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Monday March 9, 2015

The nice thing about digital cameras is you can take so many pictures; the bad thing about digital cameras is that you have oh so many pictures to sort through after an active day shooting.

After returning to Cottonwood from Phoenix Carla and I struck out for another hike before starting our journey home. We had planned to go to Chicken Point where we hiked a few years ago and where I took the photo that graces the banner of most of my blog pages. We wanted to get some good light so woke up early and got out of the house before my aunt and uncle were up. When we got to our jump off point we realized we had left our National Park senior pass back in Cottonwood. Dang! We headed over to the Sedona visitor center at 331 Forest Rd  to get a  pass. We got to play around with the various xylophones until  they opened up at 8:00.

Due to federal budget cuts they no longer have a Forest Service ranger selling passes but were were able to get a day pass. Since we were there we talked with the volunteer about nice hikes in that area to see if there might be a better option. We described our Doe Point hike from the past week and our enjoyment of Chicken Point a few years ago. He guided us to Little Horse Trail. It sounded good so we struck out.

Our hike on Doe Point the previous week was northwest of Sedona out Dry Creek Road. this hike would take us south of Sedona along Highway 179. The map below shows where we went. The gold star at the bottom of the map is the parking lot / trail head off the highway. The red pin shoes our destination (I think – I’m terrible with directions). Click the map image below to enlarge it or click this google map link which has the red pin but not the gold star.

The  Forest Service description of the hike can be found here. If you want to go on this hike, here are the no nonsense directions. From Sedona take 179 toward the Village of Oak Creek and I17. After a while the highway goes to being slightly divided to branching almost out of site of one another. Just after this happens there will be a left turn to cross over the Sedona-bound traffic and pull into the parking lot. It’s easier than it sounds – you can see the branch in the road in the map above.

Oh well, let’s let the pictures do the talking, shall we? Remember you can click on individual images to get much larger pictures. The following photos were taken in order from the beginning to the end point and back to the parking lot. The first picture is very near the parking lot showing you don’t have to go far to get nice vistas.

A short distance down the trail is a view that is likely spectacular in the evening sun; but since we were there in the morning I couldn’t get much of a picture with the sun right there.

A little farther down the trail is a view of the Chapel of the Holy Cross – maybe the most famous location in Sedona.

As we gained elevation we through a cut between some magnificent smooth red rocks.Notice the little trees growing on the top of the rocks up on top.

We were proud of ourselves when we got to the plateau. But our enjoyment was short lived as a bunch of the ubiquitous pink jeeps roared up and disgorged their passengers. We waited them out and enjoyed the view when they left. I tried a few panorama shots of the rock structure above us – you can read about my experimenting here – and determined this is the best of the lot.

We then headed down back to the car.

The hoodoos in the distance are the same we saw in the first photo above near the trail head

A panorama shot of the same area as the photo above.

A beautiful day for a hike.

One final look back up the hill before we head back to Cottonwood.

We went out to eat Mexican food in Clarkdale that night with a group of choir friends of my uncle and aunt. The next morning we’d wake up and head toward Boise and home. It may take a few days to get that post out as I have another 150+ images to sort through.