SEDONA

Steve and I took a trip up to Sedona Tuesday. It is so beautiful. Mind-blowing. At least the parts that are unaltered by human beings... Some dodo, or group thereof, has seen fit to build a ritzy resort right smack in the middle of the grandeur. I guess part of its ritziness lies in the way its structures blend with the color and alignment of what God built there, but the whole thing smacks of "Well, aren't we special?" Other than that...

We hiked into Boynton Canyon, a 5-mile round trip. Going in it was cloudy and cool.

What cataclysm must it have taken for these rocks to land like this? I loved this stump. I have an affinity for has-been's ... things that have seen better days but have a different beauty now, in this, their afterlife, which barely speaks of their past.
Manazanita, a hardwood shrub that grows in desert highlands. It grows all twisted and gnarled and complicated, live red bark growing on dried deadwood, bark now in its better days, in companionship with what has only seen better days and is no more.

Sleet started at our turnaround point, changed to wet snow/rain, then all snow. I was astonished how fast the dry washes had water in them. If it had been raining hard we could have been in trouble. We did a fair amount of puddle-jumping. I would have thought that with all the hiking I've done I'd be prepared for anything but I hadn't really expected to do a significant hike, had no hat, no gloves, only my denim jacket; luckily Steve had an extra sweatshirt. The whole 2.5 miles out was friggin' wet and cold. Here is a shot as we were leaving. The white glob at the bottom is snow that had already piled up on the hood and windshield in the parking lot.

Back in Mesa it was still 55* when we got home at 8p.m.

We have just today, Friday and Saturday in Mesa and then we pull out for the Grand Canyon, and after 10 days there we start our month-long trip back east.