From there, we headed into Sedona where we stopped at the visitor center, always a good move. After talking with a ranger there, we decide to make our way to Cathedral Rock, where, it's decided that hiking up int is a good idea. The temperature was only in the 80's so it was sort of bearable. We park at the base, and do a spectactular hike up the side. This was a not a flat sloping hike, this was very steep and at time you'd have to pull yourself up a lot of rocks. So it was quite a challenge for us folks from NJ. The views were spectacular, as you can see in the pix below. But, there were a lot of times where you couldn't believe you were supposed to go up at certain points.
That's what we climbed, well, to the base of the bigger looking rocks at the top.
That makes it a cool hike.
At the top, exhausted, we rested and had a quick snack. Then, we had to go, uh, down. Mostly on our butts, as that was the easiest way to traverse down the steep rock and not have to worry about falling down/off the mountain. We mostly survived although I smashed my ring finger moving a loose rock out of the way. But, I didn't worry about that much then, I was focusing on getting down the mountain mostly intact.
After the hike we stopped for CoffeePot Diner in Sedona. Good food, much needed food, was consumed there. We went through Sedona, stopping at Red Rocks state park and enjoyed the fact we had to go off-road to get to it. From Sedona, which is very very very pretty, we made the long haul to Jerome, which was once an abandoned town in the side of a mountain. It wasn't abandoned currently, but was nice to drive through.
From there, we headed around a mountain on very Road to Hana like roads to Prescott. This was a town with a hometown type of feel. We stopped for bit to see the infamous Whiskey Row and enjoyed the rest. From there, back to Scottsdale where dinner was some Hawaiian BBQ as we were both beat, bloodied (in my case) and tired.
Whiskey Row
