Sunny Sedona

We made it safely home from gorgeous Sedona. Trying to catch up with everything and then I'll be posting a bunch of pictures.

Rebecca was wonderful on the trip. We left before dawn on Friday morning, and we were already into Arizona before she awoke. We took a brief stop to stretch our legs and then drove the rest of the way. We enjoyed a picnic lunch while gazing at the beautifully unusual red rocks and then checked into our hotel. Then we were off into uptown Sedona, where we took a really cool trolley car tour of the area. Rebecca LOVED the trolley car and kept asking us to go back on the train. We enjoyed learning more about the geology of the area and its history, as well as learning all the names for the mountains/rocks. That night, we had a great Mexican dinner and strolled around in Sedona. We ate breakfast Saturday morning at Tlaquepaque, shopped a bit there, and then did a scenic driving tour from Sedona to Flagstaff. Ramy and Rebecca enjoyed playing in a little stream for a bit, and we made lots of stops along the way to check out all the amazing scenery and look around a bit more. We did some more shopping and eating for the rest of our trip, checked out the chapel carved into the mountain, and enjoyed the gorgeous blue skies and perfect temps. We even got to take in the jacuzzi in our room (oddly, it was in the very middle of our hotel room, but who's complaining about a jacuzzi?).

The only bad thing that happened was that on Saturday night, Rebecca woke up around 2 a.m. and starting throwing up. After about five rounds of vomit, both Ramy and I were starting to think that we needed to head to the E.R., but then it passed with no other symptoms and no more episodes. In thinking back about all the things she had eaten that day which could have caused gastrointestinal upset, maybe we shouldn't have been too surprised! The eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit for breakfast was fine, but in the afternoon/evening, she sampled balsamic vinegars, ate beef jerky, drank cranberry juice, had a couple of tangerines, and helped Ramy eat seafood pasta for dinner, which included shrimp, scallops, fish, and tomato sauce, and she had a few bites of a brownie. I'm thinking that might have been a bit too much acidity for a 2-year old!

Our trip home was equally uneventful. We stopped off at the outlets on the way home. Rebecca thinks that Miss Julie and Addie live at the mall. As soon as she saw that we were going into a Gap (outlet store), she started asking about them. It was a really great long weekend getaway. It's always fun to do a roadtrip with my posse, but it was also nice to see a little different part of the country than I've ever seen before. I was struck by the realization of the amazingly diverse scenery there is in the United States - rolling green hills, bayou, desert, jagged mountains, red rocks, black beaches, tropical, arctic, barren, lush... Pretty cool. My dad's birthday was Sunday, and I thought about him a lot on our trip. He would have really loved Sedona - seeing all the places straight out of John Wayne movies.

I'll be posting a slideshow of pics from the trip soon!