Day 5: Sedona, AZ

Today was by far one of my favorite days thus far on my trip. Unfortunately, Lea and I got food poisoning from Del Taco the night before and I got over it pretty quickly, but she got a hotel room to take care of herself and get some rest. So Stephen and I set out for a vortex/meditation center to meditate and hike with his German Shepard, Mongol. I had my swim suit on underneath my outfit because we were also planning on going to natural rock formation slipping slides. So I wore a skirt and loose tee shirt, so today was my first time hiking in a skirt. Which is surprisingly liberating. We ended up hiking for 3 hours and I'm not really sure how many miles because a lot of the hike didn't have designated paths, you just traverse and climb up boulders in random spots and sort of make your own trails. The view from where we hiked was so breath taking and met a lot of cool people on the trail. Afterwards we ended up going to the slides, but didn't want to pay the $30 and wait in the insanely long line to get in so we parked on the side of the road and went blazing trails in the woods and snuck in. It was a really rewarding feeling to make it and I had such a blast going down stream. When we were leaving and heading back to his truck I found a ton of wild sage growing on the trail and I made my own sage bundles. It made me feel like a little white witch and earthy princess.

Now I'm currently sitting in a hotel room, full of pizza, surrounded by good people, and a good puppy. I wouldn't change a single thing about my life currently. I can't even express how centered and fufilled I have been today.

Edit:

Stephen left us this morning with Mongo to go their separate ways and it's really quite a sad feeling, I knew that Lea and I would meet people along our journey, but the saddest part about detaching is knowing that you will never see them again in the same light. You will never be as carefree with them as you were while traveling. Even if you see these people again in the future it will always be a little bit different.