Arizona, Sedona and Red Rock Country

We arrived in Phoenix Arizona on Tuesday around midday - Yumi has a lot of family here, so we spent the first day meeting everyone and chilling at Chateau Quah.
For lunch on Wednesday we had a typical Southern lunch at Lo Lo's - Southern Fried Chicken and Waffles - very artery hardening stuff, but it was delicious.

After lunch we headed to the Heard Museum where we went on a narrated tour talking about the local native american tribes, their culture, crafts, instruments and even their toys.
They actually had a huge doll collection with incredibly detailed beading going back as far as the 1800's.  The Kachina dolls were particularly interesting to me - they were given to kids to teach them about the various spirits and demons so some could be beautiful while others very scary and sinister.

We had dinner with Yumi's aunt and Yumi's cousin Jessica that she hadn't seen for 15 odd years.  Was good to see them all and their kids were adorable.

The following day we drove out to Sedona, red rock country about an hour or so away from were Yumi's aunt lives.  Sedona was full of beautiful rock formations in all kinds of colours and is what you typically think of when you see most westerns.  We took a Pink Jeep 4WD tour to Diamondback Gulch and it was awesome - we picked a tour near the end of the afternoon so we'd get some sunset photos and by luck we not only had the jeep to ourselves, but we had a driver who was a budding photographer himself!  Our driver was all too happy to stop and get us into position to take some awesome photos of the area.  Make sure you check them out!

Our last full day in Arizona was filled with Yumi's favourite pastime - outlet shopping!  And yes, she picked up more than a few bargains - as did I!

That evening we headed back to Chateau Quah for a big dinner with all the family and friends - Yumi even got to meet another Yumi!
Yumi went on a 3 mile hike the next morning and saw a Coyote - was lovely and clear after the previous nights rain and dust storm.  She saw some hohokam hieroglyphs on some rocks on the trail which was pretty cool.  We packed our things after that and prepared for the last leg of our trip after that.