Road Trip 2015 - #9 Flagstaff Sedona

September 23, 2015 - We reluctantly left Datil but were excited about finally making it to Arizona.  On the way to Sedona, we stopped by the Petrified Forest National Park and drove through to see some of the Painted Desert side as well.

Just as we were approaching Flagstaff, the inevitable happened again.  Another blowout on the camper.  But I had foreseen this.  In Datil, I told David that if we have a blowout it would be that tire.  It just had that look.  From now on, I'm looking at all of our tires.  I now know that I know THE look...lol.

We fully intended to boondock somewhere north of Sedona (as we would head north from there), but where was a big question.  I located some information about a Forest Road 237 and we located it easily.  Pumphouse Wash is the name of the dispersed camping area here. It was about halfway between Flagstaff and Sedona.  It was a bit hilly and the dispersed camping sites were made for campers much smaller than ours but we finally located a perfect spot - nice and big and flat - in area #4.  Once again we were able to make use of our solar.  We also were the only people in our area...for a couple of days that is.

There were a couple of highlights of this area - other than being totally FREE.  We were on the edge of the wash - actually a small canyon with beautiful hiking.

Lots of room for the pups to run and David loved the sounds of elk bugling all around us.  We even went stalking once; however, we soon began to think the bull elk was stalking us!  His sound and closeness made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.  We never saw him though I'm certain he saw us.

We rode the scooter to Sedona which was a very pretty ride but not as inviting as I thought it would be.  I love Santa Fe and thought Sedona would be similar but it just didn't seem as inviting.  We rode through to Cottonwood where we had a drink in Old Town.

We went for a short hike at Grasshopper Point which is a cool little canyon area just south of Sedona.  They said there was a swimming area there but we apparently didn't hike far enough to see.  We heard a lot of water, just didn't see it.  Maybe next time.

Of course the red rocks of Sedona were beautiful, but on Friday the camping area got very busy with kids and ATVs and lots of noise and I knew there were more red rocks where we were headed.  It was time to turn north.