Cali and Arizona

Arizona. The desert. The mountains. The stunning landscape. What am I doing out west? Well, here's the story.

My cousin was getting married in Southern California. While being out in the beautiful, southern part of Cali for a week sounds great, my wife and I were only 6 hours away from one of the most beautiful places in the world: Sedona, Arizona. I couldn't pass up this opportunity. A vacation out west!!

Back in 2002, I use to live in Phoenix, Arizona for a couple of years with my uncle. Back when I was young, I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life, so I explored out into the western part of the US. I wanted to get away from the country life of the east and venture out to the city life out west. While out there, I loved to drive around and explore what Phoenix and Arizona had to offer. In 2003, I went through and explored a little bit of Sedona for just a day and didn't really remember what it was like. I also visited it back 2007, with my soon to be wife, Jessica, and still have very little memory of what it looked like. I suffer from epilepsy, which can erase away some of your memory when you have seizures. Because of my seizures, my memory of Arizona and Sedona is very faint. With my new found passion for nature and exploring, I wanted to experience this stunning place once again.

But still, southern California was still beautiful in many ways. We arrived in San Diego and only had an hour drive to the hotel. We eventually went back and checked out the beach in San Diego. Jessica can now say that shes had her feet in the waters of both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean!! I visited the ocean back when I use to live in Phoenix.

Southern Cali is a beuaitful area. They have small rolling hills all over the place. And in the distance, 10,000 foot mountains. The scenery was beautiful all around. You drive from the beach, through the rolling hills, out into the wine country, then into the mountains. It was definitely a treat to see different and stunning landscape.

My cousins wedding was located out in the middle of the California wine country. Little, tiny hills all over the place with palm trees and massive mountains off in the distance. It was a stunning place for a wedding.

Such a beautiful place right! We were fascinated by how diverse the landscape was. It was green, but in the middle of the desert. There was little hills all over the place, but with the huge mountains in the distance. We had a magnificent sunset that day also!! A beautiful day for my cousins wedding. Congrats Laurin and Jason!!

After the wedding, we spent one more night in Cali and in the morning, we headed off to Arizona. Our destination was Chino Valley, almost right in the middle of Arizona. It was a six hour drive through mountains and desert. The whole drive there offered magnificent scenery of the California and Arizona Landscape. On the way there, we drive past two mountains that stood over 10,000 feet tall.

Below is San Gorgonio Mountain. A massive 11,523 foot mountain that is the tallest in Southern California. I was blown away!!

But that wasn't all. A little further down the highway, on the other side, was Mount San Jacinto. A beautiful 10,833 foot mountain.

I was dying to climb this beast. There's a hike to the top of Mount San Jacinto called 'From Cactus to Clouds.' An epic 21 mile hike that gains over 10,000 feet in elevation from the desert floor to the top. It is a killer hike that I would like to complete someday. Someday...

After the mountains in Cali, it was basically all desert. There was still rugged mountains in the distance to gaze at. But nothing anywhere near us.

Those desert mountains would randomly pop up out of nowhere. They weren't nearly as tall as the ones we passed by earlier in Cali, but they were still beautiful to look at while driving.

The long ride through the desert was tough. Even though there was beautiful landscape all over the place, the sun was out at full force and it was just a straight, flat drive drive for almost 4.5 hours. Jessica had to put a towel over the window to block the sun from shining through the window. I couldn't imagine how hot it would be out here in the summer. Another reason it was rough was because of the limited amount of music! There are very few radio stations out there. The few that we could get in, were country. Nooooooo!!! After three long, country music hours on the road, we finally hit the boarder, crossing from California into Arizona!

We eventually had to leave the main highway and head north east towards northern Arizona on the less traveled roads. When we did, things got weird. We were traveling through huge ghost towns in the middle of the desert. It was really creepy. You would be in the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing around you and all of a sudden a town pops up. But nothing is there. Just abandoned houses, gas stations and country stores. Once in awhile you would see a few cars, but these towns were gone.

We finally started to get out of the desert and into the mountains around a little town called Yarnell, AZ. Back in 2013 a horrible tragedy happened here. A 8,400 acre forest fire broke out and 19 firefighters died trying to fight it. Some of those fire fighters, were as young as 19 years old. A very tough loss. As we drove by, even though its been 4 years, you can still still the burn patterns of the fire and how there was no bushes or trees on the mountain. The fire wiped them out. Below is a picture of before the forest fire line where you can see the green bushes on the mountain. The picture after that is where the forest fire happened. Leaving just dirt and rock.

There was a memorial site on the other side of the highway, but we had no clue where we could turn around and we didn't want to get lost. As we drove by, we payed our respect with a moment of silence for those brave men who gave their lives for others.

As we drove up the mountains, we gained a massive amount of elevation in little time. We passed through a couple of small towns, then started driving up the mountains once again. This was a crazy drive though!!

A very twisty, turny, windy road for 11 miles!! The photo above explains it all. The map says it should take about 19 minutes, but all the slowing down for the sharp turns made it into a 40 minute drive!! We were also gaining some more elevation as went through it. It was funny because Jessica was not prepared for this and she was starting to get a little sick from all the sharp turns in the road. It was a crazy ride that lead us into the small city called Prescott. My mother and father use to live here so I am very familiar with the area.

Prescott is a beautiful, small city in the middle of Arizona. It stands at around 5,000 feet, so it's not really considered the desert. It still experiences the typical heat of the south western states in the summer, but it has colder winter due to the elevation. The air is very thin here and the terrain is almost like the desert, with a lot of dirt and barely any trees. But, the surrounding mountains makes it a stunning place. In the winter, the mountains will have snow on them while the valley just experiences the cold, thin air.

We finally got off the crazy road and into Prescott. Since we left early in the morning, it was around 6pm when we finally arrived at my uncles house in Chino Valley, which is around 30 minutes north of Prescott. Chino Valley is seriously in the middle of nowhere. Most roads located there are just dusty, dirt roads and almost everyone out there owns a ranch and some horses. My uncle is one of the kindest, generous men in the world and we were grateful that he would let us stay with him for a couple days while we explored Arizona. Thank you Uncle Kenny and we love you!

We finished off the night at the most amazing Mexican restaurant we've ever been to. Jessica and I love Mexican food and we eat it every chance we get. This restaurant was top notch. It was definitely perfect after a long day on the road.

So that's it for now, but all the action and adventure will being in part 2 of this awesome vacation!!