Trip to Arizona: Montezuma Castle and Sedona

Ethan sleeping at Montezuma Castle NM.  

Today we drove from North Phoenix/Happy Valley to Sedona, where we'll be staying two nights at Amara Resort and Spa.  On the way, we stopped at Montezuma Castle, Ethan's first National Monument.  We bought ourselves an annual National Parks Pass and got Ethan his own Passport Stamp book.  For him, we got the 3-ring binder "Explorer's Edition" -- hopefully he'll enjoy visiting the National Parks as much as his parents do!

Cayne got to see his first ever Native American ruin and I think that this cliff dwelling stayed his favorite ruin throughout our trip.  We also headed to Montezuma Well, where I had never been before and enjoyed walking around the spring and seeing the cliff ruins.  Not quite as easy to digest was the fact that the spring water is mainly CO2 so gilled fish can't live in the anaerobic environment, meaning that the "well" is full of leeches -- yuck!

Leech-infested water.  

With one of the Sinagua ruins overlooking the Well. 

Daddy pointing something out to Ethan.  

Cayne liked how the snakes are told to stay on the trail.  

On our way to Sedona, we also headed to Tuzigoot National Monument, another first for me.  I had a disagreement with our GPS over how to get there after reading on the NPS website not to follow my GPS to Tuzigoot because it will tell me to go on a road that doesn't exist.  Well, we should have listened to the GPS, because it would have been right and we wouldn't have ended up on a dirt road (before quickly turning around)! Tuzigoot was really neat to see as well, and Cayne got to climb to the top of the ruin.

Relaxing at Tuzigoot.

Cayne inside (at the top) of the ruins.  

From Tuzigoot, we had about a 50 minute drive to our hotel in Sedona so we made a leisurely trek there, enjoying the views along the way.  Our room is really nice with views of the trees along Oak Creek (the hotel was right on the creek) and we had dinner in the hotel restaurant tonight -- duck schnitzel for me and salmon/sundried tomato pasta for Cayne.  It was delicious!!!!  And the views from the restaurant of red rocks and Oak Creek were wonderful!  

Our baby is a great road-tripper!