rube goldberg vacation

deliriumdreams and I are developing a knack for convoluted vacations. Last August it was San Diego to San Francisco in 48 hours using trains, cars, planes, and a boat ride. (Granted, that last was just a trip around the bay, but...)

This weekend we got together in Phoenix and then spent Saturday night in Sedona. Of course, this was last minute, and between wanting to find cheap(ish) flights and the fact that my poor old car needs to get back to Denver eventually: I drove from SD to PHX Friday night after work, got to chancellor_d's place about 12:30. He promptly tortured me with bad late-night TV, but we had some beers, some talk, and some geeking.

deliriumdreams flew in from Albuquerque the next day, and the three of us grabbed some Mexican food. After lunch, J and I drove up to Sedona taking it pretty easy. She'd never been to Sedona nor even driven I-17 during daylight hours, so she was loving the scenery. We had dinner at Shagrue's, stayed at A Sunset Chateau bed and breakfast, drove the Red Rocks Loop Road on Sunday, then drove up Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff.

After an early dinner at Beaver Street Brewery (cheese fondue and apple-ginger stout cake), we drove up Three Sisters to Arizona Snowbowl (she wanted to see snow). I scared her a bit on the way down, then she dropped me off at the Flagstaff airport for my flight to SD (via Phoenix, of course.), while she drove Suby to Albuquerque.

We both made it home intact and basically on schedule. She got home before I did, which I find kinda amusing -- but given that I had a 90-minute layover in PHX, not too surprising. We'll definitely plan more of these weekends meeting in the middle -- especially if we book further in advance, I hope that a weekend in Las Vegas would be cheap; we could use the extra money to check out some Cirque du Soleil shows. :)