The last weekend in September my husband and I decided to go on a quick getaway to do some fall hiking in Sedona. We’ve done it several times before but always with our corgis Ein & Faye so it has always been a day trip with no real sightseeing, and we always did the same (beautiful) hike at Oak Creek Canyon which is very dog-friendly (not very car friendly though when you get back with two muddy-bellied corgis!).
This time around we wanted to spend a whole day (and night) there to ourselves, which was especially enticing because we haven’t taken a proper vacation or weekend away in quite some time, and we had a free hotel night that was coming up on expiring pretty fast to push us to do it. So we woke up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and drove on up.
The drive to Sedona isn’t too long, about an hour and half maybe, and it’s fairly pretty considering we live in the desert. We’ve had more rain than usual this year (I’ve heard we are closer to the pre-drought levels of rain and we’ve been in drought for about a decade), so the mountains were speckled with so much more green than usual. There are about four distinct parts to driving up to Sedona too: driving through Phoenix (blech), driving into the mountains, driving along the plateau, and descending into the beautiful red rock area. While I enjoy the ride in general, entering Red Rock Country is something to behold. One minute you are looking at typical Arizona mountains and then just around a curve in the road you see the red mountains tucked away in the distance.
I had big ambitions for this trip. I used this new app (well, the website for it – the app is only on iPhone at the moment), called Roadtrippers, which lets you select your starting point and destination and then allows you to sort through categories of activities, attractions, etc… and add them to your trip itinerary. I knew there were some places I wanted to see up close and was happy to find that they had hiking trails available. In fact, while Roadtrippers doesn’t highlight it, there are TONS of trails to hike in Sedona – but not all of them were very interesting to me as I’d rather hike up into something beautiful than hike across the flat valley between two mountains. But anyway, I discovered a few places I knew I wanted to hike, went to the government sites for them to get details on distance, time to hike, difficulty, etc. (hey Roadtrippers, you should consider adding that information. Going out to another site gets exhausting!). I wanted to hike Bell Rock Pathway and Cathedral Rock on Saturday and Devil’s Bridge on Sunday.
On the drive up we stopped in Beaver Creek to check out Montezuma’s Well. I’ve been there before, back in 2003 with my family, but it was a quick stop right before the park closed and we didn’t see much. I”m really glad we went again, even though the not-that-steep trek up to the top took my breath away as if I never go to the damn gym. It’s a pretty awesome natural landmark, with cliff dwellings built around it, and a natural canal where the water filters itself out of the limestone sinkhole via a deep spring that produces about 1.4 MILLION gallons of water a day. When we got to the base of the spring, we were lucky enough to happen upon a park employee who talked to us about the history of the well. It was awesome. And then we had to walk back up!
Next we stopped at the info center on the way into the Village of Oak Creek to buy a Red Rock Pass, which is needed for parking in a number of areas in Sedona. On the way in I grabbed a photo with Smokey the Bear, then we found out that Saturday was a free day for the Red Rock Pass areas (sweet!) and the lady we spoke to gave us a whole bunch of information on how to get to the trailhead for Devi’s Bridge and helped us plan which hikes we should do on the free day. We also found out that they have significantly scaled back the Red Rock Pass areas so in the future it would be wise to look up which areas are Red Rock Pass areas – you might not even need one!
We hit Bell Rock Pathway first, because it was the first thing we got to. I wish I owned better shoes for hiking (I was hiking in a pair of my Asics running shoes), because while you can get pretty far up on this rock despite appearances, it’s much tougher without some seriously gripping shoes due to the smooth surfaces. Still, it didn’t feel like it took that long to get up there, it wasn’t too challenging, and the panoramic views were gorgeous. We puttered around the trails at the bottom for a little while, thinking we might check out Courthouse Butte, but we were pretty wiped and headed back to the car instead.
After Montezuma and Bell Rock it was time to rest and grab a bite to eat. We grabbed lunch at Sound Bites Bar & Grill in Sedona (I had very yummy lettuce wraps), then we went for a drive through Oak Creek Canyon for a while before turning back because we were exhausted and ready to nap right there in the car.
That night, we enjoyed dinner at Nic’s Italian Steak & Crab House in Cottonwood, AZ, about 14 miles from our Hotel in Sedona. It wasn’t a bad drive, and though it was dark when we got there, main street in Cottonwood looks charming and our dinner at Nic’s was probably one of the best dining and Italian experiences I have ever had. The staff were incredibly friendly, the wait wasn’t overtly long, and the decor of the whole restaurant was classy, warm and inviting. We had stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer, and I had the New England Clam Chowder (you don’t know this about me, but this is my favorite soup and it’s hard to find a good one!). For dinner Z had the lasagna (we enjoyed the leftovers the next day and I can tell you it was very tasty!), and I had the Lobster Ravioli in Creamy Pesto Shrimp Sauce, which was also delicious! Nothing about this meal was healthy, but after hiking and walking around for a good part of the day, it felt well-deserved and was a nice treat. If you live in Arizona and have never been here, I highly recommend it!
The next day, we had good intentions to get up at 7 am to get an early breakfast and a jump on our last hike, Devil’s Bridge. But exhaustion had other ideas and we never heard the alarm go off, so we got up at 8:30. The breakfast at our hotel was nothing to brag about, so we ate little and fast before we headed out. The trail head for Devil’s Bridge comes at the end of a long, rocky road that is only suited for SUVs and trucks, so we had to park at the end of the road and walk. And walk. And walk. It was about this time I seriously regretted choosing to hike in jeans instead of gym clothes, but we trucked on until we got there.
I feel like, in the grand scheme of things, the walk to and from the trail head was more work than the hike itself, though it was a lot of up-mountain hiking, with some steep steps along the way. We stopped a few times as we rose up the side to take in the breathtaking panoramic views and snap some photos. As you climb the mountain you can’t really see where it is you are heading until you get to the last and steepest “staircase” of rock. You also have a choice of hiking below (which I regret not doing because the photos from down there would have been just as awesome), or to hike up where you can walk across Devil’s Bridge. We opted for up.
The bridge itself is a narrow-ish bit of rock jutting out from the mountainside. To look at it, it looks too narrow and scary to walk out onto, but once you get over it is much wider than it seems. A nice fellow that was already at the top was kindly taking photos with everyone’s cameras and phones as they walked out onto the bridge. We donned our I Am Kosama shirts for this one, in hopes of winning the September photo contest (still waiting on that…). The walk back to the car, once we made it back to the bottom, was the worst part. My legs were exhausted and it was bright, warm and shadeless. But we made it. Can’t wait to go back and hike this one again sometime – and maybe rent an SUV or Jeep so we don’t have to trek it again.
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