2016 - Trip Report -A Walkabout at Sedona and Camp Verde
On Walkabout at Sedona and Camp Verde
Trip Report and Photos by Mignon Slentz
My friend, Jenny Jahraus recently hosted several of us to a camping trip in the Sedona / Camp Verde area in Arizona. The trip included Bob and Sue Jaussaud, Ron Lipari, Ken Sears, and myself along with Jenny.
As always, when Bob is along, we took Route 66 through Hackberry and Seligman. We stopped to look at an old schoolhouse on the side of the road when a tribal policeman drove in to confront us, saying that we were trespassing on Reservation land. He agreed not to cite us so we hurried away. Later, a look at the map convinced us we had not been on tribal land.
Our first night, we camped on the East side of 89 A about halfway between Flagstaff and Sedona. Temperatures were in the 20s overnight and Ron, in his tent suffered the most. The next morning we drove 5 miles to Call of the Canyon parking lot to wait for Jenny.
The 7 mile round trip hike that begins there follows the West Fork of Oak Creek and is one of the more popular hikes in the Sedona area. At the beginning of the hike, we passed orchards and the brick ruins and outbuildings of a once popular lodge.
We crossed over the creek many times using rock stepping stones or thin logs trying to keep our feet dry. It warmed up and most of us were glad to have changed to shorter pants.
On the way to our second campsite, we visited the Red Rock State Park Center and a petroglyph site. The next morning we hiked to some cavettes and toured the Archeology Center in Camp Verde which has outstanding examples of early Sinagua weavings.
We spent two nights under a full moon, on a ridge off Bill Gray Rd. that had views to the east of red rocks and Sedona and to the west of the old mining town of Jerome.
We also hiked along Sycamore Canyon, where some took a cold dip, visited the train station in Clarksville and walked around Jerome. We drove home on the Perkinsville Rd. which starts at the hill above Jerome and is very narrow and steep at the beginning but was a great option to bypass Flagstaff and Williams.
