December 2020 - Sedona
Despite years of living in AZ I'd never made it up to Sedona. So we rectified that for New Year's 2020! We did a lot of hiking and overall had a jolly, relaxing time.
Despite years of living in AZ I'd never made it up to Sedona. So we rectified that for New Year's 2020! We did a lot of hiking and overall had a jolly, relaxing time.
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| The super cute historic cabin we stayed in | The view from the trail around airport mesa | There are lots of cacti around Sedona |
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| A little bit of steep route-finding when we took a wrong (unlabeled) fork in the trail | Overlooking Sedona on the other side of the airport mesa | |
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| A few people at the airport mesa view for sunset | Sedona | The valley to the south and east |
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| Hanging out watching the sun set | ||
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| The city lights turning on at night | Hiking in a beautiful, verdent valley | |
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| A Downy Woodpecker | ||
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| A mule deer. The name is pretty obvious with this one! | A really incredible balancing rock | The Devil's Bridge. It's pretty cool. |
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| Overlooking the whole valley | ||
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| The "birthing cave" | We hung out for just a few minutes, it was actually quite busy | |
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| Our hangout spot | Cathedral Rock. You can clearly see the transept and bell tower - it's pretty cool! | On our way up towards Cathedral Rock |
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| Some pretty steep rock inclines that were a lot of fun to scale up | The view from halfway up | The lovely view at the end of the trail, at the base of Cathedral Rock |
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| Out on the ledge | ||
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| The end of the Boynton box canyon. Nowhere to go from here! | Looking back down the canyon. It was about an hour before sunet and really incredibly beautiful. | |
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| Hiking out of the canyon, in a bit of a hurry to beat sunset | Beautiful red rocks rising above the trail | |
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| The sun setting on the canyon | A Townsend's Solitaire, the first bird sighting of 2021 | |
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| A Juniper Titmouse | A White-breasted Nuthatch | |
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| Our first icy creek crossing heading into Oak Creek Canyon | A Canyon Wren. So cute! | |
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| Doin his thing! | The creek got thicker patches of ice as we moved deeper into the canyon | |
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| Really interesting striation in the canyon wall | Hiking in the snowy canyon interior | |
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| The end of the trail! From here it was just water heading further back into the canyon. | Crossing the creek at an iced-over part | Another ice crossing |
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| A neat part of the creek where the cliff walls have concave erosion from flash floods | Hanging out in a rare patch of sun for a snack | An especially concave bit of cliff |
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| A Ruby-crowned Kinglet | Really showing off his ruby crown | A Bridled Titmouse |
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| A squirrel watching us from high in a tree | Yet another varient of the Dark-eyed Junco | An Acorn Woodpecker |
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| Managing the granary | A Steller's Jay, came to check us out as soon as we sat down for lunch and opened that bag of chips |