Category trekking

National Trails: Where Am I?

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

Sue’s camera caught me on two American national trails during the past week. In the top photo, the trail follows, for a spell, an historic American highway. Wanna take a guess?

The highway is Route 66; in Grants, New Mexico, the 3,200-mile Continental Divide Trail is the side of the famous road. For the photo, I grabbed Sue’s trekking poles for the (geeky?) pose. I took several steps and announced, ”I walked the CDT!”

In the bottom two photos, the path is the Arizona Trail, which runs 800 miles from the Mexican border to Utah. We walked from just south of Flagstaff, Arizona to Fisher Point, an eight-mile out and back that rewarded us with a view of Walnut Canyon from the mountaintop in the bottom picture.

We encountered no thru hikers because the locations are not in places where thru trekkers typically travel during springtime.

The pair of paths are two of America’s 11 national scenic trails. The system also includes 19 historic trails and 1,300 recreation trails.

The Bell Trail: Avoid the Sedona Crowds

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

The red-rock trails of the Sedona, Arizona area are spectacular, but you need to secure parking at trailhead lots early, even before 8 a.m. in some cases. Thanks to a tip from a Montana couple we met on a hike, we explored a red-rock canyon near Camp Verde, without the crowds. The Bell Trail is an out-and-back 6.9 miles with 587 feet of elevation gain. “Don’t miss the Crack,” we were advised. The Crack is a fissure that features pools where Wet Beaver Creek passes. A couple of young guys were tempted, but resisted jumping into the cloudy water.