a so-called "thank you" barbecue on the eve of the primaries on Tuesday, March 4—the day McCain is expected to lock up the delegates he needs to officially win the GOP nomination. On Sunday afternoon McCain fired up the grill again, inviting nearly 40 reporters to his spread in Page Springs, about 15 minutes outside Sedona, for an on-the-record barbecue.

The campaign booked the senator's aides and reporters into one of the only big hotels in town: the Enchantment Resort, a five-star hotel nestled so far back in the picturesque red rock canyons of Sedona that most in the group found that their cell phones were out of range. To cope with the stress of being incommunicado, people booked massages at the hotel spa and went on hikes, including one on which an instructor sought to help participants unblock their "inner chi." "Let me tell you, I've got a lot of chi today," joked Steve Duprey, a close friend of McCain's from New Hampshire who has been traveling with the campaign. Others played golf, went swimming or simply explored the hotel compound. "I haven't walked this much in eight months," one campaign regular confessed. Perhaps this scene gives some insight into why McCain jokingly refers to the media as his base.

McCain and his aides had initially hoped to keep the soiree at his cabin off the record, billing it as a strictly social gathering. But they reversed course when some members of the press said they wouldn't be able to come unless the senator was on the record. To compromise, they allowed reporters to bring their notebooks but banned tape recorders. Meanwhile, pictures for publication were not allowed. As a result, several reporters could be seen furiously scribbling and typing notes into their BlackBerrys throughout the afternoon, at times so intensely that an observer might think McCain was divulging his deepest, darkest secrets.

But that was hardly the case—unless you count McCain's decision to disclose his recipe for the dry rub for his ribs ("One-third pepper, one-third garlic powder and one-third salt," he said proudly, shaking out a quick taste of the mixture into the palm of a reporter's hand) or where to find the best meat. (He swears by Costco.) As he grilled, McCain wore jeans, sneakers, and a white sweatshirt with a Christmas photo of his family on the front (a Father's Day gift from way back). Later, as the afternoon got chillier, he donned a jean-jacket vest.