Cathedral Rock
Our last day of hiking in Sedona dawned bright and clear. I think it was our warmest day of the entire trip (no complaints here) at 73 degrees by the afternoon. Although we had lots of hikes left on our list, we decided to complete a couple of the loops around Cathedral Rock since they were listed as fairly easy and we had a couple people in the group with aching joints and sore muscles (me included). We headed for the parking area nearest to Cathedral Rock, but even at 9 am, the lot was full – probably because it was a Saturday. We detoured to the Yavapai Vista parking area where there were only a few spots left. We started out by making a wrong turn onto Slim Shady Trail, quickly finding ourselves on a beautiful overlook of Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte. This was quite fortuitous as that is where we started our Sedona adventures. Once we realized our mistake, we back-tracked and continued along Slim Shady Trail until it reached Templeton. We followed Templeton until it reached the Cathedral Rock climb. Not having read much about this part of the trail, we looked up and thought, “it’s not too bad”. I climbed up to a very steep section, when I decided that I had gone high enough. The views were beautiful. In the distance we could see Airport Bluff, where we had walked last week. It wasn’t until I was back down that I realized I had only gone about a third of the way up! From that area, the trial continued up between the walls of Cathedral rocks. Oh well. If I ever make it back to Sedona, it will be on my list of things to do!
We hiked back along Templeton to pick up Easy Breezy Trail that followed another wash back down the hill and along the road. We then picked up Hermit trail for the last .3 miles back to the parking area. A short hike to finish our trip (only about 6 miles), but a great one.