For Labor Day weekend we went with our good friends, the Carroll's, up to Sedona.  We love Sedona because it's only 2 hours away, it's BEAUTIFUL, and has lots of fun hikes (like 100's!).  The afternoon we got there, we decided to hike "Cow Pies" (named for the formations of the rocks).  It takes 4-wheel-drive to reach the trailhead.  This part of the road was kind of a climb, and had lots of deep gauges and potholes.  After our family got over it, we hopped out to watch … [Read more...]

Spring Break this year we decided to spend a few days with our kids in Sedona.  We've been there several times and always have such a blast!  It is so beautiful there and there are so many fun hikes.  This time we we went on a hike named West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon.  It is an easy hike and is rated one of the best in the whole United States!  So beautiful. Here we are at the start of the hike. On both sides of us were the tall, red rock walls rising up to the … [Read more...]

We started this day by asking the kids what they wanted to do that morning.  They decided it would be fun to hang out at the resort.  On other days we had gone swimming, played tennis, and played mini-golf together.  Today we played Bocce Ball, horseshoes, fed the ducks, and skipped rocks in the creek.  In these pictures Mark had asked Kyle to see how high he could jump off these rocks.  I love the expressions on both their faces!  It looked like so … [Read more...]

We started this day with a hike to "Robber's Roost".  It was one of our favorites.  Getting there took about 30 minutes on a dirt road, then another 10 minutes on a "high-clearance vehicles only" trail (translation: extremely bumpy even at a very slow speed).  The hike itself only took about 20 minutes, but it did make you work hard to get up to the Roost.  Towards the end of the hike you have to carefully walk along the edge of a cliff.  The kids were a little nervous … [Read more...]

Mark has gotten really into biking this year.  He was really excited about the oppotunity this trip would give him to ride some amazingly beautiful trails in Sedona.  I drove our van while he drove the truck to Sedona so we could pile all of our bikes in the bed of the truck.  Having the truck also proved useful in getting to some of the trailheads we wanted to hike over the next few days. This was the view from the bridge across the street from our hotel... On this day Mark … [Read more...]

On this day we went to the Out of Africa Wild Animal Park just south of Sedona.  The first thing we did was take an open bus safari tour.  This camel was a bottomless pit!  It ate a carrot out of every single person's hand on the bus...  including mine!  There were all kinds of animals you could see up close, but our favorites were the tigers. We watched a show the trainers did where they played with these huge cats as if they were kittens. They got the tigers to … [Read more...]