Sedona Part II

OK, so after hiking Cathedral rock, we decided to go to Bell Rock. Bell Rock is the rock you have seen in all the pictures of Sedona. The hiking map said that there is no set trail, you just go. So we did. Heh. But we came in the back way and started trying to hike up the southern portion of the rock. It was NOT easy, even though the map said bell rock was easy to moderate. We finally got around the rock and found the nice easy portion. :) By that time, John had hundreds of tiny needles in his ankle from some cactus he ran into. Ouch. But he was a trooper and continued on. I was having a great time and was climbing pretty high up the rock. John was getting a bit nervous about the heights and stopped. I was able to get about 10 feet from one of the top rocks. Had John come with me, I know I could have gotten all the way up, but it was dangerous (and stupid) to attempt it alone so I came back down. It was very fun and exhilarating. Oh, and an interesting note...about half way up my heart started beating out of my chest. It was weird because it was on one of the flatter sections. Vortex energy? Who knows.

We then went into town for lunch at the Javelina Cantina. It was a fun place, but neither of us are really into Mexican. I got fish tacos. Not the greatest, but I never tried them before so it was an adventure. They were also known for their margueritas, so I tried one.

Next, we went into town and checked out some art galleries. My favorite was Fatelli. We also did some wine tasting, which was a lot of fun. Of course our favorites were California wines though. We got cleaned up and then went for appetizers at the Oak Creek Brewery. It was a fun place, but we didn't eat much since we had such a late lunch.

We had been undecided on whether we wanted to drive all the way to the Grand Canyon since it was so much travelling in a short time. But after all the beautiful sites in Sedona, we decided we were just too close to miss it. So on Saturday, we slept in and had another awesome breakfast at the B&B. I believe it was called blue corn pancakes. Yum. We then jumped in the car and headed to the Grand Canyon. We took 89A, which was undoubtedly the "long way" but it was unbelievably beautiful. We drove through Oak Creek Canyon (which was where Jospeph suggested hiking - I'm sure that would have been amazing). The 28 miles to Flagstaff took almost an hour as we were doing switchbacks all the way up the canyon. In those 28 miles, we went up about 4000 feet. It was awesome, but we made a mental note that we needed to drive back before dark as the road was narrow, steep and would be covered with black ice when the sun set.

Flagstaff was beautiful and the San Franciso Peaks were awesome up close. But we only stayed long enough to get gas, hats and gloves.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon around 11:30. We stopped at an outlook and it was absolutely breath taking. I have seen hundreds of pictures of the Grand Canyon, but it just does not capture the beauty and vastness of the canyon. I then told John I wanted to find the Bright Angel Trail and hike down. He resisted me, but in the end, I got us there. :) I should mention at this point that my arms, shoulders and quads were unbelievably sore from Friday's hikes. It was a good thing the trail was easy!
I have a couple of friends who have done the r2r2r (rim to river to rim) hike down the canyon and it was fun to see where they started and finished. We only had a couple of hours there, so we only went 2 miles down and 2 miles back. I absolutely loved it and the views were ever changing and amazing. I definitely want to come back and make it all the way down the trail (8 miles) to see the Phantom Ranch. It was one of those hikes that was painful to end. But, I was glad we did when we were able to drive home before dark.

Saturday night, we had dinner at Shugrues and celebrated John's birthday. The food was very good and we had a great time. Unbelievably enough, that pretty much wrapped up our trip as we had to get up very early to drive back to Phoenix and fly home. There were so many things that we had wanted to do that we just did not have time for. Specifically, we wanted to visit Jerome and we wanted to do several more hikes. I guess we will have to wait until next time.

Oh yes, and for the record, I did not run at all during the trip, but I was crazy sore from our hikes until Monday!