Life Lately – Arizona Travels Pt 2

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In today’s post, I’m continuing my series Life Lately – Arizona Travels Pt 2. This post is a bit longer with many good pictures to share. We just relied on our cell phones to take pictures, and not every picture turned out great though. Many of my pictures didn’t turn out well and won’t be posted. Haha!

I also have links to the hiking outfits each of us are wearing. I’m happy that Jeffrey agreed to make an appearance in this post sharing his hiking attire. He says he stayed comfortable and cool.

There’s nothing super fancy about our hiking clothes. I packed things I already had in my closet, and it worked out just fine! You’ll notice that we wore the same outfits two different days here. We had to pack for a little over two weeks! We did rent Airbnb’s the first part of our trip so we would have a washer and dryer. But who wants to spend time doing lots of laundry on vacation?! So, we did wash and wear things twice.

We did order hiking shoes before we left. We were both happy with the shoes we ordered. They were stable, supportive, and comfortable. Jeffrey wore these hiking shoes in the boulder color. I wore these hiking shoes in the mauve color. They required no break-in periods and had excellent traction for the terrain we covered.

After spending a few days in Sedona, we headed down to Tucson. Instead of driving down on the interstate, we took the back roads for a more scenic route. It’s amazing how you can drive just a short distance in Arizona and the landscape totally changes from place to place. Also, the elevation and temperatures really change quickly from place to place.

Driving through parts of the Tonto National Forest, we saw a little snow on one hillside left over from winter. Also, we saw a herd of elk on the roadside in the middle of a little town we drove through. Jeffrey kept talking about being in elk country along the drive, and he got his wish of actually seeing some!

While our weather was mild and pleasant in Sedona, Tucson was warmer and sunny. We enjoyed dining outdoors most of the time at some fabulous restaurants – lots of great Mexican food! The beautiful weather was such a nice break from the cold and rainy April we were experiencing in Indiana before we left.

One of the first things we did in Tucson was drive through some of the Sonoran Desert and visit the Sonoran Desert Museum.

At the museum, we saw many different species of cacti and pretty flowers like the ones pictured below. April is the time of year everything is blooming and green in Arizona. You also see live animals at the museum that are native to the area and lots of different rattlesnakes.

If you are doing any hiking in Arizona, be sure to watch for rattlesnakes along the trails. There is a huge variety of rattlesnake species. My husband was thrilled to actually see a western diamond back rattlesnake in the wild along a pull off on the side of the road for photos. I viewed it for about a second and quickly headed back to the car! And if you are wondering, we saw it from a very safe distance. It didn’t even coil up or rattle, as it cared less that we were there.

The following day, we drove two hours east of Tucson to Chiricahua National Monument. You almost drive to the border of New Mexico to get there. The long two-lane highway off the interstate heading towards the park entrance is pretty isolated. Be sure to eat a hearty breakfast or lunch before you go and/or bring some snacks. Also, make sure you have plenty of gas in the car. We were actually there on the 100th anniversary of it becoming a National Monument.

Despite wondering what we had gotten ourselves into on this adventure, I was very excited to visit this place after seeing pictures of it. It’s free to enter this little-known park, and it’s such a hidden gem! The scenery is absolutely breathtaking!

The park is supposed to be similar to Bryce Canyon, which I’ve never visited, and the hoodoos are apparently larger. The first half of the drive through the canyon looking up through the trees at the hoodoos was my favorite! At every turn and angle, there was a gorgeous different view.

All throughout the park, you saw boulders and larger rocks precariously balancing on smaller ones or on the sides of cliffs.

Finally, you start twisting and turning up the sides of the mountains on a narrow highway towards the vista points at Echo Canyon Grotto. The steep highway up the side of the mountain was a little dicey for me as I don’t love heights. However, Jeffrey didn’t mind driving up it whatsoever. With the drop offs on a few curves in the road, it looked like you were driving to the clear blue sky.

Once we reached the top, there were a few trials to explore. I was able to manage the short ones we walked and enjoy the scenery. However one of the trials we started along, I decided to turn back at a certain point. Jeffrey followed the entire path and didn’t think the rest of it was anything that difficult or scary.

Our last major mountain top adventure on this trip was Mt. Lemon. Jeffrey had driven up Mt. Lemon in his free time on previous business trips to this area. This was one of his top things on the list he wanted us to do. A former coworker and fellow deacon invited him a few years ago, and he loves this drive now.

The highway going up Mt. Lemon is not as narrow as the mountainside highway in Chiricahua. However, it does get steep with hairpin turns. You can see for miles and miles form up high out towards Tucson on this drive. And I believe it was the highest elevation we climbed at nearly 9000 feet!

Windy Point Vista is a popular spot to stop and explore. All of the following pictures are from this popular location. Even though it looks like we had the place to ourselves, there were actually a lot of people around on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.

It’s pretty easy walking around this vista point. You don’t have to do a lot of hard climbing to take in the sights even though these pictures don’t necessarily show that.

The angle from which the picture below was taken is kind of deceptive. Except for the last couple of steps you see me climbing below, the others up to that point are flat and easy steps. I pretty much said I’m done at this point though. I’ve climbed enough – ha. Oh, and wear sunscreen. It doesn’t take long to burn at higher elevations.

Of course, Jeffrey went up to the very top. I think this was the highest point at this vista. Plus, we got the coolest picture with the sun’s rays! I’m not sure how I shot that? It was so bright most days that it made it hard to take pictures with our phones. We didn’t know if we were capturing good pictures or not looking through dark polarized sunglasses at our phone screens.

I want to mention we ate lunch at a good restaurant on Mt. Lemon called Iron Door, which is right across from some of the ski slopes and ski lift. And yes, you can snow ski there in the winter. In fact, there was a little snow still on the ground across from the restaurant.

There were a few other things in the southern Arizona area we had on the list to see like Tombstone, but just ran out of time and steam. If Jeffrey goes back again in the future for work, I will want to tag along and see what we missed!

In my last Life Lately post on this trip, I’ll show the beautiful golf resort we stayed in while Jeffrey was working. There is a little shopping village close by too. Stay tuned for some of my finds. And if you didn’t see my first post on Sedona, Arizona, you can read it here.