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Red Rock County and Kaibab Forest, Arizona

April 9 - 23, 2019

We began our desert adventure in Las Vegas, going straight to our friend Anne's house, where she so graciousy hosted us for the night :) Her adorable house is amazing, and in a super interesting neighborhood right in the center of Vegas. We got all our shopping done and were there for her when she got back from work. She and her dogs came out to the Mojave to do a hike with us for a day last year, and it was great to see them all again. She took us to a fascinating BBQ joint for dinner in one of the neighborhood casinos where the folks are locals, and everyone smokes indoors. It was like a time warp!

By the crack of dawn, we were ready to get on the road with our AMAZING JEEP I LOVED IT SO MUCH. Thrifty HOOKED IT UP and had it waiting for me <3 I will never rent from another company. It cost me $600 to tool around boulder canyons in a TANK of a Jeep for 2 whole weeks. It has changed our camping life forever. Apart from the most ridiculous off-road boulder pits (more on that later), there is no trailhead out of our reach. HURRAH!

The plan was to spend the first week in the Kaibab Forest (all the Coconino Forest roads were washed out, so we had to switch plans at the last minute) and the second week in Red Rock County (the desert). We ordered all of our dehydrated food online at REI before we left, and picked them up at a Flagstaff REI so we didn't have to pack them in our bag. On the way to Flagstaff (about 50 miles from where we were planning to camp) suddenly a bizzard was upon us :( Neither of us wanted to start off a 2-week camping trip muddy and freezing, so we made a split-second decision to flip our schedule: Let's go to the desert FIRST. We knew it was good weather, and the screaming wind and snow helped make it an easy decision. So we picked up the rations and headed down South to Red Rock County

After driving through the gross tourist trap that is Sedona, we found the Forest Road we had planned to do dispersed camping on. It's a 25 mile or so rocky dirt road with fire rings spaced about 1/8 of a mile apart from each other. We were so tired from the long (unexpected) trip, and began to realize that almost every single spot was taken. It's no surprise - this area is almost as grand and impressive as the Grand Canyon, just over an hour to the north. After 15 or so miles (my first boulder road in the Jeep!:D ) we FINALLY found one of the last spots at the end of the road. We were SO HAPPY! And it was one of the best spots coz it was right up to the whole canyon :) And, obviously, FREEEE! Gotta love National Forests and the folks who use thier roads <3 Saw A LOT of Jeeps exactly like mine out there.

It's a beaut! One of our best camps! I can't believe we started the day off in a blizzard :)

Spider house in the rock.

He'll get pierced by that cactus later.

Our views...

Good ol' Biostove. Aaron says "Thanks dad!"

Sun beginning to set <3 Our first night in the desert <3

Our first dehydrated breakfast in the desert hahaha!

Our first hike was about 10 miles further up the INCREDIBLY rocky road to Llyod Canyon. It was wonderful. It was also SUPER challenging to acclimate to the high elevation and PIERCING, SOUL CRUSHING sun. It knocked us on our ass about 45 minutes in. It isn't the temperature, I don't think it got hotter than the low 70s... It's the SUN. By the time we were walking back, we spent most of our energy on finding ANY shade. There is NO WATER in this desert. Funnily enough, there are tons of creeks and rivers - they are all just BONE DRY and look as though they have been for hundreds of years. A 2-day hike (we will find out later) is just impossible for us. We can't carry enough water for 2 days and enjoy ourselves:( One day hikes are great tho!

I think this sign has been at the trailhead since the 70s.

Dead animals exhibiting strange behavior...

There was a little ranch on the opposite side of the trail and a cock was cock-a-doodle-dooing so loud it echoed through the whole canyon. I have never heard this before.

I LOVED this tree - it looked like it was a mosaic.

This is the living desert topsoil, crunchy and filled with life! Almost looks like it's underwater.

Cactus fruits.

Aaron's cactus sting. :(

Back to camp after a long, hot walk. Desert nightlife.

Aaron, and sleeping under the stars in our beloved tent <3 These things make me happy :)

The sunset that night looked like a fleet of spaceships. And we heard a pack of coyotes in the distance!

The next day we went on a hike to Long Canyon, the closest hike to Sedona. Though it is a huge tourist area, we only ran into one couple while we were out there. Gorgeous.

The desert is sharp and dangerous. You get stuck by something at every turn.

A great example of what I mean by dry water sources. You see what looks like it should be water everywhere, but instead of water it is fire-like sand. A great color contrast to the chartreuse shrubs.

Oh, and the flowers were blooming too!

Dry fire river.

We stopped for lunch here - it looked like there was an invisible rushing river and huge wind storm, but everything was frozen in stillness. So fascinating! I don't think I've ever seen such a thing. It moved fiercely, but it didn't at all.

Fire creek.

One of Aaron's favorite spots. This looks like a HUGE river that has been dry for centuries.

Back to another beautiful camp sundown session.

Next day was our first backcountry hike, and one of the BEST. The Dogie trail. Super challenging toward the end, but SOOOOO worth it, and we only saw one group of 4 day hikers while we were out there.

Lunch break. Aaron and I were made for each other <3

A dry "tank" - this is a naturally occuring body of water.

We had had ENOUGH of the cut of the suns rays, and were ready to drop. I felt like I was going to start hallucinating. This is where we decided to set up camp for the night - looks like 2 figures kissing <3

I do believe this is by far and away the best camp we've ever made.

After we set up, I climbed the slope across from where we were, which offered a view
you just couldn't see from the ground. I climbed and climbed and then turned around and gasped at the beauty - I was stunned that it was there all along. I called to Aaron to follow me and told him not to turn around until he got to the top. This is just before he turned around, and was as stunned as me <3

The sun was setting again in the desert.

This is the view from our tent. Gasp. The best view from our tent EVER, which is saying something. There are so many things in life that you can only see if you get out of your car.

Sunrise from the slope :)

We had breakfast while we watched it rise, and dreaded our climb back up from the valley. Turned out we made 5 miles in an hour and a half uphill. We were getting acclimated :) We started our hike back early.

Luckily, there was one firering not too far from the trailhead where we started, so we decided to spend the day and night there.

It is surprisingly easy to get lost around here, as everything starts to look the same. I went exploring and was glad to hear Aaron's music lead me to our camp. Life is beautiful, people. You just have to listen to it.

Sure, there were power lines around the traihead, but still... Nature has a way of making them seem less powerful.

Fire with a ring made from ancient lava rocks. LOVE.

Morning.

We had planned on doing a 2-day hike at a trailhead that you can only get to via ATV or other bad-ass vehicle. I thought it would be like the other roads that we had traversed, but I was dead wrong. The boulders were more than 2 feet high in some places and I was FREAKED OUT. I am sure that my dear Jeep could have made this haul (that we were fully packed up to do) but when I started it I was like "WHAT THE FUCK?!" Maybe I'm a pussy, but I have ZERO training in driving cars through boulder fields. This is the first trip I have ever taken with a car that isn't a Kia sedan. My thought was that I needed to know how to do this - I wasn't comfortable with just plowing through willy-nilly. Aaron agreed. I mean, the car was tipping at 45 degree angles, and I have NO IDEA what I'm doing. It was tough to scrap our plans for the next 2 days, not to mention how much we were looking forward to this particular hike. I made it about 1,000 feet and turned back :( As much as that hurt, I do not regret my decision. I will leave such things for bolder drivers. Pun intended. Please don't hate me. No pictures avaiable, as we were not in a position to take out a camera.

What we ended up doing that day was going to the Honanki Heritage site, which was super interesting. I'm always amazed at these sites, which are not frequented by many tourists (unless you have an ATV - these roads are not roads. They are boulders driven over until there is a sort-of pathway.) There were petroglyphs all over the rocks and 1,000 year old buildings from a Native American population of 1,000 who mysteriously left the area. It was an unexpected delight.

Cactus making it happen :)

Ancient human communication. Our people spoke in drawings, fellow humans.

A raven led us to the perfect site - it was about a quarter of a mile from our very first site, but way further up the hill. You could see for miles and miles and miles. We're so lucky.

Rising moon.

Morning in the desert. Another trip around the sun :)

We didn't see much wildlife on this trip, and understandaby considering its harshness. This sums it up.

The next day, we did a wonderful underrated hike. The path itself was an old road so was easy to follow. The scenery reminded me of the Italian Alps that I went through in a train back in the 90s. It heped me understand why "Spaghetti Westerns" were often filmed in Italy, but depicted this neck of the woods. It was so quiet, and even though we were only about 30 miles from our campsite, the flora and fauna were slightly different. We were the only ones there, but then we crossed a dry riverbed and heard folks shooting off guns and saw a shirtless redneck and got scared as only New Yorkers would HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It was a wonderfull hike, and I'll remember it forever <3

Mountain lion tracks.

Beautiful, colorful decay. Circle of life within one life form.

Back to camp for what looked to be a nasty storm. What worried me most about this was that these dirt roads would become mudbaths when the rain was done with them and I wuld be stuck forever. I watched the sky like a hawk and tried to convince myself not to worry that I was on a hill 20 miles from the closest paved road. I learned something - that which seems dust is sometimes sand. Yes, we got poured upon. But instead of mud, we had wet sand :) This made me very happy, and taught me a lesson. NOTHING replaces experience - that was the biggest lesson I learned from this trip. You can imagine a boulder field and a Jeep, but it's essentially meaningless until you actually drive through it. You can be a New Yorker and think sand turns into mud,but then you drive through wet sand :)

And as the world turns, the nightlife in the desert...

...goes inside the Jeep coz the rain put out the grand fire, and it's too early for bed :) And in case you're wondering, yes - I brought my Spanish vocab list, and yes, we did practice Spanish all night, in addition to the guitar. :) JAJAJAJA!

The morning after the storm was one of the most dramatically beautiful things I have witnessed on this planet. Honestly being in Red Rock County was the next best thing to being in the Grand Canyon. And we were able to do it for free with nobody crowded next to us. I highly recommend, if you have a high-clearance vehicle.

Tent got a beating like it hadn't seen since the Mojave almost exactly a year ago.

But it's a great tent, and has always served us well <3

You may notice that our bright orange tent matches almost exactly the orange of the roads we drive on. I feel like if I didn't take a picture of this, and I'm somewhere in the lush green Pacific Northwest forests, I may have thought I was exaggerating that. This pic is proof.

And the desert is the best place to dry things :)

These roads are orange AF. As was our Jeep :)

Our reststop was here, our half-way point for shower and bedding. Aaron planned a special treat for us - a grand old hotel in Jerome, Arizona (population: 444) at the top of the hill of this multi-tiered town. It was FABULOUS! It's an old asylum that they renovated into a hotel. SO INTERESTING. Ghost stories abound. And I love this town - tiny, touristy in the best of ways. A classic Western Town. We had a blast tooling around and having fun in civilization:) I love old-timey western towns, and I always will :) Reminds me of many places I went as a kid :) I'm lucky enough to have parents who showed me the West - a whole world outside the city, and exotic even if you were born and raised in America.

We ate dinner here. Aaron got a salad that was bursting with fresh vegetables. Exotic when you've been eating dehydrated food out of a bag for a week :)

Tourists pitching pennies into toilets. Love it.

You could see the San Francisco Peaks from here - a long way away - north of Flagstaff!

The big city of Cottonwood below.

We were kind of obsessed with the cement factory that was in the valley below. It looked like some kind of Star Wars village.

Posing on building ruins with a bag of goodies for the fam :)

An old smelter.

The next day was our dive back into the wilds, in the Kaibab Forest. This is the area we were planning to go to in the first half of our trip but our minds were changed by the blizzard that seemed now years ago. LOVED this area - all locals, mostly hunters in ATVs on these desolate forest roads 17 miles into the forest. Lots of logging, which made me incredibly sad (this is the largest collection of Ponderosa Pine in the world, being cut down for... toilet paper? Packaging? Calendars only good for a year?) I digress. We found a FABULOUS isolated fire ring and hung out all day.

About 1,000 feet behind was a lovely tank where we had snacks and I saw an Bassarik! :D Looks like a racoon, but smaller and more possum-like.

Here's our blessed Jeep. Somewhere between Jerome and here (about 90 miles) I ran over a huge bolt, and it was lodged in my precious tread, 15 miles into the forest on boulder-strewn forest roads. We did not know - blissfully unaware.

An elk bone we found by the fire ring! It now resides here in Brookyn with our rabbit ribcage from Colorado.

We spent the whole day doing nothing, and feeling a TEENY bit less an enemy of the sun.

We have NEVER had a fire ring this big. There must have been some damn great parties here :) You had to practically crawl inside to tend to this fire.

The moon rising through the trees. This is one of my favorite photos :) You couldn't tell if it was the sun or the moon.

So, that night was quite terrifying. When the sun went down, we sat by the fire and were about to go to bed. As far as we could tell, there were only hunters around this area - they drive very well armed in ATVs with full camouflage regalia. When the sun set, they were all pretty much gone and we didn't see a soul. All of a sudden, we see headlights beaming down the dirt road (which is scary enough for New Yorkers who think they're alone.) And then, about 150 feet from our camp, the lights turn off and the car stops. Scared out of our minds, we say to each other "WHAT DO WE DO? WHAT DO WE DO?" And about 15 seconds later, I shit you not, we hear what sounds like a woman being tortured. HUGE scream. We SCREAM, in our heads this time, while looking at each other, WHAT DO WE DO?! A few seconds later, another scream, and then another. The third scream (to me) sounded way too loud to be a human, and the very end sounded non-human animal. To give you an idea of what this sounds like, take a listen to this, an imagine you're in a forest 17 miles from a paved road:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxo8X5uIWRE

I mean... WTF?! What would you do?! At first I thought it was a woman being murdered. 30 seconds later, I convinced myself it was an elk in heat - we've heard that before. Why did that person turn off their headights? We didn't hear a door open. Within 3 minutes, the lights turned on and the car drove away down the road. That night, we slept with a 2-foot long sawblade, a knife, and our hiking poles in the tent, just in case. We never even considered it was a mountain lion 30 feet from us until we talked to some locals we met on the trail the next day. They thought it was a mountain lion, and as soon as I got the chance to get on WiFi, I looked it up on YouTube and it was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion. To think we slept that night thinking an elk was nearby and it was a fucking LION boggles my mind still. A truly terrifying night. That scream will haunt me forever.

We woke up the next morning with another kind of terror. I started the Jeep and the warning lights on the control panel start going off saying that the back right tire had low pressure (it was at 19, when the others were at 42 and it looked half flat.) We're a long way on crazy rocky roads from any sort of "town" so I got worried. Luckily, because Jeep tires rock the world, we made it to a gas station about 20 miles away. A wonderful, kind cowboy helped us, and had a gauge and expained that going from the 2 different climates may have caused the problem. Neither of us noticed the huge bolt lodged into the tread of the tire, and he filled us up. I asked repeatedy if it was OK to go back on these crazy roads and he gave me his word. Aaron even looked it up in the Jeep manual, which confirmed the climate-change theory. So off we went for our 2-day backcountry adventure, about 20 miles down the bumpy roads.

Here we are at the beginning of our first 2-day backcountry hike - Sycamore Rim. The red dust of Red Rock County still on our precious Jeep.

Pomeroy tank - a rare tank of water, and stunningly gorgeous.

The "forest" out here is deceptive. What looks like a lush Ponderosa pine forest is actually single pines with a ton of space in between them, with no shrubs or floor growth. When you're within the forest, you aren't shaded and that sun has you running from scant shade to scant shade. Add to that a 30 pound pack with 2 days worth
of water, it's brutal. After an hour I was already gasping for air. The tank was the only water source, and it's at the beginning of the trail. Nonetheless, it was amazingly beautiful, and there were a few rock climbers there climbing the big rim.

Blissfully unaware of what is about to unfold...

We took a break to watch the rock climbers and then put our packs back on for the grueling hike ahead. I saw some climbers walking down the trail, and assumed that was the trail we were supposed to follow. Turns out, rock climbers make their own spur trails to tie their equipment to rocks - this is not the main trail. We did not know this. We walked down for a while and it started petering out. Some trails do this, and you just walk a little further and you find the trail again. This is the last pic I took until camp - the trail clearly ending, but we continued over the rocks because we thought that pile of red stones was somehow a trail. At one point I thought an especially orange rock was a spray-painted rock that designated a trail marker.

Mind you, we have incredibly heavy backpacks on. We're on the edge of a 500 foot sheer ridge. It soon becomes PAINFULLY obvious we're on the wrong path because we're practically on a 90 degree angle and I'm TERRIFIED. I'll be honest - I cried. It was traumatic. I kept running until I was slipping and falling and sliding down 10 feet at a time. A few days later, when we were sitting on the opposte side of that rim, I realized how goddamn lucky I am I didn't fall. Maybe I'd maneuver OK with no backpack... but with a pack that is a sizeable percentage of your own weight, I could have easily made one wrong step. This taught me a valuable lesson: if the trail peters out, turn back. It was terrifying for both of us, and it knocked us out. When we got back to the right trail, it was punishingly uphill in the middday sun. We got to the top of the trail and wanted nothing more than to find ANYWHERE to set up camp, so we did. Once things calmed down, it was beautiful. We were SO TIRED from that haul and terror, we went to bed before sundown. 

The ridge on the other side. Imagine scrambling up the very edges and slipping down. Shudder.

Beautiful cactus bundles in the forest.

The hike back - we were too beat from the delusion that we could pull a 2-day hike with no water sources off. So the plan was to hike back to the tank at the beginning of the trail - Pomeroy Tank - and find a spot there to camp. The hike was still hard, coz we're old and have been hiking for almost 2 weeks, but it was really pleasant. Cloudier skies made it not so grueling.

Pomeroy Tank is one of the lovliest places I've ever seen. It has been used as a water source for many humans and non-humans for thousands of years. I walked around a corner and caught a hawk drinking from a pool and as soon as it saw me it flew away :)
I have never seen this before.

We hadn't seen anyone on the trail, and then along came a couple with fishing poles, locals, who we ended up chatting with all afternoon. They were the ones who told us we heard a mountain lion - we hadn't even speculated that it was a mountain lion. HA! If we did I bet we wouldn't have slept in the tent! We really, really liked them and will keep in touch with them, I hope, for a long time. I learned so much about the land around us from talking to these 2, and they even offered to let us camp on their land, not far from the trailhead. We exchanged business cards and I'm already friends with them on Instagram :) Everyone we have met here has been so, so wonderful :)

After talking with people who know what they're talking about, they mentioned that it wouldn't be the safest place in the world to camp in a tank like this because animals of all kinds drink here, and while it's unlikely, a mountain lion would be able to pounce from those rocks easily. I know it's unlikely too, but just the thought made us want to hike back the 15 minutes to the car and do dispersed camping anyway. Live and learn.

We got a GREAT spot far from everything but the traihead. The elk tracks around were half the size of my foot!

Parked in the middle of a field still unaware that a bolt is in my tire.

We didn't know it, but it was our last fire.

The next day we spent the morning on a trail down the road, but were so exhausted from the past few days, we had no energy left. We just walked a 1/2 mile in and hung out.

When we got back to camp, the warning light for the tire went on AGAIN - down to 25. I looked at the tire, and I found the huge bolt lodged in there. We decided that the best thing to do was to pack up and drive the 20 miles into town to at least inflate the tire. I didn't want to wake up the next morning hoping it wouldn't be completely flat, and expect a tow truck to come down these ridiculous "roads." And the spare on the back isn't a full tire capable of handling these roads. So we made it into Williams (a really great town, actually), filled up the tire, and got a room at Motel 6. We looked up tire repair shops, but mind you it was Easter Sunday. We found a place that was driveable - only a few blocks away - and showed up at 8AM when they opened. The guy fixed it in 20 minutes for $30. HURRAH! I was thrilled - I didn't want to get on a higway for 4 hours in the desert back to Las Vegas with a bolt in my tire. Everything worked out as well as it could have. And we got to spend our last day in a charming town with locals who bring out their burros :)

And on a last note... I started the trip with a brand-new sparkling white down vest:

And it ended up like this: