Sedona Part One...

Since I took so many friggin pictures of this beautiful place - I'm breaking it up into 2 blogs.

So here we go!

Patrick asked if I wanted to go to Sedona for a few days just before Thanksgiving.  As always - my answer is:



He booked a cute tiny Air bnb for Sunday through Wednesday and warned me that we'd be doing some hardcore hiking.  I was ready!  I mean the boy was already sweet enough to buy me some new hiking boots and I have my nifty hiker backpack so I'm set!

Early Sunday morning we headed out, road snacks and road tunes ready! Drive was easy peasy - I DIDN'T GET SICK - and we rolled into Sedona about 6/7 hours later.  Um...FYI...Sedona is fucking breathtakingly beautiful.  There are weird round-abouts EVERYWHERE which I did end up getting pretty good at, but still...slightly terrifying.  But this town is surrounded by gorgeous landscape.  I mean these people get to go along with their daily thing looking at such beauty!  I'm not gonna lie - this is somewhere I could totally see myself living some day.

I mean here's the street our air bnb was on:

I could live here

Our air bnb was super cute and connected to the main house, but our own area.  We did share the garden area with the owners, but we never saw them.  (We did smell them....um...major 4-20 happening all the time, LOL.  We might have got a bit of a contact high).  The garden area was super cute and lit up so rad at night!

As we got settled we realized that the little kitchenette was going to be a bit of a challenge to cook so Pat was like "Tonight we eat out!"  So, we hit up The Hudson.  We wanted to get a spot where we could see the sunset.  We were not disappointed.

This view

As I picked up my wine glass to take my wine against the rocks picture - Pat exclaimed "Look at the reflection!".  Then this happened.

Award Winning Photo right here...

Can I say a perfect start to our fantastic trip?!  Yes.  Oh, and here's some deliciousness.

So yum!

Afterwards we headed back and chilled in our pad with a movie.  Nice start for sure.

This is also a good time to note how lucky I am to have this great guy in my life.  I'm not gonna lie, I was having some anxiety about this trip since the last time I was here it was a storm of shitty events leading up to me being sick and sad and not enjoying what should have been a great trip last year.  I did fall in love with Sedona even though I was with someone who was an asshole.  But this time I was with a man who has a beautiful heart and is caring and compassionate.  He loves AZ and it's beauty and I got to experience it a whole new glorious way.  I'm so fucking happy I was able to make some new better memories of a place I find to be pretty damn amazing.  Ok enough mush - onto Day 2!

We decided to do Boyton Canyon Trail.  It was about a total of 6 miles out and back.  You start out through some pretty areas along a resort.  Then you end up in the canyon between a couple of huge rocks and it's just gorgeous!  It's so lush and feels like your in a forest at times!  The end of the trail led up you up a bit of a scramble to a big plateau like rock.  It was kind of slanted, so you had to be careful but a great place to chill a bit before heading back.  My only dumbass move was I apparently sat too close to a cactus and spent a good 20 minutes picking prickles out of my ass and clothes. That was awesome.  We met some cool peeps up there we chatted a bit with.  (One gal went to Chapman University!)  The weather was perfect hiking weather.  It was warm in the sun but quite chilly in the shade.  We came layered and I switched between my trucker hat and beanie.  I kept up pretty well with Pat I thought but I was stopping a lot to take pictures.  So take a gander!

Ready to hike!

This was my view all the time, and a lot of similar pics you'll see....

These little rock towers were everywhere!

Medicine Wheel

I could not get over the brightly colored leaves!

Self Timer Cuteness

Those rocks were that orange!  No filter!!!

The yellow!

I love that he humors me

Colors!

So damn pretty!!!

The end of the hike!  (F that cactus)

Love!

My attempt at a panoramic

Look at that color!!!

After the hike we were pretty ravished so we decided to head back to the bnb and cook one of the meals he brought.  Let's just say a toaster oven with 2 burners on the top, and you can't use any at the same time in a tiny kitchenette made for a slightly entertaining but also slightly long way to eat a what turned into a late lunch/more like early dinner.

Teeny Tiny Kitchen

My baby playin guitar

After stuffing our faces with steak, potatoes and broccoli (yes I ate broccoli!) we decided to check out the Amitabha Stupa Peace Park.  I would love to return here when we have more time (We were losing daylight).  What a beautiful, peaceful place!!  I fell in love with it instantly and plan to re-visit this place for sure!

Mosaics for Dad!

Pat caught me having a moment with Buddha

Taking it all in

So beautiful and peaceful!

This was an ancient Medicine Wheel.  You enter at the East with a prayer intention, then walk to South, West, North.  I said my prayer for compassion and kindness.

After this we headed up to the Airport Loop area.  Pat had agreed to let me look for caches this trip. (Tee hee) so this looked to be a possible easy find and a place to watch the sunset.  As we drove up the mountain, I realized this was where I stayed last year.  It was a little rough remembering, but being in different circumstances this time it was instantly erased.  The sunset look outs were packed, so we just looked for the cache - which I found!  But I'll post about that in the next blog so I don't need to tag both of these as geo blogs. :)

Afterwards we landed at Oak Creek Brewery. 

We were looking for a place to grab a snack and some drinks.  Not as hip as we'd hoped but still cool.  More Sports Bar like.  It was located in a crafts village that I really wanted to come back and check out, but we never made it back.

Afterwards - back home to a horror movie.

A very lovely Day 2!!

Day 3/4 next blog!