Sedona

Since we moved to Arizona we have wanted to go visit Sedona. We figured it has to be beautiful since all the calendars and screen savers of Arizona are shot in Sedona. We finally decided to be adventurous enough to go (and it was still nice and warm outside to allow for the fun stuff). Our first stop was Slide Rock state park, which is a little canyon where the creek has smoothed the rock over and formed a natural slide. IT was a lot of fun to go down the slides, but the water was COLD!!

Just getting our feet in for the first time. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get the children in the water since it is all snow run off from the mountains.

Hadley was the bravest and tried to go down some little slide portions. Neither girl really liked the sliding part since it was cold and they kept falling over from slipping on the rocks.

Miles was less sure of the water temperature. I got him to do a few slips down he shallow portion.

Allie liked to sit on the sides and see the water. She had the first big fall when we got in the water and after that was not so sure about the whole thing.

We had a lot of fun though.

The Canyon is all red rock and makes for pretty scenery around for the day.

The kids were kind of cute scenery too.

Especially when they get a long and play well together.

Rachel got a chance to go down the big rapid portion, and it was awesome.

She even convinced Miles to go down it with her (which is much more difficult since you have to hold him up through the deep parts).

A nice view looking up the canyon. We spend the whole afternoon there and only left once the storm clouds came in further up the canyon (we decided it would not be good to have a bunch of little kids in a canyon with extra rough water).

That night we found a portion of the same creek down in town. We wandered down behind some shops to look at the water and try to skip some stones.

Allie was trying to skip stones, but had no luck. So the next best option was to through really big rocks in the water to make a splash (Miles liked that idea better too).

After a long night int he hotel (where the kids kept jumping on beds and causing complete trouble instead of sleeping) we went hiking the next day. We did one hike up in the mountains close to town and did pretty good for having so many little legs.

At the halfway point we stopped to rest and have a snack (which was Hadley's favorite part of hiking).

Miles liked to play in rocks, dirt, leaves, or anything else he could finds along the way. 

It was a long, short hike.

After hiking we went to a lookout point in the middle of town to get a better glimpse of all the mountains.

Hadley found the one telescope that didn't need quarters and got some extra close up views.

Allie wanted to get and take pictures, so here is one of her (but none that she took of the mountains, sorry).

The whole family on the mountain top.

Miles found the fence and decided this was a good look for him.

Our last stop on the way out of town was the Church in the rock. It is a chapel built into the rock and looks out over the valley away from town.

It was good scenery, smooth hiking, slick swimming, and fun trip! After it was all done, we found out the girl's favorite part was the hotel (at least we tried)!