So I drive downtown, park outside the TV studio, overhear some other people in the waiting area talking about flash mobs, and ask them if they’re here to be an elf too. Sure enough, yep!

So donning our provided wardrobe of neon tights and clothing, we hang out in the dressing area and goof around, eventually make our way backstage (and it’s amazing how much more stuff goes on behind the scenes and during commercial breaks compared to the little box of view you see on the TV screen), and when they call us out from behind the set, we get a bit of time to be goofy on TV.

Life is funny sometimes…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIf-as1rbJo

Skip to about 2:20 or so to skip right to when we enter. I’m the one wearing the green shirt (in the studio, not the one in the outdoor shots wearing green at the beginning of the video).

Everyone else there was a professional dancer or even teacher. Me, not so much… which makes the “What in the world am I doing!?” feeling extra scary and fun!

By the way, did you know that things like leg hair and underwear shows right through tights? Yeah, neither did I… Thank goodness leg hair doesn’t show up on TV and we had shorts and long shirts to cover the rest. Oh the things you never see on television…

(Link to the original site.)

Wanting to stay off the main highways, the trip was about 12 hours there and about 9 hours back. It’s amazing what a good drive does for me. It feels soooooo good… Here’s a video I put together of some of the highlights, as shot from one of the dashcams on my windshield.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Ed6jAjEbQ

“So Ariel, how was your day?”

“Oh you know, spent the morning looking at physical and non-physical beings sitting side-by-side, sold a car or two, drove home and had a conversation with the non-physical beings I’d seen earlier… It was cool.”

Yeah, so perhaps this blog is headed in a new direction as Ariel’s adventures head in a new direction.

This morning my general manager texts me and asks me to bring in my laptop for the morning sales meeting. I set up up and after we all watch a youtube clip on it in the morning, I go back to sit by my laptop, sitting across from everyone else in the room. As the meeting goes on, I can’t help notice that I’m seeing people’s auras today. (It’s definitely easier when they’re up against a white wall.)

While looking across the line of people, I notice that in between two of the people, I see another non-physical energetic being. It’s about the same size as a physical person, a little smaller, and basically like a big aura. The same lightless light, the same colorless glow, but an entire body of light rather than light around a physical body. A little pointy at the top of the head too, almost like a candle. I look at it, look away, look at it, look away. It’s still there. It’s right there in between two of my fellow salesmen.

Are my eyes playing tricks on me? I can definitely see it better with my peripheral vision, and as clear as day, there it is. A few minutes later it was gone. Just empty wall to look at.

Soon after, I notice yet another being actually seated in one of the chairs, apparently sitting in on our meeting. It was there for a few minutes until it too vanished.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

That was cool…

The day goes on, I have a good day at work, and on the drive back home, my mind asks curiously, “Who are you guys?”

Suddenly I feel an energy present, a very distinct energy, and it starts to flow in through my spine at the base of my neck.

Words start to flow. Not words that my mind are coming up with. Just words that start to flow through and Ariel’s mouth translate in the moment without thinking.

“I am you. I am an aspect of your own consciousness, appearing as another being to bring you back to yourself. At this stage of your journey, it would be better for you to recognize us as you, rather than as individual entities other than you. I am you.”

This energy I feel I instinctively recognize. I have channeled before briefly several times, and the energy I connect to has always identified itself as the I that I am. Not an alien, not a deceased person, not source energy. It identifies itself as I Am.

I suppose you could call it a more all-knowing aspect of myself. My higher self, if you will. I recognize the energy very clearly. It’s depth, it’s dimensionless solidity, its presence, its power, its openness, its strength. It’s what I am… and apparently it’s really wise.

It feels good. I like feeling this and having this pour through this body as what I Am.

Somehow, it feels right. Like this is how I’m supposed to live when what I really am is activated and functioning.

For a little while now, I’ve been having periodic contact with aliens. It’s something I’ve really hesitated to speak about because, (after spending a little time earlier today to figure out what my hesitation/fear was), I’ve been afraid of people thinking I’ve gone off into the looney bin. That I’m some wiley nutcase. I think it’s part of the reason that I’ve now got a traditional 9-5(ish) job. Just to make myself feel more normal. I’ve never done drugs and yet I experience things normally that others sometimes do when they’re on drugs. Seeing energy, seeing the physical world radiate light, seeing solid objects vibrating and undulating as if they’re liquid waves. It’s just the way I see the world and while to me it’s totally normal, there’s an aspect of my own mind that judges this as weird and abnormal (in a bad way), and so I’ve been afraid of others judging me in this way too. hm, projection. Seeing this makes me more at peace with the subject now, and I feel like it’s time to share about this aspect of my life. My direct contact with extraterrestrials. I have no idea how this will be received on your end, but I do enjoy this and feel like sharing.

So with that said, let’s begin!

My Progression and Development on this topic

Astronomy was my very first passion and I’ve been into space for as long as I can remember. When I picked up Conversations with God and devoured that book series, it was a big part of when I first got into spirituality. In these books, when God talks about aliens, he refers to them as highly evolved beings, or HEB’s.

One of my favorite sources of information these days is Bashar, an alien who speaks through a guy named Darryl Anka. Darryl is a channeler who goes into a meditative state, connects energetically to Bashar, and then Bashar is able to listen and speak with us “through” Darryl.

Here’s a clip of where Bashar explains who he is, as well as a little bit about his civilization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lQJqESkJcY

He is who I’ve gotten much of my knowledge about aliens and different extraterrestrial civilizations from, but I’d rather dedicate this space to my own experiences. You can google around and find plenty of material from Bashar. YouTube has countless hours of it.

Now I don’t remember every experience I’ve had. Not because I’ve had so many, but because my memory just isn’t very good anymore. There are a few highlights, however.

First Direct Contact with the Greys

When you think of the classic alien that abducts humans, the ones that crashed near Roswell, NM, that would be the greys. Again, you can google ‘em.

Back when Anna and I were together, we were in my room together when evening we both simultaneously felt this really weird energy in the room. I don’t remember if it woke us up or if were we just up late talking. It’s been a little while since this experience, but I remember there being multiple greys in the area. One was standing just outside my bedroom door. Another one was back behind me, even though behind me was the wall. It was as if there was no wall behind me. There were probably about 3 or 4 total.

I never saw them with my eyes and neither did Anna. We just undeniably felt their presence, and honestly it didn’t feel good. Because it felt so creepy, we both tried different things to get rid of the energy. Asking them to leave, filling the room with white light, praying to Jesus for assistance, saying for only beings of love and light to remain, letting go, etc… None of the usual “tricks” were working. It was as if they were doing what they wanted, not what we wanted, and it was in a very uncomfortable way.

They never actually “did” anything to us, that we can consciously recall anyways, but we did get to experience being with them and having an intuitive/telepathic awareness of their presence.

Eventually, after maybe a few minutes or so, they did finally leave. Although the experience certainly wasn’t pleasant, it did leave us with an undeniable certainty, a clear KNOWING, that aliens do exist. It was the next step beyond just reading about them, hearing stories, etc.

Meditating with Multiple Extraterrestrials Simultaneously

Pretty often when I meditated, on their own my eyes would cross and look up to my third eye. They would cross hard and almost lock in that position. The deeper I would go, the harder they would cross. It was actually pretty painful. Come to think of it, this is probably one of the reasons why I stopped meditating for a while.

Now when I was little, one thing I always found amusing was that my dad could wiggle his ears. I can twitch my nose, cross my eyes, roll my tongue, and raise an eyebrow, but I was never able to wiggle my ears.

A little while ago, it seems like I’ve finally “found” the muscles that allow me to wiggle my ears and have gained access to them. However, it’s not something I really ever do, unless I’m being silly.

Lately when I’ve been meditating now and I let go and relax, my ears begin to wiggle. Again, it’s something I virtually never do in normal life, much less when I meditate.

It’s like I can tell when I start deepening down, because my ears begin to wiggle… and it’s definitely not something that I’m doing. It’s being done through me.

It reminds me of a clip I heard from Abraham about when Esther Hicks was beginning to channel Abraham and how Abraham started writing letters with Esther’s nose before she began channeling vocally. (Like how Darryl channels Bashar.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1vKwsmP-D8

Now I’ve never really been into crystals, though I have dabbled in them before to get a taste. A little while ago, though admittedly my mind protested a bit, I actually ordered a special crystal that’s geared towards extraterrestrial contact.

and it just arrived in the mail.

When holding the crystal, I can definitely feel an energy, similar to how I can with other crystals. With this one, I definitely feel a unique energy. New. Different. Not good or bad, but definitely an energy that pours into my body that I’ve never felt before. A new energy.

Part of the meditation involves holding the crystal, feeling your heart beat, and feeling your heart beat connecting with the heart beats of other beings… and I actually did. I have no idea how to describe it because it’s not an earthly reality, but I felt myself simultaneously meditating with several different aliens. Humanoids, if you will. They’re not human, but very close to human looking.

They’re human-like aliens also doing the very same meditation in parallel realities at the same “time.” Literally right here, as real as if they were sitting right next to me, except closer than that because we were sitting in the exact same herenow space. Overlapping because we were in the same “location”, but in different parallel realities. Similar to how different TV channels could all simultaneously exist on the same screen location and, if you wanted to, you could display multiple TV channels simultaneously on the same screen and have them all be playing at the same time.

All our hearts literally beating at the same time, in sync. Really trippy. One heartbeat beating in several bodies.

Then I felt my left cheek/eye start to twitch. Then the whole left side of my face, the muscles would contract and squeeze, with my lip lifting up almost like elvis.

Then my right side of my face.

It’s like I would sit here watching my face being moved, totally disidentified with it. Not controlling it, trying to make it happen or trying to stop it. Just watching. My face would squeeze more and more, then tighter and tighter. In progressive stages.

To the point where it would squeeze supertight right to the threshold of pain then it completely released and my face relaxed.

With the release, a tear of relief flowed down one cheek, then the other…

and a stillness, connection, being both literally at one with all of this and yet still retaining the sense of individual sitting here watching this.

I have no idea what’s going on of course, but just rolling with this and watching it unfold.

It’s pretty cool…

I’ve done the meditation a second time and a third and each time, my face starts to react similarly with the squeezing I’m not doing, the eventual releasing, and the release of tears.

One thing that I find particularly interesting about my experience of making contact with aliens is that they don’t seem to be in “this” physical earthly reality, per se. It’s like my awareness expands to include other simultaneously existing dimensions/realities, and their energy can “leak” into our reality as well.

The best way that I can explain being with these beings, by analogy, is like if you had only been using 4 of your senses, and then suddenly you developed the capacity to hear. An entire new dimension of reality would open up. Seeing and hearing and feeling could all simultaneously exist in the same space, but they wouldn’t conflict with each other. If anything, they add to each other and you then experience MORE of what is already going on. With the awareness of them, they add to the richness of all that is right here and now.

They add to All That Is, right Here and Now.

To All That Is Right, Here and Now.

Interesting stuff…

Ron Paul speaking before thousands of Seattleites

I’ve never been into politics. It’s always seemed to be a whole bunch of BS and it’s just never interested me all that much. However, Ron Paul is the first politician who’s ever gotten me excited because what he says just makes sense. One morning recently on one of my days off work, I found out he was going to be speaking here in Seattle later this evening. Since I’d never been to a political rally, I figured I’d go and have that experience to see what it’s like.

This rally was being held near the airport and when I arrived at the hotel where he’d be speaking, I got there an hour early and there were already hundreds of people in line.

People were walking by handing out road signs you could plant, stickers, buttons, and so on. In the mood to “play the part” of being into these sorts of things, I grabbed a button and a few stickers and put them on.

Adorning myself with Ron Paul paraphernalia

While waiting in line, the people around me and I naturally struck up a conversation and it revolved around, you guessed it, Ron Paul.

The guy in front of me mentioned he was a caucus leader or something. “What’s that,” I asked. and he began to share with me all about how this whole election thing worked. It was all very foreign. “So people don’t actually vote for the candidates they want?” “Nope.” Apparently it all starts with this thing called a caucus. Each county in the state is made up of multiple districts. A caucus is a meeting of people into politics. They vote for people called delgates who would go to the next level of voting and would vote for a certain candidate they want to represent. Then there’s higher and higher levels of elections. Caucus. Delegates. Districts… I had no idea these things even existed. It all sounded like a foreign language to me.

Ron Paul pamphlets and stickers

In any event, once we got into the room, I managed to actually get a seat, and in the center section no less!

The room continued to fill until the whole place was packed, with standing room only. (It didn’t really matter much because people wound up standing the whole time anyways… heh)

The press set up to record the event from the back

Before Ron Paul came out, some other dude came up to start talking about something to start the event.

The guy who introduced the guy who introduced the guy who introduced Ron Paul

Then another guy came up. I believe he was a chief justice.

A chief justice

Then finally the last introductory guy came up on stage. I can’t remember anything these guys talked about, but I’m sure they were important people…

I think this guy is a Senator

Finally when Ron Paul entered the stage, everyone went ballistic.

People recording the cheering as the room explodes for Ron Paul

Throw your iPhones in the air like you just don’t care!

One thing that I liked about being in the back was that I could get the people holding their phones/cameras in the air taking pictures as Ron Paul talked.

This guy is really passionate and energetic

Since I had my SLR with me, I think I spent more time focusing on the pictures than on what was being said.

The light levels were pretty low there and the only lens I have now, the 18-55 IS, only opens to f/5.6 at 55mm. What this meant is I was shooting at ISO 1600, 1/15s or so. And this was done by holding the camera over my head, hail mary style. (Thank goodness for Live View. You are a life saver… You too, IS!) Because of the shutter speeds, shooting over my head basically involved steadying the camera as much as possible, waiting for a still-ish moment, and machine gunning off a few shots, hoping for some sharp frames.

People cheer after he shares his viewpoint on one of the many subjects he addressed

I’ve gotta be honest. What this guy has to say just makes a lot of sense. No B.S. No nonsense. Especially when he addressed issues like economics, war, the fed, business, the role of government, etc.

An Obama sign being held up in the crowd

As Ron Paul continued to speak, I started to listen more because like most everyone else, I had already gotten the main shots I’d wanted.

Speaking to the crowd

When he finished speaking, everyone cheered like mad.

Even though I’m not really into these things, the energy was very electric and exciting. Almost like being at a concert.

The crowd cheers as Ron Paul finishes and leaves the stage

After he finished his talk and exited stage right, a mob of people poured forward, hoping to get autographs and whatnot. I tried getting close too to see if I could get a shot, but the closest thing I could get was, I think, a part of the top of his head. lol… He stayed a couple minutes more before heading out.

After heading out, paying for parking, and heading out to my car, the mob of people turned into a traffic jam of taking a good 30-45 min just to exit the hotel parking lot and get out the pay gates.

It was a cool event. Writing about this now, I feel like I’m coming off bored about it. and perhaps I am. I mean, it was definitely an exciting atmosphere at the time, but now that it’s all over and done, it feels like well… whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmy6g4ZgUuo

Growing Dinosaurs in Fremont

It’s been a while since I’ve really taken the time to invest some energy in shooting and publishing on this photoblog, and yet telling stories with photos is something I really enjoy. Just because it’s fun, when I went to go get a massage during my days off work, I decided to take a stroll around the funky town that is Fremont and spend the rest of the day just enjoying the area.

After parking my car, I started mozying on down the street and found the big Fremont Rocket standing tall in the sun.

Fremont Rocket

I had a little time so I hopped inside PCC to grab a bite to eat and got a free organic soup (thank you Foursquare!), mango kombucha, and an organic banana.

After getting my nom on, I headed out and found a little area they’d set aside along the sidewalk to grow food.

Using urban spaces to farm food outside of PCC

Right next door, there’s this sandwich place Matt really likes called Baguette Box.

Baguette Box

I think it’s one of the many places here that’s been featured on Food Network.

If you look at the architecture here, it looks pretty unique, doesn’t it? Let’s zoom out and step back across the street to get a better view!

Don't you just love the architecture here?

This is part of the central area of Fremont, so I decided to go off the beaten path a bit and find some little details to discover.

Google, Adobe, and Getty are here!

Right around the corner I found a sign letting me know that Google, Adobe, and Getty Images were here too!

A Google building in Fremont

and sure enough, here’s a relatively nondescript Google building…

With the water just back behind this area, that’s naturally where I headed.

As you approach the water, there’s some stairs that head down to the bike/walking trail that runs alongside the water.

These steps remind me of the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces in Yellowstone

The stairs here are kinda funky and immediately reminded me of the Mammoth Hot Springs terraces in Yellowstone National Park…

Mammoth Hot Springs terraces

Some regions of the terraces are colored as you can see. Others are totally white like the stairs.

Buck and his deer on the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces

I wonder if this is where they got the inspiration for the stairs!

Heading down towards the water, here’s the view looking into Lake Union:

Fremont Cut of the Lake Washington Ship Canal

Walking along the waterside, it looks like I wasn’t the only one enjoying the winter sun!

Taking a break to catch some sun by the water...

Continuing right along, if you keep going you’ll run into the Fremont Dinosaurs!

Growing Dinosaurs in Fremont

The story behind these guys is pretty funny. Guess how much the dude who bought these dinosaurs paid for them? If you happened to just watch the Price is Right and you guessed $1, you’d be correct! No seriously. lol…

Apparently the Pacific Science Center was trying to get rid of them so the Fremontians (or whatever they’re called… Freemontonians?) brought all 5 tons of the dinosaurs on over, rewelded the wire frames, and started regrowing the 7,000 ivy plants it needs to fill the metal skeleton.

Around the corner from the dinosaurs, follow your nose and it’ll lead you to the Theo Chocolate Factory!

(Something odd I discovered about this place… it smells like chocolate from the back, but from not the front. I’m guessing the back is where the aroma-filled exhaust, for lack of a better word, from the chocolate factory is released? or maybe they’re just taking a page out of Abercrombie’s book?)

It smells like chocolate behind Theo's!

At the chocolate factory here, they offer tours (that I have yet to go on) of the factory!

Theo's entrance

One of the great things that may keep you coming back here time and time again is that they offer free samples of chocolate!

Help yourself to different unique flavors! Here's Fig Fennel & Almond, Hazelnut Crunch, Bread & Chocolate, and Chai Tea!

There’s tables and walls full of chocolate bars and samples of chocolate.

Colorful shelves of Theo's chocolate bars and free samples

After a bit of walking, it was time to head on over to Planet Earth Yoga.

Planet Earth Yoga

Upstairs is where my friends Matt and Julie offer their monthly satsangs.

When I went upstairs, I grabbed a cup of hot tea while filling out the paperwork beforehand. I like how they had “calming” tea available as well as “stress relief.” How perfect!

Enjoying some hot tea before my massage

It was my first massage with Audra and I like how she incorporated a few extra things into her massages like, hot stones, sounds, and aromatherapy. It was a nice touch.

After a nice relaxing experience, I headed down to the Seattle REI because, well, why not?

One great thing about this location is that there’s a waterfall out front as you climb the stairs to the main entrance. Getting a good shot of it with naked winter-time tree branches in the way makes it a little tough, but oh well.

Waterfall and trees in front of REI

Inside it was fun checking out Vibram’s new selection of Fivefinger’s, noticing REI’s current nonexisting inventory of male’s chacos, and how the inventory and store layout was changing for the season…

Entrance to REI

One thing here that’s nice for parents, and probably drives the employees at the adjacent restaurant crazy, is the playground for screaming kids. :p

REI's treehouse playground

After strolling through the store and not really doing anything important, I hopped back in the car and started driving around Seattle, watching the city as the sun set.

(Leaving the store, I even saw one of my customers who I had just sold a vehicle to!)

Traffic was pretty bad on the highways as I was leaving this afternoon, so I took an alternate route back and, while passing Green Lake, spontaneously pulled into the parking lot for no reason.

Taking a rest, I walked over to the edge of the lake and sat down to look across the water.

Looking across Green Lake post-sunset

I had been here once or twice before, but never really explored it. Since I had some time and felt like walking alongside lots of people instead of sitting in traffic, I got up and started hiking down the trail that loops around the lake.

It’s roughly 3 miles long and features several different lanes depending on if you’re on wheels (bike/rollerblades), on foot (walking or running), and even an inner track of gravel and packed dirt for those of us who prefer a more natural and forgiving terrain.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was that on the dirt part of the track, there’s little puddles of water that you can splash through. Since the light was low, you’d spot them either by the remaining traces of skylight bouncing off the puddles or, when the sky was totally black, by the car’s headlights in the distance reflecting off the puddles.

When jogging or running, it was especially enjoyable to splash through the puddles. Yet another reason why I love always wearing goretex shoes and outdoorsy clothing when walking around Seattle!

Paddling across Green Lake

After a nice run/walk around the lake, it was time to hop back in the car and head home.

…a great way to spend a day just noticing the world here and having fun new experiences.

and it was the most fun I’ve had in ages!

Me having a blast hiking in the snow

So it doesn’t snow much here in Seattle. This part of the country is weird. We get a lot of rain, but rarely do we get storms. There’s water in almost every direction, but it’s not humid here. We’re 3 hours away from Canada where everyone lives in igloos, but it rarely dips below freezing, even in the wintertime. If you go east over the mountains, then you get the traditional bitterly cold winters and all that jazz. But here? Nope. Moderate.

So you can imagine my excitement when we actually started to get some snow falling Saturday night/Sunday morning!

My car Sunday morning

Being at work was great and it looked really beautiful there.

Our dealership starts getting snow Sunday

While I was there, I had some time to experiment with how different cars perform in the snow. AWD, FWD, RWD, with traction control on and with traction control off, AWD lock, etc… and it’s amazing how much of an effect the different setups have!

Remnants of my testing different cars' snow traction

Traction control is definitely awesome. Turn traction control off on a 3.8L RWD Genesis Coupe, crank the wheel, and floor it… Yeah… that’s an experience! It was fun, and it left my heart pounding afterwards.

It’s really great having the opportunity to learn what it’s like, and how to maintain control in different situations. Starting slow, and gradually speeding up, never actually getting dangerously out of control.

I wasn’t the only one having fun in the snow.

Birdy footprints in the snow

My new iPhone 4S has a front-facing camera too, so I had a chance to play with that.

Ariel at the dealership

Monday we continued to get some snow. Not a lot, but some soft falling. The flakes were really big, some as big as a golf ball! Fluffy and soft. They didn’t have much taste… :p

Tuesday was pretty similar, but it started to pick up a bit.

Snow falling more heavily at the dealership on Tuesday

One thing that was supernice in the afternoon was that at one point, the clouds broke and the sun shined down. I was in the back of the lot then and with the sun behind me, this beautiful glow was cast down over the cars on the lot. I loved it!!

The clouds break to let the sun shine on the snow-covered cars

While we were at work Tuesday, we spent almost all day watching radar maps. They were talking about this huge storm that was coming in from the coast. Though weather is really hard to predict here in Seattle for some reason, they were predicting 5-8″ of snow. For us that’s HUGE!

Fortunately Wed and Thurs are my days off work, so I didn’t have to go to work. The past few days, my manager, who lives in the mountains in North Bend, had been leaving his Veloster with its low profile tires at work and had been driving a used Santa Fe AWD we had. Definitely a good decision on his part! Some of the other people also did the same thing going home Tuesday…

Now WEDNESDAY was the day we got SLAMMED!

I woke up repeatedly that night, excitedly peeking out the window at the constantly increasing snow, then going right back to sleep.

It was… yeah…

My car covered in snow

I normally leave to work around 8:10am or so and there’s usually a bunch of cars that are already gone.

Today I went out to the parking lot around 10:30am, and this is what I saw:

My car Wednesday morning after the big snowfall, along with most every other car

SNOW!!

Have you noticed how full the parking area is? In my area of the neighborhood, with the exception of literally just one car, EVERYONE WAS STILL HERE!!

No one was going to work today…

Curious how the roads were looking, I pulled up the traffic cameras to take a look.

Downtown? Yep. Snow.

Traffic Camera - Denny, Stewart, and Yale

Down on Montlake in the U District where I used to live, yep. Snow. With a snowplow caught on camera.

Traffic Camera - Montlake

Down on I-5, one of the major highways here, the roads were pretty snowy, but the plows were doing a good job:

Traffic Camera - I-5 and 145th

About 2 miles south, down on 1st Ave and Northgate way near I-5, here was the view:

Traffic Camera - 1st Ave and Northgate

Last year when it snowed and I had my Subaru, you better believe I took it out to go drive in the snow! This year, in my FWD Sonata Turbo, I kept my car in place and decided to got hut hut it on foot.

Having taken my snow gear out of storage earlier that week, I busted out my winter arsenal and got dressed in snow pants, gaiters, traction devices, snow googles… the works!

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been hiking, much less got an opportunity to use my snow gear, so you better believe I made the most of it!

On the way out of my apartment complex, I ran into another guy walking out. He was carrying a sled behind him (like a husky dog in Alaska) and mentioned that he was going to the store to get more supplies.

Taking a sled to the store for more supplies

From here I took a left towards Aurora, one of the big streets that runs parallel to I-5. (It’s a big street, similar to Alpharetta Highway, for those of you from Roswell, with lots of stores, car dealerships, and more. Our dealership is a few miles down this road.)

It’s so beautiful walking down this street! The crunch of snow beneath your feet. The blanket of snow carefully resting on top of tree branches. The sound of quiet and the buzz of cars as the drive past. The white white white everywhere. The variety of soft snow, slush, ice, etc. How it was mostly AWD vehicles on the road, and some FWD cars, several with chains. The white grayness of the sky. The calm. The simplicity. I really enjoyed the walk solo.

Car tracks, foot tracks, and sled tracks towards Aurora

One thing I noticed is that often times it’s hard to tell where the curb is. In this picture above it’s pretty easy, but often times with snow accumulation on the sides of the roads, you have to keep an eye out for what’s the road and what’s sidewalk. Both when walking down the street as well as when crossing a street.

Driving through the slush on Aurora

We don’t have many true snow plows here in Seattle, especially compared to cities like Chicago. Often times 4×4 trucks will mount a blade to the front of the truck, like the one in the picture above, and turn into a snow plow when necessary.

After mozying around a shopping area for a minute or two, just to see how busy things were and if anything was opened (and surprisingly, quite a few places were!), I headed back towards my apartment.

Having taken my time slowly walking away from my apartment, I felt like running up the hill in my snow cleats. and that felt so good that I just kept jogging! I don’t know if it was the endorphins from the run, how good it feels when I exercise my body, the beauty of the snow, how much appreciation I had for all of it, but I don’t remember the last time I felt that good!!

Me having a blast hiking in the snow

Once I finally got back to my apartment, I cooked up a warm meal, and felt grateful for having power, heat, electricity, food, supplies, water, warm clothing, a roof over my head, a full tank of gas in my car, my backpacking stoves and food I can prepare without power just in case, and everything I needed.

The view out the back of my apartment

The next day, Thursday, we continued to get not only snow, but now also freezing rain. With the temperatures down to a whopping 27 degrees that night (heh… and this was considered a record low!), the snow had start icing up. The snow had become more crusty.

My car Thursday, once freezing rain had fallen too

One thing I really enjoy is being able to have an adventure close to home! It saves a lot of driving when the snow comes to you!

Donning my snow gear once again, I headed out for another hike.

Heading out my apartment complex

God this place is so amazing in the snow…

Beautiful snow-covered trees

People had kept talking about the snow. 2 inches. 4 inches. 5 inches. 8 inches. 12 inches. How deep was it?

Wednesday, the first day of the big dump of snow, I tried my official patent pending technique: Find an area of untouched snow and spear your hand into it, fingers first, and reach for the ground. Pulling my hand out, I estimated 4 inches.

I know most of you who live in snowier climates will go “4 inches? That’s nothing! Around here we get X!”

and you’re right, but for us that’s a lot! It’s all relative.

Floating on top of about 1 inch of snow

Thursday, with the continued snowing, we got even more. Enough to sink in past my ankle, and even above the top of my boot! (Thank goodness for gaiters!)

Eye-balling it now, it’s about 8 inches or so.

Sinking down past my ankles in snow

So out for a hike today, the plan was just to go have fun, enjoy the experience, and see what I would discover.

Before I even left the apartment complex, I already started finding snowmen!

Snowman and snowcat

This one even had a pet cat!

Snowcat

Some of the snowmen were even more decorative.

Snowman with a scarf

Sometimes, it’s all about the details.

Icicles hanging under the truck

Does it look like he’s making faces at you?

You smile with that snow

I know I post a lot of pictures of my car, but I can’t get enough of this!

My snowy car loving the snow

Out and about, taking a right out of the neighborhood, there were plenty of things to find!

A modded STI

Here’s a vehicle wearing the set of Z-chains I’ve used and really like. They’re easy to mount, work well, and you don’t have to stop to retighten them once they’re mounted.

I love this style of tire chains

Here’s a big full-size snow plow.

Snow plow

There was a mail truck at this little shopping area and the lady was getting her chains repaired. The previous day at a nearby speedbump, she’d damaged her chains. Today she broke them, so she had a truck driver come by to repair them for her.

Mail truck after getting her chains fixed

She was really nice and friendly. When she saw me taking a picture after we finished talking, she rolled down her window to say that the mail was going to arrive, even if it would be a little late!

I talked to the truck driver as well and though he was a little less happy, I thanked him for coming out and doing his part to help.

Drive slow!

Hiking down the street, I marveled at the fact that you can drive on snow, without your tires ever touching pavement. This is amazing to me.

Cruisin' on the snow

and I loved the way some of the homes were nestled into the snowy environment.

A cozy snowy home

There was a neighborhood down the street so I felt like ducking in along the way.

Snowman with a tie and with hair

When I saw these two snowmen, I LOL’d.

Walking down the street, I said hello to another guy walking by who said he was going a bit stir crazy and needed to get out. He also mentioned he was getting a headache from lack of caffeine (Oh Seattle, lol…) , so I can only assume he was walking to one of the nearby coffee shops.

This snowman even has buttons and arms

Buttons!

One of the big highlights of this neighborhood was the goggle of kids playing. There were digging in the snow, sledding down hills, and just generally having a great time together while their parents watched.

Little kids playing in the snow

The kids sledding down the hill together were having fun, so I got a shot of them.

Sledding down the hill

After shooting this, I started to turn around to continue on, but I felt this inner tugging to stay. Perhaps sensing my hesitation, one of the moms introduced herself to me and I met some of the other parents there. Cool people.

This probably sounds totally silly, but she noticed me watching the kids sledding down the hill and asked if I wanted to go as well, mentioning one of the extra sleds sitting idly at the bottom of the hill.

“I’m 27 years old. I’m not supposed to do kid things like that,” I thought.

“Sure, that sounds like fun!” I wound up responding. lol…

So I grabbed a sled and hiked up the snowy hill. Waiting for the kids to clear the way after their previous run, noticing how most of them wiped out on the curbs, I wanted patiently for a good time while eyeing the slopes and turns of the hill to try and figure out the best route, then kicked off and down I went.

The right curb! Leaning hard left, I tried to steer back into the street.

The left curb! I was successful at going left, but this only shot me sideways into the other side of the street. Unable to avoid the left curb, I wiped out when I hit the curb, and flew flat onto my back, almost as if I was making a snow angel. Relaxed and yet sliding down the hill on my back with a big grin on my face, I slid towards a fence as snow started to pour down into my neck.

Laughing at how ridiculous I felt (in a good way) for letting myself play like a little kid, I got up, brushed myself off, returned the sled, said thank you, and happily kept walking.

Continuing down the street, I saw some other kids in the distance playing on an adjacent hill. They also had sleds. One even had a bike he was attempting to ride down the hill.

Bigger kids playing on another hill

Speaking of hills, continuing walking down the street, on the other side of the street, there was another big hill. Much to my surprise, I saw people skiing down the hill!!

Skiing down the hill, and a driver waiting for the skiers to make it

I love seeing people do silly stuff like ski in town.

The guy at the bottom was waiting for his girl to come down.

There was a vehicle at the top of the hill. They waited patiently at the top for the people at the bottom to make it down before they started ever so slowly and carefully inching down the hill. (admittedly morbidly curious, I stayed to watch the truck come down, wondering if it would slide into a ditch or make it down successfully. Fortunately, it did.)

Smiling at the skiers and watching them ski down this hill, they saw me, smiled, and posed for the camera.

The skiers posing for the camera

When they got to the bottom, they started to ski down the sidewalk. This made me laugh.

The skiers cross country skiing down the sidewalk

Hiking on, cars continued to go by as I neared the grocery stores on the corner up ahead.

Snowy roads

As I approached the grocery stores, I noticed a mom and her daughter playing with one of the bushes. The daughter was laughing as she knocked the snow off the bush, branch by branch.

Sled with supplies coming back from the grocery store

Having sleds. I guess this is something that the locals do. That and having reusable shopping bags because, again, this is Seattle.

Across the street you’ll see PCC, a local organic sustainable market. On the left side of the street is a QFC, one of the main supermarket chains here on the area. It looked busier so I went there first.

The QFC was hoppin'

Now I didn’t need anything from the grocery store since I had gone a few days earlier, but I was eager to see how busy this place was and if people would be buying up a storm… no pun intended.

There were definitely people there and as I clacked along in my snow cleats, I watched as people shopped naturally. There was no empty shelves. Just a nice full fully stocked store. Very nice.

Next I headed over next door to the PCC.

PCC

When I got here, I felt like checking into foursquare on my phone for some reason. When I did, I unlocked a deal that gave me a free cup of soup.

Thank you! A free hot meal after hiking in the snow for a while! How wonderful! So picked up a cup of this delicious looking Hungarian mushroom soup. Then I headed over to the kombucha section to get a drink to go with it.

Kombucha

Enjoying the drink and knowing it was really healthy, I asked what was so special about kombucha, since I still don’t really know. The guy I asked wasn’t totally certain either so he picked up a bottle of it and it said that it was good for digestion and a whole list of stuff, right on the label. Oh, right, that was easy.

I picked up a bottle myself and laughed at what I saw:

Found Abraham-Hicks on a Kombucha bottle

PCC has a little lunch area with picnic tables where you can have a seat. I talked to the people nearby, including this one dude who was also wearing a ski mask. He said that he was going up the street to go snowboard down a hill. Way cool.

Once I finished my nice tasty meal, I smiled and waved to a little shy kid who smiled back and then headed back out.

It felt cold to be back outdoors again!

Zipping my pitzips back up, I started hiking back.

On the way, I spotted an odd four wheeler going by, which made me feel like I was in redneck town. :p

The driver gave me a fist pump as he drove by and saw me taking a picture.

Two kids cheering as the drive down on a 4 wheeler

Since I was feeling cold at this point, I decided to jog back, picking up the pace, and warming my body back up quickly.

It was a wonderful jog back.

A Subaru cruisin' back

When I finally got home, I started checking the weather again. Would I be able to drive to work tomorrow? Hopefully not. It looked like it was supposed to both warm up and rain tomorrow, so driving conditions looked good. or at least getting gooder.

When I got up the next morning, I made sure to give myself plenty of time to both clean off my car, if I was going to go, as well as make the drive safely and slowly.

When I got to my car, the snow was pretty crusty, having frozen and much of it getting iced up. Brushing it away didn’t seem to work all that well, but gently pounding the snow with my arm/fist was enough to break it up so I could knock the snow off the car.

I gotta admit I was pretty sad to watch the snow go, to clear it all off the car. But when it was all said and done, I was able to get it all clear.

Car after I knocked all the snow off

Even though some of the snow was piled up in front of the car, I was able to get out and leave the neighborhood. The apartment complex was definitely snowed in, but once you get out, the plows had been through so it was pretty straightforward to get it.

The dealership itself was still snowed in, and it took me 3 tries to make it up a hill to park but I eventually got in.

Later that day it started raining, and the snow was starting to warm and disintegrate, turning into dirty slush.

Slush forming at the dealership

The forecast actually called for flooding in some areas. The rain had actually started to carve little rivers in the snow as it melted. Stomping and splashing through the rivers, I walked towards the road, finding myself standing in about 4″ of water intermixed with the browning slush. I was way fun to walk around in, and I was amused how the water would actually cool down my feet as I stood in it with my waterproof boots.

The rest of the day, other than selling a car and working my internet leads, consisted of a lot of playing and stomping around in the snow and slush.

This is definitely fun stuff.

I love this.

Rental car in front of Bell Rock at sunrise

For our last day in Sedona, I wanted to get up early and shoot a sunrise. Since our hotel, Bell Rock Inn, was literally a minute or two drive away from Bell Rock, this was the natural choice. Shooting the sunrise here was a great start for the last day in this beautiful location…

I got to Bell Rock well in advance of sunrise so that I could do a bit of scouting and find the best location to shoot from.

When I got there, I noticed that Bell Rock wasn’t the only big rock sticking up in the area. There was also another big rock structure to the east of it. Since the sun also comes up from the east, I whipped out my phone to see exactly where the sun would be coming up from, and if the rocks to the east would block the light of the sun.

"The Photographer's Epemeris" app screenshot of sunrise at Bell Rock

Bell Rock is at the center of the X.

To the right is the lighter colored blob, the big rock to the east that I was wondering whether or not would block the sunrise light.

The yellow line leading up to Bell Rock is the path of the sun’s light at sunrise. (The other lines represent sunset, moonrise, and moonset.)

Looking at this screenshot, I was able to see that the sunrise light would be unobstructed this morning. Woohoo!!

So after parking my car and hiking towards Bell Rock from the south (the blue dot in the above screen shot is me), I started scoping out the area and taking some sample shots.

Trail leading straight to Bell Rock pre-sunrise

I experimented with a different compositions. Some with the trail leading right into Bell Rock. Others with the trail swooping off to the side.

The trail continuing on towards Bell Rock

As the sun would be rising from my right, the moon was quickly setting to my left, behind another array of red rocks.

Moonset just before sunrise near Bell Rock

I was hoping that I could get a wide, sweeping panorama with the sun rising on one side, the moon setting on the other, and the rocks aglow all around me.

The way the lighting and timing and weather worked out this morning, the clouds would thicken and cover up the moon as it set, but it would dip down behind the rocks in the west a few minutes before the sun peeked up from the east. Oh well.

After doing some scouting and getting the best vantagepoint I could find for nice trails in the foreground, desert plantlife scenery in the middle, and as much of the rocks as I could get fitting through the trees and all, I got my camera gear in place to shoot some panos.

While shooting panos with my main camera, I also pulled out my phone camera for some quick snappy snappies to post on facebook.

Bell Rock at sunrise

As the light progressed and the sun continued to rise, I got to shoot a number of different panos.

I think this is one of the places where you really have to be there to really get a feel for it, to turn your head from side to side and see everything standing up before you, to watch the light as it changes as the sun rise… but hopefully a panoramic photo will work.

Bell Rock sunrise pano

After successfully shooting several panoramas (in between people hiking through and walking their dogs down the trail), I packed up and headed back to my car.

Rental car in front of Bell Rock at sunrise

From the parking lot I was overjoyed to find a picture perfect photo op of my rental car in front of Bell Rock. (I love my car in scenic location pics!)

After heading back, packing up, and checking out, Anna and I hopped in the car and headed out to go meet Matt and Julie at a stupa they knew about. What’s a stupa? I’m not quite sure but it’s time to go find out!

Amitabha Stupa

So in Sedona you’ve got this stupa, which seems to be a place where Buddhists go to pay their respects to Buddha and perform their rituals. It’s this big tower with a worn trail that runs around it where people have walked laps around the stupa.

Walking around the stupa

Curious to learn more about what this was, I found this stand with some information about the stupa, as well as a nice photo of it from behind. Great idea! I like it and am gonna copy it!

Buddha statue behind the stupa

(Sometimes it definitely helps to see other people’s shots for ideas, especially when they’ve spent quite a bit of time there…)

Anyways, after doing the photo thing, I set down my gear and spent some time quietly meditating. I also decided to go try out walking around the stupa and found it to be really enjoyable. It’s like your mind would go quiet as you would focus on the repetitive task. Out of your head and into the moment. Cool.

This guy walked countless laps around the stupa

There was this one guy who, well, you can read the caption above. He had these rosary-like beads in his hand, which I guess would help him keep track of how many laps he’d done this far. He just kept walking and walking, doing countless laps around the stupa.

Wrapping Up and Heading Out

After finishing up here, we all headed out together to go visit some stores together before heading out.

Anna wanted to find some bird feathers which she wound up finding.

Julie wanted to get an agave didgeridoo from literally a guy who makes them, and she wound up doing exactly that, which was an interesting story unto itself!

While we were at a shop looking for didgeridoos, at one point I approached some Native American knives on display. I picked one up and somehow instantly knew endless details about these knives: how to use them in combat, how to hold them, how durable they are, different materials used over time to craft the knives including wood, stone, bone, metal, etc… and yet I’ve had no training with Native American weaponry or any serious training with knives in the first place. (Just a few basic ways to defend yourself against a knife from karate years ago when I was young, sure, but nothing like this…)

Just after all this information flooded into my awareness, Julie walked up behind me and casually said, and I paraphrase, “In this lifetime you’re not meant fight and kill with your knife. This time you’re here to use your sword of love to penetrate into the depths of other’s hearts.”

“Whoa,” I thought.

“That reading was free,” she jokingly added.

(Since then I’ve purchased a military grade knife off of Amazon. It’s a huge step up from the smaller and lighter backpacking knives I carry. I don’t know why but I feel like I have experience with this knife, a familiarity with it. At the same time, I have this unexplainable disinterest when holding the blade and using it, similar to a child who’s just tired of playing with his old toy.)

Past life stuff and me evolving, perhaps?

(I accidentally wrote that as evoloving… and I like that.)

Gassing up our car to hit the road, I was taken aback by finding these sitting by the cash register…

Scorpion suckers

Yes! Those are real scorpions inside those suckers!! Crazy…

From here on out, it was pretty chill. Took Anna to a Cracker Barrel in Phoenix since she’d never been (southern comfort food!!), gassed up the car, and off we headed back to Seattle.

What a great trip! Full of plenty of unexpected events, but that’s how these things always seem to go.

Until next time!

Aliens in Sedona on 11-11-11 (Photo shot by and blue sky added in by Julie, aliens photoshopped in by Ariel.)

Yesterday when we went to Shaman’s Cave, the original plan was to visit all of the vortexes in Sedona and choose which one to be at on 11:11 on 11/11/11, but that hike turned out to be WAY more than we had initially anticipated. Since there’s really only a few vortexes in Sedona, we figured it would be easy enough to just go check them out in the morning, feel our way around, and then decide which one we wanted to be at at 11:11am. Time to go check out some vortexes!

First off, where are these vortexes? Well conveniently enough, there’s an app for that!

The main vortexes in Sedona include the Airport Mesa, Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, and the Chapel of the Holy Cross.

The Airport we had already been to and so we decided to go check out Bell Rock next since it was really close to our hotel.

Bell Rock Vortex

Julie checking out Bell Rock

It looked like today would be a bit overcast. Feels like being back in Seattle, almost.

Now what was going to happen today, if anything, I honestly had no idea. I’d heard lots of things but honestly I have no idea what to believe… so for me it was simply about going on the journey and then finding out, as life unfolds, what would happen.

One random cool thing we spotted there was that there was a guy up on top of Bell Rock!! I have no idea how he climbed up there, maybe from the back, but it was pretty wild to see this speck of a person up on top doing yoga poses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1t4NQcGiE4

Evidently Lake Titicaca, in South America, was the first spot that would go through the 11:11 transition and the energy from there would go straight into Sedona at that time. We did the time zone math and found that that would be at 8:11am, Sedona time.

So when we got to Bell Rock, we naturally did a little exploring to look around and find a place to sit and meditate a bit, in time for 8:11.

(Matt had mentioned that he went through some process the night before, around 3am or so, and that his process was already complete. Cool.)

Once we started getting settled in at Bell Rock, Julie found herself a nice spot. Anna hiked off and found herself a spot too. Matt and I sat down in the same area and started meditating.

Now while meditating, I was just open to whatever would happen, if anything, with no real expectations. Shortly after I began, I started to feel more of ME turn on. I’m not sure how to describe it, it’s not so much a physical body or emotional body… if anything it was more of an energetic/etheric body. It felt like I was becoming aware of more of what I was, more of my body than my physical body, and as if things were turning on.

It was different than the sensation of an out of body experience. It’s not what I used to call “my real body” vs. “my physical body” when starting to have an OBE. This was decidedly different. It’s what I’ve felt before when intentionally meditating and asking for DNA activations.

In any event, whatever was happening was happening. Once it felt like that stage of the process completed, I opened my eyes and turned to Matt and said, “Lightbody activation.”

(I don’t know why or how I knew that. It just seemed incredibly obvious that that’s what had happened.)

He was excitedly telling me about shifting between parallel dimensions and alternate realities and I was enjoying this new shift that I was experiencing.

It didn’t feel in any way like it happened because we were in Sedona. We just happened to be in Sedona when this particular experience happened.

After this, Julie wanted to go hike up a bit and check things out closer to the rock. Anna and Matt stayed back to talk and I went up to go join Julie.

Red rocks from Bell Rock (iPhone HDR)

From the rocks, you could see the orange landscape, the big red rocks, these awesome leafless trees, dry grasses, cacti, desert bushes, and just a great view.

Even when you get up to Bell Rock, the texture and striations of the rock itself is really interesting to look at up close… seeing the dots and patterns and lines in the stone… lots to explore.

Chapel of the Holy Cross Vortex

The next vortex we went to go check out was at this cool church which was embedded into the rocks in Sedona, a small church called the Chapel of the Holy Cross.

(I realized afterwards that I didn’t get any good shots of the chapel, so here’s an image from Wikipedia.)

Chapel of the Holy Cross (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Since Matt had tweaked his ankle the day before on the hike at Shaman’s Cave, we decided to drive right up to it and keep the hiking as minimal as possible. Here’s a quick shot of Matt checking out the view from the Chapel:

Matt beside the Chapel of the Holy Cross

Now something interesting on the way up to the chapel that you’ll find is this huge fricken mansion, complete with green grass (yes, in the desert) and even an observatory in the back!!

Mansion with actual green grass

It comes with several waterfalls, some stone walking paths, fresh blooming flowers, a gazebo, a pond, and way more… It was beautiful, yet oddly out of place. You can see it here, as seen from the chapel, and how out of place it is, relative to all the other buildings in Sedona.

The huge and oddly out of place mansion

One thing I really liked about the architecture here is that everything is designed to blend with the landscape. This I found to be true all throughout the southwest, including NM, AZ, and TX. Basically the houses match the color of the surrounding areas (muted green/brown for trees, red/orange for stone, etc.). Everything is designed to blend. Even at night the lights from the house are designed to be non-intrusive so they don’t overpower the landscape when the sun sets. It’s all tucked in and nestled in, and I really enjoyed this.

Anyways, hopping back to the subject at hand, let’s go back to the chapel. So on the way up, you’ll find these cool desert plants, but this is true everywhere, really.

Desert flowers and red rocks

Stepping inside the chapel, the energy really does feel great. (The again, if you go to a synagogue in Israel where people have been praying for thousands of years, you can feel strong energy there too.)

Inside the chapel is a really wonderful experience.

Inside the Chapel of the Holy Cross

Music was playing when we walked in. There was no church service or anything. Inside there were these huge windows looking out over the landscape. There’s plenty of seating areas in the rows in the back, as well as more seating along the sides of the walls which is where most people sat. The main rows were nearly empty and the benches along the wall were nearly packed. You’d see people meditating, smiling, hugging, and just enjoying themselves. It really was a wonderful feeling place. Back towards the front (which sounds kinda weird to say it like that), you’ll find candles on both walls. I went and lit one and it was fun.

After spending a bit of time appreciating the inside of the tall tall chapel, we went back outside to head out to the next area, but not before appreciating more of the architecture and landscaping all around us.

An awesome sign we found

Cathedral Rock

The clock was starting to tick closer to 11:11am and we decided to head on down to the next vortex, Cathedral Rock. Apparently this is a highly photographed area of Sedona, so the photographer in me was happy to be going here.

Getting to the vortex, we followed the exact GPS coordinates that I had to the vortex. Unfortunately, they took us to a road that had been closed down. The clock is ticking! Now what?

Going back down some dirt roads we’d come up and amusing passing a road named Disney Lane, we headed into Red Rock Park, got directions to where we needed to go, turned back around yet again, and continued heading back towards Cathedral Rock literally just minutes before 11:11.

At this point, I start getting really amused. All this work to get to Sedona for 11/11/11, trying pick the best spot for 11:11, and angels parting the heavens or anything, this all seemed comical to me. Is this how it was going to go down? Trying to figure out how to get to a parking lot and not actually being somewhere for when the clock ticks past?

We roll into the parking lot with maybe 1-2 minutes to spare… With Matt’s ankle, Julie drops us off near the front as she goes back to park the car. We start walking down the sidewalk as the clock ticks over to 11:11.

11-11 screenshot

I grab my camera and snap a shot of us walking down the sidewalk towards Cathedral Rock:

Strolling down the sidewalk at 11:11am

To me, this is the funniest thing ever… Nothing big, nothing special, just totally ordinary everyday life. I was loving it and grinning goofily (if that’s even a word).

Anna meditating at the base of a tree like a Buddha

Anna figured this was a good time to meditate and so she found a nice little spot and sat down to do just that.

…so this is it?

As we wait for Julie to come back from parking the car, I head off to go to the bathroom. Yeah, this is about as unceremonious as it can get.

Once Julie arrived, we continued walking on over towards Cathedral Rock, making sure Matt was still okay with walking on his ankle.

After passing a wedding group (turns out there were a number of them here in Sedona we’d spot for 11-11), there was this beautiful field that would open up, compete with yellowing grass, fall colors in the trees, and a long since abandoned mill.

Sweet mill on the way towards Cathedral Rock

If you remember the picture from the opening of the blog post, it was from this location.

Since we didn’t have any aliens come down and join us as the clock ticked over to 11:11, here’s some fun little photoshoppy action to pretend that they did.

Aliens in Sedona on 11-11-11 (Photo shot by and blue sky added in by Julie, aliens photoshopped in by me.)

Continuing on down the walking path, you head under a canopy of trees and eventually wind up arriving at this area with red-orange stone (surprise! heh) and a nice view of Cathedral Rock with a river flowing past in the foreground:

People enjoying Cathedral Rock

Walking closer to the water, I continued snapping away.

On the edge of the red stone, looking at Cathedral Rock

Matt and Julie had sat down to enjoy the view and click some more photos.

Going for the ‘postcard’ shot of the rocks, I walked up to the water, composed, and fired away.

Cathedral Rock behind the trees

With the overcast lighting and barren foreground trees, it wasn’t exactly knock-your-socks-off picturesque, but it was still nice.

Now just off to the left from here, there was this trail that continued on. I wouldn’t have known about this, but Julie told me about it so we continued hiking on while Anna and Matt stayed back.

Just a little ways in, we stumbled across this rock with tons of little stacks of rocks. Snap snap snap!

The first set of stacked rocks

As we shot pictures of this, someone was hiking back out. We asked him if there were more of these rocks and he was like, “This is nothing compared to what’s up ahead. This is just the beginning…”

Turns out he was right.

As you continued to hike on, there were literally fields and fields full of rocks!

Rocks stacked amongst the trees

When you’re hiking, stacks of rocks like these are called “cairns” and are typically used to designate where the trail is. When you’re hiking through the woods, you’ll get a wipe of paint down a tree, called a blaze, which let you know that you’re on the trail. Different color streaks designate different trails. Ever heard the term “trailblazer”? Well that’s meant for people who go into the outdoors and create a trail, marking the trail with blazes as the go along. Hence the term trailblazer.

In locations where there’s not an easy way to create a blaze, which is common in rocky mountains or desert environments, you stack rocks to create cairns. In this area, the stacked rocks were more artistic than anything else.

Gettin' down low with the rocks

This place, as cool as it was, was actually really hard to shoot…

The more you’d walk, the more fields of rocks you’d find.

Stacks and stacks and stacks of rocks

This is a place where you can really appreciate all the time and energy people had put into building the cairns. Whether you build one yourself, build upon someone else’s, or just quietly stroll through and appreciate the work of others, it feels like everyone has a role here and everyone contributes. It’s mass cooperation, and I love it.

Stacked rocks in the water

Anna and Matt were getting super hungry so we didn’t want to spend too much time here, even though you could get lost here for hours, but eventually we started making our way back. Julie was looking everywhere for an Ohm sign in the rocks and didn’t see one, so she created one herself.

Julie making an Ohm out of rocks

Once we left here, we were all really hungry, so we wound up heading on off to a delicious pizza place in the area.

Getting a little woo-woo

In the parking lot there, I stumbled across a nice Sedona find… An Ashtar Command truck!

Ashtar Command car sighting on the way to lunch

I’m not particularly familiar with them, but I know they’ve probably got some youtube videos out. They’re probably some channeled entities or something.

(Last time I was in Sedona with Glenn in the beginning of 2010, we found a UFO store. It must have closed down since because we didn’t see it this time around.)

In any event, after getting a nice delicious meal of Italian food, we headed out to go check out some of the more woowoo sides of Sedona.

One of the most visible spiritual arenas is this building near one of the main roundabouts in Sedona called the Center for New Age.

The Center for New Age and their big mural

Inside you could find all sorts of books, crystals, and so on, as well as different intuitive readers and psychics.

Around back they had a person who offered UFO tours. You’d basically go out at night with nightvision goggles and you could go spot UFO’s.

Anna and Matt both opted to have their auras photographed and analyzed here at the center. Julie wasn’t interested in it so she left to go explore elsewhere while I sat in and listened to Matt’s reading and Anna’s reading.

The Center for New Age

Basically what happens when you go for an aura reading is you sit in a room in front of a box/camera and they take a picture of you while you have your fingers on this metallic sensor box thingy. Scientific names, I know.

I was actually surprised how spot on both Matt’s and Anna’s readings were! The lady who did the readings would look at the polaroid-like photograph that would come out, and she was also really intuitive, so she could put the pieces together and give you a nice reading.

I wound up coming back the next day to get mine read. Here’s my aura photo:

Ariel's aura photo

(Interestingly enough, the photo looked very similar to the aura photo I had done several years back. I think they used the same technology which would make sense.)

Anna’s photo looked similar to mine, but a bit different. Matt’s was way different with a bunch of violet energy.

Looking at my photo, for example, the red had to do with a lot of intense creative energy in me. I believe the yellow off to the side has to do with organization and future abundance. The gap in the aura above my head has to do with the connection up to spirit. The lady went into intense detail about my creative energies, specifically targeting photography, was able to know that my intuitive gifts were not regarding clairvoyance (seeing things) or clairaudience (hearing things), but clairsentience (just knowing things), knew that energy healing would be a good match for me (I’ve done the reconnection and am a reiki master), knew that running my own business is good for me, and so on.

Even though the reading was so spot on, I was a bit let down by it. I felt like it just wasn’t useful. I mean great, you can really read me and tell me all about myself, but I already know all that. I live it every day. Tell me how I can do something useful with it. Then it’ll be helpful. Nevertheless, it is pretty surprising how spot on a person can get doing this…

Alien watching for 11:11 pm:

After bopping around town and checking out lots of different restaurants for dinner, we wound up stopping at a restaurant up atop the airport mesa near the Vortex. They were actively advertising themselves as the most expensive place in Sedona, yet their prices weren’t actually all that outrageous. Amusingly enough, I think this place was the least amount of money we’d spent… ordering just tapas and waters since we weren’t all that hungry. :p

After dinner it was definitely dark. Since we were already up at this vortex, we decided to wait out until 11:11pm and check out more aliens if we could spot any.

At this point it was cold. It was definitely cold. We were all bundled up. Some of us just wanted to go back. Some of us really wanted to spot something. Some wanted to stay. Some wanted to go. In the end, we decided to wait until 11:11 and see if we’d see anything.

After chilling up there for a while (no pun intended) and as 11:11pm approached, I asked Matt if he could sense anything or communicate with anyone up there. He said that he didn’t feel anything and that it’s not something he necessarily initiates. They simply come to him and begin the dialogue and he’s here open to whatever happens. Made sense to me. But he didn’t have any senses of anything going on or about to happen.

11:11pm came and went and as soon as 11:12 hit, we all loaded up the cars and went back to our hotels to finally get some sleep…

Definitely a unique day!

Shaman's Cave

So now day 2 in Sedona, or perhaps day 1 if you wanna call it that. It’s Thursday the 10th of November. We decide to go check out various different vortexes in the area, feel them out, and decide which one we’d want to be at for 11:11 on 11-11-11.

For our first stop, we decide to take a little hike out to a place Julie had heard about called Shaman’s Cave.

Julie had this vision even before we left to Arizona that we would meet some guide on a mountaintop who would guide us to exactly where we needed to go. One of those cliche stories you hear about, and yet that’s what what she envisioned.

So coming back to the topic of Shaman’s Cave, it’s not exactly a tourist hotspot… It’s one of those places where you have to know someone who’s been there and can tell you about it and give you directions. It’s just outside of town down some dirt roads. The directions we got were good, though a little unclear, and we wound up going down some rougher roads than anticipated.

Driving towards(ish) Shaman's Cave

Driving down gravely roads, we missed out first turn and went further than we needed to. Stopping near a hiking area with some ancient artifacts and whatever the word is for those cave drawings on the wall, we checked out a map of the area to get a better feel for the roads. While here we took a few minutes to explore and snap some pics.

Snapping some pics of the red rocks when we stopped to get oriented

The photographer in me got to have a little fun here…

Water! Reflections! Turns out muddy reflections don't work as well as clear water =)

Once we got oriented and figured out exactly where we needed to go, we backtracked a bit to find the next road we needed to take. Matt was intuitively having conversations with the Spirits of the Land in the backseat. (For those of you who don’t know, he grew up having conversations with angels, spirit guides, and ascended masters, and he’s incredibly intuitive, perhaps one of the most intuitive people I’ve ever met. His and Julie’s website is here.) While driving towards Shaman’s Cave, Matt shared with us that the Spirits of the Land told us that to find the cave, we’d have to be vigilant and persistent. Vigilant and persistent. (Oh how right they’d turn out to be…)

Finding this place required knowing exactly what to look for and spotting tiny signs that mark roads. We really had to keep an eye out to find the next road and the next and the next.

There was about a mile of rocky off-roading action that we could either drive or hike to get closer to the trailhead. We started driving up this road when it struck me… “Wait, is this that road you mentioned we needed a high clearance vehicle for?” Bottoming my rental car out a bit on a boulder confirmed to me that yes, this is it.

Backing up back down the rocky hill/road, I was able to find a place to turn around and drive forwards down to a parking area where we could grab our packs and hike up the road instead. With snacks and water and cameras and GPS gear in my pack, we started hiking up towards Shaman’s Cave!

A little over 1.1 miles in, there’s a parking area and an unmarked trail on your right that leads towards the cave.

Anna hiking down the unmarked trail towards Shaman's cave

As you may expect in a desert, there’s cacti everywhere!

Cactuses cactuses everywhere-se-ses

They’re not the tall saguaro cacti that were down in Phoenix, the ones you see in roadrunner cartoons, but shorter, almost pancake-like, cacti.

Matt and Julie enjoying the hike

This was Matt’s first hike ever and he was doing such a great job! It definitely wasn’t an easy hike, but he was rockin’ it.

Anna was thoroughly lovin’ it too.

Anna!

I really loved the feeling of this area. The view pictured below somehow felt familiar, like I’d been there in a past life or something…

I love the variety of green plants that live on this slope up towards the ridge... cacti, trees, brush, grass, bushes...

As we continued towards the back side of the big red rock where the cave should be, we knew from the directions we got beforehand that there would be some walking on walls we’d have to do to get to the cave. Every path we tried to take was WAYYY too dangerous and on a slope to make across safely. So we tried hiking away from the rock a bit to see if we could see where the cave was, exactly.

We hiked downhill into the cacti, which turned out to offer us a really nice view!

Hiking off to the side of the rocks, we found this nice cactus-filled area with a view

From this area, a bit away from the red rock, we tried to find the cave. If you’re facing the direction of the above picture and turn to your right, here’s the view you’d see towards the red rocks that somewhere housed a cave:

Checking out the backside of the rock, looking for the cave

Do you see a cave? We didn’t…

See that fallen rock down at the bottom? Those are huge massive boulders. Look uphill and see that white-ish area? Those look like shear lines where the rock had fallen from. That was the closest thing we could find to a cave.
Since we couldn’t eye the cave, we decided to take a quick break and enjoy the view. It was a perfect location for a group picture!

Group photo somewhere near Shaman's cave

I spent some time being the happy photographer while my friends also enjoyed the landscape.

Anna and Matt loving the area

Julie sat down and meditated and chanted.

Julie chanting

At one point she stopped chanting and listened more carefully. “Do you guys hear the music?” She asked? I couldn’t really hear anything but she was convinced she could hear something…

More on that later…

After making it this far, we didn’t want to turn back. So we decided that it would be a good idea to go down there to scout and take a look, hopefully finding the cave somehow. We agreed that I should go out to scout so I dropped my pack and camera gear and went out to go see if I could find this thing…

On the way down I accidentally kneed some cacti a couple times. I elbowed one at one point too. Now let me tell you about the cactus needles here… There’s actually two types of cactus needles you can run into, no pun intended…

These cacti had two kinds of spikes, the single long ones and the tiny shorter ones

The longer spikes aren’t really a big deal, oddly enough. It’s the little yellow ones that really get to you. In this photo, they’re in splotches. On other cacti, they’re long and fill the entire edge.

Cacti and red rocks

You can kind of see it in this photo (taken elsewhere in Sedona). The cacti farther away, they’re covered with yellow needles on top. If you elbow one of those, they break off and stick in you. I elbowed a long, wide patch of these and it left this yellow mustache of needles sticking out of my left elbow. Now these little suckers are nasty… they don’t come out easily. They must have tiny barbs on the end because once they go in, they don’t come out easily. What happens is that even if you try to pull them out from the outside of your clothing or the inside, they wind up sprinkling down inside your clothing and spreading out throughout your whole body. So what was just a dense collection of needles in your arm winds up pricking you all over your body… your arm, side, chest, back… everywhere. Yeah, these things kept poking me for the next day or two, but fortunately gradually diminished over time.

So to make a long story short, don’t mess with cactus needles.

Anyways, back to the search for the cave… I ran up and down the side of the mountain, trying to find the thing but to no avail.

We got close to turning back here, but Anna pressed on and started marching forward to the alternate trail, the one that goes up to the top of the mountain and was supposed to give us a nice view. Go Anna!

When we got up to the top, much to everyone’s surprise, Julie actually spotted the cave! Woohoo!

However, there was a little problem… we were up above it and not sure how to safely get down to it, or how to get back up…

We could slide down the face of the cliff a good distance and hopefully make a safe landing down below, but there was no good way to come back up, and the drop looked pretty hairy, both in distance down and the landing site.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that Julie had this vision of finding a guide on a mountaintop? Well at the top of the mountain we found a guide! He was this really friendly flute-playing guy named Jesse.

It turns out he had heard Julie chanting down below and she had heard his flute playing from above!

At the top of the mountain, while leading us down the safe route to the cave, he pointed towards the sun and pointed out the sun dogs on either side of the sun’s fireball:

Sundogs and a circular rainbow

Too cool! It’s the first time I’ve ever seen this in real life.

Leading us to the cave since we asked him if he could help, he took us around the bend to a back route that lowered safely and then wrapped back towards the cave.

Jesse showing us the path to the cave

Not exactly a typical trail, eh?

Rounding the corner, there’s the cave!!!

There's the cave!

I don’t think this trail is one that you would find at first glance…

Yeah... this is the trail to the cave...

Once you figure out the “path,” it does get a bit easier.

Uphill, downhill

This is one of those places in which you can really appreciate being…

Julie admiring the view

As we got closer, we heard Jesse back behind us playing his flute, helping create an experience for us.

Our guide Jesse playing the flute

Being inside the cave was SUCH a cool place… It was a really wide view that I couldn’t take in all in one shot, so I set up my camera and shot a pano.

Shaman’s Cave pano

(You can click on the panorama to see it bigger. Same with any image on this blog.)

The bigger opening is the main opening. The window on the right is a natural window.

(Panoramas are funky in that they make the scene look much smaller than in real life, and they it look like everything is straightforward. In actuality, standing from the very back of the cave, the left side of the panorama is looking off to the left side of the cave. Rotating your head, the middle of the image is looking straight forward. And the right side of the image is what you’d see with your head turned to the right.)

This is one of those places that needs to be shot on video to get a better feel for it, so here’s a video tour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_sXwPun5s

Some people say the cave is an energy center or something. I dunno. I didn’t really feel anything there. Definitely felt sacred and special, but not necessarily energetic. No one seemed to feel a vortex here, per se.

After a little time spent exploring, we were ready to head back out.

Hiking out of the cave, aka hiking on a wall

Finding this place took a while and we had to really keep an eye out for little clues for the next step, and we had to be really persistent to keep going on, even through the several times we felt like turning back. Vigilant and persistent. The Spirits of the Land that Matt spoke with earlier were definitely right! Thanks guys!!

Speaking of Matt, this was his first actual hike to Massive props to him!!

Matt happily hiking back

We made it back to the car in perfect timing. It was starting to get darker at this point so we had just enough time, as the sun was setting, to make it out before it got too dark and harder to see the roads.

Driving away from the cave with the sun rapidly setting off to one side, the moon seemed to rise incredibly quickly off to the other side. Stunned at how quickly the moon seemed to be moving, we pulled over to shoot some photos.

The moon quickly rising behind these rocks as we're heading out from Shaman's cave

In Seattle, being at higher latitudes, our days are much longer in summer than what I’m used to, having grown up in Georgia, and the nights are much longer in the wintertime. One other side-effect of that is that sunrises and sunsets are slower. One thing I really love about that is that the beautiful light seems to last longer at higher latitudes, which is awesome for photography.

Coming back down to Arizona, the sunrises and sunsets happened much more quickly than we were all used to.

Whoa, Intuition

After departing from this area, I would have one of my strongest intuitive experiences ever thus far…

After we all took pictures of the moon rising above the red rocks (pictured above), we all headed out to dinner for a nice, satisfying, and well-earned meal.

After parking our car in town, we grabbed our stuff and started walking down the street, looking for a good restaurant. Once we spotted a possible restaurant, we crossed the street to head into it. While crossing the street, I heard something fall behind me. It was a water bottle so I turned around and picked it up.

We kept going and suddenly everything else spilled out of Julie’s backpack, all over the sidewalk.

“My camera!”

We all helped her get everything we could find that had fallen out of her pack. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find her camera that she’d just bought and had taken pictures with throughout the whole trip, including the whole hike we’d just done. She’d put it in a soft pouch that would protect it from falls, but unfortunately it also muffled any impact sounds so we didn’t hear when it fell out. It must have been at the very top of her pack since she had set it there after taking pictures of the moon so it must have fallen out before the water bottle when crossing the street.

We backtracked our whole path to see if we could find it, looking on the sidewalk, between cars we’d passed through, underneath cars, inside our rental car… everywhere we could think of, but we couldn’t find it…

While Julie continued to search back and forth, up and down the street, in and out of our car, the rest of us went to go check out the restaurant, grab a table, and check out the menu.

After feeling things out, Matt didn’t particularly like the menu and suggested we walk back and go help Julie and find another restaurant along the way. While walking back, we spotted a better restaurant, checked out their menu and decided to go there instead.

We got Julie, who was unable to find her camera anywhere, and she came in to join us. Sad about losing her awesome new camera and all the valuable pictures she’d just taken, she started surrendering and letting it go. It stunk, but she’s definitely good at letting things go…

She said a little prayer while sitting at the dinner table hoping the universe would help us find the camera when suddenly it hit me out of nowhere…

I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE YOUR CAMERA IS.

This massive feeling poured into my body and overwhelmingly surged throughout my whole body.

I NEED TO GET UP AND WALK TO THE RIGHT, RIGHT NOW.

The feeling I could only identify as ME. More me than who I thought I was. A pure knowing, intensely powerful, infinitely large and yet sizeless ME.

“What? I have no idea where your camera is,” thought the ‘me’ in my head.

“I don’t want to go walk to the right,” my mind continued to protest. “That’s towards the front door and out of the restaurant. It’d cold out there. I don’t want to go out in the cold.”

GET UP AND GO WALK TO THE RIGHT.

Knowing that I could use my mind to will myself into resisting this energy and feel “powerful” and “in control” that way, I decided instead to go with it and see what happens. Why not? This is Sedona afterall…

Standing right up, and practically knocking the chair out from behind me in the process, I started walking to the right.

Walking towards the front of the restaurant, on the podium where the hostess waits to greet people when they enter the restaurant was Julie’s camera. In its pouch, it was quietly sitting right there on top of the podium.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised in the least. (If anything, I was surprised that I wasn’t surprised…)

Grabbing the camera and returning to our table, I casually set the camera down on the table, said “Here ya go,” and sat back down.

Everyone’s jaw dropped…

I had no idea what happened either…

It was one of those moments of both celebration and cheering that the camera was back, and at the same time a “WTF was that!?”

Still pretty blown away about what had happened, I asked Matt, “What is it on the other side that knows? What is that gives us the answers through our intuition?”

He looked at me and responded, “The totality.”

“Oh,” I replied, “That makes total sense…”

After we finished our meal, we went up to the front of the restaurant and asked why the camera was sitting on that podium.

Evidently someone had found it on the ground in front of the restaurant and turned it in. They must have turned it in as practically as soon as it had fallen out because we didn’t find it when backtracking past the restaurant.

Then in struck us… if Matt hadn’t suggested that we skip out on the first restaurant and check out another one, we never would have found her camera.

If we didn’t decide on this particular restaurant, we never would have found her camera.

So many things had to go just right in order for us to have this experience…

So many pieces of the puzzle had to work out in that exact way…

It was a beautiful orchestration that included events that could have been labeled as “unfortunate” and yet things played out beautifully…

Wow…