Heads Carolina, Tails Arizona

Okay, I admit it- the song really goes, "Heads Carolina, Tails California"... but sorry I prefer Arizona, so I changed it :)

Eric and I were a little concerned about leaving Scottsdale this morning. Sure, we loved Sedona last year, but time had made us forgetful... not to mention all the people (in Phoenix) who said, "Oh Sedona!? Fantastic, you'll get to see snow up there!" Do we SEEM like people who need to see snow? No thanks.

Plus I had to be dragged away from the self serve frozen yogurt. I discovered the peanut butter flavor last night and all I can say is... goodbye teaching, hello eating frozen yogurt every day for the rest of my life. Oh and I should mention I don't even really like peanut butter ice cream generally- as any of my sophomore year of college roommates can attest to, haha. I seriously considered frozen yogurt for breakfast, but sadly the "winter" (ha!) hours meant they didn't open until 12. Wah.

So we reluctantly headed up towards Sedona, the former love of both of our lives. Things got scenic immediately as they tend to do in Arizona...

Things started to look up as I demanded a Subway in the middle of the dessert and what appeared a few miles later but a Subway in the middle of the dessert. We decided to head to Jerome on the way to Sedona. We had heard good things about it and didn't get a chance to visit last year. I pictured it as an old west cowboy town... which I suppose it sort of was, but what I didn't understand is that it's a town built into the side of the mountain- about 6,000 miles above sea level!

Not going to lie, 6,000 miles does not feel awesome. Luckily, we found a cure for this... wine! (Not that we had an scientific basis for this, but what does wine not cure really?). Jerome is well known for having many wineries, more than we could possibly visit in one day, but we did visit 2 sister wineries: Bitter Creek Winery and Jerome Winery.

Bitter Creek was a place with a ton of personality. All the wine labels were tarot cards... ah the memories of middle school sleepovers. Anyone else?

In truth, the real personality was the guy doing the tasting. He was hilarious. First of all, he was VERY serious about IDing those doing the tasting. He inspected our IDs and even asked us questions about them. The best was when he tried to pronounce my middle name, which on my license is my mom's first name + my maiden name together, because I didn't want to get rid of either one... clearly it's not a very logical name now, and he was like, um- how do you pronounce this? I think it was all a big joke though because I'm pretty sure this guy did not have a care in the world. We only tried 4 wines there and we were there for probably an hour because he just relaxed, took his time and chatted with everyone about his brother in law and mother in law who own the winery.

This whole situation became a lot more funny when we headed up to Jerome Winery (about a 2 minute walk away) and found none other than his wife doing the tasting there. She was the complete opposite of him- didn't care at all about our IDs, but poured the wine so fast I was barely done drinking the first sip when she was asking me what I wanted next. It was actually kind of refreshing after spending half the afternoon at the other one, but the contrast was really just hilarious. I personally preferred the wines at the first stop better, but Eric liked the sparkling wines at Jerome Winery, so there is something for everyone at both I suppose :)

I'd say I've come along way since my first wine tasting experience in Australia...

Just joking- that was whiskey. That was my first wine tour ever though :)

Anyway, back to present-time Arizona. After our wine tasting fun, we shopped around the stores a bit...

Then we really headed for Sedona. All I need was one glance of this...

... and I was declaring my love for Sedona all over again. Seriously, how is it that I didn't know about the existence of this place until last year?! It's so so beautiful. I can't wait to explore it more tomorrow!

Oh and PS. As you can tell from the picture- there is really no snow to be found. They got a lot this weekend, but it's already melted away with the warm daytime sun. It's almost enough to make me forget frozen yogurt completely. Almost.

Have you ever met husband and wife pairs that are complete opposites of one another? Do you think people become more alike as they are together longer or more different to balance each other out?