Sedona

Over the course of many trips I have fallen in love with the idea of the “trip within a trip”. A day trip plunked down in the middle of the longer voyage is something that almost always brings me awe and rejuvenation. Going back to the first time my wife and I traveled to Europe, an expedition to Bruges in the middle of a two city trip to Amsterdam and Belgium is something that got this concept planted firmly in most of the plans I make to this day.

So, a spring training trip to Arizona for a week needed a day trip in the middle of it and after looking at some maps and talking to some friends, I landed on getting out of the Phoenix area for some hiking, exploring and even some wine tasting (yes!) in the general vicinity of Sedona. As I was battling morning rush hour traffic through what seemed like an endless Phoenix urban landscape I briefly doubted the intelligence of my plans. But soon enough, the the number of traffic lanes got down to a reasonable number and the landscape opened up to wider vistas and I felt myself easing into the day.

My first stop was just outside of Oak Creek. I had a spectacularly beautiful day for a morning hike…. the kind of day that gives you shivers of excitement. If I was hoping to feel awe, I had definitely found the place and day for that.

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If absence makes the heart grow fonder, there was no way I wasn’t going to be head over heels for finally making it to Spring Training in Arizona. Thanks to the pandemic, my baseball nerd dreams of lounging in the Arizona sun watching baseball got shelved in 2020 and it took until last week to finally make that trip. It was a trip that, truthfully, I’ve wanted to take for a much longer time.

The hook for the trip was spring training baseball – small stadiums, lazy afternoons and getting a close up view of the game I love so much. This year, as scheduling luck would have it, the World Baseball Classic was happening with a round of games in downtown Phoenix at the Diamondbacks stadium. I got the schedules for all of those games, a map, and got to work planning out the kind of visit my baseball loving heart has always dreamed of.