cottonwood/sedona

Ben and I took a relaxing vacation last weekend as a reward for him finishing his classes. Ben's really good friend, Ryan, grew up in Cottonwood (about 1.5 hours north of Phoenix) and invited us up to spend the weekend with him as he house sat for his parents. We spent some time in Cottonwood playing disc golf, relaxing at his parent's house and eating out. On Saturday Ryan took us up to Sedona to check out the different attractions to do there. Sedona is similar to Park City, in that it is a richy, touristy town. It is really beautiful with the red rock mountains.

After Sedona we took a quick stop in Jerome, an old mining town high on the mountain above Cottonwood. I loved the old history there with the old buildings and tourist shops. There was mining shaft that we stopped to look at. It was amazing! Basically the entire town is sitting on a hollowed out mountain because of the extensive mining that took place. We stood on top of a glass covering to the shaft and was able to look down at how deep it was. 19000 feet to be exact. That's more than 1.5 Empire State buildings deep! We dropped a rock down the shaft at it took more than 5 seconds to hear it hit the bottom. We stopped in a shop called Nelly Bly and Ben completely fell in love with it. He was like a little boy in a candy shop looking at all of the different kaleidoscopes. The trip ended up being so fun and we were so glad that Ryan had invited us up to see the different beautiful parts of Arizona.