Oh sure, you’re fine if  Jon Snow presents them.

 

 

After hiking Red Rocks State Park, we drove around and looked at….

 

 

Rocks!

 

 

(Come on, were you really expecting anything else?)

 

 

We did pass this….

 

 

Whatever this was.

 

 

Is he climbing in.. or out?

 

 

Who cares?

It’s weird… and built with red rocks. That’s enough for me.

 

 

Yeah, probably.

 

 

As we were driving, a storm started brewing…

 

 

The eerie kind…

 

 

Where the light takes on that spooky, it’s time to rock and roll! hue.

 

 

The colors were amazing.

 

 

By the time we got to uptown Sedona…

 

 

It was raining…

 

 

And the pink jeep tour people were wrapped in plastic.

 

 

 

Not really….

Saran Wrap was never my color.

 

After our fruitless climb and search for the Apache Fire House, we kept walking.

 

 

Trying to avoid my husband’s Kryptonite. Seriously, any interaction with this evil plant sends my other half to the emergency room.

And he gets it everywhere.

Need I say more?

 

 

We walked some easy paths….

 

 

And some that lead to benches.

 

 

Personally, I think I could have found that without a stone rimmed path… but I’ve always been good with directions.

And in the distance? That damned house we couldn’t find…

I mean, crikey!

It was right there.

 

 

But we found interesting tree bark… so smooth and spotted, it almost looked painted.

 

 

Yes, that’s how boring these posts have become.

I’m talking about tree bark.

 

 

We found a classroom…

 

 

Where the husband waited in vain for a teacher.

 

 

Then scanned our information leaflet and found another trail that would eventually lead to the Apache Fire House. I said, “Let’s go!”

No ruined shell of a building was going to beat me.

 

 

But of course…

 

 

It did.

And I learned that the least amount of rain can cause flash floods and washouts in this part of the world.

 

 

 

So I admitted defeat, cursed the house we couldn’t reach…..

 

 

And called it a day.

We walked past an outdoor arena…

 

 

Back to the visitor center…

 

 

Found a hummingbird garden with no hummingbirds….

 

 

And a strawberry hedgehog cactus…

That looked nothing like a strawberry or a hedgehog.

 

 

 

Exactly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a disappointing morning where everything I wanted to see was closed by the shutdown, we ditched the National Sites idea and found a nice (open) fully staffed state park.

Yes, more rocks.

Exactly!

Our first stop was the visitors center,

Which was a pretty impressive group of rocks in and of itself.

Inside?

Well…. rocks.

But hey… there were fun rocks as well.

Can you read the petroglyph?

I’m a little rusty, but I think it says if you follow the river..apply heavy mascara.. do a couple of dizzy Izzy’s.. you’ll find a bug. They also spelled whom incorrectly.

There was information about a rock house…

And about different rock layers…

Hang on… this will make you smile.

There was a photographic middle finger to tease me with the places we tried to go that morning but couldn’t.

Rude rocks.

That’s different, right?

Damn. This is a tough crowd…

But look.

There were bugs!

Apparently my glyph translating skills weren’t as rusty as I’d thought.

Heading back outside, we found a rock hummingbird that seemed to be pointing me towards….

A big Prickly Pear cactus….

From whence all wonderful margaritas grow.

*sob*

Did I mention there were rocks?

And they were red?

Some even looked like giant eyeballs.

I spotted the Apache Fire House off in the distance…

While the husband read the history and laughed that the couple divorced before it was finished.

I laughed harder because the wife got the house.

And then we started hiking…