We had over a week to visit, so we had time to do some sightseeing. Here's some of the highlights from our hikes:
This is on the Peralta Trail. Coincidentally, this picture was taken by a family with a University of Arizona student and two Indiana University students. At least we have the same school color.
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| From Phoenix 2009 |
Here's where we turned around - Fremont Saddle. The big rock formation off in the background is called Weaver's Needle.
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| From Phoenix 2009 |
For Christmas Eve, we went to a friend of the family's house for a traditional Polish dinner. I didn't bring my camera, but believe me there was a good spread! There were at least 3 different types of homemade pickled herring (just like the Swedish kind), pierogis, stuffed crepes, borscht, and tons of other stuff. We started the dinner with the traditional Polish Christmas wafers, where each person gets a piece, then breaks off a small piece of each other person's wafer while wishing them Merry Christmas (or some other nice thing).
Back at the Simacek house, we exchanged gifts including these Christmas outfits
And, of course, Snuggies, which my grandmother informed me used to mean some kind of undergarment for old ladies:
We also went to Sedona and experienced the wackiness of the area by visiting some vortexes. Apparently some people believe each "vortex" has some magic energy that is either male and female or some sort of yin-yang balance of something or other. Paul seemed to have a good grasp of why these were special places - they are all really nice places to take in the view. Paul's dad had been there before and brought us to some of the highlights of the area.
Here we are on an apparent vortex near the airport
Here's another vortex, in Boynton Canton, with something called Enchantment Resort in the background. They had some drum session going on while we were hiking past it. So now we know where to go if we need a good Native American drum session followed by some vortex action.
This was my favorite rock formation of the hike - it looks like a face in the rock, kind of like the old man of the mountain of New Hampshire (RIP)
