Sedona by Jeep

I was my great good fortune to yesterday be included in a back country Jeep ride in Sedona with my cousin's daughter and her family. There are a great many Jeep trails that wind back in the canyons behind the villages of Oak Creek and Sedona. They are open to the public but most require a Red Rocks Pass if you're going to stop and take pictures or hike some of the trails. By far, the greatest users are the many commercial Jeep tour operators who contract to take tourists into the back canyons. We started out by taking the Broken Arrow Trail, one of the most scenic and popular trails available. There, we encountered a great many of the famous Pink Jeeps.

Only high clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles are permitted on these trails. There are many obstacles to climb and very rough road to traverse. The practice of taking off-road vehicles into the back country into difficult places is called rock crawling and involves extensive modifications to the vehicles involved to enable them to perform the way they do. Of course, it's great fun, particularly if you're open to the experience.

 The views are just spectacular.

The light colored thing in the center is called Submarine Rock and is easily 150 yards wide. You can drive to it but not up on it. We stopped there and walked to the highest point for the view. 

There are also many different kinds of plants. This one is called Century Plant.

It's a member of the Agave family, the one that is used to make Tequila. The Century plant only blooms once in its life which lasts from 10 to 40 years. After it blooms, it dies. The flower stalks can be over 12' tall. The spines of the leaves are dangerous. While the sap in the flower stalk is sweet and the stalk itself is eaten by people and livestock when it's small, that of the leaves is so highly acidic it can produce blisters on the skin.

After the Broken Arrow trail, we went across town and explored the Soldier Pass trail where we found some rare shade for a lunch break.

At the end of Soldier Pass is an old cabin that is an historic landmark.

Called the Van Deren cabin, here's it's story:

Spoiling the effect, if you go thirty yards behind the cabin and peek through the bushes, you come upon a golf course.

By the time we got back to town, it was getting hotter, about 95, so we decided to gain some altitude and headed for Jerome and Mingus mountain. At the top of the mountain, we turned onto a dirt road and followed for 20 miles across the ridges and into the isolated community of Cherry. 

There's a lot of lonely country back there. After 11 hours on the road we returned home tired and happy.