Monday morning after 8 days of EOT is always an odd day. The campground had 5 campers left in it. I had a good chat last night with Mystery Rider from UT who had been 2 doors down the row and was now the nearest remaining camper. It makes the break easier when everyone leaves and you have no one left, no more reason to be there. Let’s get on with the net phase of this winter trip.
So up north we go, up I-17 about 75 miles to Cottonwood, near Sedona. We have never been here before. It has a reputation for its natural beauty and it might be true; it took Carlene 2 hours to find a campsite and that’s why we are in Cottonwood instead of Sedona. It’s only 14 miles to Sedona. We are here until Friday. We did see a Bald Eagle on the way up, it flew right by us on the highway, very easy to see that big white head. Hopefully I caught it on the dash cam.
After getting settled on our site we took a hike. First stop was the Verde River. This Arizona river is quite different, it has water in it! Real liquid water! Skye had a blast, swim, run, shake, roll in the sand, come out looking like a chocolate lab, back in for a swim. Then we got to the hike. There is a hill behind camp with a couple overlook decks part way up. We took the longer route and that turned out to be a good thing. We didn’t find the trail to the deck, we found the trail around behind the hill and up to the top. There was no trail to the deck but who needs it when you’re on the top of the hill with an even better view! But no trail down to the deck means going back the way we came. Or does it? We went part way back and took a trail to the west, around the hill and back toward camp. It led down to a residential road thatI knew ended near where Skye was swimming. But it didn’t connect without going through someone’s yard. And apparently many people have done that because they had signs asking us not to. So back to the trial. I had noticed another trail headed north around the hill farther out so at hoped it would take us back without going up the hill again. It did, sort of. Not directly but out to a paved road and soon connecting to a dirt road and that took us back to the original tail and back to camp. Too bad we didn’t track all of that on our trail app.
We are at 3300’ here, Ben Avery was around 1500’. It is already cooler and will get cooler during the week. By Friday it’ll be a high in the 60s, maybe below 40 at night.
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