Finally on Monday, I felt good enough for a hike in red rock country, which is less than half an hour from Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Sedona is a very busy town, so we suspected that the popular hiking trails parking lots would fill up fast. There is a shuttle system, but it only operates Thursday-Sunday. We arrived at the Courthouse Vista parking lot on Monday morning about 9:30 to see the last two spots fill up in front of us. We drove back to the Bell Rock Pathway lot to find three open spots, one of which we could fit into. Best advice is to get there early.

At first the hike out to Bell Rock felt like we were in a small crowd with street traffic noise accompaniment. But as we got further along the trail, the crowd thinned and the traffic noise died away. This scenery is so very beautiful!

As you can see in the pictures below, Bell Rock looked very different from the north side, and had people climbing up to ledges. When we were in the forested parts of the trail with evergreens, Tony’s nose gave him a workout. The trees were putting something into the air that he was allergic to.

Bun Rock had very curved edges and Tony thought it looked more like a giant heap of Dino dung.

As we made our way around to the Courthouse Plateau, we could see sections where running water had taken off the red, iron oxide layer and sections where huge chunks of rock had come loose and fallen.

There must be areas where people can rock climb as we saw a young couple loaded down with ropes and rappelling gear as we neared the parking lot. We held some of that equipment in an REI store and marveled at the weight of it.

When we returned to the parking lot, a woman in a truck asked if we were leaving and if they could have our spot as the lot was full. They followed us back to Usain.

We couldn’t leave town without trying the Pisa Lisa pizza restaurant. I had an awesome mushroom pizza with a perfect, thin crust and plenty of leftovers.