Part 2 - The Grand Canyon & Beyond!

Hello!

Here is part 2 of our trip to Arizona! In our last post, we shared pictures and stories from our first week in Phoenix. Now, here are the pictures from our second week in Sedona and the Grand Canyon.


SEDONA

These saguaro cacti are all over the place in Arizona!

And here's a prickly pear cactus (a.k.a. man eating :)) that is found along the hiking trails of Bell's Rock in Sedona! :)


There were a ton of beautiful hiking trails in Sedona, but we finally decided on one that wound around a mountain called Bell's Rock. Halfway through, we decided to abandon the trail and blaze our own! It was some serious hiking, but we had the time of our lives, and made it almost all the way up the mountain!
We were on hands and knees in many places...


Sometimes, you just need a helping hand...:)

Here, we are almost at the top of the mountain on an overhanging rock! We found one other lone hiker to take this picture for us! :)

Here is a view of the whole mountain after we hiked it. Just for the record, it was a lot harder than it looks! :)We took a "cool off" ride after the hike in the back of the truck that some dear friends from Phoenix loaned us! Boy, were we tired! :)

After spending one night in Sedona, we reluctantly left that beautiful area, and headed on for some more serious hiking on the Grand Canyon trails!


GRAND CANYON

The interesting thing about this part of our trip was that it was actually Christa's and my second time to "hike" the Grand Canyon. You see, the first time was over seventeen and a half years ago but we didn't get to see anything, because we were still developing at three and a half months in my mom's womb! :) So this second trip was a long awaited gift for our seventeenth birthday!

The view was breathtaking!





We had a fun game that we played on our way down into the canyon. (on our way back up, we were too out of breath to play any kind of game! :) ) We tried to talk to as many people as we could to find out where they were from. Since the Grand Canyon is one of the seven wonders of the world, people come from all over the world to hike it. We met people from Canada, Finland, New Zealand, Poland, the Ukraine, and a bunch of other countries! And we loved hearing all the different accents too! :)

Taking a break from the steep trails! Hiking the Grand Canyon was beautiful, but it was much, much harder work than I ever expected, especially coming back up! :)


After we hiked 1.4 miles down, we took a break to eat a snack and relax on a huge overhanging rock called Canyon Ridge. We were the only people there, and the weather was beautiful, so we stayed for a while! :) We even sang some worship songs together before we left!


Yes, there was actually some snow on the ground in places! But it wasn't too cold; in fact, we had beautiful weather both in Sedona and the Grand Canyon! Thank you Lord!


The hard road up the canyon! :)

The Lord was so good to us to give us such a wonderful trip! These are memories that we'll never forget!