But of course we got ensnared by the biggest tourist trap in the area, the Meteor Crater!
Come on guys, it has it's own radio station! We had to stop!
It has it's own exit off the highway and it was another 5 or so miles to the Crater. They had some weird signs by the road that said to be careful for baby cows...which I thought was odd. While driving, I am probably going to be careful of the baby and the full size cows. Probably more careful of the full sized. As much as I (and everyone alive) loves baby animals, I am more cautious of hitting a full sized cow. Anyway, we tried to snap a picture but missed it.
I won't lie, this place is outrageously expensive to get into. I think it is $15 per adult.
We didn't really mind paying because we knew going into it that it was probably going to be expensive.
It was actually a better value than I thought. There was a sizable museum beside the Crater that had a lot of exhibits on meteors and other space junk hitting the earth.
There was a bunch of interactive stuff and I thought it was a well put together museum.
They also had the biggest chunk of the meteor that had made this crater:
It wasn't that shabby, so we had fun taking a half hour to explore the museum.
And there were photo opportunities to take embarrassing photos of yourself:
Outside the museum they also had the Apollo Test Capsule, which the astronauts used to train (and they did do some training at this Crater).
We saved the actual Crater for last:
There were telescopes that you could use to look into the bottom of the crater to see the astronaut training area:
The Crater was super windy!
We made a quick stop at the gift shop where I purchased my favorite tshirt of the trip. It looks pretty retro and says 'I survived the wind at the Meteor Crater'.
Once in the car it was time to do our 24 hour advance check in to Southwest.
We were running a bit behind schedule, so Brian told me to go ahead and start to drive and he could do it while we drove.
Of course this didn't work out at all, he could only find his reservation so he went ahead and checked in, then couldn't find mine at all and had me convinced that I never scheduled a flight for myself. This went on for a panicked 10 minutes until he finally found my reservation, right where I said it was in my email, and got me checked in as well.
The rest of the drive was really not fun. I was the only driver listed on the car so I had to drive the whole 2ish or so hour trip. I was annoyed at the whole Southwest check in fiasco and I was also annoyed that the vacation was almost over cause I'd really been enjoying it.
So anyway we'll just speed right by most of the drive and pick up the story where we begin to enter Sedona.
Except for this picture of a giant cow on a building in Flagstaff:
OK now we are on to our entrance to Sedona.
It was really a spectacular drive, we headed down and down and down these really steep roads and there were tons of gorgeous trees and drop offs and vistas. There were also a lot of real nice houses and vacation homes along a river that we were super jealous of.
The whole area was so artsy and woodsy and interesting.
We finally arrived at our hotel, the Sky View Ranch around 5:30. Brian got us checked in and we found our room and were able to just relax! Which was amazing. We started to look up somewhere to go eat and then we decided we really weren't up to it and we just had some leftovers while in the room.
The room did have a kitchen:
Most of my room pictures turned out blurry, but it was a really big, nice room.
We had a little patio and here was our view:
The grounds were really beautifully landscaped.
The front desk worker had informed us that sunset would be promptly at 7:30, and since our hotel was up on the top of a very high hill we decided that it might be worth seeing.
We made it right in time, and once again, these pictures don't do the sunset justice. It was pretty amazing.
Next up: Stargazing Tour and the beginning of our last day
