Next trip..Sedona, Arizona

Hello everyone J It’s another stormy day in Massachusetts. My friend JR is torturing me by reminding me he is headed to Florida this weekend to warm weather and sunny skies.

I’ve wrapped up my stories from my South Dakota vacation so it’s time to turn my attention to my next vacation.



 Back in 2008 I took a vacation in Sedona, Arizona.



On the road to Sedona



 I went alone that time as no one was available to join me and I was in a “use it or lose it” mode for my time share. While my sister was with me in Rapid City, I told her to think about where she wanted to go next. We kicked around a lot of ideas, including Yellowstone, Jackson Hole and Yosemite. In the end we decided on the Grand Canyon.


Standing on The South Rim of the Grand Canyon~2008

 When I went to Sedona in 2008 I made several trips to the Grand Canyon including taking the Grand Canyon Railroad so I suggested we use my time share and go to Sedona again.



Grand Canyon Railroad

  There were a lot of things that I didn’t get to see in spite of a very busy sight-seeing schedule so I don’t mind a return trip plus everyone needs to see the Red Rocks of Sedona at least once. They are a great complement to the Grand Canyon.



Coffee Pot Rock, Sedona AZ

 Originally we were going to try to book the timeshare for September but when I went online to check availability there was a 75% off sale as long as we went before May 31.

The time share is based on points and I have 5000 points to spend/year. Expecting Sedona to come in around 7500 points I had banked some extra from 2010 so a 75% off sale left me plenty to book a 2^nd trip.

 With vacation packages so inexpensive at the moment the biggest advantage to a time share is that we can prepare some of our own meals and save on restaurant costs. When we went to Rapid City, we used a vacation package. It was extremely reasonable but without kitchen facilities our meal costs were a big part of the cost of the vacation.



Sedona Summit


But back to Sedona, I have reserved the timeshare for the middle of May. Sandy is retired so getting away is not as much as a problem for her as it is for me as I have to get the vacation time approved. I had discussed the time with my supervisor before I finalized the dates but now they are changing the vacation criteria. I’ve informed work that it’s too late to change my plans now so here’s hoping the approval process will go smoothly.

The other consideration is that Sandy doesn’t like it really hot and Sedona is the High Desert so Mid-May should be warm but not too hot.

We’ll be starting the planning process and I’ll share that with you as we go along. If any of you are familiar with the Sedona / Grand Canyon area and have recommendations, we’d love to hear your suggestions.

I think I’ll include a list of the things we are thinking about doing and we can add or subtract from there. I’ll try to put that together for tomorrow’s post.