Sedona Area

Wow, what an awesome place.  We actually stayed at the Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood, AZ, 19 miles SE of Sedona.  It was fun to ride up the road to get to the “Red Rock Country” and see the terrain change as we went. 

One of our trip was on St Patrick’s Day;

Being centered in Cottonwood allowed us the opportunity to visit neighboring areas like Jerome, a retired copper mine. 

We started to do a forest road trip up to Jerome, but the terrain became too rough for us.  So we bailed on the forest roads and took the highway up. 

 

The highway was fun, climbing twisty turney road.  We spotted a couple of sport bikes just getting them some, but when we caught up to them in town they had a state trooper and local sheriff with them.  Apparently they were going a little too fast for the limits set.

 

We had a megamillion calorie lunch in Jerome, then rode the bikes down the mountain around the hill and down the road to the Hayfield OHV area.  I promptly broke the rules by riding around the Tot’s track, then BR had to be a joy kill and show me the sign; “For children 12 years and younger”.  Man, I was having some fun. 

 

Ok, on to the grown up stuff.  There was a big wash running through the middle that had lots of sand in it.  Bummer.  BR found the grownup MC track.  Around about 3 times and we were bored with that.  This is the part where I picked on her a little.  I pushed her into trying some whoop-ti-doos.  She wasn’t sure, didn’t like it, but gave it a shot.  Shortly after that I lost track of her.  Can you find Barbara in this picture;

 So we piddled a little in the OHV area, but it is really not our thing, give us more trail.

The next day we rode the highway up to the Red Rock State Park.  Pretty area, we had a pretty good walk around the park.  Never did find the Apache Fire House. 

 

 

There was a river running through the valley;

And the trails up through the Juniper trees are very pretty.

After buying some chap stick we rode up to the Hananki Indian Ruins.  It is amazing to me to observe places that people lived a full 600 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 

 

Of course along the way we are always respectful of the local inhabitants. 

 

 

 

 One never knows whether or not they will become venomous.

 

 

 

We ended the stay by taking a side road that the guide book said was a “moderate” trail.  Kind of like a blue on the ski slope.  BR did good.  She got into some really rough rocky stuff and ran off the road.  When I got back to her she was laughing, saying she really shouldn’t have tried to take that section so fast. I think she may finally be over her fall she took in the Guadalupe National Park.  

There is so much more riding we could do here, maybe some hiking. .  We tried canoeing the Verde River, which was a disaster resulting in me carrying the canoe a half mile through branch and bramble back to the truck.  There was just not enough water in the river (creek).