So it's not been about 8 days out here in Scottsdale, and I think that in the past few years, we've done just about everything there is to do out here.  We capped it off yesterday with a day trip to Sedona, which I've been told to go to for years as the place where the "red rocks" are.  I've always been pretty whatever about it.  I mean, red rocks, whatever, right?

Wrong.  Once we really hit Sedona, we were both completely blown away by the beauty of the rock formations.  We set out from Scottsdale pretty early in the morning, with plans to stop at Out of Africa, an African wildlife park, as well as Montezuma's Castle and Montezuma's Well, a couple of historical landmarks.  Out of Africa was great - we got to feed a giraffe by hand (which is safe, by the way, because giraffes don't have top teeth) as well as see a bunch of other hooved animals up close from our safari bus.  We also got to see bears and tigers being fed as well as hear a hyena laugh, which is a really, really creepy experience (they only laugh when they're scared, trying to protect something, or hunting I think).  Montezuma's Castle and Well were, well, OK.  The castle wasn't so impressive live, but still looked kind of neat.  The Well, on the other hand, was pretty neat, a HUGE hole in the ground filled with water.  Made me want to leap into it, but as Jenin mentioned, we've probably been watching a little too much Planet Earth. 

Once we hit Sedona we drove around in one of the residential neighborhoods to get a better view of the red rocks and spent about an hour at a local coffee shop catching up our travel journal - just killing some time until our sunset ATV ride.  I haven't been on an ATV or done anything similar to it, but oh man, it was awesome.  Even on the gimped Yamaha Bruin we were on, I had a huge huge blast just driving slowly until the other ATV's were ahead of us and then blasting off at full throttle.  I think we probably were close to the 35mph max speed!  To add to the thrill of the ride, it started POURING on the way home, which was nice at first, but it lasted all the way until we got back to the van.  It was only a 90 minute ride, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Oh well, I'm pretty homesick now, I'll be glad to finish my work early this week and get home on Wednesday night or something.

Hope you're all having great weekends out there.  Pics to come after we get home.