When I entered our Sedona hotel in the GPS from Slide Rock State Park, it said it was less than ten miles away, but that it would take about fifty minutes!  We thought “that can’t be right!”, but soon enough we found ourselves in a one way lane of crawling traffic.  We thought “there must be an accident”, but it turned out that it was just everyone trying to get away to Sedona on Friday afternoon of the New Year weekend.  We heard from some lifelong locals that the traffic in the past week had been the worst they had ever seen.  It seems that Sedona is experiencing some growing pains.

We had booked a night with the last of D’s Marriott points at the Courtyard by Marriott in Sedona.  This was one of the nicest Courtyards we have stayed at!

I loved this room!  It felt so fresh and modern.  It made me want to put a mural in our house. 🙂

This was the view from our balcony.

It was a good thing that we stayed here last.  If we had started out with this hotel, we would have been sorely disappointed by the others!

This was the view from the rooftop lounge.

We ate dinner at Gerardo’s Italian Kitchen.

This was basically our only “real” restaurant meal since that fateful night in Holbrook.  D and I shared the Liguria Pizza, which had White Sauce, Thinly Sliced Rosemary Potatoes/Crispy Prosciutto di Parma/Fossil Creek Goat Cheese/Mozzarella Cheese/Topped With Baby Arugula tossed in Lemon Oil.  Yes, it was delicious as it looks! k ordered kids’ pasta with Alfredo sauce and n ordered a kids’ pepperoni pizza and they shared.  The restaurant was pretty busy and the atmosphere was cozy.

On our way out, wed tried a few of these Italian “cookies”, which were kind of like fried wonton strips dusted with powdered sugar.  Interesting.

Back at the hotel room, the kids watched some television through our Hulu account.

D took a dip in the heated pool.  Yes, he’s crazy.

We awoke to a lovely sunrise.

We took a little drive to downtown Sedona since we did not want to deal with the masses the day before.

The shops on the main street were not open yet, but they looked cute.  It seemed like the Red Rocks provided a scenic backdrop wherever we went.  If Santa Fe was a bit of a disappointment, Sedona surpassed our expectations.

We saw a turquoise McDonald’s and had to do a double-take.

For breakfast we stopped at Sedonuts.  Isn’t their logo ingenious?

A sweet way to end our trip.  And no, we did not eat them all in one sitting.

The ride from Santa Fe to Sedona was uneventful.  Our initial stop was Slide Rock State Park.  I had not really read up on this place, but I am glad we took the time to explore this gem.

This was the view from the parking lot.  The entrance fee was $10, which is quite reasonable.  During the warmer months it is $20.  The park ranger kind of laughed when we asked for a map.  There is pretty much one main trail that leads to “Slide Rock”.

The trail was about .5 miles long.  There were some historical artifacts along the way.

This is the water “slide” that makes this park so popular.  It looks a lot more dangerous that I had pictured in my head!

The park ranger said the water temperature was 37 degrees that day.

Someone was crazy enough to jump in!

He did not stay in for long!

Does going down this slide not look super dangerous?  Apparently it is a really popular activity in the spring.  I wonder how many injuries occur??  I am kind of glad we visited in the winter because I know D would have been tempted to try it if it had been warmer.

The area is so picturesque, though!

Hey…we have a photobomber!

Love the reflection in this picture.

Slide Rock State Park is definitely worth a stop on your way to Sedona!

After resting for a bit at the hotel, we drove to the Santa Fe Botanical Garden to see a holiday display called GLOW.  It was described as “an artful illumination of nature”, but I was not sure exactly what to expect.  The adult tickets were $10 and kids 12 and under were free.

We arrived around 5 p.m., so there was still some daylight.

There were a lot cozy conversation spots and creative lighting.

I believe they were burning pinon wood.

Loved the luminarias!  They were everywhere in New Mexico, even on top of the regional hospital.

This art installation changed colors every few seconds.

This was a fun little local event to check out.  They were selling hot chocolate, but n had been ODing on hot chocolate throughout our vacation, so we skipped it.  There was also a musician scheduled to perform, but we did not want to stay that late…D had college football to watch at the hotel!

Our appetites still were not back to normal, so we just made a quick stop at Panda Express on the way back to the hotel.  Sorry Santa Fe, we just were not up to fully exploring you; I feel like we did not experience all that you have to offer.

I had a lingering headache in the morning, probably from dehydration, but was feeling much better than the day before.  It was time to explore Santa Fe.

We parked in a parking garage in the downtown area and walked around.  Our first stop was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

It is a relatively small museum, and it was fairly crowded that day.  We downloaded the app and brought our earbuds for the audio walking tour.  Honestly, I did not find it all that interesting, but I am sure true art buffs would disagree.

The front ticket desk let the kids borrow a sketchpad.  They were invited to draw sketches of what they saw, and told to return the unused pages.  The kids were excited about being able to keep the artist-quality pencils.

We walked to the Railyard District, but did not really know where to go. #PlanningFail  This mural was cool, though.

There were hanging chiles everywhere!

We walked by a small frozen river.

Interesting juxtaposition of old church and modern metal sculptures.

Our main destination was supposed to be The Plaza.  Unfortunately, we found it somewhat underwhelming.  I think The Circle in Old Town Orange actually has more charm!

We shared two fajitas, one chicken, and one beef, from a cart on the Plaza ($5 each).

We saw some people eating Frito Pies, but that really did not sound appealing at that moment.

We did a little more walking.

There were tons of small shops, but we were not in a shopping mood.

We went back to the hotel to rest in the afternoon.  On the way we stopped for a snack at a Sonic Drive-In for the very first time.  The ordering system was fascinating to the kids.  They were disappointed that the employees did not deliver the food on roller skates, though.  We explained that the liability risk would be way too high–ha!