Sharing Sedona Area with San Diego Friends

We were able to entice our good friends from San Diego, Martin and Estella (and their puppy Chelsea), to join us in one of our favorite places: Sedona. They stayed at cute Sky Ranch Lodge up on Airport Mesa, with amazing views out over Sedona and easy access to the Airport Mesa Loop trail.

With freezing rain showers predicted we got a little hiking in between storms (sort of). Hans and I have visited Sedona several times, even spending a month in this area in 2014 so we've found dozens of fabulous hikes, but this time I found something new: the Amitabha Stupa.

A stupa is considered to be the living presence of the Buddha and one of the oldest forms of sacred architecture on earth. It's a peaceful place of reflection nestled in Sedona's red rock beauty.

Walking loops around the stupa in mindful meditation.

Estella and Martin.

Sedona love!

Our hike up Doe Mountain included a rain storm that gave us some amazing cloud and sun interaction over the surrounding landscape.

As various storm cells passed through the region shafts of sun would break through and light up the rocks.

The storms finally moved on and we had a glorious day to hike from Sedona's Broken Arrow trailhead.

Strolling Submarine Rock.

Sedona reflections.

Chelsea hitches a ride from Estella.

We had the most wonderful thin crust pizza at The Anvil Pizzeria in Cottonwood on their dog friendly patio. They use high quality ingredients and house made mozzarella, good local beers on tap too!

We moved down to Dead Horse Ranch State Park for a few days and another San Diego friend, Kathryn, joined us for a hike on the park grounds. Tavasci Marsh trail was easily accessible from our campsite and provided great views of Tuzigoot National Monument as well.

Tuzigoot National Monument from Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

It was neat walking through the almost leafless mesquite forest in the Verde River flood plain
with a carpet of brilliant green grass thanks to recent rains.

Our last Sedona hike for this stay was the Soldiers Pass/Brin's Mesa Loop, which we've previously hiked in 2014. I love this loop, especially adding the half mile spur trail to the top of Brin's Mesa where you get fantastic Sedona views from a neat red rock vantage point.

We were extra fortunate on this day to see a pack of javelina at the top of Soldiers Pass. We suspect someone is feeding them because they were not afraid of us at all and a couple were even walking slowly towards us as if expecting treats! That was a little scary!

A few of the Seven Sacred Pools along the Soldiers Pass segment.

This handsome devil watched us for some time before moving off the trail.

Mama and young.

If you take the Brin's Mesa spur trail to the top of the mesa you get fantastic views of red rock spires...

...from atop a dramatic rock pile!

I believe Mt Wilson is rising behind me.

Last but not least a trip to the Sedona/Verde Valley area would not be complete without a weekend visit to Jerome and a stop in the Spirit Room for some live music.

Kaleidoscoped photo of us from the awesome Nellie Bly kaleidoscope store in Jerome!

Campground Review

Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, AZ is an excellent location for exploring the Verde Valley, Sedona and Jerome. Roads and sites are paved, each site has a picnic table and fire pit with water/electric hookups. There are restrooms and showers in each camping loop. We had good 4G Verizon without needing to boost the signal.

We loved having a trail right from our site and there are many miles of trails throughout the state park. They may not be the glamorous red rock trails of Sedona but whenever we wanted those it was just a 20 minute drive away. We'll definitely return to this state park.

Excellent site #61 in the Red-Tail Hawk Loop,

View of Cottonwood and the Mingus Mountains from our site.

Looking down on the Red-Tail Hawk Loop.

That's it for the Verde Valley for this year...we LOVE this area and we WILL be back!

Hangover Hiking with Friends

We have good friends from San Diego meeting us in Sedona for a few days so we decided to go all out and stay at the fancy RV park right in Sedona: Rancho Sedona RV Park. There really aren't any special amenities here, but the park is very pretty and it's right next to the heart of the Sedona tourist area so it's close to many trails and close to our friends hotel, thus making it worth the highway robbery price for a few nights. And the blazing fast 4G Verizon signal is much appreciated after our excrutiatingly slow signal in Camp Verde.

Thanks to a cancellation we got site #77, with excellent site separation and a gorgeous setting.
Oak Creek is just behind the berm in back of our rig.

Oak Creek.

But before our San Diego friends arrived we planned a big hike with RVing friends who happened to be staying in the area. Steve and Mona Liza and Howard and Lauren joined us for a repeat of a hike Hans and I had done (twice) in 2014: The Best Hangover Ever!

This eight mile lollipop loop took us into the red rocks and along the mountain biking double black diamond Hangover Trail. We saw some crazy folks riding this trail and were very happy to be traveling it on our feet...there are numerous steep drop offs and traverses across nearly vertical slick rock plus lots of rock steps that any normal person would have to hike their bike through.  :-)

Lauren, Howard, Steve, Mona Liza and Hans.

Traversing the Cow Pies.

Mona Liza approaches the gap between red cliffs that we will pass over.

At the gap we get a tremendous view into the red rock country immediately North of Sedona.

We stopped for lunch at the gap and got to watch a couple of mountain bikers as they came over the top and headed for the narrow shelf of the Hangover Trail.

You can just barely see the bikers below the rim.
The trail continues through the shelf of trees ahead of them.

The Hangover Trail is not for the acrophobe!

Waves!

Hanging out on the Hangover!

A look back at the gap, we've walked through the band of trees in the shade.

As we head west Sedona comes into view surrounded by its amazing red rock landscape.

Now comes the steep drop...it's hard to imagine anyone RIDING this!

One more shelf to walk, with amazing views, before another steep drop.

Down, down, down, with a little butt scooting.

A fine view of Midgely Bridge.

Another terrific day on the trail in one of our very favorite places with friends...Life is Good!

From Bluff to Flagstaff to Camp Verde

We had a long drive (for us) from Bluff, UT to Flagstaff, AZ so we were very happy to spend two nights in Flagstaff, allowing us a day to explore a little and Rosie a day to recuperate from travel. We spent those two nights at Greer's Pine Shadows RV Park just north of town and backing up to National Forest.

This is a decent RV park, though our site was not the greatest, any of the sites along the back row would be fine because they have reasonable separation and only a chain link fence separates you from the forest. The very best thing about this park is you can access NFS trails right from the park for miles of lovely forest hiking.

We hiked the Fat Man's Loop trail right from our RV park and enjoyed wonderful views of North Flagstaff.

There were some enormous old alligator junipers on this trail!

This acorn woodpecker must have found something really tasty under this picnic table!

We played a round of disc golf at Flagstaff's McPherson Park. We really liked this course, though there are quite a lot of Ponderosa Pines, you can see through the trees and the tees and baskets are well marked.

Flagstaff was a great place to take care of some shopping and we had an excellent Mediterranean meal at Bananaland Cafe and some tasty brews at Mother Road Brewing.

Mother Road Brewing!

After Flagstaff we moved down to Rancho Verde RV Park in Camp Verde, AZ for a few nights. We stayed at this lovely little park in 2012 (you can read my review here), and the only thing I'd add to that review is the park wifi is nonexistent and our Verizon 4G LTE signal was frustratingly inconsistent.

There are numerous Native American sites to explore in this part of Arizona due to the surprising number of streams and rivers flowing through the Verde Valley. Montezuma Well is one source of water in these parts and Native Americans lived near the Well from about 1050 to 1425. The Well's water originally fell as rain on the Mogollon Rim more than 10,000 years ago and has percolated through many miles of rock to arrive here. 1.5 million gallons of water flows through the Well each day!

The water in the Well contains arsenic and high amounts of carbon dioxide so fish cannot live in it. Other creatures, amphipods, water scorpions and leeches, do live here though and, apparently, the water was safe for humans! At one time there were more than 30 rooms built along the rim of the Well. The water that flowed out of the Well and into Wet Beaver Creek was channeled into a canal that irrigated their crops.

A couple of ruins remain tucked into the cliffside overlooking the Well.

Pueblo ruins with a fantastic view.

After checking out Montezuma Well we repeated a hike we had done in 2012: Wet Beaver Creek. Formally named the Bell Trail, the trail follows beautiful Wet Beaver Creek for many miles surrounded by juniper and pinion covered hillsides topped with red rock and black lava...if you look carefully you just might find ancient petroglyphs on some of the lava blocks fallen from the top of the mountains.

A perfect day for a hike!

Wet Beaver Creek is enchanting!

Red rock reflections in the creek.

Petroglyph covered lava rock fallen from the mountain top high above.

We were fortunate to overlap briefly with Steve and Mona Liza so we met up for dinner at Pizzeria Bocce in Cottonwood, AZ. It was terrific fun to catch up since we last saw them in Denver in May and we planned a hike that I'll share in a future post.

A little blurry but it sure was good to get together once again!
Steve, Mona Liza, Hans, Lisa.

The last thing we did before moving on down the road was to visit another Native American heritage site: V Bar V. V Bar V is the largest known petroglyph site in the Verde Valley and is named after the former ranch property where it is located. The site has been identified as the Beaver Creek Rock Art Style and was created by the Southern Sinagua Indians between AD 1150 and 1400.

This was the most protected rock art site we have ever visited. We walked down a one third mile trail to a fenced in area guarded by a ranger host. The only graffiti added to the site were a couple of names etched into the rock in the 1800's.

We saw several small tarantulas, it must be breeding season!

An interpretive host described how certain images denoted planting and harvesting times based on when the sun peaked through the rocks at various times of the year. I don't know how they figured that out based on the multiple layers of images placed here over hundreds of years!

We've not seen birds like these at any other sites in our travels.

Fall colors are just starting to show here in AZ.

Next we move on to Sedona for a few days...