Day 1 - Red Rock Welcome
David's Pictures
Amber's Pictures
David's JournalOur first day of our new "adventure". I hate flying, but luckily this one was only an hour long. Our adventure guides, Tiffany & Chris, met us at the airport and promptly took care of our luggage for us, and continued to do so for the rest of the trip. We spent about 2 hours having lunch and shopping in the airport waiting for everyone on the tour to arrive. When everyone had arrived we boarded a bus, met our driver Dan, and started our adventure. First stop was Montezuma's Castle National Park. I had never heard of this place before, but apparently some Indian tribes had build building directly into the rock faces up the sides of cliffs. Quite impressive to see. Unfortunately not something you can climb up into. After touring around the park for a while, we proceeded on to our first Hotel, the Amara Resort and Spa in Sedona. This was an awesome hotel, Chris was talking up how terrific the beds were, and I thought they couldn't possibly live up to how he described them, but they did. This hotel had the softest comfiest beds I've ever slept in. We ended the day with our meet and greet dinner, where we had some cowboy singing and poetry, followed by a local animal expert who brought in a tarantula and a snake for us to hold and see. Amber's JournalDay 1 Arrival at Sedona Today, bright and early we flew to Phoenix. Our trip was pretty short--it would have been better if we'd arrived a bit later, as we had to wait a couple hours for other Adventurers to arrive. Eventually, when all had arrived, we were herded onto a tour bus to an Indian ruin called Montezuma's Castle. These were built by the Sinagua (without water) people who for unknown reasons vanished after building many settlements in the area. The ruins were named Montezuma's Castle by cowboys who knew a little about Aztecs and Montezuma, but little else about ancient Native Americans. It was pretty hot in the desert, and our guides began pushing water on us like they were getting paid by how much we drank! The desert is beautiful, and once we got into the Red Rock area, it got spectacular! We stayed at the Amara Inn, and the beds are as soft as poofy marshmallows! We expected a bag of goodies like we got on our last trip, and the magic fairies delivered! The new bag had toys in it like neck coolers and a surprisingly good pair of foldable binoculars. We then went down for a lovely buffet dinner with entertainment. We had a cowboy and his wife who played cowboy tunes for us, and a wildlife expert who showed us critters like snakes and a tarantula. I got very brave and held the tarantula (eep!) However, either the spider didn't like my dry skin, or he picked up my fear, because he didn't want to stay in my hand long...fine by me! After the dinner, we turned in early. Going to bed early became a theme on this trip--I don't think we stayed up much past ten on most nights! |
