I could almost cry tears of happiness!

When I was a child and my parents took me to New London, CT to the shore, I remember my Mom saying that from here onward is a very big ocean for thousands of miles away. My answer was “Oh, it’s too big for my eyeballs”. And for me, ever since, anything that was awe inspiring would illicit that same child-like answer. Well, this post is about the incredible beauty that we’ve seen in three distinct places here in the southwest: The Painted Desert/Petrified Forest, Sedona and the Grand Canyon. They’re all “too big for my eyeballs”! Actually, I’m going to only give a small hint of what is to follow for the Grand Canyon in our next post.

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park

I’d also like to start the section on the Painted Desert with a question. How many of you listened to the Grand Canyon Suite by Fernand Grofe when taking music class? One of the movements was the Painted Desert. We downloaded the piece so we could listen to it while we looked at our just-shot photos in a slide show. It was incredible. However, none of the photos could do justice to the actual feeling of being present there. This is a park that you drive through for 26 miles. It begins with the Painted Desert and ends in the Petrified Forest.

Hopefully, you’ll get some idea of why this area is called “Painted” Desert.

Next on our trip through the 26 mile leg, we came upon the “tepees”:

Next we found an ancient stone with petroglyphs:

We found a petrified log that formed a bridge over water:

Lastly, we came to the petrified logs strewn about in the desert:

When we were in Las Cruces, we visited the Zuhl Museum at New Mexico State University, where they exhibited the petrified logs in their polished forms. Here are the ones from the Petrified Forest:

What a fascinating and beautiful place this is. We were surprised at how few people were visiting here the day we passed through.

Sedona, a Magical Place

Our plans were to meet up with Ken’s cousin Danny and his wife Beth for Mother’s Day weekend (May 12-15) in Sedona. They live in Phoenix. Although Sedona is not a National Park, its scenery rivals that of many parks. But, first I’m going to discuss the family happenings.

Danny and Beth met us at our campground, Distant Drums (actually in Camp Verde, a 30 minute drive from Sedona) on Friday around 5PM. From there we drove our cars to Sedona so that they could check in to their Inn, and we could go out together for dinner at Elote, an upscale Mexican inspired restaurant owned by a James Beard finalist chef, Jeff Smedstad. There was an hour wait, but it was worth it!

Here’s Beth and Dan enjoying their dinner:

There’s a cookbook available by the Chef.

The next day’s dinner was at L’Auberge, outdoors by the creek (Oak Creek). This is a Price Fixed Dinner of 3 courses. The meal was incredible. Our waiter was extremely knowledgeable, and Ken ate rabbit as one of his early courses (his first taste). I’ll admit that it was a splurge!



On Mother’s Day, we went to a restaurant that Jen recommended in Cottonwood: Farside Bistro, a Mediterranean focused cuisine of Persian influence. This place had no special brunch going on, which was a good thing. Again, we had great food, with new tastes to try. Here’s the four of us:

On Saturday, Ken and Danny spent almost the entire day hiking in Sedona. Ken may do a post on that adventure (or mis-adventure). They were gone from 10:15 to almost 5:30. We had to call and get our dinner reservations pushed back and were lucky they were able to fit us in an hour later. The guys got LOST. While the guys were getting lost, Beth and I went on a gallery walk through Sedona and had a nice lunch out in a courtyard cafe. I found a few galleries that I liked very much. Here are a few pieces of note:

These paintings were all in the same gallery. Two from the same two artists. They are unique perceptions of landscapes.

After our Mother’s Day feast, Ken and I went on a photo shoot. I was determined to find the best of Sedona to photograph. I’ll let you, my blog readers, be the judge. It’s easy to find beautiful places to photograph in this magical land.

Sedona is so awesome; we can spend a month here alone. But, there are other beautiful and interesting places to visit and the Grand Canyon is next!