The Magic of a Vortex

 So after our great Grand Canyon adventure, Addie and Bret were kind enough to drop us off at the Flagstaff airport and we rented a car and headed off for part two of our holiday. We had several things we wanted to do over the next four days but part one would be driving to Sedona to experience a few Vortices, and before you ask, Vortices is the plural of Vortex. What is a Vortex you ask?? Well I'll Plagiarize an explanation and then copy down the link if you want to read more.

 What is a vortex? Sedona vortexes (the proper grammatical form ‘vortices’ is rarely used) are thought to be swirling centers of energy that are conducive to healing, meditation and self-exploration. These are places where the earth seems especially alive with energy. Many people feel inspired, recharged or uplifted after visiting a vortex.

https://visitsedona.com/spiritual-wellness/what-is-a-vortex/

 Balderdash you say, phooey, that's a bunch of pure hokum you're thinking. Well at least that was what I was thinking before we went, but Joani wanted to see a couple and don't get me wrong, the scenery around these so called mystical places looked pretty cool so I figured why not; Joani came with me to bottom of the canyon, I could easily take a walk to a couple of these areas.  We had decided that the two we would see would be Cathedral rock and Bell rock. These looked the most scenic and that was my reason for going and Joani agreed that these were good choices, so first we headed off to Cathedral rock armed with cameras and water. ( You carry water with you everywhere you go here as it always seems to be a least 100 degrees F and very dry.)

 Seems normal doesn't it, no magic involved in that, it's just a big red rock. The thing is, this was a chance for another hike and that was cool for me so we started hiking closer.

And closer.

 A lady took our picture together.

Apparently you could hike almost to the top but after a while Joani had had enough of hiking, so she found a shady spot and rested while I hiked on by myself determined to go as high as the trail would allow. This was when things got a little funky. Joani had bought me a lighter camera for this holiday as she didn't want me hauling my big heavy model down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This new camera while being small is a great little device that I still haven't completely learned how to use yet, but there is one setting that I have used frequently. It punches up colours. If you have gone through my earlier posts you have seen the effects of this setting several times. It doesn't change colours, but just makes them a little more vibrant. All the photos I have taken in the last days I have alternated between this setting and the auto focus which doesn't explain what I'm about to show you. As I continued hiking up Cathedral rock on my own I continued snapping photos and took a couple of amazing shots that I never even saw until two days later when I was downloading pictures for possible use on this blog.

 First this one!

Then this one.

I guarantee that I used one of the two settings that I had been using for the entire vacation so far, and you have to believe me when I say that I don't have the ability to change the camera settings or modify a photo to look like either one of these. So what happened? Was I standing on the epicenter of one of these Vortices or did my camera burp......twice? I could swear I see some sort of aura around both photos and it's freaking both me and Joani out! I would like to mention, being oblivious to this phenomenon affecting my camera, I continued to the top of Cathedral rock.

 I'm not saying that there's something mystical going on in Sedona. I'm not big on mystical stuff in general, but if anyone wants to step up and tell me what happened to my camera for those two shots just email me. I, as I've already said didn't look at those two shots until a day and a half later so I wasn't too spooked this particular day to look at the next vortex area on our agenda. Bell rock.

 I didn't climb it because it looked like a much more steep climb and I am not really a rock climber. So we contented ourselves with just taking photos from further away. In hindsight I'm not unhappy with that decision especially after seeing my cameras reaction to the first Vortex area.

 Bell rock is right beside another big red rock called Courthouse vista.

No freaky photos from this one either which made me happy. My camera is new and a present from Joani. No sense in blowing it up.

 We also visited something called the Chapel of the Holy Cross. A church built by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

 This is the back side of the church. I only realized later that I hadn't taken a photo of the front that is considered very photogenic. But I will tell you that the scenery around this church was amazing!

All kind of red, but if you see all these red giant hills scattered all over the place it sort of freaks you out. At least it did to me.

 This about ended our first part of Sedona. The next day we headed  to Page to see the Antelope canyons. See you there.

 Garry