Without further ado, let's kick off #FBF!
As a side note; today's blog won't feature any pictures from the actual trip, simply because I didn't take any this trip, but do I have a story for you. Hang in there-it's a long one.
This story takes us back to one of the hubby's and my first trips together. If memory serves, we had only done one other trip by ourselves before to see my sister in-law in Las Cruces (pictured below). So this trip was kind of a big deal.
I'm pretty sure this was our first EVER picture taken together! Photo cred goes to my sister-in-law. Oh the memories :)
If you've been following along my journey, I've explained my appreciation for Sedona here before. I loved it so much, I knew immediately that one day I would make the drive back. While it took a little longer than expected, I finally made it about three years ago, this time with the hubby. Only at the time we were recently engaged.
We intended the trip to be a long day trip filled with a picnic lunch and a hike. Reminding you yet again that six-hour road trips are not outside my realm of possibilities!
Our trip started out normal. We made our way into Arizona, deciding to forego Flagstaff on the way out, and hit it on the way back home. We made it down the long winding mountain road that dumped us into Sedona. The views are amazing, the birds and wildlife are full of songs and life. It's like the perfect picture from a sappy movie, with the windows down, music up and enjoying the road ahead.
We made it into Sedona and found a trail we wanted to hike with the pups and spent about a couple of hours climbing up the rocks to the top where we were gifted with some amazing vast views of surrounding rock formations. We decided to take a bit of a break at the top to enjoy the views, have some lunch and let the pups rest up and enjoy some shade. After a while we decided to head back down and agreed we had seen what we wanted of Sedona and thought Flagstaff would be a great next stop.
As we packed up and headed out, we were faced with extremely long lines of traffic of tourists enjoying the scenes, and if I remember correctly, there was also some construction going on in town. Well, this is about when that sappy movie ended and all of our luck changed for the worse. My car decided to overheat and breakdown on us. Long story short, we were now stranded in Sedona for the night.
One string of bad luck led to another combined with a holiday festival weekend taking place in the town, until we found ourselves car camping outside of an auto-repair shop until morning when we were supposed to be getting help. The mechanic, thankfully came in on a Sunday morning when they're usually closed. Some strings were pulled. So I guess for as many bad things we had happen, we saw just as many blessings. The mechanic fixed the car for us, we thanked them profusely, headed out on our way again and decided, hey since we now have the whole day to get back home, let's finally go check out Flagstaff!
As we were exiting the highway to head into downtown Flagstaff, low and behold, the car proceeds to overheat again. Car. NOT. Fixed... Whomp Whomp! After much debate and problem solving we ended up having to rent a Uhaul and tow said car back home.
Not at all how I had hoped my return to Sedona would turn out, but memorable nonetheless. I can honestly say we both look back on that situation and smile. It certainly wasn't ideal, was extremely frustrating, but we also had one of the sweetest times and growing experiences and before all of the trouble, Sedona was still beautiful.
As another funny aside, the google map car must have happened to take a trip down our street that weekend when the Uhaul truck was outside the house. When you google our address, we have the lovely reminder of that trip on street view haha!
I can't say Sedona is currently top of my list anymore, mainly out of fear, but some day I'd love to take the hubby back where we can actually enjoy the full trip. Next time, we'll be bringing a different car.
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