Two years ago I flew across the country to the west coast of the United States and embarked on the best trip of my life. It was my family which is, my two bothers me and my parents, with my twin cousins and their parents. For all of us, it was going to be the longest flight that we had been on and to make it even better, none of us had been to the west coast before. Our journey started when we flew from New York City to Phoenix, Arizona. When we landed after about a six hour flight, the sun had just set. We collected our luggage got our rental cars and headed outside. Immediately after I took the first step I took outside, I was smacked in the face with a wave of hot, dry air. It was crazy to me because it wasn't even sunny outside and it was still insanely hot! After getting in our car we had to drive two hours to get to where we were staying in Sedona. During the drive there we got lost twice, which is unlike my family; my dad is a bit of a control freak and always has everything in order. When we finally arrived it was night time and we couldn't explore or see anything so we just went to sleep. When I woke up the next day and took one step outside of my hotel room, I knew there was something special about this place. Everywhere you look you could see giant red clay mountains encasing the small but lively town. None of it felt real, the atmosphere, the weather, the appearance, I felt like I was on the set of a movie. The colors of the mountains were so vivid like the people who lived there. The first thing I did that day was go on a drive with my dad. We turned a small trip to the store into an adventure. All we had to do was drive around the block to get necessities for our hotel room but we ended up driving around the town for an hour. We drove through the valleys of the red mountains and found places where we wanted to visit in the future. When we got back to the hotel, we got ready to go on a tour through Sedona with a tour guide. He told us all about the mountains, their names and why they're colored the way they are. He showed us the best places to eat and the homes of famous celebrities who chose Sedona for their vacation homes. He took us to a small ghost town called Jerome in the middle of nowhere. The town was a total of maybe ten blocks, but it was defiantly strongly knit community. The next day I woke up early with my cousin and went on a run through a trail up one of the mountains. Later, we relaxed by the pool and went to supposedly the best Mexican restaurant in town; I have to admit it was really good. That night we went back to the pool and laid out under the stars. In Arizona, they have restrictions on their lights at night. They have the only McDonalds in the country with a green sign, instead of yellow, because it emits less light. It’s easy to say that they have the brightest stars that I had ever seen. As cliche as it sounds, we got lost in the stars. We laid there for what seemed like minutes, but in reality was hours. Lost in the beauty and in our own thoughts; worries seemed to disappear. I felt so at peace and felt a sense of warmth that I had never felt before, I felt at home. Leaving the place that I fell in love with in such a short amount of time made me heartbroken. I didn't know when or if I would ever be able to come back but more than anything I hoped that I would.