Doin' time at the pines

We arrived home, sweet home, in Sedona, AZ, on Christmas day.
(pretty cool how the timing of everything worked out this way 😊)

Joel, Rahemah, Cam, Veronika, yo

Our friend Cam drove up from Tempe to eat dinner with us at Joel's cousin's new house.  Veronika is Joel's cousin, and she's hosting a foreign exchange student from Pakistan for a year.  Her name is Rahemah.  Veronika had a holiday dinner cooked up for us all! and we witnessed Rahema trying chili and cornbread for the very first time.  She likes it 👍  She told us a lot about her country and answered all the questions we were firing at her.  she's very friendly and fun!
Another friend of Veronika's came over after dinner, a few gifts were exchanged, then we all played games.  one of them was cards against humanity.  who doesn't know this game?  i bet 90% of 'merica busts this game out on Christmas day.  !!  and now even little girls from Pakistan-  we were using the set that Cam gifted to Rahema the month previous for her birthday.  Oi!  Don't tell her mother!!!  We all played and laughed our asses off.  at one point i was crying so hard i couldn't manage to read my card out loud anymore ... my gut hurt so bad.  HURT SO GOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!   love it.

New Year's eve was very special.  We had Veronika and her friend Todd over to our camper for a venison dinner.  Joel grilled it.  it turned out incredible.  best venison i've ever had.  the whole meal was delicious and the company wonderful.  They led us to a friend's bonfire party for the remainder of the evening and we met a bunch of cool new peeps.  if you recall?  the moon was known to be HUGE and bright that night.  it revealed the entire length and height of Thunder Mountain, the glorious, massive hunk of rock overlooking our location of the party.

Thunder Mountain!!!

I heard some ppl share stories of hiking up it's hugeness at nite, to only the light of a full moon.  Todd chimed in as one of them.  "how long did it take you?" i asked.  it looks like a crazy haul up there, so i was not expecting to hear "about an hour".  ?!  i heard that and said "WHAAAAAT!??  REALLY?  well then WHAT ARE WE DOING still standing here???  let's go do that!!!" but it was kind of the beer talking.  Mostly, it was my curiosity.  i'm gonna do it.  we already made it halfway up in the daytime a couple weeks ago, now we know the way to go, and the moon is definitely capable of blazing plenty of light to illuminate the path.  i'm stoked!!  in fact, i've already made a pact with myself to get outside every next, bright, full-moon evening and hike up onto a mesa or vista of some kind.
that NYE full moon night was magical.  and i expect all the next ones to be as well.

NYE funky panoramic pic

So why Sedona?  what are we doing here?  what's going on:
Joel used to live here years ago.  He loved it.  He brought me here for my first time a few years ago, and i could see why he and Veronika, and all his friends still living here, felt like making this home.  I felt it too.  There are so many nooks and crannies and high points to hike into, we'd have to actually live here in order to experience our fill of soaking in the energy of this area.  and not even just Sedona, but all of AZ.  and all AROUND arizona.  and beyond!  we're gonna wander all around.  here feels like a great place to start.

Joel stayed at The Pines years ago

Joel has owned a timeshare down here for many years.  He used to live out of it for a couple weeks every month in his last RV.  It's also where we stayed a few years ago, in one of their cute, modular tiny-home cabins.  it was really fun and a very nice place.  Now we're back-- shacked up at Sedona Pines resort, enjoying the luxuries of hot tubs, hookups, free laundry and mini golf 😁

When Joel lived here previously, some mornings at the crack of dawn the hot air balloon company he worked for would drift their baskets overhead of the resort during their flights.  One morning they actually landed here, and one of Joel's RV neighbors happened to be outside with a camera and snapped a few photos.  We've had this one pinned up on our billboard since we've lived together.  The same guy's balloons still drift by overhead most mornings, sometimes just outside our window 😲

Staying at The Pines today

HELLO! right outside our window

Between Joel and his cousin's share at the resort, it's looking like we'll be able to stay here the majority of every month.  This was a pleasant surprise to discover!  We haven't had to pay any "rent" for a month now, nor have we had to full-out boondock it quite yet, with the way things keep unfolding for us.  But we use our solar energy nightly for everything but our heat, and it's been working great.  We will leave here eventually to camp out on BLM land.  Joel has already driven us out to a few of our options, and they are really pretty places!  for now, during these coldest months, we appreciate being here to run our heat throughout the night.


It sounds like we've "lucked out" with the weather.  it's been warmer than usual, some folks have said, with every day radiating 65 degrees and sunny, so with that sun, it easily feels like 70+.   I braved one of our hikes last week in shorts and a tank top, so comfortably! and happy to feel all that sun on my skin.  Most days we throw open our camper door by noon and let the fresh air in all day long.  Unlike our time in TX and NM, we haven't had any nites below freezing.  We can see snow on some of the distant peaks to the south.  We're surrounded by foothills, mountains and mesas.  It's so beautiful, everywhere we look appears EPIC!  i love it.  there's even a big hill out behind the resort that i plan to get to the top of one of these days.  we already attempted it one day and we got to the base of it.  it took us almost 2 hours to walk that far.  we couldn't see a clear path up and decided to approach it from a different side next time.  it was a baking day so we had to head back to the camper to put our bread in the oven.   it'll be so fun to see the whole view, including the resort, from high up, out in our own back yard!   i don't have a picture of it yet.  i'll talk one eventually.
one night we got a thunderstorm.  that was... CRAZY!  to hear the thunder.  it echoes on and on for a long time.  it sounds totally different from what i'm used to in MN.  (except for in the BWCA) All of them so LOUD.  it poured cats and dogs for hours.  and it snowed just 30 miles north of us.  so we went that way the following day to go snowboarding.  and it made some of the dry creek beds flow a bit, making hiking less dusty, and the air seemed to stay a bit cooler.

Neighbors-
We had a guy named Steve staying on one side of us, living in his van, and pulling a trailer with a small kitchen set up in the back of it.  he sleeps and has his work desk set up in the van.  he's writing a book.  on the other side of us is a woman from poland, wintering here with her husband until they go back home to Canada soon.  she's really cute- crazy hair, LOVES to chat.  One day when Joel and I were out on a hike she saw my pile of hula hoops laying around and decided to pick one up, and have a go at it.  She did great, and came over later that night to tell me so! and about how much fun it was to be able to hula hoop again.  "My grandchildren have some but they are so small and light, i cannot keep them up.  it is impossible.  but this one, it works!  i can do it again.  i love this."   I let her know that's why i make these ones: the bigger, heavier the hoop, the easier it is to keep it going around the hips, and the more adults are able to see they really can do it 😉  she asked if she could keep the one she tried by her camper that way she could use it again later.  so i just gave it to her.  she was over the moon, and came by again later that night to give me some cash.  that was fun!  and why i hauled them with me in the first place.
it's not exactly like the Escapee parks we stayed at tho, where there's happy hour and everyone knows everyone within a couple of days.  there are only13 RV spaces here, and at least half of them are open right now.  most of the resort is made of little cabins and casitas.

here comes the sun

It's really feeling like a honeymoon.  altho this one goes for more than a week or two.  neither of us are working.  we have no pressing appointments.  we wake up whenever we do everyday, look over at each other and laugh a bunch before finally getting out of bed, open the shade to our living room window, and let the sunshine just POUR heat into our home as I make coffee.  Then we sit on our couch by the window, bask the sunlight, and decide where we want to hike to that day.  That's pretty much all we do now.  We hike.  that's it!  sometimes we bike, we've been snowboarding once, played a little frisbee golf, and re-connected with some of Joel's old friends.  but mostly we hike.  I heard there's over 300 trails to hit.  we've been on about 15 of them, and every single one has filled me with so many smiles, and awe.  none of them are lame!  ALL of them-- blowing my mind.  we've been up HIGH on plateaus and down low through a few canyons.  every where we go i'm thrilled all over again.
285 left.  we love it here and we are happy.

that being said, i'm getting photos organized for my next post.  and heading out the door again right now!

💚TALLY HO💜