Sedona, Part 1

We made it to Sedona with plenty of daylight for hiking but the rental car foiled us several times. A lot of the trailheads near Sedona are down very rough jeep roads and the Beetle just couldn’t make it. We ended up doing only one hike Friday afternoon, at Fay Canyon. We went half a mile in before finding the .3 mile side trail to an arch and some ruins. After exploring there for a bit, we continued all the way to the back of the canyon, another .8 mile past the side trail. It was surprisingly green in there, and pretty level except for the steep trail to the base of the arch. The trail disappeared but we kept going on a dry creek bed until we hit the wall. From there, we found a large formation to scramble up on to get an even better view, and we were able to see even more ruins against the back of the canyon. We hiked back out and then headed to the time share to get settled in.

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Saturday morning we started with the Cathedral Rock hike. It is .6 mile up steep slickrock to the Cathedral and it’s one of Sedona’s vortex sites. The vortexes around Sedona are supposed to have some magnetic energy that make one feel very calm and filled with a sense of well being. I didn’t feel anything, but it was a cool formation to climb around on.

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Next we headed over to the Broken Arrow Trail, a 1.7 mile hike in to Chicken Point where there were great views. We also passed a sinkhole called The Devil’s Dining Room and a formation called Submarine Rock. The trail was a mix between regular dirt/rock trail and slickrock. We were crisscrossing with a jeep road so there were plenty of tourists out and plenty of mountain bikers too.

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We tried to do one more hike, but the Beetle foiled us again, so we decided to go wine tasting instead. We checked out Oak Creek Vineyards, Page Spring Cellars, and Javelina Leap Vineyard.

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5 Comments

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  1. Beautiful photos!! I tried to take my mazda to some hikes when I was in Sedona but probably would have destroyed it. Lol. Decided to just go to ones near improved roads. Did they not let you get another type of rental car? I guess renting truck or SUV would be best for next time. I’ll keep that in mind when I go out west again.

  2. We had just booked an economy/compact car since it was cheapest, and that was the only car available. My Corolla has higher clearance than it.

  3. I know it has been a few years but I was wondering if you remembered where you encountered the ruins at Fay Canyon. Were they under the arch or in the back of the canyons? My girlfriend and I hiked Fay to see the ruins and never saw any. It was wonderful easy hike nonetheless but we’ll be going back hopefully to see ruins this time. Thank you in advance.

    • The ruins were near the arch. We went half a mile into the canyon before finding the .3 mile side trail to the arch and ruins.

      • Shemuel Arrindell November 3, 2017 — 7:01 pm

        Thank you. We went and almost climbed all the way to the arch before it got steep with cacti and loose rocks and decided to turned back. Next time we’ll know the reward I near. Thank you very much.

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