For my final Sedona article, I’m writing about our hiking adventures. We drove around Sedona, looking for good hiking places but without a decent map we kept coming up with dead-end roads. At one point, we ended up at the closed gate to someone’s property. We were on a narrow road with no way to turn around. My husband had to back up quite a ways until he found a widening in the road and then he made a u-turn, which still wasn’t easy.

After that experience, we decided to drive to our hotel and see if we could check-in. We were told we had to wait another hour. The clerk gave us two maps, one with hiking trails listed. We went in search of the nearest one. Turned out it was very near the hotel. We parked in the trail-head parking lot and set out up the hill.

It was not an easy trek, especially in the hot and somewhat humid weather. What made it worse was that we were already at a 4,000 foot elevation and weren’t used to that altitude. Our legs didn’t want to cooperate, but we finally made it to the top, where the trail evened out.

I was always at the back of our little group because I’m the slowest walker but also because I kept stopping to take pictures in all directions. I think I wouldn’t enjoy hiking nearly as much if I didn’t have my second pair of eyes with me.

You might be surprised to find out we didn’t see a single snake, scorpion, or even a lizard out there. We were constantly on the look out for them. Not surprisingly, the trek back down the hill to our car was a breeze!