SEDONA!

WOW! WOW!! WOW!!!
USA WEEKEND's Annual Travel Report of the 10 Most Beautiful Places in America listed Sedona as #1.
"It's a nation so blessed with sights -- natural and man-made -- that you could ask all 300 million residents for their favorites and expect 300 million different answers.
1. Red Rock Country (Sedona, Ariz.)
Ever since the early days of movies, when Hollywood has wanted to show the unique beauty of the West, it has gone to Sedona, a place that looks like nowhere else. Beginning with The Call of the Canyon in 1923, some hundred movies and TV shows have been filmed in and around town. We fell under Sedona's spell, too, and while debating our No. 1 spot kept returning to it for the same reasons Hollywood does: The area's telegenic canyons, wind-shaped buttes and dramatic sandstone towers embody the rugged character of the West -- and the central place that character holds in our national identity. There's a timelessness about these ancient rocks that fires the imagination of all who encounter them. Some 11,000 years before film cameras discovered Sedona, American Indians settled the area. Homesteaders, artists and, most recently, New Age spiritualists have followed. Many cultures and agendas abound, but there's really only one attraction: the sheer, exuberant beauty of the place. People come for inspiration and renewal, tawny cliffs rising from the buff desert floor, wind singing through box canyons, and sunsets that seem to cause the ancient buttes and spires to glow from within. We hear the canyon's call and cannot resist. For more, go to Sedona.net.
Even I, the mermaid with salt water coursing through my veins, could not resist!
Red Rocks . . . ROCK!!

Cathedral Rock from Red Rock Crossing

Boynton Canyon

Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte

And another from Boynton Canyon

The Macs in Boynton Canyon

Did I mention that the rocks really are really, really red?

Except, unless, you look at them the way Ansel Adams would:



SO, here's the slideshow. Besides red rocks, you will get to see Christmas lights and window shopping scenes at Tlaquepaque, the Macs at "home" the Mac guys climbing insane stuff on our hike Sunday afternoon in Boynton Canyon, and a little preview of the slideshow to come from Dave's and my hot air balloon ride on Sunday morning.