I have been wanting to go Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon for quite some time now and I finally had the opportunity to this winter break after my final fall quarter at UCSD had ended. I was originally going to go on a road trip with my brother all the way from northern California but we ended up deciding that that would be too much to drive for him(as I don’t have my license yet 😔). Thus, we ended up booking a plane ticket to Phoenix and planned on taking a few days to drive over to the Canyon.

Our flight over was rather uneventful (thankfully) and we landed without any issues. I was wholly unprepared, however, for how big the Phoenix Harbor airport would be. We had to walk for what felt like around twenty minutes just to get to the sky train that would take us to the rental cars. Once in the car we decided to go to a sushi place for a quick bite to eat before my brother would go to some famous barbershop to get his haircut. We ended up at what seemed to be a rather high-end yet casual sushi bar called Harumi Sushi Bar. Their decor was distinct, I remembered being charmed by the pottery they had lined up at the entrance. The food wasn’t anything too mind-blowing but it did the job of filling us up before our dinner reservation later that night.

After eating, we realized that the Phoenix Art Museum was closed so we just walked around places near the barbershop before his appointment. The barbershop itself was quaint with a lot of collected antiques. It felt more like a museum than just a place to get your haircut but it was quite fun to look around. I don’t have much else to say about the barbershop because I wasn’t the one getting my haircut. For that you should probably defer to my brother’s Yelp page here.

The next day we drove on to Sedona. At first there wasn’t a lot to see on the highway it seemed to just be vast desert that stretched out into nothingness. The only interesting thing to note was that instead of the trees that I was so used to seeing on the side of highways it was huge cacti dotting the yellowing hills. It felt distinctly Arizonian(is that a word?).

However, getting closer to Sedona the yellow hills were exchanged for beautiful red rocks that towered over us. It was my first time seeing geological formations like this and it took my breath away momentarily.

After finally arriving in Sedona and having lunch at a wonderful little Italian restaurant we stopped by the Arts village. It definitely lives up to its name. I ended up spending quite some time at a book and records store, and I decided to buy Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which is a memoir of his time in Paris.

We hit the road again the next morning, making a stop at an antique store in Flagstaff. We got to the Grand Canyon at around 5PM, catching the Canyon right at sunset. Taking the bus we headed to the trailhead, and began hiking down.

We hiked downwards for about a mile and came across the aptly titled Ooh-Ahh point where we were able to see a sweeping view of the Canyon. Then, began the arduous hike back up. It was quite painful at it was just a mile of uphill climbing with virtually no breaks in between. However, we made it back and the bus picked us right up.

It was dark when we were walking back to the car and there were so many stars visible. I had to stop to take a snapshot with my phone.

With that, our day at the Grand Canyon was over. It was quite beauitful and I would love to go back someday to experience it some more. But now, we had to make our way back to Phoenix for a live Suns game! My brother had impulsively bought some tickets that were actually quite close to the courtside and I was able to see all the action.

I wasn’t really a Suns fan before coming to the game but the atmosphere was intense and there was basically non-stop action happening at all times. Although I didn’t come out a Suns fan, I did ironically enough come out a fan of Tyrese Haliburton, who plays for the Indiana Pacers.

After an exciting game to conclude the night we retired to a hotel and got ready for the next day. I was finally able to visit the Phoenix Art Museum and they had a pretty huge collection! Here is just a small snippet:

And with that, the Phoenix trip is over! Lot of fun stuff and will definitely be back to go to Sedona and hike the many trails there. :-)