Montana
This is going to be a difficult trip to summarize. Most of my trips are to a single destination, but in this case Nathalie and I hit 4 National Parks, 7 states, and a ton of little side trips all within about a week. We started by visiting a friend in Sedona, then we hit the Grand Canyon, followed by Bryce and Thunder Mountain, then off to Zion, and finally Yellowstone before we arrived at our destination in Helena, Montana to look at properties. To add to the difficulties Nathalie and I took several hundred pictures between the two of us. We saw such amazing places there is no way I can summarize it up on this website. Stop by if you want to see all the pics and hear all the stories.
We weren't in Sedona for long but we went to check out some of the local mountain bike trails. We headed out to Turkey Creek. The trail started off really nice. It was smooth and rolling. Then it started climbing, at first it wasn't too bad. Then it became mostly unrideable. We actually eneded up ditching the bikes to hike to a high spot, found the bikes again, then road down.
Here's Nathalie on the way up the trail. It was a great day, very few clouds and pleasant temperatures.
Below is the view from our high point. You could see out across the desert forever.
After we left Sedona we stopped at Sunset Crater, it was almost sunset so the pictures of the black rock didn't turn our very well. We were the only people there that night and it had kind of erie feeling with no one around. The crater is a long extinct volcano. The walking tour brings you right into the crater itself. Cool to see and right off the main road.
We were covering a lot of climates and planning to do a lot of activities on this trip. Fitting everything in the truck took a little trial and error some times but by the end of the trip everything had it's place and we could pack up and move on to the next town in no time. Among the many things we had with us were our bikes, snow shoes and skis, tire chains, a cooler, backpacking gear, climbing gear (which we didn't even use), a 4 season tent, and clothes for -100 to 100 degrees, plus all sorts of other gear.
