Road Trip Travel Log 02.02

Finally made it to Red Rock State Park, and made a couple of new discoveries along the way. Our route took us through what turned out be the incredibly beautiful Coconino National Forest, a place we have vowed to return. If Tolkien’s Elves were a real thing, they might just choose to live in a place like that. Verdant green forests around the bases of giant granite mountains, interspersed all along the way with little villages and expensive looking cabin retreats, with lights hanging from the trees across bridges that span crystal clear mountain streams. It was breathtaking. The city of Sedona begins in that place, and continues for quite a ways as you emerge out into the sunlight and the geography changes once again to drier, rockier terrain. I expected Sedona to be much cheesier than it is; like a sort of Disneyland for New Age bullshit. It was nothing of the sort.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of psychics and crystal shops and vortex tour agencies and the like, but they don’t overwhelm what looks like a pretty resort town and what I imagine would be an interesting place to live.

The kids were excited to get hiking after spending most of two days in the car.

The problem was we were dealing with some serious looking storms on the horizon. We decided to risk a short hike, and I was able to take some decent photos of the park that I’ll be posting later.

Those are the Cathedral Rocks that the park is known for, and the ones we hiked to get a better vantage of. We dealt with some light rain along the way, but by the time we got to our overlook we could tell conditions were beginning to get worse. We made it back to the car with no time to spare. We hit hail and heavy rain, but thankfully the car took no damage.

We arrived earlier than expected in Williams and had a great buffet dinner with a decent Arizona margarita. Tomorrow we ride the rails to the Grand Canyon.