Sedona Sunday Videos

After loading up on carbs at the Coffee Pot restaurant, I did this short video from the parking lot.

From somewhere on Devil's Bridge trail...

As I was making my way back from Devil's Bridge, I suddenly realized that not all cars are created equal.

We made it back from hiking and decided to relax for a bit a local park.

We finished off the day with a stroll around the wonderful shops in Uptown Sedona... again. It was like the forth time we had done it, but it was still nice to watch the people, enjoy the weather, and smoke a cigar.

That's all for this trip. Thanks for reading.

The Devil's in the Details

Our final day in Sedona started off well. The weather finally broke and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. We decided to begin with a solid breakfast at a place we had passed by in town a few times while driving around. It struck us as a place we needed to go because it billed itself as the home of "101 omelets". It's called the Coffee Pot and it is in the older, more residential area of Sedona as compared to where we spent most of our time. But it was definitely a good choice. I will post some video a little later where I report from outside the restaruant.


Any way, the restaraunt is located very near the coffee pot rock formation. You can see from the picture above that the rightmost part of the formation kind of looks like a perculating coffee pot. I don't know the whole history behind how the rock formations got their names, but if you ever go to Sedona, you will quickly learn that almost every rock formation area has at least one name, sometimes more.

After we had our fill, we ventured out to a relatively mild trail called "Devil's Bridge" . It's about a mile and a half one way trail that ends up at a natural rock bridge that was formed by an arching rock. You can actually walk over the rock bridge if you make it all the way to the top, which we didn't. In the picture below, this is the start of the trail, and the end is somewhere on the side of that rock formation in the background. It's not all the way at the top, but it is about 800 feet higher than the starting point.


As I mentioned though, we didn't make it all the way up the trail. The first half of the trail was only a mild incline, fairly easy to walk. It was the second half of the rail where the climb became quite severe. We were close enough to hear the poeple ahead of us who had made it to the bridge, but we couldn't see them as the view was obscured by dense trees and brush. I did turn around and look back down the hill at some point in the climb and I was able to capture the image below of the surrounding area.


On our way back down the trail, we stopped off to do what everyone should do when they are in Sedona, stack rocks and make a wish. I don't know the story behind this, but a friend of mine who went to Sedona before I did told me I needed to do this, so I did. I meant to research it a little and find out why I needed to do it, but I ran out of time. I will do that in the next few weeks and I will blog about it so everyone knows the story. For now though, the picture below is of the rock stack that I created while taking a break from hiking the Devil's Bridge trail.

Tlaquepaque time, anyone?

One of my favorite shopping areas in Sedona is Tlaquepaque (pronounced T-lockey-pockey). It is located on Oak Creek in a Spanish mission-style estate. We ended up going there to walk around, window shop, and even buy a few things almost every day we were in Sedona. It's just a nice place to be outside and enjoy the day. Below is a picture down one of the many sidewalks lined with shops.

In addition to the sidewalks between some buildings, there are larger "streets" between others. This is a pretty massive complex of buildings surrounded by a tall stucco fence. You really feel like you are in a old mission akin to the Alamo. Each "street" is named and the building corners have the street signs embedded in the facade as shown below.


Many of the merchants leave their doors open and some place their goods outside (as shown below) so that people can admire the offerings. Many of the shops are very small and only 4-8 people can be in the store at one time, so this is a good way to allow more people to shop at the same time.


And a lot of the shops feature artsy kind of goods, from real art to artistic crafts like these colorful, hand-painted, wooden boxes. The stores included photographic prints, wood crafts, home decor, Christmas ornaments, restaurants, and many others.


There is even a small chapel in the middle of the complex. It was closed up the first day, but open on Saturday when I was able to snap this picture. The following day, we went back to walk off our dinner and saw that someone had just gotten married in the chapel and were getting ready to start their reception in one of the many courtyards on the property.

Sedona Saturday Video

Saturday was a fairly non-eventful day. It rained off an on... I know, what else is new? Anyway, we did what we could. A little shopping, a little eating, and a two hour retreat at the Amara spa. It was nice to get away from all the rain and really de-stress for a few hours. Here is a quick vid from the early part of the day when we were at Tlaquepaque.

What a Grand sight

We finally made it to the Grand Canyon around 3:00 p.m. on Friday. It was still raining and we were quite disappointed because we thought we might not be able to see what we had traveled nearly three hours to see. So, we decided to pay for the IMAX movie. What's the next best thing if you can't see the Grand Canyon in person? See it on a ginormous screen! I have to tell ya, it wasn't half bad. The movie lasted about 30 minutes and was a pretty good history of the Grand Canyon from its earliest inhabitants to recent explorers.

The best part is that when we got out of the movie, the sun was shining. There were still quite a few dark clouds in the sky, but this was the first time we actually saw sun in several days, so we were very thankful. Seeing the sun, we decided to pay the $25 entry fee to get into the park. When we got there we battled sprinkles off and on, but for the most part we were able to see some of the Grand Canyon, like this view from Mather Point.


The shear scale of this geological phenomenon is amazing. You can see people on the cliff to the left. They are tiny compared to the vastness of the Grand Canyon. It is an impressive view for sure. As we were walking back to the car, we ran into some wild deer grazing in the woods. I was able to get some pretty good shots of them, like the one below, since they seemed to be used to people.


All in all, the day was a success. The weather was as cooperative as inclement weather can be. I mean, we didn't get drenched and we were able to see quite a lot. It would have been much better if we had experienced typical Arizona weather, but I will take it.

Sedona Friday Videos

We started our first full day in Sedona off right, with an awesome breakfast at Wildflower Bread Company!

Then we took a road trip to Winslow and checked out the area. I forgot to do a video post in Winslow, but this is shortly after we left at a rest area off I-40.

The last video of the day was recorded at Meteor Crater, an amazing site to see and a load of fun for kids of all ages.

A Hell of a Burger

After spending Friday morning driving up from Sedona and visiting Winslow and Meteor Crater, we stopped off for some lunch in Flagstaff. Determined not to eat at a place we can find in Texas, we parked on the street in the middle of downtown and decided to walk around until we found something that sounded good. Boy were we in for a surprise!

This is what we found...


Diablo Burger is a very new and very tasty burger joint. The place is so small that I didn't even try to take a picture of the inside. The notice on the wall said that the maximum occupancy was 26 persons. That's pretty small!

Anyway, the burgers are to die for. Christen got her standard boring plain burger dry (bread and meat only). I opted for the Cheech, which had lettuce, tomato, guacamole, pepper jack cheese, and fresh grilled jalapenos. The burgers are made of grass fed beef and all the ingredients are grown locally. They use english muffins as their buns and they brand the logo (above the name in the picture) on the top muffin. The fries that come with the burger are thin and seasoned with fennel seeds.

I loved everything about this place... the location, the ambiance, the taste, and the philosophy. If you like burgers, you gotta try a Diablo Burger if you get the chance.

Holy Meteor Batman!

On our way to the Grand Canyon from Winslow yesterday, we stopped off at one of the world's largest and best preserved meteor impact craters. I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw this on the map, but I can honestly say that it is well worth the $15 price of admission.

From the photo below you can see how massive this crater really is. For some perspective, the dark rectangular area at the 7 o'clock position is a parking lot and the black line curving away from that is the two-lane road that connects to the Interstate.


So here are the numbers for those of you nerds out there:
- The impact occurred 50,000 years ago
- The meteor was traveling at 40,000 miles per hour
- The meteor was only 150 feet in diameter
- The explosion was equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT
- 175 million tons of rock was displaced due to the impact
- The crater is 4,000 feet across and 55o feet deep

If you ever find yourself in the Flagstaff, Arizona area, you must make time to visit this place. There is a little museum and a 30-minute movie that really makes the whole experience a lot of fun, not to mention very interesting.

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona

Yes, I actually was "standing on the corner" as the Eagles' song goes. In fact, the corner is very well marked as you can see in the picture below.

The funny thing is, there are souvenir stores on two of the three other corners and they were both blasting Eagles' tunes loud enough to be heard from half a block away. Kinda funny. Anyway, we stood on the corner for a bit and then we walked around the town. I had to buy some postcards and mail them from Winslow. The guy at the post office was nice. He was in awe of my Nikon D2X camera. Many people are. It is a massive piece of hardware. But I digress... He offered to hand postmark the postcards for me instead of just running them through the machine. So I took him up on that offer.

Of course, Winslow is a stop on the once famed Route 66, so we had to drive the historic road. I snapped this picture of a street sign indicating the route as you enter Winslow from the west.

Of course, the trip down Route 66 is much different than it used to be. There aren't as many unique local stops along the way. A lot of those places couldn't survive once the Interstates came through. It is sad, but I guess it is just evolution. As all things evolve, the past fades away. If we don't move toward the future, we get stuck in the past. But I love old things and I really liked driving Route 66 and checking out the things that were still there.

Having Fun in Sedona

This is the morning of our third day in beautiful Sedona, Arizona. Unfortunately, we have had uncooperative weather so far. It's been raining here almost non-stop since we arrived Thursday afternoon. But we have still had fun so far. Even though it was raining, we spent our first day walking around town, we ate at a good restaurant, and we even bought a few trinkets for friends and family.

This was the view from our balcony on Friday morning, our second day in Sedona.

Since we figured it would be raining most of the day yesterday, we decided to take a road trip to try to escape the weather. So we jumped in the car and hit the road, stopping in Winslow, Meteor Crater, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon. More posts will follow describing those adventures. Stay tuned...