Sedona, Arizona by Emily Cote

      This week I spend two days in Arizona assisting my wonderful Photography teacher while she took one of my good friends senior pictures. This trip was everything we hoped for and more! It was amazing and crazy all at once. So let me recap.

The adventure started out before we even took off. We were set to take off at 6:30am on Tuesday morning, but late Monday we got a text from Southwest Airlines saying that our flight was cancelled, so we took off for the airport at around 4:30 and caught a flight forty-five minutes later. We got to the airport and didn't check any bags because we were only going to be there for two days, so me being the airhead I am, didn't bring travel sized bottles of shower stuff. They pulled me aside and told me to "Read the fine print next time." They ended up throwing away my shampoo, shaving cream (that was expensive, I might add) and mouse for my hair. Not a super fun start, but from that point on, we decided our motto for the trip was, "Just go with it!" And we did.

      We finally made it Phoenix Arizona, we got our rental and got on the road. We got lost once and then found our way, but never forgetting our motto! Our first stop was a random exit we took to see what we could find in the Arizona wilderness. We ended up in Black Canyon in a neighborhood looking for a bathroom, but instead ended up finding an old 1950's truck a midst a sea of junk in someones yard. Mrs. Purkiss, being that outgoing person that she is, marched into their yard and knocked on the door. Grace and I stayed in the car waiting for her. When she came back she was smiling and laughing with the owner of the house, they looked like old friends already! That's when we met Chris. She was such a genuine, sweet, rough around the edges person, and we loved her. She let us shoot pictures in her yard for an hour and a half. We couldn't believe how fast time went! She even gave us a new saying that we'll be using often in the future. "Oh my cow!" she said when Mrs. P showed her some of the shots she got.

     We stopping at any and every place we thought would look good for portraits, we would jump out of the car, help Grace find something to wear out of the suitcases in the trunk and shoot for as long as we wanted. The red rocks were absolutely incredible. I have never seen anything like it before. I'm not even kidding, I think Grace said, "I'm so happy!" about 1000 times over those two days. Sometimes would just all look at each other and start laughing because we couldn't believe what we were surrounded by. God's creation takes my breath away. We kept thanking him for making these scenes for us to enjoy, because when we were standing at the base of those mountains, you feel so small, but in the most humbling way.

      One of our favorite spots was our last stop at River's Edge with Cathedral Rock in the background  We had a pretty cloudy day and we were running out of sunlight but we decided to go anyway. We got some excellent shots of Grace with her feet in the river, which was probably 30 degrees or less. Then Mrs. P put me in there and we couldn't feel our feet for the rest of the night! But it was so worth it.

After we lost sunlight, we searched for a place to eat and we chose, Red Planet Diner that was outer space themed. The food was great. The service, not so much. BUT! We "Just went with it!" We found our hotel at around 8:30 or so, uploaded photo's, washed the red dirt off of our feet and completely crashed. We couldn't have asked for a better or crazier day.

      Day two started a little slower so we could recuperate after our long first day. We had a free breakfast at the hotel and took off.  We stopped and climbed up some more red rocks and photographed some fun pictures in our dresses, even though we were freezing! Our last stop was downtown Sedona where we took more urban looking photo's. We reluctantly got on the road and headed to Phoenix to catch out flight. Little did we know, our flight filled up and we wouldn't actually catch it because we were on stand by. So we got comfortable in the airport, editing pictures, eating delicious sandwiches and making friends. We eventually got a flight and got back to San Antonio at around 12:30am. 

     It was a whirlwind of a trip but so SO worth every second.  If you even get a chance to go to Arizona, you have to check out Sedona, it had so much beautiful scenery and lots of fun things to do in town. Hope you enjoyed my recap of our trip, hope I didn't bore you too much! Here are a few photos I took while I was there...