Winter vacation to warmer Arizona weather

It's been awhile since I've had the time to put together a little article on our blog and I thought I'd drop a few lines to let you all know what I've been up to.  I'm not good at writing these blogs, so please don't mind run on sentences and grammatical errors.  English was never my strong suit and thank goodness my creativity outweighs my writing ability!

As you can image, things have been busy around T Marie Portraits and Photo Booth during the past year and 2019 has been just as busy!  I'm so happy to report that I've gone back to working for myself full time and outsourcing some sub contracting work with smaller businesses for marketing and social media.  I work my own schedule each and every day and LOVE it!

For those of you that work from home and work for yourself, you know what I mean when I say ... "I never take a day off unless I physically leave."  SO ... I decided to escape the winter weather and take a trip with one of my Aunt's from Marion to visit another Aunt in Sun Lakes, Arizona in January.  We picked a great week to get out of town as it happened to be -50 here in Iowa and 72 in Arizona!  It was great to be able to "recharge"and take a few days off of work and relax!

On our first full day, we went for a long morning walk, toured around the Sun Lakes Community on our golf carts, hit up a couple of the country clubs for cold drinks, relaxed in the hot tub and spent time catching up.  We decided we were going to venture out to the Palo Verde Country Club at 4:30 for trivia night and dinner.  Playing trivia in a retirement community compared to our local establishment was much different!  Those people are SO serious about winning and the place was packed!  Needless to say ... we are not as smart as the locals!

On Monday morning we pack our day bags and took a day trip with Sedona being our destination.  We decided to take a little ride off of the beaten path and head towards Jerome, Arizona.  All I had really known about Jerome is that is was an old "ghost"town in the middle of nowhere.  We took the back roads getting into town and they had to be the scariest roads I've ever driven on.  Lots of ups, downs and sharp corners.  Jerome itself is 5,000 feet (1,500 miles) above sea level.

View from the Chapel of the Holy Cross - Check out the impressive mansion

After Jerome, we made our way into Sedona to see these "red"rocks.  Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of extra time to stroll around as we really wanted to see the landmarks while we were there.  Next time, we will need to plan for an overnight trip!  We stopped by the Chapel of the Holy Cross and thank goodness there was a golf cart that picked us up at the bottom of the rocks and took us up to the top!  It was so worth the $5 tip!  Such a beautiful view.  We ventured down the road (in our car) to see Bell Rock.  Such a unique rock formation and I wish that we had more time to walk a few of the trails.  I would definitely recommend the Sedona area to anyone and can't wait  to go back again and explore more!

 On Tuesday, my Aunt from Marion and I visited the Phoenix Zoo while my other Aunt golfed in her weekly ladies golf league.  It has been awhile since I've been to a large zoo and I truly enjoyed it!  It was a beautiful day and we definitely got our exercise.

After spending a few hours at the zoo, we drove across the parking lot to see the "hole in the rock" at Papago Park.  I had already been there a couple of times, therefore I knew the hike to the top was fairly easy and well worth it for the view!

After a good nights sleep, we decided to take another little road trip in search of the Salt River wild horses.  We were solely going on recommendations from other visitors on google on where to find these horses.  We got lucky and were able to see some along some of the side roads and I got out and took some photos of them.  I had imagined that they would be ungroomed in appearance and skinny.  As you can see, they were beautiful. We walked along some beaten down horse trails to take a peak at the river, hoping that I would be able to catch them playing nicely in the water.  The view from the river bank was absolutely gorgeous and so peaceful.

  On Wednesday night, the local Country Club has a BBQ Rib dinner special that is one of our favorites each year that I go to visit.  Before we went to dinner, we needed to chase the sunset.  This time, we decided to go outside of their little retirement community, which is actually on the Gila River Indian Reservation.  No city lights, no traffic, no distractions.  Typically we are not patient enough to stick around after the sun actually sets.  We did this time and wow, what a difference that made in our sunset view!

 We had a late afternoon flight home on Thursday, so we were able t catch some sunshine before we packed our bags and headed to the airport.  It is always great to be able to travel and more importantly with family.  It was definitely a COLD SHOCK when we return to our rides in Iowa.


Until next time ...