Beautiful New Year's Eve

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If the thought of New Year’s Eve, with the loud fireworks, screaming, and drunken people makes you want to crawl into the fetal position, then this week’s New Year’s event is for you! (no screaming or crying involved)
- Cris

Arizona

Sedona has a little secret tucked between its red rock silhouettes. It is called the Stargazer’s Hot Cocoa Campout, and kids think it’s pure magic. Grownups do too, but we pretend it’s for the children.

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As the sun slides down behind Cathedral Rock, everything seems to be bathed in warm peach and rust. The desert cools fast, so you wrap your hands around a mug of cocoa that smells like someone melted every good childhood memory into a cup. A few families wander onto the stargazing platform, bundled in blankets. Kids whisper to each other as if the sky might hear them. No countdown clock. No booming fireworks. Just the quiet build of anticipation as the night sky prepares to take over.

The astronomers who run the campout are part scientists, part storytellers. They pull out telescopes that look like they were borrowed from a friendly wizard and invite everyone to take a peek. Saturn shows up first, rings crisp and delicate. A seven-year-old next to me gasped so loudly her mom laughed. “It looks fake,” she said. She wasn’t wrong. Seeing Saturn with your own eyes feels like spotting a celebrity who wandered into the wrong grocery store.

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Once the sky settles into full darkness, the real show begins. Sedona is one of those rare dark-sky preserves where the stars spill across the horizon like a tipped jar of glitter. The astronomers switch into adventure mode, guiding kids from constellation to constellation. Orion’s belt. Cassiopeia’s crooked crown. The Pleiades cluster that looks like someone smudged the stars with their thumb. Every kid gets to point out something, even if it’s just a shape they swear looks like a llama.

Adults lean back in their camp chairs as the cocoa keeps flowing. One of the guides tells a story about a New Year’s Eve when a meteor streaked so bright that people actually applauded. Another shares how kids sometimes argue over which planet should count as the “official” new year moment. One little boy insisted that the sky should wait for Mars. Another said it had to be a shooting star or the year didn’t count. Honestly, these rules made more sense than most resolutions.

When the new year finally arrives, it does so without ceremony. A single shooting star slices across the darkness like someone gently underlining the date at the top of a fresh page. Kids gasp. Parents smile at each other. Someone quietly says, “There it is.” And that’s the whole thing. The sky decides. You simply show up for it.

After the excitement fades into warm laughter and blanket bundles, families begin drifting back toward town. The rocks glow faintly under moonlight and the air smells like cedar and cold desert stone. Kids chatter about the star they claimed as “their own.” One little girl insisted hers winked at her. A boy announced he was naming a constellation after his dog. Nobody corrected him. It felt like the kind of night where the sky might agree.

If you want a New Year’s Eve that trades noise for wonder, Sedona delivers. It offers a chance to start the year looking outward instead of inward, reminded of how big things can feel when you stop trying to control every second. Whether you go with children or borrow someone else’s for the evening, the stargazing campout gives you a rare gift. It gives you a moment that feels earned. A moment shaped by the universe instead of a countdown timer.

See you next Wednesday.

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