Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your day with family and friends was wonderful and blessed.

I finally made it through my photos of Sedona. I figured I better get this blog written before 2015 was over!

I’m officially caught up with my blog now. 🙂

I took my friend Valerie to Sedona for her (dare I say it???) 60th birthday last October.  We had both talked about seeing it someday. As photographers we would dream of going and photographing the beauty there.

Sedona is about 5 hours from Albuquerque. You would think leaving Albuquerque at 9 am we would have gotten there early. Not so! We stop for ALL Kodak moments! On one trip to Phoenix we took 13 hours to get there! It should have been about 8 hours. But we took the tour through the petrified forest and painted desert. We took LOTS of photos!

This trip was no different. We decided to stop at Walnut Canyon in Flagstaff. It is an old historic Indian site. They would build their homes under the natural shelf formations in the canyon.

Now Valerie and I laugh about how we start our trips looking nice with our hair and makeup done. And then it never fails that we always end up with photos of bad hair! It doesn’t matter what time of year we go, it will rain, hail, snow, wind blow, or all of the above!

So here’s me at the start of this trip…

After we were on the road a couple hours it started raining….sigh….

Remember those 224 steps we took at Seven Falls? Well, this canyon was worse. And to make it more difficult we had too climb up to get back to the car. We counted our steps and we climbed 273 steps!

The canyon was beautiful. The history interesting. But halfway through the hike it started raining.

Back on the road we were ready to see Sedona before dark. We stopped at the edge of town to see the beauty of the vistas. Just stunning! But I found it difficult the entire weekend to truly capture the grandness of the area.

After checking into the hotel we wanted dinner and alcohol and not necessarily in that order!  We got to enjoy our dinner and drinks because the hotel had a shuttle for us.

The next morning we were ready to go hiking. We had heard from several people that we had to see certain sights. 

Our first stop was at the Church of the Red Rocks.  It was just beautiful.  Very unique.

Inside was beautiful and peaceful. The views were amazing.

Next stop was Bell Rock. We stopped at one parking lot to hike but we didn’t care for the open flat terrain to the rock formation. But I did take one photo from the parking lot that clearly shows the Bell shape it’s named for.

We decided to hike the trail on the other side of this formation. It was a great hike. As you climb higher the views became more and more grand. We decided at the end of the trip that this was our favorite hike.

Next we decided to climb Cathedral Rock. Numerous people recommend this hike. It was nice but Bell Rock was way better.

The next morning we wanted to hike the West Fork Trail. But sadly the parking lot was full. I had hoped to hike this trail because I understood it was not only beautiful but also a hot birding spot.

Since that trail was full we headed back to town. We had noticed a trailhead not far from the hotel.

While hiking I walked past a rattlesnake. It shook its tail and I shrieked! Valerie and I took off running!!! Thankfully our dogs had been snake proofed and they ran too!

I was shaking very badly but I wanted to get a pick of that snake. But I was so shook up I didn’t set my camera settings right for the deep shade it was in. I clicked a photo and saw it was bad so went to change the settings when it shook its tail at me. I decided to run away instead of getting a better pic ….

We kept hiking but we were looking at every stick, shadow, rock, etc…

After the hike we headed into town for lunch. While there we stopped in at Pink Jeep Tours. It looked like a lot of fun so we signed up for a tour that afternoon.

The jeep ride was awesome! We were driven into Broken Arrow Canyon. Just beautiful. Valerie and I had so much fun.  Most of our photos were crooked or jiggly but we didn’t care!

We had such a wonderful time on our trip. It was a truly stunning place to visit. We want to go back again and see the other trails we’ve been told about.