Another Morning In Sedona (West Fork Trail, Oak Creek Canyon)

Evie's Sister, Claire , Our Host, With Roses From Her Yard

Oak Creek

Red Rock Mountains

Cactus Growing Half way Up The Cliff

We Marked Our Trail, With A Cairn

Cliffs of Red Rock

Apple Orchards at Entrance to Creek

Taking Time Out

It's 5:15 in the Hampton Inn, and Evie's up already.  I have been down to the breakfast room, to get some coffee, but no breakfast till 6:00.  How uncivilized.  Right now it's 57º with a high today of 64º, so different from Scottsdale, 120 miles south of us.  The elevation here, however, is 5000 feet, towering above the Phoenix/Scottsdale deserts.  We hope to be off hiking by 7:30, to Boynton Canyon, a hike not quite as long as yesterday's but more challenging, as we climb 500 feet towards the end, to the viewing point.  We have, of course, been watching the news coverage of the horrific events yesterday in Boston.  I have to say with all the crazies in the US as well as the world, it's a wonder it does not happen more often.  In some parts of the world, like Iraq, it happens almost every week.  Are we any different? Any less vulnerable?  I doubt it...people are the same everywhere.  We have just been more fortunate.

Yesterday, we left Scottsdale around 7:15 and as expected it took us just about two hours to pull in to the Visitor's Center in Sedona.  We were told to go there first, for maps and information about hiking, and they were  great, all volunteers, with name tags telling what city in the U they originally were from.  The drive became really spectacular when we turned off of Interstate 17 on to @179 which headed towards Sedona.  That's when the red rock formations began, and as you got into Sedona, they hover over the city, its outskirts, all developed with the same kind of stone.  It's a dazzling display of nature at her best, sheer cliffs, bizarre rock formations, some like large cairns, with parts ready to topple.  The highways are great and we wondered at what it took to create a highway between these rock formations.  And I assume, they are always dealing with rocks falling on to the roads.

Four hours

We had read about the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon and the rangers also said it was a great hike, also very popular.  We drove about ten miles north of Sedona, on 89A, and pulled of a turn into the crowded parking lot, paying a fee of nine dollars.  It was 10:30 when we started and it was quite cool, probably in the 50's, so different from the 80's of our previous desert hikes.  We actually put on fleeces and started on our way, a round trip of over six miles.  I figured about two hours each way and that's just about what it took, including stops, time for lunch, and the arduous crossing of the creek, thirteen times out and thirteen times back.  The trails followed the creek, crossing it obviously at various times, to allow us to continue walking.  When we  started, the land on either side of the creek was fairly wide but as we hiked farther along, it became more and more narrow, until the end, when it was quite narrow, with little land on either side of the creek, just sheer canyon wall.  We did meet lots of people coming and going, more than any of the other trails we have been on except for Pinnacle Peak.  The trail was mostly flat, often sandy, very shady as we walked mostly through pine forests, occasionally climbing up and down some rocky areas, but overall, it was a delightful walk in the park, except for the creek crossings, where you had to navigate across rocks and logs, trying not to slip or get a soaker.  The most stunning part of the walk was the vertical cliffs on either side of the creek, red rocks, sheer cliffs, huge boulders, three or four hundred feet if not more.  It got so you almost forgot they were there as you walked until you looked up in awe at their height and color.  We went as far as you could easily hike, about 3.1 miles.  From there, you were on your own, having to make your own trail.  Most people chose to return as did we.  I was surprised by a couple of things, the sheer verticality of the cliffs, the number of people hiking on a Monday, and the coolness of the weather.  We were rarely hot though we did take off our fleeces after the first half hour.  We both thought it was our favorite hike so far, lots of change, not the desert beauty, but the beauty of mountains, pines, creek, and the wind whistling through the leaves.  I forgot to mention there were fairly heavy winds all day, in the twenty or thirties.

We drove back to Sedona, stopped again in the Visitors Center to buy a Senior National Park pass for nine dollars.  It enables to enter any National Park free, for life...a real deal!  Obviously, around here you have to pay a parking fee, but any National Park, like Zion or Bryce, is free.  We checked into our Hampton, just outside of town at 3:30 and relaxed, showered, and read and got caught up on emails, until about 5:30.  Then we went out to look around, visit the shops, and have some dinner.

Around 6:00, we went off looking for a good place to eat.  We walked for perhaps a mile, stopping in and looking at two or three recommended places, none of which we liked.  The last place we stopped at, Picazzo's, an Italian  restaurant, ended up being a gem.  We were able to sit at the bar, at a marvelous organic pizza with mushrooms and turkey sausage and a huge Caesar salad, along with a brew or two.  We struck up a conversation with a couple from Seattle, who were really fun, here on a golf trip and like us, they go on to Scottsdale tomorrow.  And another couple stopped us, said they had seen us on the trail earlier in the day (we recognized them as well) and we both laughed at the coincidence of both of us hiking the same trail, eating at the same restaurant. And, by the way, all six of us loved our meals, would come back in a minute.  So, if you are in Sedona, want Italian and a great atmosphere, go to Picazzo's.  When we  left at  8:15, there was still a line of people waiting to be seated.

At Picazzo's in Sedona