After hiking and scrambling and hiking and scrambling for days on end, we had slightly different plans for today. I got up and had coffee, as per usual, and when Matt got up we made pancakes for breakfast. Yum!

We hit the road early-ish and headed out to Prescott. I wanted to check out Watson Lake, which looked really cool in pictures. 

It took us about an hour and a half to get there, driving through valleys the whole way. The terrain flattened out a bit (at least on the route we took there), and the rocks became just regular mountains with pine trees instead of the red rocks of Sedona. Watson Lake was a total bust – not sure if we just went to the wrong place or what, but there was very little to see.

When we got to Prescott, we parked and got out to walk around. We were on Whisky Row, a street with a bunch of bars on it, most on the National Historic Register… It was pretty cool, all those old buildings. 

We found lunch at Colt Grill, a BBQ place that was actually pretty good. My chicken sandwich was delicious!  We wandered around a bit longer after we ate and continued on to Jerome. 

We were driving up and up and twisting and turning our way through the mountains, and finally hit the high point and started back down.  We could see the valley below, but Google was saying we were only a mile away from town… And the valley was well further away than that. Eventually, we found ourselves in the town.

Jerome was built into the side of the hill. The streets pretty much went straight up or straight down. It was super European looking, with little alleys and alcoves everywhere you looked. It was pretty awesome. 

After wandering for a while, we finally went in to Caduceus Cellars. We’d know about the place for years – Maynard from Tool owns it – and I knew we had to go. We did a tasing. The wine was pretty good. There was a red and a white that I particularly liked, and we left with a bottle of white – the red was $50/ bottle and I can’t stomach paying that much for wine. We also picked up two cans of the sparkling wine they had – a red and a white. 

We drove back to camp after walking around a little more and made dinner. Tonight was pasta and jar sauce with some broccoli that was left over from the other day. MmBed came early. Well, laying down did, anyway. Sleep came eventually. 

Today, we were going to Palatki – yesterday we got reservations to go check out some cliff dwellings in the area – seemed like a good “well, we’re here” activity. We had breakfast, a couple cups of coffee, and drove down the road to where the dwellings were. 

Palatki was cool! There were some buildings that still stood, have been standing for over a hundred years, and the pictographs were even cooler. Those have been around for thousands of years. 

My favorite was the one that looked like a sun over mountains at various times of the year. Some of the mountains were red, some were white. When you turned around, the mountains behind were red and white, just like in the pictograph. The guide told us that one theory is that someone would look and pay attention to where the sun was over those mountains at what time of year. For a community of farmers (with no internet to tell them! ), it was super important to know when to plant the various crops. So cool. 

Afterwards, I was just exhausted. We’d talked about doing a hike, but decided to just go to town to the grocery for a minute and back to chill. Apparently I’m having trouble recovering…. But I haven’t really stopped moving since we left home. 

We grabbed some sandwiches from the grocery for lunch, and they were huge. So we had a much smaller dinner than I’d planned, which was fine. 

Once it got dark, we went into the car and watched a movie, reminiscent of the “Jeep RV” of years past. Creed III – it was good! Then into the tent for some good sleep!

The next morning, we climbed a mountain. Bear Mountain, to be specific. 

We had coffee and bagels for breakfast and got moving fairly quickly. We drove to the trailhead and started hiking.

Just over a quarter mile in, the trail started up. And up. And up, and up, and up. The trail was straightforward, just remarkably up. I mean, it climbed 2,000 ft in about two and a half miles… 

The views were spectacular. Especially as we got to the top. From there, we could see the cliff dwellings from yesterday, which was cool. We were on top of the high white mountains we could see from there. 

All the up became all the down, which is always annoying, but what goes up must come down, after all. 

When we were back to the car, we decided to take the “senic” route back to camp – the gravel road that took the same amount of time, but was way shorter distance – wise. 

We chilled out all afternoon, and went into the tent relatively early. Sleep til tomorrow!

The next day was our anniversary. Happy anniversary to us! 

We got up slowly, had plenty of coffee and eggs for breakfast, broke down camp, and went for – you guessed it – a hike!

On our way, I called the hotel for the evening (it’s our anniversary – I’m NOT camping tonight!) and asked if we could check in early. The very nice lady said yes, but not before 1:00 pm – perfect!

We wanted to do Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte, but when we got to the parking lot, there was a line of about six cars to get in… We’d seen another lot not too far back and we decided to park there instead. 

We figured out how we’d get to Bell Rock at least, and realized it wouldn’t be that far… The connecting trail was pretty cool. There were underpasses under the highway and a bit of the trail went through the median. We found where we wanted to be and started the hike in earnest. 

And so began the scramble du jour. Oy. I think this was the puckeriest one yet. Of course, we went straight up, the direct route, instead of maybe following the suggested route… But that’s what we do. 

It was – you guessed it – super cool up top. We scrambled about as high as you could and took some good pictures. 

We went back to the car and went to our hotel for the night. 

The Sedona Hilltop Inn is fabulous! The lobby is beautiful, and the room – aaahhhhhh! A breath of fresh air after a week of camping and no showers. I must’ve taken the longest shower ever, washing my hair twice and shaving my legs… It was funny, watching the red dirt run down in rivulets off my legs. 

I also washed my shorts and hiking pants in the sink. SO much red dirt!

After our showers and clothes-washing, we headed out to walk around town. We wandered for a while, stopping into a few shit shacks. We had a drink at a bar with a BEAUTIFUL view!

Then we walked back to the hotel and changed clothes for dinner. We ate at Mole, a Mexican joint down the road that got really good reviews – and holy SHIT, it did not disappoint!

I had the snapper, which was amazing, and for an appetizer we had fried avocados, which were really interesting. And delicious. 

The margaritas were in the top five of my life. They had this cilantro salt rim that was to die for! 

We came back to the hotel and started looking into camping in Tucson. Yeah. About that… There’s not much. So we came up with a new plan. We’re going to camp at Organ Pipe tomorrow night, then we got an Airbnb in Tucson, then we’ll take our chances with dispersed camping near White Sands, then we already have a hotel in Santa Fe…

Not quite what we thought it was going to be, bit it will be nice to not have to go without a shower for six days again…

Here’s the video: