Our Arizona Mini Vacation: Sedona

On Sunday we ventured about 45 minutes south of Flagstaff to Sedona, Arizona. Now let me just start by saying, wow. I know I mentioned this in my Grand Canyon post, but seriously, I had no idea how beautiful Arizona is. It is gorgeous! The pictures I took don't even come close to doing it justice. If you want to see a better example of it's beauty, just google "Sedona, AZ" and go to the images. Everything is this deep red color accented by full, green mountains. It was awesome.

What was cool about driving from Flagstaff to Sedona was that we went from an elevation of about 7,000 feet in Flagstaff to 4,500 feet in Sedona all in a matter of 45 minutes. How did we drop that elevation you might ask? Well down a curvy, windy road on the side of a mountain, of course! Okay, so I say this was "cool" because 1. Matt loved it and 2. The views were amazing. It was actually a little less cool, though, because I'm a big weenie when it comes to curvy, windy roads on the side of mountains (let's all think back to our honeymoon in Maui now). Fortunately, this road actually had two lanes and a guard rail, but other than that it was really similar to that fateful road in Maui.

Anyway, on our way to Sedona we stopped at Slide Rock State Park, which is this awesome park with a natural red-sandstone water slide you can actually ride down. Unfortunately, though, due to a recent forest fire the slide portion of the park was closed. :( So all we got to do was look at the creek. Pretty to look at? Sure. As much fun as sliding down the creek? Heck no. So we went, we took pictures and we headed on our merry little way.

That's the creek down in the right hand corner

After our uneventful trip to Slide Rock, we drove to a little downtown area of Sedona and got out to walk around. It was a cute area with restaurants and shops and amazing views, of course.

From there we kept driving through Sedona and appreciating the amazing red rock mesas that surrounded us everywhere we looked. I can only imagine what the hiking in Sedona is like, but with a two year old in tow, we stuck to the road and scenic pull off areas.

Chapel of the Holy Cross

Next we hit up the Oak Creek Brewery for a delicious lunch and from there headed back north to our hotel. And while Ethan and I snoozed in the car (I try really hard to stay awake when Matt has to be awake to drive, but sometimes I just can't fight the tired bug!), Matt stopped on his way back up that curvy, windy road on the side of the mountain and took some more pictures.

See the road?

Then after a little downtime in the hotel room we took Ethan out to a huge playground we found to let the little guy burn some energy and run around and just generally be a kid. He loved it and totally deserved it after all the car time we put him through earlier that day.

From there we visited the Lowell Observatory, which is actually where they discovered Pluto - cool! And we got to look at the sun through a telescope - also cool!

Checking out the sun

And finally, after the observatory, we went to Beaver Street Brewery, where Matt could have a quick sampler and then we ordered carry-out and very happily headed back to the hotel room to crash. Have I mentioned that traveling with a two year old is exhausting? Haha. :) I'll be sure to finish the "Our Arizona Mini Vacation" series soon with the last post for the Meteor Crater and finally making it home after 950+ miles in the car in four days. :)