Good morning!
None of us wanted to leave this beautiful point.
On our way back to the main dirt road we took some “short cuts” and it led us into a back entrance to someones settlement etc. It was pretty interesting.
Soon after we hit some silt that rivaled the worst I’d seen in Baja. It was brutal. It was coming up and over the hood and somewhere inside Goose was a leak that caused the inside of the truck to begin getting hazy with dust. I knew Kevin must have dropped back so we just keep plugging away and got to a nicer road to wait for him.
From here we kept heading to nicer and nicer dirt roads. Then we got to pavement. Usually hitting pavement is a sad moment, the end of the trip, but we’d resolved that today we wouldn’t be letting that happen. Kevin had to head home, but we decided we were going to get closer to home and stay on dirt.
We met up in Flagstaff, AZ for a burger and to say good bye and then we headed towards Sedona looking for dirt!
The moment we hit dirt we knew something was wrong. The first pull out had a wrecked and overturned popup trailer with trash piled on top of it. As we drove further out this road it was either abandoned campsites with trash left or a tarp city with “non-camper” folk at it. It must have been due to the holiday weekend that non-campers decided to invade the woods to camp. It looked like 75% of them believe there was some sort of trash cleanup service in the National Forest.
My blood was boiling. After having such a great trip I knew we’d have to drive long and far to get back to a place where I felt remote. We drove and drove. I felt like each mile between me and the pavement helped to cleanse the views I’d seen from my mind. Once we were an hour in I felt a bit better. Now, we were seeing normal-ish campsites. A tent and some gear. No heaps of trash. Still, we had to go further.
I guess this is a sign we should turn here?
Eventually, we found a point that seemed to have no tracks. The grass was high. I noticed that the topos had this trail on it, but visually it was hard to notice it was there. We pulled out to the end of the point and knew we’d found home for the night. We where exhausted.
Looking through the thick growth was quite a view.
We called it a night early. Something about seeing so much trash and so much disrespect for the places I love got me down. We just need to go more remote, I told myself. The solution is always, more remote...
The next morning I wanted to get moving early. I knew that getting off of the dirt roads before the masses of slow lumbering vehicles would be key. We headed down into Sedona and after realizing how early it was decided that this is about the only time one of the most popular trails in America wouldn’t be busy!
We turned on the video camera and ran through Broken Arrow trail. It’s sort of an old friend. Every vehicle I have owned has done the trail. This was Goose’s first time. As a kid of about 5 we did a family trip to Sedona and I remember riding in one of the Pink Jeep tours along redrock. It may have been Broken Arrow for all I know.
Being early it was nice and quiet... well quiet for this trail. I only had to backup into a pullout and let someone coming the other way by 10 or 12 times. The jeep tours were out doing their first morning run, but if you know this trail, you still consider that quiet.
With that, we got back on pavement. Tires still aired up from the day before. It was finally time to admit the trip was over and head home. We’d packed in a lot, we were exhausted. I didn’t mind heading home.
Thanks for coming along. Until next time!
Tim
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