This week I have some images from Sedona, Arizona, to share with you. My husband and I spent two weeks there relaxing, swimming in the pool at the RV park, and exploring the many hiking trails, mountains, canyons and streams in Red Rock Country.
Why so long? Free camping! We became members of “Thousand Trails” an organization that owns about 80 vacation properties for campers and RVers. They are all in the USA except one in Canada.
The deal is it cost us $500 to join. That includes 30 days of free camping in a year and after that it costs only $3 per night. We also get discounts on all the Encore resorts. We bought the membership in Florida where camping was very expensive, especially since we were there during high season. There are many Encore resorts in Florida and we found that the Thousand Trails membership paid for itself in the discounts we received in Florida alone.
When we saw one of their resorts was just outside Sedona, we decided to stay for two weeks and use up some of our free camping nights.
Sedona is surrounded by rugged red rocks that provide stunning vistas. On one of our first days in Sedona we took a scenic drive to the Village of Oak Creek where there were numerous pull outs along the road. After our drive we decided to return to Bell Rock to watch the sunset.
Please click the image to view a larger version.
We only had to hike a short distance on the path up to the rock when we were rewarded with this view looking back towards the city.
I made this image using a 3 stop soft step neutral density filter to even out the exposure between the bright background and darker foreground. In post processing, I polished it off using Nik Color Efex Pro.
Beautiful!
Thanks Joe!
Anne,
This is a PERFECT capture of the light and colors.
I hope you’ll be sharing more Sedona photos, especially given your wonderfully long stay there. I was there for just one day, and the scenery and wandering around and in Oak Creek made a huge impression and left vivid memories. One of my big regrets is not having had then enough money to buy a piece of land nearby, and now of course it’s totally out of range of my budget. Plus I’d have to move there, since I don’t travel anymore. The latter is why I’m so enjoying your recountings and your outstanding photos, because they bring the places you visit to life.
Wow, thank you so much for your kind words Mim! They bring the places I visit to life – that makes me feel great, thank you!! Sedona was beautiful and it was nice to spend some time there. Most of the time we were outside the main city and just did day trips in and I’m glad of that too because there were so many people in the city.
I’m traveling with you guys, a pleasure..
It’s nice having you along Kaz! Thanks for joining us.
This is a wonderful spot. We visited Sedona when we toured California (detoured to the Grand Canyon and stayed in Sedona for a night). I remember going almost off-road through the red rocks near the resort. It was getting close to sunset I recall – so this image looks pretty special to me. Thanks, Anne. Great work as always.
Hi Andy, what a great memory! I saw lots of jeeps – you could rent one yourself or go on a jeep tour to do some off-roading. I was tempted but I have a really bad back so I decided against it. It looked like a lot of fun. But hiking through the red rocks is fun too. Lots of people were mountain biking too.
Stunning photo!
Hi Wyoming! Thank you very much for the compliment. I’ll have to check out your website because I loved Wyoming! Devil’s Tower was so cool.
Sedona is just stunning. Beautiful image Anne.
It is stunning. Thank you for your comments Edith!
I really love the colors in this. So terrific.
Beautiful work!