Arizona – Travel Documents

Sedona – Path Less Traveled

I had wanted to hike Soldier’s Pass, but we were 30 minutes late arriving to the tiny parking lot, which meant no parking for us. So we headed over to the Fay Canyon trail head, which is billed as a easy hike but with a spectacular vista at “the end”.

The hike was truly a walk in the park, with a flat terrain and rock walls to the sides.

This rock wall looks like a choo-choo train…

The trail was flat up until the end of the maintained trail. Then you’re looking at hiking up this…

Must scale this to see the view…

Most people stopped right here, but we kept going only because we wanted to see what was beyond. After a certain point the trail grew thinner and fainter. At one point, the trail was no longer obvious, but we saw cairns and started following those. We ended up against a cliff wall, and this is the view everyone else missed…

Resting and enjoying the view…

Where’s Waldo? This shows you the sheer size of the place. There were darker marks along the rock walls indicating water falls. I can only imagine how pretty this place would be when there’s water flowing.

Again, where’s Waldo? The best part was that we had the whole place to ourselves.

This was a hike that was billed to be an easy hike, and was supposed to only last 55 minutes, but ended up taking us 4 hours to complete. I’m so glad we kept pushing on because it felt more like an adventure than just any old hike.

Back to the spot where everyone else had turned around…

After 4 hours, we were both hungry and a cold beer sounded like the perfect remedy. The plan was to hit another hiking trail, but after 2 beers each we were done.

We did manage to check out the Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village before our dinner reservation at Mariposa. Joe really liked a piece by Robert Charon he saw at the Renee Taylor Gallery, and I’m thinking it might be a good 45th birthday present come September.

Casa Sedona Inn

Casa Sedona Inn is a boutique hotel with 16 rooms. We were lucky to snag the last room available for Memorial Day weekend.

We ended up with the Sierra Vista room.

Bathroom with a jacuzzi tub, which we never got a chance to use.

The room had it’s own patio entry.

Dining, patio, and ‘lobby’.

They serve breakfast (except Mondays and Tuesdays) with some interesting items such as truffle brie scramble eggs, savory ham and cheese waffles.

After we checked in, I took a 2-hour nap before venturing out again.

There’s an iconic image of Cathedral Rock I (along with everyone else) wanted to capture, and the place to be is the Crescent Moon picnic area located within Red Rock Crossing.

We got there about an hour and a half before sunset.

As did everyone else including a wedding party…

Since we had dinner reservations at Dahl & DiLuca, we didn’t get to stick around for the Cathedral Rock to turn orange. Dinner was yummy though…

Sedona

Sedona is one place that keeps drawing us back, and there’s always something new to explore each time we’re there. Our first trip to Sedona was in 2006 when we had just moved to Tucson, and were in awe of the red rocks as we were driving into town.

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Our second time there was in 2008 when we stumbled upon the West Fork hiking trail.

Since moving to CA in 2010, we’ve been busy exploring places locally, and hadn’t been back to AZ in 8 years. Joe wanted to bring the car on a road trip, and living in coastal CA one only has a few options – go north toward Napa, south to Mexico, or inland. Mexico’s out given how dangerous Tijuana is, and Napa we’ve been not too long ago, so we opted inland. Palm Springs, which is 2 hours away, didn’t sound exciting enough. Neither did Phoenix and Tucson. Personally, I think the most beautiful area in all of United States is in the southwest – southern Utah and northern Arizona. Since we’ll be heading to Vegas and southern Utah in October, we thought, “why not Sedona?”

We cobbled together a last minute trip for Memorial Day weekend. Snagged the last room at Casa Sedona Inn, and we were off to do some hiking. FYI, avoid Sedona Memorial Day weekend – too busy and crowded, good luck trying to find a parking spot at the trail head if you arrive 30 minutes after gate opens.

We left home a little after 11PM Friday, and drove 7.5 hours to Sedona – best thing about driving at night, no traffic. We got to the Mescal trail head parking lot @ 6:45AM – early enough to still get a parking spot, and we were off towards Devils Bridge. For those with high clearance vehicles, they can drive right to the Devils Bridge trail head. For the rest of us we had to either park at the Mescal trail head or the Vultee Arch entrance, and then hike towards the Devils Bridge trail head. Of the 2 options, I recommend parking at the Mescal trail head, as the hike in is shorter.

Devils Bridge…

We were fortunate enough that there wasn’t a huge crowd by the time we got to Devils bridge – if you want to hike this and avoid the crowd, start early.

We witnessed 2 proposals on the bridge.

Us, old married folks, on the bridge…

Before reaching Devils Bridge there’s a path that splits off to give you a view of the underside of the bridge, which I think it’s totally worth checking out. A lot of people bypassed this…

By the time we got back to the car, it was only 10:30AM, so we were off to the next hiking trail since check-in wasn’t until 3PM.

Cathedral Rock.

We had more fun with this one because it was scrambling up the rock. But first, we needed to find parking, which the lot was full. It took some driving around – going to the overflow parking lot, Yavapai Vista, which was not ideal; looping back to the Cathedral Rock parking lot, and tracking hikers who were heading back to their cars.

Beginning of the trail…