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!