It’s another installment of our vacation chronicles (check out our Grand Canyon adventure and our Petrified Forest/Painted Desert extravaganza). Unfortunately it is the last post of this kind since it wraps up all of our adventures in vacation-land. Sigh. I’m so ready for another one. I really don’t think you can get too much vacation. This post actually shows the hub of our vacation, Sedona, Arizona, where we actually had our condo. We traded in our Hilton Head timeshare this year to visit the beautiful desert of Sedona. Because of that we had a wonderful condo to settle into, unpack, and use as our little home for a week. Man, was it great. Check out this view from our balcony.
I’ve heard quite a bit about Sedona and heard about a lot of people visiting it, and I had some ideas of what it was going to be like. And they were all wrong. With it being such a destination, I thought it was going to be a big city. Wrong. It was a very small town; a small town that obviously thrives on tourism. It is just tucked in between these majestic red rocks, whose beauty is the main tourist draw.
There are quite a few lookouts that we checked out. It’s just majestic in a whole different, desert way.
One of our favorite places was a Chapel of the Holy Cross, which was actually built right into the rock. It was an amazing feat of architecture and sat perched on the side of a rock.
Oh, and check at this house I was totally creeping on. It was like a Greek castle in the middle of the desert. It was crazy cool. Crazy cool with a view!
One of the days we were there we decided to take a little road trip to the even smaller city of Jerome. It is an old mining town that almost turned into a ghost town after the mines were deserted but artists found this beautiful spot and it became a hub for them, based on its beauty…and cost of living since it was practically deserted at that time. Talk about a town built on the edge of a rock. I don’t know how some of those homes actually stayed upright!
The main attraction was at the former mine owner’s mansion that is now turned into a museum. It was fun to not only walk around an amazing mansion but to learn about the history of the town.
Here is a diorama inside the mansion that showed what the mines looked like when they were in full swing. How crazy is it to think about all that activity underground!
One of things in the museum that I thought was the coolest was this buggy.
Why, you ask? Because this is the buggy, literally the buggy, that was used in the movie Oklahoma. That is one famous buggy. So famous it’s the topic of a song (buggy with the fringe on top). That really made me oohh and ahhh for a while.
After the mansion we had a nice little walk around the town, just browsing through the artsy stores. It was just a sweet, little town that was definitely worth the drive – even if just for the views!
Oh wait, there’s more! The last little day trip we did was to Montezuma’s Castle. Wow, right?! From mansions to castles…except this was no castle but a pretty amazing place nevertheless. Montezuma’s Castle was actually a place where Native American tribes literally built homes in the cliffs. No, not on like Jermone and the chapel, but the homes were in the cliffs. Check it out.
It was just one of those places that just blew my mind. It was incredible! Just looking around and absorbing the history was incredible; to think about how these tribes lived here, protected by the cliffs, situated by a river in the desert. It actually was quite the lush oasis.
There ends our final vacation post. You can check out our Grand Canyon tour and our visit to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, the other big stops on our vacation in Arizona. Sigh, really, can I go back?
