While Sedona, famous for its dramatic red rocks and spiritual vortexes, was our base for the last leg of our trip, the string of national monuments we hit undoubtedly overshadowed it in appeal. As soon as we left the Grand Canyon, we started our monument circuit beginning with Walnut Canyon and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monuments. Located just half an hour from each other, these two spots felt worlds and eons apart.

Walnut Canyon is a 400-foot-deep, 20-mile-long gully that was home to a community of Ancestral Puebloans for about 125 years almost 1000 years ago. Although they departed mysteriously, they left behind 80 structures comprised of 300 rooms in the steep canyon walls. You can take a path halfway down the canyon and see these dwellings up close. The buildings in Walnut Canyon may not be as complex as those in places like Mesa Verde but being among them provides a greater connection to the past than just gazing from afar. This ravine radiates long memory, making it my favorite stop of our whole trip. One of the rangers mentioned that they’d had the option of changing the monument’s title to include “cliff dwellings” in its name, but their parking wasn’t adequate to accommodate the increase in visitors that would result. So, while “cliff dwellings” still isn’t on Walnut Canyon’s brochure, that’s exactly what it is.

Did you know that Northern Arizona’s San Francisco Volcanic Field has produced over 600 volcanoes? Sunset Crater Volcano, which is the youngest volcano in the field, erupted 900 years ago. It became a national monument back in 1930 thanks to activists petitioning for its permanent protection after a movie studio planned on blowing a significant portion of it away to simulate an avalanche in a film no one remembers now. President Hoover agreed that this cinder cone and its lava remnants should be preserved, and the monument was created. We checked out its brittle and contorted environment after Walnut Canyon and wandered the A’a, Lava Flow, Bonito Vista, and Lenox Crater Trails. No need to be impressed, completing all those treks required barely over three miles of hiking.

The next day, we headed south from Sedona on the Redrock Scenic Byway for, you guessed it, more national monuments. We explored Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well, which are technically both part of Montezuma Castle National Monument. In case you are wondering, the names are completely wrong since Montezuma hadn’t even lived yet when these villages were active, but that’s what you get when you let Europeans name somebody else’s stuff.

Montezuma Castle is a five-story structure built between 1100 and 1300 by Ancestral Puebloans. To preserve this cliff dwelling, tourists haven’t been allowed to walk through it since 1951, but that doesn’t keep the throngs from taking a look. For some reason, the short trail below this building was more congested than those at any of the other national monuments we visited on our trip.

Montezuma Well, while not as flashy as Montezuma Castle, had fewer guests and greater distinction. Montezuma Well is a mysterious desert spring that remains filled even during droughts and outputs 1.6 million gallons of water every day. Many Indigenous Tribes consider it sacred or even the site where human beings first emerged into this world. Its depth is unknown even after years of research as a baffling layer of fluidized sand 55 feet down obscures the bottom, which is at least another 65 feet deeper. Montezuma Well contains 80 times the levels of carbon dioxide normally found in water, making it uninhabitable to fish. What creatures might appreciate these strange and sour waters? Leeches, water scorpions, and amphipods mostly. Five species in its basin are found nowhere else on Earth.

For the last day of our vacation, Jason and I chose to break from our norm and do some hiking that didn’t involve a national monument. Many of Sedona’s most popular paths are so packed police must constantly enforce parking limits at their trailheads. And forget about finding a clear shot for a picture, you might have to throw a hiker or two off a ridge to get one. Therefore, we decided to enjoy the area’s famous red rock on a not-too-popular path. We did a five-mile loop in the Secret Mountain Wilderness that incorporated the Soldier Pass, Cibola Pass, and Brins Mesa Trails. We ran into quite a few people for a mile or so span of Soldier Pass but saw next to no one the rest of the time. Why so many in that section? The Devil’s Kitchen Sinkhole, the Seven Sacred Pools, and the Soldier Pass Cave/Arches were the reasons for that human excess. Did they warrant the crowds? Sort of.

The Devil’s Kitchen Sinkhole is rather cool. In the 1880s, a 200 sq. ft. underground cavern about 666 feet below the surface, which had formed from water slowly dissolving rock, collapsed and caused a cascade of disintegration all the way up to the surface. Since then, more stone chunks have fallen suddenly into this pit increasing its size by more than 40%. Today it is 150 x 92 feet wide and 40-60 feet deep, and it’s not done expanding. Scientists have been monitoring it for decades and have discovered that its cracks are getting longer and broader. It’s just a matter of time until the Devil remodels his kitchen and installs a doublewide oven, integrated range hood, and bay window.

The Seven Sacred Pools, the next attraction drawing the mobs, are a series of circular hollows carved out of sandstone by an intermittent stream. These were completely underwhelming. I still can’t fathom why they are so hyped up. Maybe they are more striking when the stream is flowing? It seems more likely that their recognition is a bit of Instagram trending gone awry.

The final curiosity bringing the masses to this trail was the Soldier Pass Cave/Arches. It is an opening in the rockface with a second level that includes an arch window. You can scramble up a short rocky incline and access the hidden ledges of its second story. Those ledges do have a substantial gap between them, so the top floor may not be ideal for the height concerned. Since this cavity is unusual, it’s probably worth a visit. However, we found it too packed to be thoroughly enjoyable.

Past the cave, we saw only a handful of people the rest of our miles back, which gave us plenty of opportunities to take in the scenery unhindered and bestow amazing names like The Devil’s Sock Puppet and Jabba the Rock on the strange stone formations we encountered.

What were our thoughts on Sedona? It is beautiful, but it’s certainly a victim of its own success. The traffic was horrible and constantly backed up. It was hard to find parking at the trailheads, and we didn’t even attempt to go to the most popular ones. I’d take somewhere slightly less scenic but also less peopled over Sedona anytime. Plus, I’d say it’s overrated. Moab easily has Sedona beat on both scale and quantity of the natural attractions in its proximity. We wouldn’t be opposed to stopping in Sedona again sometime, but I doubt we would pick it as our primary destination due to its busyness.

The Grand Canyon may have been our reason for traveling to Arizona, but, like Sedona, it probably won’t be what brings us back. Although we enjoyed every section of this trip, the secluded places and still moments were the highlights, along with the treehouse pie of course.

Ahh the Grand Canyon, grand in size and grand in guest size. This post will be all about that mammoth tourist attraction and how we experienced both its legendary beauty and bevies.

For those who haven’t visited the Grand Canyon before, the subtleties of the many viewpoints and the shuttles circulating between them can be confusing and overwhelming, especially when you add a large volume of people. We were still perplexed about how everything worked after reading 200 pages of a travel book.

To orient ourselves, we decided to park at the first available place, which turned out to be the visitor center, and then hit the Rim Trail. The Rim Trail is a paved path that goes along, you guessed it, the rim of the canyon. You can follow it for up to 13 miles one way to connect a slew of overlooks. When you get tired, you can jump on one of the free shuttles to hitch a ride back to your car. Unless you were dumb and parked at the visitor center. Many of the shuttle bus routes don’t go that far, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Jason and I joined the Rim Trail at Mather Point, probably the most popular vantage point in the Grand Canyon due to its proximity to the visitor center. The outlooks were impressive; the people were annoying. We pressed onward through Yavapai Point, Grand Canyon Village, Maricopa Point, and Powell Point. The Rim Trail is easy, more like walking than hiking, but instead of speeding us up, that slowed us down. Why be in a hurry if you are only rambling along a crowded precipice? The Trail of Time also slowed us. A 1.3-mile portion of the Rim Trail covers 2.1 billion years of geological history going back to the genesis of the canyon. We were so distracted by the signs and rock samples around us that walking just over two miles took us roughly 2.5 hours. Ridiculous! Nothing like two billion years to make your seconds seem meaningless.

Although the Rim Trail was busy in spots, we still attained a few solitary moments. We found a comfortable stone out of the way to sit on and discuss the rock layers before us as a California condor glided soundlessly over our heads. It was perfect until we turned around and realized dozens of people had decided to follow suit.

Finally, we reached Hopi Point where we witnessed a beautiful sunset held curiously high in the sky due to rock buildup from the last two billion years blocking the sun. Afterward, we thought we had time to take the shuttle back to our car before it got dark. Nope, we did not as the shuttle would never take us completely back to our car. (Remember my comment above about the limitations of the shuttle service?) That’s how we ended up on the Rim Trail again sans sunlight. This unexpected 2.2-mile stroll had some perks though. We sat down on a bench to momentarily admire the setting and realized the stars over our heads were more prolific than chocolate chips in a Nabisco factory. Plus, apparently no one else was ill-informed enough to park rashly as we had, so we had the trail almost exclusively to ourselves.

We had one more day to spend in the Grand Canyon, and we elected to use the first part of it hiking the South Kaibab Trail down to Ooh Aah Point. Although this portion of South Kaibab covers only 1.8 miles, it dips 1000 feet into the canyon and is considered strenuous. The huffing and puffing we heard from uphill hikers as we descended made us afraid of our unavoidable climb. We were pleasantly surprised to find our upward journey not a big deal. In fact, we chose to hike back to the visitor center afterward rather than wait in the long shuttle line at the trailhead. Another 2.2 miles past Yaki Point and Pipe Creek Vista, and we were again at our car and ready to head down Desert View Drive.

Desert View Drive, for some reason, doesn’t get the tourist traffic other sections along the South Rim do. For that reason alone, it is worth visiting, but there are plenty of others. Our first stop was the Desert View Watchtower, which was designed by architect Mary Colter in 1932 to resemble the structures of the Ancestral Puebloans, the desert’s main occupants a thousand years ago. The inside of the Desert View Watchtower was closed, and the viewpoint itself had just reopened after a year-long closure due to concerns about tourists passing through the adjacent Navajo Nation and spreading COVID. It was a shame to miss the Southwestern art inside the tower, but the prospects were still outstanding. We left Desert View to check out Navajo and Lipan Points. Then, we returned for the sunset.

What was our consensus on the Grand Canyon? It was a little too popular to be completely pleasant. Although it didn’t have its typical onslaught of international sightseers during our visit because COVID was still causing travel hesitancy, it was busy. I can only assume that normally it is a madhouse. With that many tourists, you might guess the bathrooms get messy and gross. You would be right. Surprisingly, for its size, the Grand Canyon doesn’t have many hiking trails. However, the viewpoints are plentiful. If you’ve seen one of these, you definitely have not seen them all. The canyon looks remarkably different from each angle, so taking in a dozen overlooks doesn’t feel like the holiday equivalent of Groundhog Day. Most visitors wouldn’t know that though because the average stay in the Grand Canyon is only four hours.

After our time in the Grand Canyon, we were ready to move onto lesser-known attractions. In those, we discovered places we preferred to that renowned ravine. Come back to learn what could be better than the sixth-most visited national park in the United States.

Ours anniversary happened while COVID restrictions were lessening, and people were still a little unsure how to proceed. So, I decided to reduce uncertainty and just plan a road trip for our big celebration instead of an excursion to some exotic locale. Still, with six million visitors each year, my pick certainly wasn’t akin to the world’s largest peanut. You may have heard of the Grand Canyon? Since Jason and I only had vague memories of visiting it as kids, I selected that acclaimed chasm as our main destination. But what’s a road trip without a few* extra stops? *Disclaimer: “Few” in the preceding sentence may refer to any number between 17 and 726. Yes, our journey to the Grand Canyon formed a much squigglier route line than Google Maps would have tolerated. Here’s how our path ended up looking like the scribbles of a toddler.

Before we were even on the road, this trip proved convoluted. How do you pack for temperatures oscillating between the 40s and 90s? Eventually, we were in the car with way too much stuff in our trunk. It was a wet drive to our first lodgings with rain turning into slippery patches of snow off and on, not a typical April day.

A treehouse in Orderville, Utah was our accommodation that night. Yes, an actual house built in a tree not some figurative or misnamed edifice. Most treehouses fit about a kid and a half; this structure was comparatively spacious… I’m talking at least two kids. It was way too much fun being in a treehouse though to whine about minor inconveniences like having to literally crawl into bed. The only food we could get from town that night was homemade pie. So, with that as our single option, we ate pie for dinner in a treehouse, which is every child’s fantasy. If my ten-year-old self could have seen me, she would have thought I’d made it to the big leagues for sure.

The next day, we were back on the road fairly early and thought we would reach our rented home in Williams, Arizona fairly early. The drive was only supposed to take four and a half hours, but it ended up taking eleven hours. How did our travel time nearly triple? Stopping at points of interest is a slippery slope. Our first step onto that slick decline was a detour to Pipe Spring, a small national monument not far out of the way. Pipe Spring has been a home and source of water for desert people for centuries including Ancestral Puebloans, Kiabab Paiutes, and Mormon ranchers. Although not large, this monument is flowing with historical information. As I am an unashamed sucker for historical information, we ended up lingering at Pipe Spring for two to three hours.

A bit further down the road, somewhere near the Vermillion Cliffs, we got sidetracked again by Blanche Russell’s Stone House and its surrounding structural oddities. Almost a century ago, Blanche utilized chunky boulders and mushroom rocks from the landscape to form portions of the walls and ceilings of buildings that were at first temporary shelters. Eventually, these became permanent residences and finally a restaurant and a trading post before the property changed hands several times and ultimately was abandoned. These manmade deviations from the desert caught our curiosity, but there were no signs nearby explaining what we were looking at. We weren’t sure if they had been constructed by bored teenagers or ambitious travel promoters. The facts we discovered later told of a much richer history.

Besides some small diversions for viewpoints and meals, our next pause was at Navajo Bridge. Navajo Bridge is a pair of bridges that cross the Colorado River near Lees Ferry. The older of the two bridges was built in 1929 and is only used for pedestrians these days. Not only is it a historic span, but it is also one of the highest bridges in the United States at nearly 470 feet above the river’s surface. Need another reason to justify this road stop? Navajo Bridge provides a rare chance to see California condors, one of the scarcest birds, as it is a common hangout for the species. We caught one taking a break on a nearby outcropping.

Enough sidetracking? I guess not. We rerouted again to visit Horseshoe Bend near Page. Horseshoe Bend is a u-shaped meander of the Colorado River that can be viewed from a cliff about 1000 feet above the water after a short hike. Although Horseshoe Bend was dramatic and tummy tingling, the crowds distracted from its elegance. Apparently, social media posts in recent years have exponentially increased its popularity. We encountered a couple taking a barrage of selfies every 10 feet, which perfectly sums up the downside to this sinuous wonder. Still, Horseshoe Bend is worth seeing.

Another break or two for food, and we were at our destination. Exhaustion didn’t keep us from catching a view from the top of the world, or at least from a mile up, the following day. Next time, I will discuss our experience at the Grand Canyon from the prospects to the people.