hiking in sedona

ken had a business conference up in sedona at the end of january, and since i had never been to sedona myself, i decided that otho should sluff school and that we should take the 2 hour drive up north to pick him up. while we were up there, we thought it would be fun to go hiking in the beautiful red mountains.

one afternoon during the conference, ken helped shuttle people from the resort to hiking destinations, so he had scouted out a few good trails for us to go on. he decided this looked like the prettiest:

bear mountain trail. i HIGHLY recommend it. granted, when i came home and read about this trail, i found out it is one of the hardest hikes in sedona. and we did it with all four kids. but boy oh boy it was fun. i wish i could put a little arrow to how high we went...well about the tree line, where the very left part of that big mesa juts out...there's a small horizontal indentation...that's about where we stopped to turn around (otho had fallen into a cactus, our water was running out and we were getting tired after carrying kids up extremely steep parts of the trail).


abe on some really pretty red rocks during our first of MANY rests.


otho resting too.


a picture of most of the clan.


about half-way up to the mesa.


ellie got good and dirty. she loved playing in the red dirt, running her fingers through the soft clay. she was filthy by the end of our journey.


i carried riley in a hiking backpack that we borrowed from the readings (thanks stacy). she slept most of the way, and didn't compain otherwise. i'm telling you, i really do have the most perfect baby ever.


otho ready to get back on the trail, and go up up up again.

the view at the top:






i wish we could have finished the hike. i might just have to go back with just ken so we can see where this thing ends. if you ever want to go to sedona to go hiking, this is the hike to do. just don't take the kids...unless you think they're up to the challenge.

but, seeing as we did do this with the kids, it makes me know that we can do just about anything we put our minds to doing...even if it's really hard. if we can conquer bear mountain, than we can conquer just about anything.