Welcome to Sedona Arizona memories!

We got a very nice gift of four nights at the Ridge on Sedona Golf course. What a way to start! If you haven't been to Sedona, it's about 5,000 population, and set up for tourism. We hear it gets crowded in the Summer. The red rock formations are spectacular and inspirational. The hiking can be as difficult as you want (we chose "easy" for our first visit), and we found the outdoors to be very serene. And, at 4,000 feet of elevation, the weather is very different for those of us who live at sea level!

For first time visitors, we recomend taking one (or more) of the jeep tours. There are several companies; we picked the Pink Jeep group. The "Broken Arrow" was our favorite tour - it's accessible only to 4-wheel drive jeeps. Even though the terrain is rocky and steep, the drivers go VERY slow when needed, so we always felt safe. Of course, they also give lots of history and back-stories.

There are lots of choices in Sedona. We did find that most of the popular restaurants are hard to get into, so you'll want to make reservations in advance. We didn't want to be on a schedule, so just took our chances. We ate at the Wildflower Bread Company twice. Nice casual place. Had a GREAT dinner at Rene restaurant in the Tlaquepaque center. Rene IS expensive, but if you're in the mood, it has atmosphere, good service, great food and an extensive wine selection.

This was a big key for us. We got a couple of guide books and picked two of the easy hikes, Red Rock, and Cathedral Butte. Although they are listed as "easy", you should be careful. We enjoyed the feeling of serenity when we got away from traffic noise.

Since we know our way around a little, we don't feel like we need a guide again. But we're glad we took those tours. Next time, we'll train for and plan for some of the more difficult hikes. Also, since we know how the restaurant situation is (busy) we'll make reservations. Will be sure to pre-schedule some massages after our hike. We did call for a massage at 2:30 one afternoon, and they didn't want to work anymore that day!

Here are some  short videos and photoes we took during our stay. IMPORTANT - There are captions for many of  the photos, BUT you need to click on the photo to see the  description!