23 before 24: Arizona

One of my 23 before 24 goals is to travel more often, and I have been taking every chance I get, as long as it fits within my budget. I was lucky enough and very thankful to tag along with Brandon to Arizona this past week. His family put together a nice trip to celebrate his graduation in the spring.

In an effort to keep this post short and sweet, I'm going to break our trip up into 3 posts with 3 different sets of pictures (you know the pictures are my favorite part). : D

Arizona: Part 1

Our travels were warm, beautiful, and quite eventful. However, while we were hoping for a smooth vacation, we had a couple of bumps in the road. We started out by missing our flight on Sunday and spent the WHOLE day (7:00 am - 5:50 pm) at the Columbus Airport waiting on the second flight heading to Phoenix. I spent the morning crying in Max & Erma's, because I was tired from lack of sleep the night before and because we both felt pretty stupid. After a short nap on the couches I was good to go, and honestly, I felt it was nice spending the day next to Brandon. I got some work done, and he got caught up on House of Cards (we can't wait for the 3rd season), we ate Coldstone and drank a few beers at the brewery. In that situation, you have to find the positives or else we would have spent 1/5 of our vacation upset.

One of my favorite days of the trip was the day we hiked Camelback Mountain. The view was gorgeous, but the hike was intense. I thought I was an avid hiker, until we started trudging up the mountain. Maybe it was because I had a long winter off, or maybe it was just because this was nothing like I was used too, but this hike seriously kicked my butt. It also didn't help that I was carrying a backpack, and had a heavy camera around my neck. However, I think I got some decent shots despite my exhaustion.

Did you see the part where you literally have to rock climb!? Luckily there was a pole to grab on to, but my hands were sweating and I thought I was going to slip and fall to my death. LOL Brandon and I have plans to go back and do it again someday. We hope to at least be in great physical shape so we can kick the hikes butt and not vice versa.