The last couple of weekends, I've been driving around a few places in Arizona with my brother and his wife. They like to look at land and homes that are soon to be up for auction. One of the places we visited was Sedona, Arizona which has a population of around 11,000. It is known as 'red rock country' for its beautiful mountains and cliffs that have a pinkish/orangish color but when wet from rain or certain times of the day they look reddish/orange. It's also known for its art galleries and outdoor jazz festivals. It'd be a cool town to live in for me but it's a bit expensive and, right now, there isn't a house there less than $300,000.
With the photo below, I am standing on the same hill looking more NE at Sedona. The rounded hill on the right, with the pointy peak on top is called, would you believe, Nipple Hill. 
The next two photos were taken in Lakeside, Arizona up in the White Mountains. We used to go up there for a few days in the summer and stay at the Lazy Oaks Resort in one of their small cabins. Very quaint and pretty place with Rainbow Lake right outside the front door of the cabins. We never did any fishing or boating but took lots of leisurely walks along the lake shore, had barbecues and generally just lazed around in the cool, fresh air.
This is one section of the famous Superstition Mountains near Apache Junction, Arizona. I took three photos to try and get the whole thing in and still didn't get the whole mountain range. It is monstrous. There's many old tales about lost gold miners in these mountains. There's plenty of hiking trails in and around the area and we took a few but never ventured too far in. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition_Mountains
And, last but not least, a sunset from the backyard of my old house.
thesnakeandiandthebutterfly 
Nice Pics, Pam! :up: That first one IS a photo of the real deal, isn't it?There's something peculiar about it. Maybe it's just me.It's like the greenery over on the left and the bottom looks real. And the mountains in the back look real, but superimposed on there. And the middle part, the town … looks like a model of a town or something. :eyes: I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes sense. And no, I don't drink. 😆 It's just a weird look that I'm seeing. :::Shrug:::
Carlos, it is the real thing taken with my trusty old Pentax 35mm. It does look kind of weird. There was a huge rain cloud slowly moving in. The sun was just shining through the clouds on part of the town and one of the pinkish orange mountains on the right. A few minutes later it was all in shadow. The Sedona Airport is up near where we were and my brother always likes to hang out at airports. He's always had a thing for planes and has a dozen or so model airplaines hanging from the ceiling in one room in his house. I had the best machaca taco salad I've ever had at the little cafe in the airport. I have another roll of film that I need to finish up and it has closer shots of the mountains.Lea, thank you. I'm trying to show that Arizona isn't just all desert and cactus. Many people think everything is like in the picture of the Superstition Mountains. A 40 minute to 3 hr drive and there is a much different terrain.
Gorgeous and beaaauuttiiifull scenery i love it all. :up: :yes:
My favourite the last picture :love: :heart:
Hi Lady Pam. Thanks for sharing. I would love to go there :up: :yes:
Very beautiful photos. 🙂
Very interesting read for a guy like myself who has numerous times been on excursions just like that.That Sedona place looks great to me.
I knew Arizona is beautiful. But, I was expecting to see more of the reddish stone deserts, like in cowboy movies 😀 I guess Arizona is very big and no one actually want to live in stone desert :)Nice photos :up:"I have another roll of film " Oh, you are not using digital camera?
Beautiful photos Pamela and great description of the places! A place to visit! :up: Thanks to share! :):):)
Heyyy, that could be it. Now upon further looking, I guess that does look like it could be a cloud shadow towards the back.
Carol: Thank you.:) Allan: Thanks. Yes, Sedona is a great place. Really not too far from where I live. It's about 40 minutes north of where I live. An hour if I'm driving. 😆 Darko: Oh, there's lots of red rocks! And, no I'm not using a digital. I'm still using a 35 year old Pentax 35mm camera. Everything is manual on it. Somewhere I have some pics I took twenty some years ago when I went with a group of people for what was called 'New Age Convergence' at Bell Rock in Sedona. It literally is a hill, or mountain shaped like a bell, and more reddish looking that the pics above. A few people had drums (bongo and conga), others had triangles, sticks, bells, and other music making instruments and we all sat around playing the instruments. I have forgotten what the significance was for this so I'll have to look it up. Ze: Thanks. Yes, a nice place to visit. Carlos: I added one more photo of Sedona. The first one I am looking east and the second one northeast. We are up on a hill near the Sedona Airport and we're looking down, through vegetation at part of Sedona. I'll get the link for Sedona Airport and it shows a pic of where it is situated in conjunction to the city. Here is the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KSEZ_approach.jpg There is an overlook on the left and that is where we were overlooking Sedona.
You are welcome Pam. 🙂
Are you talking about the orange thing on the left? That's from where y'all were looking? Question: Isn't that the only runway at that airport? Why do they call it Runway 3? 😀 Or is it because inside the airport terminal, there are 2 Runways for Super Models? 😆
No, that orange thing is one of the mountains on the east side of the town. The overlook we're at is left/center, where the greenery is, and on the same hill the airport is. Not sure why they call it runway 3. Maybe it's been redone three times, because there wouldn't be room on that hill for another one. AND, the building is so small that I don't think there'd be room for a model runway. :p
Thanks Graham. Since May of last year, when my pc crashed, I've been painstakingly going through hundreds of my photos to rescan them. Only thing is, I keep adding to the amount of photos. The first two and the last one are new, the others are from several years ago. I try to remember to always bring my camera and the times I've forgotten, I could kick myself. I had my camera when we went to Sedona, but didn't have it the weekend before when we tooled around this town called Black Canyon City, which is just 35 minutes up the highway. There was some property there that was tucked away in this little canyon with a creek at the bottom. I'd never seen it before and you can't see it from the highway. There were newer homes there and they had the most serene view of the creek and some large trees. I was awestruck and will have to return.
Thank you, this brings back a lot of memories. Especially the Superstition one. I loved Tortilla Flat and the roads around there, with all the big cactus. I guess a couple years after I was there there was fire at the diner in Tortilla Flat and half the town burned down. Not that there was that much to it anyway.I always thought that the old hotel there would be a perfect place for a writer to check into for six months or so and work on a novel.I was with a friend at Lake Roosevelt once and my friend and I were throwing rocks at this craw-dad and pretty much by accident we killed it. We collected some trash that was laying around, made it a little raft, and gave it a Viking Funeral.I like Prescott better than Sedona. For reasons that I really can't explain. Very nice photos, Pam.
Thanks Ed. I like Prescott better too. It's older, more quaint. My brother and his wife went there yesterday to look at property and asked me, but I declined to go. They did drive me there last summer for my birthday dinner at the Peacock Lounge. I'm hoping to get a few of us to drive to Jerome. It was an old mining town, then ghost town, and now a new age hippie/artist community. Yeah, some of these old places are a perfect setting for artists and writers to stay for a while.
Wow, Arizona seems like a fascinating place. I love the photos of the mountains and the lakes, Pam. :up: Lan
Hi Lan. Thanks. Arizona is really quite diverse.
Scott, we have amazing sunsets, especially if there are a few clouds. The saguaros are numerous too. Sunday, my brother and his wife, and my sister and I drove to the Veteran's Cemetery in Cave Creek, Arizona. It's about 30 miles north up Cave Creek Rd. In that area, there are hundreds of saquaros. From a distance, they look like green toothpicks sticking up from a hill, then you get close and realize how huge they are. I've finished another roll of film and started another from our road trip this weekend. I'm also going to take a couple of photos of my neighborhood. There is a mountain range about a 3/4 of a mile from my house. A couple of months before we went to Cave Creek just to look at property. We drove up and around the area looking at some of the homes built into, on and against some of the mountains with enormous boulders. This was one of the times I forgot my camera and kicked myself for it. There was one house that was built on top of a giant boulder then went across to another boulder. There was nothing underneath about 20 or 30 feet of the house. It may have been more but I'm a terrible judge of distance.
that last one took my breath away.now that i finally had a chance to see part of arizona i am quite impressed by the beauty of it's mountain ridges . those sixty foot tall cactus are incredible. even their skeletons are like some alien life form.
Thanks Jill. The City of Sedona is such a pretty place. I'd love to live there.
awesome pictures, Pam… looks like it was a lovely excursion! there is so much colour in the second photo, so beautiful.