Out and About in the Verde Valley

Choosing to spend a month in Cottonwood, AZ, with its easy access to Jerome, Camp Verde and Sedona has been an excellent decision! There is so much to do within 20 miles of our home base. Here's a sample of the past few days...

We hiked the Secret Canyon Loop, a moderately strenuous set of trails into the Red Rock Secret Canyon Wilderness. The hardest part was the road to get to the trail head. We'd read that it was rough and high clearance was recommended, boy were they right! Our truck performed beautifully, but we probably won't attempt this road again with this big vehicle!

4.5 miles of road like this to the trail head.

A slot full of water!

Lots of trees and bushes and some great rock views.

Since our arrival on March 13 we've made it up to Jerome each Saturday afternoon for live music at the Spirit Room. Free music, good beer and people watching, plus the funky charm of Jerome...how could you go wrong!

Always lots of motorcycle riders in Jerome, this guy had a particularly unique ride.

The old miners cemetery was the site of a geocache find.

We got to explore the rugged mountains South East of Camp Verde with new friend and blog reader, Jeanie. Jeanie lives in Cottonwood and knows the back country around here well; it's been a real pleasure getting to know her.

This particular outing was exploratory, we'd read about some ancient ruins along Towel Creek and thought we'd try to find them. The ruins eluded us but we had fun trying to get to them...fording the Verde River was included in this adventure!

Rugged landscape outside Camp Verde, very few roads cross this terrain.

This little guy greeted us at the trail head.

Lightning rocks!

Here's Jeanie fording the Verde River to get to Towel Creek. 

Chalcedony pockets in the creek bed.

The local residents were looking for handouts from us after the hike.

Yesterday we checked out the popular Broken Arrow trail area of Sedona. There's lots of fantastic red rock formations around here such as submarine rock and chicken point, and the ubiquitous Pink Jeep tours are all over the place, taking folks on some wild slick rock rides.

Several times we were buzzed by this B-17.

There's supposed to be a geocache up on top of this pile of rocks,
we took a pass on that one...the terrain was pretty treacherous!

This solitary beauty represents our lovely lunch site away from the crowds
when we took an unmarked "social trail" into the wilderness.

After our little trek into peaceful wilderness we tried a different route back to the truck. There are a few new trails just now being developed for official inclusion into the Broken Arrow Trail System: the Hogs Trails are expert level, triple black diamond, mountain bike trails. They include High on the Hog, Hog Heaven and Hog Wash. We hiked them and could not imagine riding them, but we sure would love to see the experts do it! I couldn't get a any good representative photos of the extreme difficulty of these trails, but they were pretty mind boggling and are worth a look if you are in the area.

This was an easy section of Hog Wash, I loved the flowy, oozy looking slick rock!