Day 4: Sedona, AZ

We took the day as a sightseeing day to check out Sedona, about 45 min south of Flagstaff. Sedona's known for it's brilliant red rocks, filming of Western movies and sunsets. We took a back road to Sedona through a canyon along some of the twisty-ist roads I've been on. Some stunning views, but Chris and I were both car sick by the time we rolled into Sedona.

First glimpse of the red rocks.

As we were standing here watching the creek we could hear rocks falling off the cliffside behind us. When one rolled up next to our feet we decided it was time to get going.

Rock structures towering over the town of Sedona.

View from downtown

We arrived in Sedona with little to no plans. We chatted with the people at the tourism office, checked out the shops, had some lunch and embarked on a little hike.

Except I wanted to see one of these cacti real bad (I even showed the guy at the info booth that pose in search of the cactus) however, those live south of where we were. Dang.

Instead we saw these.

We put on our warm and fuzzies and hit the trail. This one just a short up to a lookout so we could get a nice lay of the land.`

Ready to go!

View along the trail

View from the top

One of my favorite photos from the entire trip.

The top!

We continued our journey with a new goal. Sniff out a good place to catch the infamous Sedona sunset. The local airport is located at the highest point in the city on a mesa and there just happened to be a lookout point near the airport - off we went!

A huge view - we'll be back for the sunset.

Just up the road was the local airport. If you know my husband, you know we had to stop. It was just about lunch time and there was a tasty looking cafe with a dead on view of the runway. Count us in.

View from our table. However, it was too windy for any planes to land. While we were sitting there watching the runway Chris and his expert wildlife sighting skills spotted us a road runner and just moments later we saw a fox. I don't think they saw each other though. I was glad we didn't have to watch the food chain in motion over our lunch.

The Corolla, she was looking a little dirty by this point. And anywhere we parked we dripped red mud from under the bumpers.

After we filled our bellies we headed to the other side of town for a hike up Fay Canyon. All the locals thought we were flat out crazy for going outside on a frigid day like it was, but we didn't want to miss out on anything! We chose an easy hike because of the slick conditions.

Fay Canyon trailhead, we were the only car in the parking lot.

View of the canyon from the parking lot

We hiked to the back wall of the canyon. Whether we were on the trail or not towards the end, that was up for debate.

The rocks were in such cool formations.

The sun broke out and dare I say... we were actually warm!

Big rocks littered the trail. Really cool, but then you look up the rock faces and think about where they came from and it gets a bit scary.

More cool rocks.

Afterwards we headed back into town for a little bit of shopping in this neat artist's village. And guess what I found...

It was made of metal, but it was a decent substitute.

We went back up to the airport lookout and got all situated for the sunset. The wind was just roaring at this point so we stayed inside the car (and wolfed down a box of hickory smoked wheat thins...) until the very last second. We bundled up and headed out - we were rewarded by an amazing sunset.

Beautiful colors coming out

"Pretend you're not cold!"

It was worth it, but we were so frozen by the time we got back to the car. So frozen it hurt. We were going to catch dinner in Sedona, but we decided we wanted to head back up to Flagstaff and thaw out in the car. We took another highway back up to Flagstaff (a straighter road) and the rock formations with the remaining sunset set were just amazing. The red rock is so much different than anything we have here in the northwest and just have their own kind of beauty.

Back to the hotel to load up the car - hitting the road tomorrow for Las Vegas!

Day 3: Grand Canyon

After careful weather calculations we figured our first day in Flagstaff would be the best to make a break up to the canyon. I can't say visiting the Grand Canyon in December would've been my first choice of timing, but we were there so we were going to see the dang thing. The South Rim of the canyon was about an hour and 45 minutes away so we got an early start.

Hills on the way out of Flagstaff

It was cold. Like real cold. We learned an exciting fact, the thermometer in the Corolla actually reads negative numbers.

The closer and closer we got to the canyon we got this was our view, increasingly more and more foggy. At this point we were beginning to get concerned our view of the canyon was going to be obstructed.

So we got up to the rim and it was blowing wind and COLD (see at trend on this trip). We were so excited to actually be at the Grand Canyon. We suited up, barreled out of the car, took a little walk out to the view point and...

Here is it... we were standing at a view point on the rim and there was nothing grand to see except the fog :(

I was rather disappointed, here we were at the Grand Canyon and there was nothing to see. Literally. But, there was local there with his camera and we got chatting. His words of advice were that the canyon will come just as quick as it goes. Wait it out, the fog will blow out. But you better be quick to get your photos in because the fog will roll right back in. While we were standing there talking with him the fog began to blow out of the canyon and we got a glimpse of what's to come.
The cool thing was how the fog and the canyon dampened all the sound. It was such a strange silent muffled feeling. Hard to describe, but almost like talking in heavy snowfall.

The cacti were buried in snow and looked like the spiny guys from Super Mario Brothers :)

This is to show you just how bundled up I was. I think I had everything in my suitcase on at once (including leggings under my jeans).

We went and walked around the lodges and shops and killed time waiting for the fog to burn off. Unfortunately it was too snowy and icy to do any hiking off the main paths. Our patience paid off, we managed to catch some amazing Canyon views. You had to be right on the camera though or else the fog would come back real fast. The Canyon was absolutely stunning... perhaps you could call the views grand? :) When you stand on the rim of the Canyon looking in you feel so tiny and when you think about how it was carved into the earth you feel so powerless. Amazing experience. As much as I had been complaining about the snow, it actually made the views unique. The snow caught on the layers of the rock and add some beautiful contrast to the red rocks. We feel fortunate to have visited in December because we probably never would have chosen this time of year to go. Next time will be a bit warmer though - I want hiking weather!

Warning: Lots of (probably boring) Canyon photos ahead.

Hey look! Blue skies!

Working our way East along the rim.

Yay! We can see the Canyon!
Canyon Watchtower

View from the Watchtower window

We headed back towards Flagstaff through the Painted Desert. We caught the sunset along the way which really made the "painted" part true. Unfortunately, we wanted to get back to the hotel before dark because of the road conditions so we watched the sunset from the car along the way.

Car sunset

We got back to Flagstaff that evening and planned the next day's adventure - Sedona.

Day 2: Albuquerque, NM ---> Flagstaff, AZ

After an exhausting evening we woke up to a very, very frigid Albuquerque. By the way - Kirtland Air Force Inn - top notch accommodations. Besides being the first stop outside Texas, I was excited to stop in Alb and check it out. Chris frequently travels to Kirtland for work (he's there now actually) so it was fun to see where he actually goes :) First order of business, the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Chris has visited this museum for work and wanted to show me some of his work related stuff. The museum was very well put together and considering I don't know much about that slice of history it was very enlightening.

The museum

Periodic table of elements entry way - cool!

Someday, this will be in my driveway.

The road to Flagstaff was long and occasionally snowy. The scenery started getting more and more interesting along the way. Chris and I passed the miles pondering the difference of mesas, plateaus and buttes. Bet you don't remember from high school!

Mesa? Butte? Plateau?? Will we ever know? (yep, I'm funny).

Color! Hills!

Along the way, we drove through some really depressed Native American land. You can tell these tiny towns with little tourist stops were hanging by a thread and the rough economic time has severed that stream of income. Very sad.

Uh oh. White stuff again.

Continental Divide! We seem to see a lot of this on vacation (Multiple sightings on the Glacier/Banff vacation of 2010).

We made it to sunny, beautiful... Arizona?

I was hoping to lay by the pool and soak up some Arizona sun. Next time.

Two most critical things about me on road trips. I like to nap. I'm a map watcher. I watch the roadsigns and stare at my map. No tacky tourist trap will escape me. No little town will go unnoticed. National Parks? Viewpoints? Not going to miss them on my watch. I was thrilled to see we'd be passing right through the Petrified National Forest National Park. One squeal and obsessive pointing at my map and Chris knew his husbandly duties.

We pull off to get to this...

And get this... for reals?

No worries - our daylight was limited and there was this killer tourist trap coming up. Meteor Crater. There had been billboards for hours. A must see. We get off the freeway and drive for miles through cow pastures.

This guy helped us along our way...

On my way to see a meteor crater!

So we roll up to the visitors center. Just on the other side of that building exists a 1 mile wide, 550 ft deep crater created by a rock from space. Cool. Except... the admission to see a hole in the ground was $16. For the two of us... THIRTY. TWO. DOLLARS. Call us cheap, but...uh no. (And it was blowing wind and freezing, surprise) Anyways, we passed on that attraction, I'll leave it to google to show you what we would've seen.

Luckily the view was pretty sweet. Flagstaff was just over those mountains!

We made it to Flagstaff with no further complication. One little nervous moment when the driveway to the hotel was closed (snow, again) but luckily we found the back parking lot. We checked into the hotel in time to watch the sunset over the hills before heading out for pizza and beer at the Beaver Street Brewery in downtown Flagstaff (and a few snowy back roads too icy for the Corolla).

Sunset while we were unloading the car

Beer sampler

Pizza! With blackbeans!

The next two days were tourist days. No driving! We carefully watched the weather to decide if we'd spend our next day in the Grand Canyon or Sedona. A snowy day would put a real damper on this portion of our vacation.