*Lots of pics!*
Last week my bestie Jessica and I FINALLY got to go on our long awaited getaway to Arizona! This has been planned since January. We were supposed to go at the end of April, but well ya know a pandemic happened.....so we reschedule to mid September and prayed that all would work out!
And what do you know--it did! God bless.
We flew into Pheonix and stayed our first night there in a hotel. We rose early the next morning to hit the road and begin our hikes in Sedona!
In Sedona we started at Devil's Bridge Trail. The parking was packed! We waited our turn for a pic on the arch at the top for maybe 45 minutes. Worth it!!
After hiking Devil's Bridge and grabbing a quick lunch, we headed over to hike Soldier's Pass Cave trail. It was so hot! Jessica waited in the shade at a junction to cool off and I continued up the steep trail to the cave....however I couldn't find the right approach find the entrance! I kept it safe and turned around after 3 tries. Oh well!
Seven Sacred Pools along the trail
At the end of the trail where I'm trying to find the cave entrance....
After Sedona we headed NW to our next spot--the Grand Canyon!!! We had a campsite reserved in the park for 2 nights, and we arrived just in time before sunset to set up our tent and get some dinner.
In the morning, lots of local friends were having breakfast right by us!
We got up early and started a long day of hiking down into the Canyon on Bright Angel trail! There are rest stops at 1 mile, 3 miles, and 4.5 miles along the trail so we were going to see how far we felt we could go for a day hike. We ended up hiking to Indian Garden, which was at the 4.5 mile mark and approx 3000' elevation change!
Finally at Indian Garden! The Native Americans used to farm here in the past. We took a lunch and a long rest before beginning the ascent back up to the rim. The temp was 15-20 degrees hotter down here than at the top! Approx 105 F.
A ranger told us there were at least 5 rescues that afternoon, mainly hikers with heat exhaustion!
On the way back up we were able to spot Native American pictographs! Very small, but if you zoom in you can see animal shapes.
We got to see our first Elk as we headed back to our car from the trailhead! They were enjoying the evening sun.
In the morning after we packed up camp, we explored the main viewpoints at the top of the rim like good little tourists!
We even spotted some elk sleeping in the canyon!
After we left the Grand Canyon, we had a 4 hour drive ahead of us to our next destination of Page, AZ right by the Utah border. We stopped at a Native American roadside stand and each bought some Navajo jewelry for souvenirs.
We set up our tent at the campsite we had reserved for 1 night there. It was basically a sandbox!
Dinner was stuffed burritos. YUM
In the morning we packed up camp and excitedly headed out for our last fun day in AZ!! We rented a double kayak for the day and kayaked 3 miles on Lake Powell into Antelope Canyon for an afternoon of hiking.
We stopped for lunch and a rest, then headed back to the kayaks. We stopped after a bit in the canyon to cool off in the water!
But the most fun part of it---we took some fancy dresses and makeup with us on our hike and changed right in the middle of the canyon for glamour shots!!!!! So much fun
Behind the scenes!!
We ended the day with a hotel in Flagstaff, then drove to Pheonix in the morning to fly out and return home and back to real life. Tired and exhausted, but happy!
