Sedona Day 8

Our last day in Sedona started out like the rest--bright sun and a little cool, but with a promise of warming up later. We left Sedona around 9 AM and went to Phoenix, AZ. We went to Snow Mountain,a city park which had excellent mountain views of Phoenix. This is billed as the biggest city park in the world containing over 16,000 acres. It was mostly a high desert area witn many different kinds of cactus, miles of walking trails, cliffs from which to hang glide, and many high mountains with breath taking views.

We left the park for downtown Phoenix to find the old historic section. After much searching, we found a city museum and was told we were in old Phoenix. All the old buildings had been razed to make way for new developments. The mayor of Phoenix at the time convinced the city council to buy one old house and about 3/4 blocks to preserve. The house is in the slide presentation and is an excellent example of houses of the time.

After the tour of the museum, we went to the Botanical Gardens. This was a desert botanical garden and was one of the best gardens I have been to. Dale Chihuly gave a presentation titled, "The Nature of Glass". He was sold out, but they did have displays of his glass creations throughout the garden. Most of the pictures in the slide show are of his glass art.

The plants in the garden were fantastic. A lot of the different varieties of cactus were in bloom and had very beautiful flowers. The glass displays were amoung the flowers. The flowers made an excellent backdrop for the glass pieces.

We caught a 11:45 PM flight out of Phoenix to Atlanta, then to Dayton. We finally got home between 9:30 and 10:00 AM. We had a very enjoyable trip, but were glad to get back home. We left 80 degree weather and returned to snow showers...a true Ohio welcome home.