Sedona.
I have no idea how I came to want to visit this place. No one outside the US talks much about it. I think I started looking at Google maps and thought the map looked interesting and randomly dropped myself into Google Streetview and went “Whoa!”
Yup. No one outside the US tells their friends that they should go to Sedona, but man, they should.
Crystals and rock shops aside (more about those later), the place is full of walks and awesome views and rocks of all colours and did I mention the rocks? Oh, it has loads of cactuses, interesting town landscaping and a real permanent creek going through it with waterholes and stuff where you can swim. Not in January, though.
What’s there not to like?
So we drove there from the Grand Canyon and spent three days in Sedona. Because there was lots of walking, because it was Not Cold. And because it’s just a cool place. I could live there.
Anyway, when in Sedona, you have to climb the Airport Vortex (a little rocky hump that you can see in the first photo, with all the people on it) and watch the sunset. Warning: if it’s January, it gets a bit nippy.