Kittens From The Dark Side: Sedona Day 1

It was my birthday recently and my sweet Gregory took some time off to help me celebrate! Obviously we weren't going to invite people over for a party, but we did certainly have a wonderful time and we were able to enjoy a lot of outside time, which was wonderful for my soul.

On the way, of course we stopped at Sunset Point!

We did not see any poisonous snakes or insects in the area.

Our hotel in Sedona was adorable!

There was a fountain right outside our door!

Clarabelle (my car) was happy to have a different view.

We couldn't check into our hotel until after 4 pm, so we went off on our first hike! I planned 3 different possible hikes because I didn't know how much time we had or exactly what the weather would be doing. It ended up being rather warm, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway!

We started with this hike because it is shady.

Ooooo . . . scary!

Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness

The plants are interesting in the desert.

The bark of this tree spiraled around it.

This type of tree has dragon scales.

This crazy plant had two types of "bark" - normal woody bark and also a smooth red covering in other spots.

There were some flowers, too, like this pretty purple one.

This flower looks like it would be spicy!

Juniper pine berries:

We found lots of cairns along the path.

Here I found an arc of cairns!

A tiny cairn!

Here's me climbing up on a big flat rock!

There were a bunch of people crowded up at the "end of the trail," but they didn't all go up farther to my favorite part, the climbing around on the rocks!

You can see my about halfway up in the middle of the photo!

Along the way, we heard mysterious flute music!

Someone was playing a recorder-style instrument up in the mountains.

Look at that view!

Greg was very brave; heights aren't his favorite thing, but he climbed on up there anyway!

Look at that beast!

I went up further. There's more interesting climbing up there and I was able to get further into the canyon, but after going around the corner, the amazing view wasn't visible anymore, so I came back. Also, Greg didn't want to clamber on up there with me (making it less fun), and it was starting to get darker in the canyon (it gets dark early because the angle of the sun's rays means they don't get into the bottom).

On the way back, I saw a rock that looked exactly like a liver!

These cairns were leaning in to make an arch!

It's a perfect place for the wedding of some tiny cute animals!

I love cairns.

We decided we had enough energy to see if we could climb up to the cave. I found the path, but the rock sign leading to the path was no longer visible, so I created a new one.

Then we started our ascent. Can you see the cave?

I climbed up faster (I took fewer photos on the way up) and was able to get this photo of Greg in the wilderness.

Can you find him in this photo?

It's a steep climb, and we were already at 4000 feet in elevation (when we're used to close to sea level in the Phoenix metro area), so we were breathing pretty hard when we got up there. It was worth it, though!

It just looks like a cave from afar, but it's actually . . .

an arch!

From inside the cave:

Eventually we were back to the trailhead and the parking lot. There's Clarabelle!

We drove back to check in to our hotel.

It was a regular hotel room (only the sink was outside the bathroom because the bathroom was too tiny for it!) but the location was perfect: right along Oak Creek! We didn't know this until the next morning, though . . .

The bathroom had a little stained glass window!

I decided I wanted to try the healthy Thai food restaurant on my list, so off we went!

I got a bowl with rice, a three-bean mixture, onions, mushrooms, and carrots.

It was a bit bland, but it was the best option because anything with interesting spices can mess with my digestion, sadly.

Then we walked through downtown Sedona. It's a strange and interesting place.

It's famous for its "vortices". These are supposedly places where the distance between the spiritual world and the physical world is easier to cross. I haven't experienced anything especially interesting in this realm in Sedona.