Sedona/Grand Canyon/Flagstaff

Haven't had time to post in a while so I'm condensing several days into a single post.
From Flagstaff I headed down highway 89A to Sedona. The drive was super switchbacky and scenic, traveling through forests and mountains. The red rocks pushing up through the trees were beautiful. I walked around Sedona (a huge tourist trap) for a while and then hit up Oak Creek Brewery to wait for my friend Leah whose flights were all getting delayed. It turned out that she wouldn't be able to make it to Flagstaff that night on a plane so she rented a car in Phoenix and drove to meet up with me. The rental agent felt so bad about how she had been treated by US Airways that she got upgraded to a Mustang convertible for free. Once she was in Flagstaff, I dropped my bike at my friend Peter's apartment and we cruised in style towards the Grand Canyon.
We stayed in Sally's (the sweetest woman ever) spare room that we found on airbnb.com. It's about 20 minutes from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, but since we got in so late we didn't have time to do the Grand Canyon that night. Sally informed us that there was a meteor shower happening so we went into the back yard and laid out under the stars to watch the show.
It was incredible how many stars we could see, especially given that I'm from Seattle and can only see the really bright stars...if it's not cloudy. We could see stars all the way across the sky and all the way around the horizon. We could see the Milky Way and used Google Sky to identify Jupiter and many constellations. We saw lots of shooting stars, and even a few that left trails in the sky as they burned up.
The next morning Leah and I headed for the Grand Canyon armed with a picnic that Sally packed for us. We walked the rim trail and then shuttled over to Hermit's Rest. From there we hiked down into the canyon for a while. One of the warning signs said that last year 400 groups had to call for help to get out of the canyon, and one of the main reasons was "lack of preparation and planning". Since we were starting the hike late and didn't want to get rescued by helicopter (an expensive proposition), we didn't hike all the way down. As we walked/shuttled around the canyon, we were brought in and out of view of the canyon. Over the two days we spent at the canyon, it never became any less impressive. It's breathtaking, and hard to explain just how impressive it is. We grabbed some pizza and beer and headed back to Sally's to turn in early. We were tired since we stayed up super late watching the meteor shower and hiked all day.
The next morning we headed back to the canyon with another picnic breakfast/lunch and headed east from the visitor center instead of west like we did the previous day. I'm not sure if it was the direction we headed or the fact that it was a Sunday, but the overlooks were much less crowded, which was nice.
After the canyon, we headed down to Flagstaff for the night. We stayed at another place found on airbnb.com, which was listed as an art gallery. We assumed that we'd be above the art gallery, or in an attached room, but we were actually in the art gallery, surrounded by installations. The walls were covered in art for sale. It was not what we expected, but was pretty awesome anyway.
Sedona Photos
Grand Canyon Photos
Shameless plugs for the places we stayed (the places and hosts were awesome)!
Grand Canyon
Flagstaff