Sedona

First morning post insanity hike: UGH!  Even after dosing up with ibuprofen I could hardly move.  Actually it was all in the calves. My feet hurt a bit, but they hurt all the time so I hardly notice anymore. Thankfully my knees, which honestly felt mildly injured at the end of the hike, didn't hurt at all in the morning, and nothing else was particularly sore besides my calves. But let me tell you, you notice it a LOT when you can't use your calves properly!  I was somewhat comforted that even Jonathan felt a bit sore the next morning. 

The pain didn't get me at all when stepping up--I think if I were helicoptered to the bottom of the canyon I could have hiked out again. However, even a single step down was enough to make me stop for several seconds and figure out how exactly I was going to manage it. 

We had to get back over to Bright Angel to pick up our car, so we decided, despite feeling somewhat decrepit, to walk there along the rim.  It's only a mile and is flat, and gave us another chance to take in the views before leaving for Sedona.  Along the trail we came across a beautiful elk which we didn't see until we were literally right beside it, maybe 8 or 10 feet away. 

I also don't think I mentioned that it was really, really cold in the morning and evening--below freezing. Although it warmed up to tank top and shorts temps during the day, we were completely bundled up with hats, scarves, gloves, and the works both in the morning and basically as soon as the sun set in the evening around 5:30 or 6pm. 

We had tried both of the previous evenings to get a reservation at El Tovar, the nice restaurant at the rim, but it was pretty booked up. Since we were having a leisurely morning and didn't get over there until around 9am, past the rush, we decided to have breakfast there.  It was amazing, and we also got to try prickly pear sauce on our corn cakes--yummy!  Jonathan is going to try to replicate this at home. :-)

After breakfast we collected the car, returned to the room for our luggage and headed to Sedona. The drive was gorgeous and we had some really great conversations along the way as well. 

Because we were so sore (interpretation: I was so sore) we abandoned the plan of doing a hike in Sedona. We stopped at the uptown shops and visited the olive oil shop, did a bunch of tasting and had them ship several bottles for us. 

Then we headed down to Tlaquepaque and found a spectacular restaurant, Rene. Although it was the middle of the afternoon by this point and we were nearly the only people at the restaurant, there was a woman playing the piano and singing old jazz standards. So we just sat out in the Spanish courtyard, ordered tapas and listened to the music. Absolutely idyllic. 

We went back uptown for ice cream and then headed out towards Phoenix along 179 with all the red rock views. It was right about sunset, and the rocks were vibrant. 

Once we got to I-17 we started turning our attention to the fact that the next morning we were scheduled to fly right into Hurricane Sandy. Jonathan spent over an hour on hold trying to reach the airline to find out if our flights were scheduled to go or not. In the end it appeared that our flights were to run on schedule, so eventually we left our Starbucks wifi in Scottsdale and headed over to Karen and Bradley's condo that they had kindly offered to us. We were supposed to stay there Thursday night, and in fact Jonathan did stay there, without me.  It was fun to see their pad,  including a piece of art that they bought at an art sale we hosted in our house several years ago.  It was also fun to see Karen's many crocheted creatures around the house, as well as little touches like crochet samplers used as window valances. We were also fond of the saguaro cactus made from barbed wire that "grows" in their front courtyard.