Chihuly at the Desert Botanical Garden

On Thursday, we picked up Mike and Pam Noble at Sky Harbor airport. We decided to take advantage of the trip to Phoenix to take in the Chihuly exhibit at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. This was a fascinating exhibit. Chihuly, a native of Washington state who studied and taught at RISD, has exhibited all over the world. He recently had an exhibit at RISD.

His work is interspersed with the native tree, wild flowers and cacti. The place is very interesting on its own, but was really spectacular with the blown glass. We went late in the afternoon, so there was a lot of good lights and shadows on the glass. They are lit up at night which must really be something. Here are a few photos.

Today we start a forced march of tourism with Mike and Pam. They are only here for a few days so we will cram in as much as humanly possible.

Sycamore Pass Road

Looking for some more back road adventure, Judy and I decided to try some of the "difficult" trails leading toward a place called Sycamore Canyon. The main access to the canyon is from the north. But that would mean going west from Flagstaff, then south. We thought we would take the short cut.

We took the first dirt road we found once we got off the highway and it lead us through a cattle ranch where we were getting up close and personal with a lot of hefty beasts. They seemed to be pretty used to humans. They just turned their heads toward us, stared at us and continued munching away at the sparse grass. We took lots of pictures and I've started a portrait of one of my favorites. Maybe she'll buy it. I think it is a she. It had udders, but also horns. So I guess females have horns on this breed.


We kept going further and further off the beaten path. There were spectacular long range vistas as well as some flowering cactus we came upon.



The trail took us part way up Sugarloaf Mountain. We circled around the back of the mountain and could see a trail winding steeply up the hill, when we ran into a metal gate that blocked the trail. I think we had gone far enough anyway. I needed an excuse to turn back. See Judy scoping out the trail.

The next day, we decided to go again and take Ian McEwan, a friend of Woody and Margaret Flowers, with us. He is here with his wife, Connie, who is on a plein air painting trip. Ian seemed to really enjoy the ride. He is retired from the GM truck division so he was used to rough riding. We drove to a great spot just below the gate. Then we tried to cut across the landscape going through ranches until we could get to a trail that runs along the red rocks, giving Ian a closer look at the formations. At one point we were a bit lost/confused on one of the connecting dirt roads when we saw a UPS truck and asked directions. Yes, a UPS truck was out there deliverying to the ranches. We finally found one of the smaller trails and dove back into the outback and made it through Outlaw Trail and back in time for Margaritas and a great dinner with the painters. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.

Demo at Sedona Art Center

Today, we attended a demo at the SAC given by Jerome artist, Cody Delong I had seen him doing his "plein air" thing during the Plein Air Festival in October and met him the other night at the Sedona Art Center opening for the Arizona Plein Air Artists show. He won best in show, by the way.

Anyway, Cody was doing a 16x20 recreation of a study he had done recently. It was of a winding creek with a small waterfall. The scene had a lot in it. Underwater red rocks, bushes and small trees, bigger rocks on the shore and a background bank with a wooded area beyond that. For this type of work, Cody's approach is to tackle the focal point first. But, to begin with, he uses a charcoal to sketch in the drawing. He took an old paint brush and drilled out the ferrule (?) and inserted a piece of charcoal. That way he could draw as if he was painting. On location, he might use a pencil while in the studio he uses the charcoal.

After roughly sketching in the drawing, he started by laying in the color and value of what he was seeing beneath the water. He did not want to paint the top surface until he had the correct feeling for what was beneath the surface. This started with a warm green in the background, then a cooler green and then a warmer red-ish color for the foreground where one could see the rocks under water. He laid in a dark area which would be at the base of the little falls. He wiped out some of the red area with a paper towel to make the underwater rocks. He'd go back later to add more detail. He feels that by laying blues over the green water gives more interest to the creek instead of starting with blue and adding highlights. It definitely worked.

As he added the blue to the water, he used directional strokes in the foreground to indicate movement in the water. Some of these would be his final stokes. Economy of brushstokes?



He then went to the background and put in a mid-tone gray on top of which he added darks for tree trunks and lights for some of the foliage. He added the river bank in front of the trees and was able to drag wet into wet. He works top to bottom so that he can drag the new layer into what is already there. He is meticulous and takes his time with his painting. He wasn't going to finish the whole canvas, but we got the point. See the photo for how he was approaching his work.



Cody uses a pochade box from Openbox.com . Actually, it is the panel and pallette holder. This attaches to a normal camera tripod. For a panel, he uses a Pintura panel that he primes with liquin and light ochre. He also uses a light coat of liquin to varnish his work when it is dry.

He can fit everything he needs into his backpack as he hikes into the back woods of Arizona in search of something that stikes him that he can put to canvas.

Sedona Wildlife

After going on a bird watch recently and seeing some hummingbirds and seeing some at Taliesin West in Phoenix, we decided to pick up a hummingbird feeder at the local hardware store. I made up a mixture and hung it on a nail on the deck. When a few weeks went by and I hadn't seen any activity, I was about to return it as a faulty feeder. When lo and behold a couple of Anna hummingbirds (at least that is what I think they are) started to show up. There are a pair of them now and they dart in an out during the day. They hit the feeder then buzz off to hide in an apple tree then come back for more. Today, I stood by the feeder and waited for a few minutes til I heard the hum, then looked up and snapped this picture. Pretty Cool, huh! Double click on the photo to blow it up.

Another fascinating landscape

Last week we took another drive northeast of Flagstaff with Jacques and Claire. We planned on visiting Sunset Crator and the Wupatki Ruins. We packed up a lunch and made sure we had our Senior National Park pass and took off. This pass is the only thing great about getting old, so far. It costs $10 and it gets us, plus 3 people and a car, into any national park FOREVER. The only snag is that if we lose the pass we have to go to the place where we got it to replace it for free. That would be Scranton, PA. I don't think so. I'll pay the $5 to avoid Scranton.

Anyway, we stopped at the visitor center and got a map and headed to the first scenic view. As we drove along, out of nowhere, we noticed a huge, long pile of what looked like torn up highway from the Big Dig. It was a thousand year old lava field from the volcanos that existed in the area. The lava rock still looked very jagged and rough. A park ranger said it is because there is so little topsoil and rain that there isn't much erosion of it, if any.

At Sunset Crater, we parked and took a 1 mile walk through a lava field. There are many volcanos in this part of Arizona. There are several explanations for why there are so many in this area. You'll have to read the guide book to get the explanation, but it has something to do with the fissures between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range Province to the south. Got that? There are also different types of volcanos which are also explained in the guide. Speaking of which, the guide can be borrowed and returned or bought for $1. Pretty good deal. The San Francisco Peaks,seen in the background of the photo above, are the remnants one type of volcano. They are about 12,500 feet high now but were probably over 16,000 feet before erupting.

There is very little vegetation in the ashes from the lava. But what there is has adapted to survive. In this photo, you can maybe see the roots of a Ponderosa Pine that has toppled over. The trees face challenges of finding enough soil to root in and in capturing enough water as it drains out of the soil. They do this by spiraling the grain so it can bring enough water to all the branches and leaves evenly. It makes them more flexible but also reduces their strength. So, the are susceptible to toppling due to wind and soil erosion.

From here we drove out of the lava field and ash covered hills into a part of the "Painted Desert". It was an amazing site to see the grey ash end abruptly and see the multi-colored layers of rock in the distance. This is where the Wupatki Ruins are. They are one of a number of ruins located in this area. It appears that this area was built and occupied after the eruption of the volcanos. Maybe the eruption drew people to the area. Wupatki was settled by the ancestors of the Hopi and had 100 rooms, some for collecting scarce water, some for storage, some for community activities. They lived by farming and trading. There was no irrigation system so they may have carried water in some of the many pots found at the site. Archeologists think that upwards of 2000 people lived within a days walk of the ruins. Evidently, this ruin is more typical of the homes of the time as compared with the cliff-dwellings of the Sedona area.

Jerome Junkers

Just in case some of you are wondering if I am doing any painting at all, here are a couple that I did in the old gold mine/junk yard in Jerome. The place is full of stuff like this which I enjoy painting. These two were next to each other and I may do one with both. I had to cram myself between a few other junks to set up my easel and by the time I was finishing up, a sand storm blew up and nearly knocked everything over. Another one of the plights of plein air painting.

A Unique Discovery

It's been a few days since the last post. We've been busy with company, touring, painting, snoozing, eating, etc.

However, today, we "discovered" something really unusual and impressive. Our friends, the Sullivans, told us about the spot where the Little Colorado River flows over some falls on its way to join the Colorado and go on to the Grand Canyon. We had to find our way from Winona, east of Flagstaff, off of I-40, to the Navajo Reservation. Bill and Sarah had given us directions to follow like "turn left where there is no marker, go 8.5 miles and turn left again between two piles of basalt." The landscape was absolutely barren. I had figured if someone needed to use "facilities", they could go behind a tree, as usual. But there was not a tree nor blade of grass in sight. I was wondering when we would come to the falls as the land was totally flat and we could see no indication of any water. Finally we found the path between the two piles and I drove down the path in 4WD as it was quite bumpy. We saw what looked like a litte viewing area in the distance and headed for that.

When we got there and got out of the Jeep, we were presented with this awesome sight of tons of muddy Little Colorado water pouring over the rocks and making a hard right heading to join the Colorado. We had no idea what to expect and it was truly an amazing sight. The wind was fierce, but we manged to get out of the Jeep without having the doors blown off and took a bunch of pictures.
This is something that only lasts for several weeks before this section dries up. So, we feel fortunate that we were able to catch it in this small window.

Did I mention the wind? I thought the finish on the Jeep was going to get blown off and we didn't dare get too close to the edge of the canyon as the wind was blowing us off balance. We kept our distance. Here are a couple more photos of the area. One of the falls and maybe you can make out the sand storm in the other.

Ancient Graffitti

Back to tourism. My boss from our days in Paris, Jacques, and his wife Claire are visiting us. Some mutual friends from Chicago, Syd and Mitzie Eisen, have also come to Sedona to see Jacques and Claire.

We decided to visit one of the best sites for petroglyphs in all of Arizona. The petroglyphs are rock carvings made by the natives up to 1200 years ago. This place is in an old abandoned ranch, called the V-V (Vee bar Vee) ranch. All that is left of the ranch is a chimney from the house. A short walk along a Sycamore lined trail leads to a wall of petroglyphs. A guide there explained the significance of many of the carvings as well as explained how the natives had created a solar clock to mark the seasons. The wall is just a few degrees off of due north. There are a couple of rocks that conveniently stick out from a crevass on the wall which causes light and shadow to appear on the wall when the sun hits it right.

The natives carved images on the wall when the sun hit at times of the year to indicate the season they were in. For example, when the sun hit a certain spot on the wall, it was the season to plant the corn. So, they put a symbol for planting corn on the wall. Then they would know when to plant the corn the next season. Here is the symbol for planting corn. It looks like fish bones. Can you find it in the larger image? There are many other symbols that represent animals, festivals etc.







Next we stopped at Monezuma's Well which is close by. This is a huge sink hole that contains a constant level of water at a constant temperature and a constant outflow of thousands of gallons per minute. They are not sure how it works. The white people who first stumbled on it thought they were in Mexico so they named it after Montezuma. The water has a high concetration of CO2 so there are no fish in it. The life cycle in the well seems to be plankton, algae, insects and leeches. Yikes, no skinning dipping at night here. They natives used the water to irrigate their crops and lived around the well or in cliff dwellings in the wall of the well. This was a very interesting surprise.

Full Disclosure/Self Exposure

In the interest of self-exposure, I feel obliged to post these semi-candid photos that our friend, Sarah Sullivan, took of Judy and me at the Tucson rodeo. I say "semi-candid" as Judy seems to be aware that the phot is being taken and I am either reacting to a guy getting thrown by a bucking bronco or have just sat on a prickly pear cactus someone slipped onto my seat.

This photo shows the depths that some companies will go to entice customers. Yes, guys, you too can get a gal like this if only you'd dip a little bit of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. Makes me almost want to stuff a pinch between my cheek and gums.

Over the last few days...

I guess you all figured out that we went to Vegas last week. Our friends, the Kobeys, who live across the street from us, were visiting and we decided to make a quick trip to Vegas and take in a show. We got a great rate at the Belaggio Hotel and got tickets for Cirque Du Soleil, "O". The show was an unbelievable display of technology, athleticism, grace, strength, creativity, you name it. It was terrific. This was the second one we have seen and they both were great. On the way to and back, we passed over the Hoover Dam. What a sight and the scenery around it is other-worldly. We may go back to take a tour of the dam.

We got back to Sedona by 4pm. David did his best to take 18 minutes off of the GPS systems's estimated time of arrival. Nice job, David. While Judy, Lynn and David went to the trendy shopping area called, Tlaquepaque, I went to the Sedona Art Center. It was First Night for galleries in Sedona, so I stopped into their gallery. I met a woman who heads up a plein air painting group and she invited me to join them on thursday. I was already commited to go back to Jerome with Michael Johnson and Bill Cramer, who won the best in show at the gallery. Check out his web site at http://www.billcramerpaintings.com/ . After I left the gallery, I picked up the 3 stragglers who were at a real nice gallery where Dustin Payne, a western sculpturer, was in residence for the month. He is 26 years old and already a very accomplished sculptor, like his dad. http://www.dustinpayne.com/ . What a nice kid. He was on a rodeo scholarship to college. His event was the team roping.

Saturday, I stayed back to paint/noodle while the other guys went to Jerome for the afternoon. They had a great time and so did I.

On sunday, we decided to take one last Jeep ride and then go on a hike. I took the Kobeys to the Broken Arrow trail. They, especially, Lynn, loved it. It is a pretty grueling trail in places and has some great vistas to soak in the scenery. Here is a photo of Lynn on the "stairs" that you have to come down to exit the trail. I bottomed out a couple of times here as I really couldn't see over the hood to pick my way down.

Lynn took this photo of the Jeep after climbing over some slick rock to get to the top of this little hill. It was a tight squeeze around the top to go out the "trail" on the left. A little further from this spot, I actually had to get out of the Jeep to walk over the rocks to find where the trail went.

Our last hike of the week was to Devil's Bridge. It is a fantastic rock formation not far from a main hiking trail. It got to be a fairly difficult climb to get the top but it was worth it. The trip down was a bit tricky too. Sliding on your butt was helpful at times. This is a popular place so there were lots of people coming and going. Definitely a good way to end up the week.

Where in the World.....?

La Fiesta de los Vaqueros - aka Tucson Rodeo

We had an interesting weekend. We drove to Tucson to take in the Tucson Rodeo. It was the 84th time for this terrific event. It is held in a rodeo grounds that holds about 14000 people. It is the largest outdoor rodeo. There is a pretty nice carnival atmosphere with all kinds of food and clothing for sale. Of course, we had to buy hats (to protect ourselves from the sun.) There were plenty of events like the bucking bronco, right. A pair of announcers kept a running dialog of what was about to happen, what was happening and what just happened to keep things interesting. The riding skills of the people is truly amazing and the strength to hold on to either the horse or an ornery bull is incredible. I must admit, I didn't quite get the scoring system but most people did seem to understand what was going on. They even booed some of the results.

While, the bucking broncos and bulls were something, we especially like the team roping where one guy lassoed the head of a bull and the other guy lassoed both the rear feet of the bull (the same bull). About half of the teams succeeded in this. Pretty impressive. ( I forgot to mention, the bull was running at the time.) Even more so was the women's barrell racing. The control these women had over their horses and the way the horses reacted to their direction made me want to take up horseback riding.

Our neighbors, the Kobeys, arrived in Sedona on Monday afternoon. They left Boston a day early in anticipation of the storm. Good move on their part. When they arrived, we went out for a little ride and took in the setting sun over the red rocks. Today we took a leisurely hike, ate lunch in Fay Canyon and then went for a "joy ride".

Tomorrow, I am going back to Jerome to do some more painting. I got an email from Michael Johnson letting me know that he and Peter were going back to Jerome and asked if I wanted to tag along. I jumped at the chance. Not sure what I will do, but there are plenty of choices. I have worked some more on the two I started last week and feel pretty good about them.

Plein Air Painting

Plein air painting has its plusses and minuses. Getting something from real life is always better than trying to recreate something from a photo. But we all know there are problems associated with painting outdoors. There is the wind blowing over your easel and your canvas lands in the dirt. There's chasing the shadows or the tide. There's dealing with people and traffic. There's trying to paint with the sun in your eyes or directly on your pallette or canvas. Etc, etc. I added another one today when we went to Midgley Bridge to paint, falling into a canyon. Check out the photo. To get a good view of the bridge, I had to set up fairly close to the edge of the cliff. I was not dangerously close, but I didn't have much room to back up to check out my progress. I did get a queezy feeling in my gut if I got too close to the edge. I was trying to block things in as quickly as possible as the shadows change quickly on the rocks and I wanted to get away from the edge.

Jerome had its own set of problems. Jerome is a former mining town not far from Sedona. It has tons of great locations to set up and paint. There are also tons of people, lots of traffic passing through and, depending where you set up, lots of dog poop. Here is a photo of "downtown" Jerome and the quick underpainting I did. Using the reference photo I should be able to finish this one. I was mainly working on perspective and can see a few changes that need to be made. I started another one (while waiting for Peter to finish his 4x4 foot canvas) that is off to a pretty good beginning.

I plan on returning soon to paint more buildings plus there is an old "gold mine"/junk yard where you can find lots of abandoned old cars, trucks, buses, etc to paint. I'm looking forward to that.

Another day another ruin...

On Wednesday, we decided to check out another one of the many ruins in the area. It is called Honanki. It is another site occupied by the Sinaqua Indians about 1100 years ago. It is not in the same condition as the site of Palatki and it does not have a guided tour, but in some ways it is more interesting. There are perhaps a dozen remnants of homes nestled under the overhang of the cliff walls. You can walk along a short trail to go from home to home. There are also many pictographs that are hundreds of years old, as well. The trail up to the ruins was not as steep as Palatki as it winds through the brush and over and behind boulders to end up at the cliff dwellings. There is a very pleasant walk back to the parking lot.


Judy said that when I quickly agreed to go to Honanki, something else must have been up. In one of my off-road guides, I read that there was a Jeep trail next to the outhouses at the ruin. The person at the information booth said it was a well marked, relatively easy trail if one had enough clearance. That's all I had to hear.

This trail led up and down through the rolling hills around the red rocks. It had enough excitement to get the blood flowing and some unbelievable 360 degree views of the area. It led through some cattle ranches so there were plenty of cattle sitings. The guide said there would be some difficult sections and, once again, we thought we had gone through the difficult stretches when we actually hadn't. This photos shows what looks to be a difficult section, but actually was a breeze.

As we got further along this trail, we finally came to the more difficult part. The trail led over a large boulder and down into a dried creek bed. On the other side of the creek bed we could see a pile of rubble leading up a hill, but no real discernable trail. The rocks were pretty large but there was enough room to snake our way up the hill to find the dirt path.

This was a fun trail as there were great views, some easy parts and some difficult parts. Despite what the person at the information booth said, we saw no trail markers anywhere. We just kept taking lefts at all the forks in the road and made it back to civilization intact.

As mentioned, there were lots of cows out there. There were barbed wire fences that kept them on the ranch and the cattle crossings on the roads kept them from roaming down any streets. They seemed used to people and just stared at us and then slowly walked into the brush. What do you think these two are thinking?

Painting the town.

The past few days, I joined Michael Chesley Johnson and a couple of his students in painting some of the beautiful landscape in the area. This week, Rob and Peter, both from Canada are participating in Michael's mentoring workshop. I will join them on a day to day basis. Rob and Peter are both oil painters. Rob is from Winnipeg and Peter is from Newfoundland. They were glad to get out of the "great white north" and into the comfortable Arizona weather. It is beautiful here now.

On Monday, we set up in a field at the base of Bear Mountain. We had a number of different vistas to choose from. Look in any direction and there was something to paint. We all were relatively close to each other so that Michael could visit us from time to time to offer his critique and/or suggestions. That was very helpful. Here are Rob and Peter set up at the base of the mountain.

On Tuesday, we decided to spend some time at Red Rock Crossing, where the icon red rock formation known as Cathedral Rock can be viewed. I'm sure some of you have seen pictures of this formation before. Normally, the creek that runs by it is fairly calm, but melting snow in Oak Creek Canyon has caused the creek to rise quite a bit. Here's Rob with one of his large canvases at the edge of the creek. You can see the rapids in the water. The rocks were backlit in the morning so one had to block in the shadows quickly so as not to chase the sun. In the afternoon, especially late afternoon, these rocks are flooded with light.


Michael paints with us. We can either watch him while he gets in his under painting (he allows about 30 minutes for that phase) or we can paint ourselves. As Michael gets to each phase of his painting, he will take a break to visit each of us to check on our progress. This is very helpful in getting us to the next phase too. We have enough time to just about finish a painting or, at least, get it to the point where we should let it sit for a bit. At Cathedral Rock, Peter was working on such a big canvas that the rest of us had time to start on a second painting. Here are a couple of rough photos of my work so far.














Tomorrow we will go to the town of Jerome, an old mining town hung off the side of the Mingus Mountains about 2o miles away. There should be great opportunities there. I'm really looking forward to it.

Broken Arrow Trail

Saturday morning we decided to take the Jeep out on another adventure. One of the most scenic trails in all of Az, according to our Off Road book, is the Broken Arrow trail that leads to a place called Chicken Point. We had been there before on a hike and had seen the Pink Jeep tours driving over the red rocks so we decided to give it a try. The first thing you run into is a wall of rocks at the very beginning of the trail. This is meant to discourage people in their rental cars from getting in over their heads. Once you get over that obstacle, you soon find yourself on a huge slab of red rock. We got out of the Jeep as we had the place to ourselves for a few minutes and we strolled around.

From this spot, there are great views into the canyon and then panoramic views across to the red rocks around Sedona. We were there in the morning, so the sun was shining on the formations towards Sedona and the rocks in the canyon were back lit with lots of nice shadows.


The guide books rate this trail a 7 of 10, mainly because of a very steep, ledgy slickrock hill. The trail itself is one-way and this stairway is near the end. You pass this end of the loop when the trail becomes one-way. You are advised to walk up part of the stairway to determine if you want to continue or not, because you will need to exit the trail by that stairway. Onward we plunged.

A bit further there is a side trail to a large sink hole called Devil's Dining Room. There is another such sink hole in town called the Devil's Kitchen. The sink holes are caused by water leeching thousands of feet down into the soil and finally eroding a layer of limestone deep under ground. Once the limestone leeches away, there is an empty space that needs to be filled. (Nature abhors a vacuum). The ceiling of that hole collapses, then the ceiling of the hole above collapses, and so on and so on until the last ceiling near the crust of the earth collapes causing the sink hole. Got that? This one is about 100 feet deep and you can see all the many layers that make up the red rock formations.


We left the Devil's Dining Room and ventured further up the trail. Soon we encountered a 4WD club called Flagstaff4Wheelers and decided to follow them. They seemed to be up to no good. We were the last of a parade of 13 Jeeps that made their way to Chicken Point where we were treated to a great view towards the Village of Oak Creek. From there we tagged along as they went to "play" before they were to head out for another trail.





As the trail was One-way, I had to follow them.

The first playground was up a slickrock, around the very top of a rock called, The Roundabout, and then to the exercise of climbing the rock in the photo on the right. Believe it or not, I made it up this rock with relative ease. I just put it in 4L and let it crawl. I had to goose it a bit a couple of times to get over the first few boulders, but once I had all 4 wheels on the big boulder, it went smoothly. The path I took was a bit different than the guy in the photo. I went up the light grey path where the two guys are taking pictures.

These guys were mostly young and crazy, except for their leader who was not young but was crazy. He wasn't satisfied with his playing until he just about got wedged in a groove between two boulders. He got out of this without a tow. Needless to say, I didn't try this particular stunt.

More Ramblings...

Some more things I just want to remember for myself...
We are starting to get into a bit of a routine. I am trying to do some painting in the morning and then, when the sun comes up over canyon walls, we will take our lunch and go for a hike.
I think I am finished with my view of Sugarloaf Mountain, on the left. I blocked in the painting from the same spot as Michael's pastel, below, and took a reference photo for the shadows, etc. I modified the original a bit and tried to follow the lights and darks from the photo. I'd say I'm done, at least for now. I'll let it percolate a bit and see if it needs anything else later.

I've got a couple of other paintings that are near done and I started another one yesterday morning.



But, yesterday, we decided to check out Palatki ruins. These are ruins that are built into the canyon walls and date from 900 years ago. They were inhabited by the Sinaqua (spanish for "without water") for a couple hundred years. There are lots of these ruins, in various condition, around the area. There are also pictographs that have been carbon dated to be 12,000 years old. I think I heard that correctly. It is a bit of a climb to get to the ruins, see photo.

But, once you get there, it is worth it. The docent was full of great information. He is a retired tennis court installer from Prescott and now works for the forest service as a guide. Most of what you see is the original walls of the home. They have repaired a few things but not much. The stones are held together with mud. The homes were completely sheltered by the overlay of the canyon so they never got wet. Otherwise, the "mortar" would have become mud again and the homes would have crumbled.


Tuesday afternoon, we decided to check out Fay Canyon. In some guide books it is noted as a "personal favorite" so it was worth checking out. They were right. It is an easy hike through a canyon that opens up a bit so you can see both sides. There are beautiful views around every bend in the trail. The trail winds through the canyon for about 1 1/4 miles until it reaches the end in a box canyon. At least, it looked like the end as there were huge blocks of rock that had fallen from the cliff walls blocking the way. At that point we turned around and took in the sites from the opposite direction.

When we left Fay Canyon, we had plenty of sunlight and time on our hands so we (I) decided to take one of the paths that lead off the dirt road for an adventure. We have a Forest Service map and a hand made map from one of the off-road places. So, we found a trail marked as FR152A (Forest Road 152A) and decided to give it a try. The forest service map rates the roads as Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Extreme. This trail started as Difficult and then became Extreme. But, when in Rome...

The first part was pretty difficult. We passed through open areas with lots of cows as well as ruts, rocks and arroyos. There were lots of dried up river beds we had to go down into and climb out of. After a while of struggling along this trail we took a break to enjoy the scenery.

The hand made map had a narrative telling when the Extreme part would begin.(Extreme definition from Forest Service map, "Not advisable for novice drivers. Maximum ground clearance, four-wheel drive, low gears required. Jacks and winches may be needed.") The difficult part ("Warning! Use at own risk", from the off-road map) began after an old cattle pen and loading ramp leftover from old cowboy movies that were filmed here. We hadn't seen the pen but figured we must have missed it somewhere along the way while concentrating on the driving. But, no, all of a sudden we came to the pen. We thought, What? That wasn't the hard part we just went through? Judy suggested we turn back but I didn't want to go over what we had just done, so we forged ahead. This part was much more difficult than the previous section. The first major obstacle to climb was a hill with huge boulders in the middle of the trail. The thing to think about in off-roading is making sure you can clear anything, so you try to get your wheels on high points so the under carriage clears the rocks. I drove up the side of the path with the left wheels on the slant of the path and the right wheels on the rocks. It was the first time I thought we might roll the Jeep. But, we recovered and made it to the next challenge.

There were many such challenges and I didn't think it could get any worse until we hit a very steep downhill into a riverbed. The map comment said, "..drops into "the gulch". Take a moment on each side of the gulch to appreciate what you are about to do and/or what you just did by driving through it." I'll add that this off road outfit rents the dune-buggy type 4 wheel drive vehicles. So, we took a second to appreciate what we were about to do. I thought this had to be "the gulch". But, wait.

Anyway we "serpentined" our way down the slope and started up the other side when I saw a Jeep from Pink Jeep in my rear view mirror. I felt better knowing that if we had any problems, another Jeep might pass by within a day or so. We had water and trail mix. I pulled off the path and let the Pink Jeep pass me. I thought I could profit by taking the same route, but they have bigger tires and more clearance than my Jeep so they don't have to be as picky abut the path. I kept it in sight so I could beep my horn for help if something happened. It was only 50 yds ahead of me when it stopped and then it dropped out of sight, bouncing from side to side as it disappeared from view. I got to the top of the hill and saw it picking its way down a slope that must have been 60 degrees with a equeal climb out on the other side. I had to follow as I was getting a bit nervous about being abandoned out there.

Once again, I made my way down the slope with Judy calling out the navigation over the boulders. There wasn't much room to maneuver as there was a wall on the left and a cliff on the right. I didn't think we would get hung up as it was so steep that I thought, even if I hit bottom, the momentum would carry me downhill. We only bottomed out a couple of times. Needless to say we made it. This was the famous "Gulch" from the map. I stopped to take one quick photo of the gulch before chasing down the Pink Jeep. I didn't want to stop for too long and lose sight of any potential resuce vehicle.

We caught up to the Pink Jeep as they took a break at the top of a trail to take in the panoramic view. We stopped for minute to catch our breath and then took off to finish the trail. The remainder was still difficult, but compared to the Gulch it was a piece of cake. When we got to the end, I pried my hands from the Steering wheel and Judy said, "I'm ready for a cappuccino." We both said that we need to take that trail again before we leave.

On the way back to Sedona, we took some photos of the big western sky. This is an expansive view we don't get to see too much in New England.