Sedona (5/12/07)

The next day we drove into Sedona - I was expecting it to be in a deep canyon (Oak Creek Canyon) but it is out in the open with great views of surrounding red rock formations. It's a nice town, and I can see why people like it, but the north part of it before you get to Oak Creek Canyon heading up to Flagstaff is VERY touristy! Tons of Jeep tours of the surrounding red rock areas. Not as many new age crystal healing type places as I had expected to see - I guess that part of the community has been somewhat eclipsed by the tourism part, at least on the surface. After eating breakfast at a nice little cafe in the other part of town (Taste Cafe), we stopped in at the Visitor Center (and got free cookies because it was "Tourist Appreciation Week"! Yay us!) and got some basic information and maps of the Jeep trails we wanted to explore. We would have liked a much better map, but the National Forest map for $10 wasn't all that much better and for one day of exploring, we decided to forgo buying it.

Schnebly Hill: We started with Schnebly Hill Road, and it was quite scenic! The road leads to views of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon and the surrounding redrock formations from the Mogollon Rim. Not really a Jeep trail, though, since we saw quite a few regular cars - though it was pretty rough for a regular car. On top, we tried the "Hot Loop" trail for a short distance to get to the very top of the mesa. The Jeep does very well! Later we found out that T.C. Schnebly founded Sedona, and the town is named after his wife (after the postmaster general in Washington rejected his other ideas of Oak Creek Crossing and Schnebly Station!)

Broken Arrow: Next we wanted to try the famous "Broken Arrow" trail, which is maintained jointly by the Forest Service and Pink Jeep Tours. Pink Jeep is the largest and most highly regarded of the Jeep tour companies in Sedona, and they have an arrangement that they are the only tour company to use the Broken Arrow trail. The place was crawling, literally, with Pink Jeeps! Ha. On overhearing the guides at the beautiful "Submarine Rock" formation, I was impressed with their knowledge of geology and natural history, and also of their concern for the environment. They obviously talked about staying on the trail, responsible backroad use, preserving native flora and fauna, etc. I saw one guide bending over an Agave by the trail up the rock and talk about how it was getting trashed by people walking on it, or maybe driving over it. It was neat to see that level of caring in a tour guide.

The trail is interesting, in that at the beginning is a roadblock of rocks across the trail, obviously meant to keep out non-high clearance vehicles. There is a parking lot by it so folks can walk or mountain bike into the area, but it is open to private parties in their own or rental off-road vehicles. We saw mostly Jeeps, but one Hummer (which I think would have been too wide to go much farther than where we saw them). We actually scraped a little bit going over the "entrance" rocks - we are basically stock - the slightly larger BF Goodrich off road tires give us only about a half inch lift from stock. Most folks doing these sorts of trails will get a lift kit and lift their Jeeps 2-3 inches, but that would make it a bit hard for Devin to get into and out of, and since it's our only car now, that's not practical. Shortly after entering the trail is your first climb over slickrock, and a sign saying "if you can't make this climb, turn back now" which gives you an idea of more fun to come. We made it no problem, and all the others as well.

Devil's Kitchen: At the first fork in the road, we went right, and accidentally discovered the "Devil's Kitchen" sinkhole. That's where we saw the Hummer. And two people up above the sinkhole preparing to rappel down into it. So we stuck around to get photos! After the man had rappelled down, two pretty large loose rocks fell down from the wall and hit him right on his hardhat! I saw the rocks fall, then heard a loud THWACK! and an equally loud "OUCH!" It's a good thing he was wearing a hardhat and that the rocks hit him there, instead of an arm - I think they would have broken his arm. The woman rappelled down with ease and smiled and waved for the camera, then we left. Hope they made it out okay!

And I hope they didn't disturb any bats, since May is when they start having babies. Their ropes were mostly in the air, and not on the sinkhole walls, so I think they had a good chance of not disturbing baby bats. The sinkhole was fenced off with barbed wire, had "revegetation/restoration area" signs outside it, and there was an interpretive sign in the parking lot on not disturbing the bats, so I had mixed feelings about watching the couple rappel into the sinkhole, but I didn't figure saying anything would help, since none of the signs or fences did, so I just took photos and chatted about climbing.

Submarine Rock: When we went back out to the main trail, we followed a convenient Pink Jeep to another side trip - Submarine Rock. I followed the tour groups up and listened in on the geology schpiel a bit, and took photos. The road up there was a bit exciting - the steepest attempted so far in the Jeep. Oh but there was more to come!

Mushroom Rock and the Road of No Return:

At the next fork, we went right again - with no map to guide us, we weren't sure where this lead, but Devin had seen Jeeps crawling around on the slickrock there, so we went up. First we came to a rock that looked like a giant mushroom, and discovered that the trail went around the rock! Next we went up a very steep hill that Devin wasn't to thrilled about coming back down, so I scouted the trail ahead while he sat up on the slickrock with a great view down to Submarine Rock below. The trail seemed to keep going, and before long, another group of Pink Jeeps came along, so we decided to watch where they went and what they did. They had some fun with their passengers, is what they did!!

There is a loop over the slickrock after the steep grade, and we had a perfect view as Pink Jeep after Pink Jeep toyed with their passengers and we heard screams, squeals and lots of nervous laughter. On driver actually stopped at the steepest part of the descent and handed out brochures - ha!! A couple in a rental Jeep had come up just ahead of the pack of Pink Jeeps and after watching them do the loop, they decided to try it, too. Jeff, the guy, said he was afraid of doing a "Dukes of Hazzard" at the end, but they executed the descent perfectly. They had a hand-drawn map of the trails from their rental company (Farrabee) which was much better than what we had, and they shared it with us - we were considering going back, but this was a one way road! Good thing we looked at the map. They also gave us something to look forward to/dread - at the end of this side-loop were the infamous stairsteps back down to the main trail. Oh boy.

So we continued on, and when we got to the stairsteps, I could NOT believe that this was a road!! We were going straight down!! I thought we were going to flip end over end, and all I could say is "ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod" in a rather shrill voice. Devin was laughing. He's evil! He wanted the camera to get a picture of my face, but the battery died. Finally, when I realized we really weren't going to flip, I got the spare battery in and tried to take some pictures with my sweaty, shaking hands! But the Jeep handled it all with aplomb. Devin also is a very good driver, and knew to keep it slow and controlled, unlike that video we saw online of the Bronco going out of control and flipping over coming down the Lion's Back in Moab. After this, though, the Lion's Back should be no problem for us - ha!

After we got to the bottom we pulled over and just were laughing - so elated to be alive - ha!

We decided not to finish the rest of the trail (we missed Chicken Point and some more views) because it was getting late and we had to drive back to Cottonwood. We did drive up Oak Creek Canyon, past Slide Rock State Park, just to check it out, since we would not be going that way in the Moho to Flagstaff tomorrow. We enjoyed our day of exploring around Sedona, and would recommend Pink Jeep Tours to anyone coming to the area who wants a thrill and a good tour - be sure to take the Broken Arrow trail!

(If this slideshow doesn't work for you, or if you'd like to see it larger, go to our Picasa Web Album (picasaweb.google.com/devinandmaggie/) and click on the Sedona Album and click "View Slideshow" for a fullscreen version.)