My favorite little guy <3

Grand Canyon National Park!

One of the many highlights of my Arizona trip was our three night stay in the Grand Canyon National Park.

We also hiked down into the Canyon! We had a limited amount of time so we were allowed one hour to hike as far as we could at our own pace and then come back up. I hiked by myself so I could enjoy my surroundings at my own pace.

We had many switchbacks to hike on.

At my bottom-most point

 

We needed ice cleats for some parts of the trail

 We stopped at a few of the lookout points during our drive back to the National Park.

We also learned from some Park Rangers while we were staying in the park. We had a surprise guest during our presentations about different areas of the park and the park community. The surprise guest was the Superintendent of the Grand Canyon National Park!

Jerome, AZ

Jerome is a great little artist town that used to be a mining town. I will probably write more about the sustainability of Jerome on my sustainability blog at a later time.

We visited the Jerome County Historic Museum

Looking down a mine shaft that goes almost 2000 feet into the earth

 

Driving toward Sedona!

The view from our hotel room in Sedona. So amazing!

Camelback Mountain

Today was our first full day in Arizona! We hiked the "extreme" trail on the famous Camelback Mountain. It was a very challenging yet rewarding hike. Very much worth it for the view!

Made it to the top!

Trip to Arizona!

Tomorrow I am leaving to study Sustainable Public Policy in Arizona for my J Term course! For more information about my trip, see the post on my sustainability blog. I plan to take lots of wonderful photos of the landscape. So be on the look out!

SU Basketball

Mr. Spurchise let Tim and me sit in his season ticket seats at an SU Basketball game. This was my first time at the Carrier Dome. I can't wait to go to a game during the SU semester so student fans and the band will be there too! What a fun way to start off our New Year's Eve celebrations.

What great seats!

Look how close we were!

Syracuse won

Lights on the Lake

Lights on the Lake has been hosted in Onondaga Park by Wegman's for 23 years. For two miles, different themes are created with amazing lights. This event is open from November to January. If you like holiday lights, you will love Lights on the Lake. Tim treated me to this wonderful experience this past Sunday night. It was wonderful. I didn't t take photos of everything because I wanted to take it all in, so I mostly took photos of the different archways that began each theme of lights.

One of the archways in the beginning before you really enter into 

Lights on the Lake.

Waving Santa in a chimney

Another archway

Entrance to the "Under the Sea" section

A "school" of fish 

Santa's workshop was full of elves making gifts, Santa and Mrs. Claus,
reindeer, etc.

Gingerbread man jumping over the road. Because of the speed of the
moving lights, my camera caught two segments of the movement.

Entrance to the "Land of Oz"

Oz and his hot air balloon

A prancing reindeer

The frog hops over the road and turns into a prince!

What a great mountain scene int he form of an archway! 

The train says to be positive

Amazing castle arch