Sedona, Arizona

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If you’ve missed parts one and two of Anna and Amy’s Arizona Adventures you can start with those links and rejoin us here for part three: Sedona. We made a day trip from Scottsdale, squeezing in just two hikes and two meals before heading back. I would love to spend more time in this region. The red rocks are truly wonderful to traipse around.

First of all, we completely misunderstood the trail description for the first hike we picked and thought it was 1.1 miles round trip. Turns out that’s only if you have a 4×4 that can go offroading, and even then it’s a mile each way. So, our first hike of the day turned out to be 4 miles instead of 1. Alas. We hope it was worth it for the bridge shots.

On the way to Devil’s Bridge.

Yay we made it!

Contemplating whether we should have made all that effort for this shot. But I guess it’s nice here.

Lunch break at the simple but delicious Tamaliza.

We were originally going to do the Courthouse & Butte Loop, but since we accidentally underestimated the morning hike we opted for a shorter afternoon hike instead: Doe Mountain.

Do you see us? Look really carefully on the right side. I took this with my new baby tripod and my remote wifi feature built in to my Sony camera. It reaches pretty far! It was pretty fun to hike up and then be on top of one of these crazy plateaus atop the mesa formation. You feel like you’re just flat on the ground which, I guess you are… but just raised up in the air with steep cliffs all around.

And then we rushed over to catch sunset at the popular airport mesa spot.

Just after dusk, we headed to Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village, a very cute shopping district. We thought it closed at 6pm so we were rushing to see as much as possible in 30 minutes, but there was a suspicious number of people and festivities. Turns out they were having a special holiday festival and were open later than usual. So we got to see it all, with live music, free cider, and cute little lanterns lighting the way.

Dinner was also delicious, at Elote Cafe where we enjoyed plenty of corn. I love corn, so that worked out really well for me.

And last but not least, as we headed back to Scottsdale Amy suggested it might be nice to stop and see if we could see any stars. We missed two possible turnoffs, and just as it seemed like we should just forget the idea and continue the two hours back, I spotted one more turnoff and we grabbed this image. It was very cold, and it was so dark that we could barely tell that there was the outline of a mountain in front of us. But the camera can see things we can’t. So lovely and worth the stop.

And that was our quick and jam-packed day in Sedona! Catch up on the rest of the Arizona Adventures below.

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She creates beautiful, soft, and timeless imagery while capturing the most fleeting of moments. View her work at annawu.com, follow her daily adventures on instagram, and contact her to book your own session today.


Arizona Adventures

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