Winter Vacation in Sedona, Arizona

Historically I have used the winter holidays as an excuse to head out to a warmer place. Working in a corporate setting meant that I usually had the time off from work from Christmas to New Years off since the companies I worked for would shut down for the holidays. Sitting at home for a week in the middle of winter was out of the question. Many of the years I’d drive to someplace warm, a few times I’ve flown to warmer places. On a few occasions I even managed to trailer the motorcycle and do some riding in the warmer temperatures. Over the years the winter holidays became synonymous with winter vacation.

Well, no job means no winter vacation.

This week marks 6 months of unemployment for me. Being unemployed and having all this time off is hard for me. When I was employed my biggest complaint was that I never had enough vacation time. I have always worked for companies that only allowed two weeks of vacation per year. That may be enough for the regular person but not me, I like to travel a lot.

So now I have all this time off but not enough money to actually go anywhere. And the longer I stay unemployed the less money I’m willing to part with.

But then two days ago an opportunity presented itself. A week in Sedona, Arizona and free lodging! All we had to do is get there. And we had a full kitchen to use since we’d be staying with Mike’s parents at their time share. Now the trick was to justify another trip so soon. We just did a Colorado- Louisiana - Illinois trip in November. Even though we spend 11 days on the road over Thanksgiving visiting family, most of the time was spent driving. We only managed to spend a few hours with Mike’s parents. So this was an excuse to go, right?

Here is the logic to justify a trip when one really has no money to spend. We do grocery shopping here and eat at home, no wasting money on eating out for us. So we could do grocery shopping in Sedona. Not eating out at restaurants means that food would cost us the same as if we stayed home.

OK, we would have to get there and that costs money. But taking my car vs. Mike's SUV would save us on gas and gas is still cheap. Although taking my car meant we couldn’t trailer the bikes. But who cares, there were other things that we wanted to do that didn't require motorcycles.

It was a no brainier, so we got packed and tomorrow we’re heading out to Arizona :)



The route: I-25 to I-40 to 89A - Fort Collins to Sedona - 858 miles