Thank you to everyone for your comments on our last blog. It's great to hear from you!

We had a busy couple of days here before leaving on Monday . On Friday, we headed to Boynton Canyon to hike the 3 miles in, 3 miles out trail. Boynton Canyon is a box canyon believed by "New Age" adherents to be the site of a strong electromagnetic power (vortex) with a balance of masculine and feminine energy. The "New Age movement" is a Western spiritual movement from the second half of the 20th century, that draws on "spiritual and metaphysical traditions, self-help and motivational pyschology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics."  Phew.

It was our intent to make it to the vortex at the end of the trail. The trail goes through red rock ledges and hugs the north canyon wall before dropping to the canyon floor. It has amazing scenery, includes towering buttes, crimson cliffs, natural desert gardens, and tall columns of pinyon and large ponderosa pines. There are some beautiful houses and a resort in the valley. The canyon abruptly narrows and steepens up a shifting path beside a wash, with the sky a canopy of trees and the ground a carpet of leaves and, horror of horrors ... snow, albeit melting.

The trail was flanked by crooked bushes with extremely smooth, reddish brown twisted branches. They say the trees are twisted because of the vortex. Along the trail, we saw stacks of prayer rocks, either alone or in groupings, that looked a lot like inukshuks to us. :)

Well, we walked and walked and walked, and climbed and climbed. We saw people who told us the end of the trail was about 1/2 hour away, and 1/2 hour later, we saw different people who told us the end was about 1/2 hour away. It gets dark here at 5:45 pm, so we had to be careful not to hike in too far and end up coming out in the dark. We ended up turning around when we saw a couple on a steep rocky incline that seemed near the end of the canyon, who told us the end was ... you guessed it, about 1/2 hour away. Argh! This trail seriously needs some mile markers!

When we got home, we googled pictures of the vortex at the end of the trail . Apparently there is often a man playing the flute on the top of the vortex. Based on the comments in the visitor registration book at the start of the trail, he was there the day before. Of course he was. That would have been amazing! We also learned there is a 0.3 mile Vista trail that leads directly to the vortex. Seriously!!? Ack!! I guess we would have missed the beautiful scenery, though. I'm really trying to conjure up some of those vortex ions to put a positive spin on this!

As I write this on Saturday, I realize the obvious thing to do is go back and hike the Vista trail. Duh. So off we went. Well that was a lot easier. Turns out there are two vortexes - the one with feminine energy, and the one with masculine energy. And a balance circle. And a flute player who was there before we got there. :(

I sat at the base of the feminine energy vortex, and soaked up the energy that you can't help but feel there . I made prayer rocks for Brie & me. Then we went to the masculine energy vortex and made prayer rocks for Ry, Bennett and Roger. Very serene and inspiring there. (Brie - this is where the vortex stone we got you is from.) :o)

Roger was sitting on the patio later (elevating his ankle, which he turned over climbing down from the vortex), eating peanuts and making friends with two squirrels that were hanging around. They figured they hit the peanut jackpot. After we went inside the trailer, one of them was brave enough to climb up the trailer steps, stand on his back legs, and look in the screen door. Trick or treat! :)

We spent our last day here exploring the National Monuments dedicated to the ancestral villages of the Sinagua civilization in the Verde Valley - Tuzigoot, Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well. These ancient villages were excavated in the 1930's, giving work to men during the Depression . The Sinagua people left these villages around 1400 A.D. - it's not clear why.

Tuzigoot is a pueblo-style village built on a hilltop. Montezuma Castle is a 5-story, 20 room dwelling in a cliffside recess 100 ft above the valley. Early American settlers marveled at the structure, assumed it was Aztec in origin, and named it Montezuma Castle. But, since the Aztec Emperor lived long after the site's occupation, it is inappropriately named. And Montezuma Well is a water oasis in the desert, with cliffside dwellings along its walls. The water there is saturated with so much carbon dioxide because of the limestone it passes through, that fish cannot survive in it. However, there are five species of life that live in the water there that live nowhere else on earth!

We, that concludes our stay in Sedona. We are off to Lake Havasu State Park for 2 weeks. We will not have internet access there, so will depend on wifi access at cafes, etc to stay in touch (other than texting, which we think will still be fine).