This Sunday, May 9, is Mother’s Day and this weekend’s weather should be gorgeous with temperatures in the 80s this whole last week. Temperatures have been in the 70s and 80s, with bright sun, few clouds and very little wind.
After more than a year when we were effectively stuck inside due to COVID-19, with many too terrified to leave the house even to go to the grocery store or to a restaurant, this spring weekend is a perfect time to get out and enjoy what Sedona is.
We can gripe about traffic, or the ineptitude of Sedona City Council, the self-serving Gov. Doug Ducey using the pandemic to angle for a U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and complain about the past presidential administration or the current one — depending on whether to support the red team or the blue team — but despite all that, we still do live here in Sedona at the prettiest time of the year.
The Phoenix area will be in the mid 90s this weekend and next week meaning longtime Phoenicians will still comfortably endure the hot temperatures — unlike in early summer, when the temperatures peak 100 and Phoenicians with the means and the time will do anything they can to get out of the city on a weekend.
So this weekend, our terrain still belongs to the Sedona locals before a last influx of Arizona tourists and then the dead heat of summer when no one wants to go anywhere. We should take full advantage of that.
If you plan to hike one of Sedona’s more popular trails, get out to the trailhead early before tourists finish their continental breakfasts and begin filling up parking lots.
Or you could choose one of the more isolated trails, finding parking with no difficulty.
Two weeks ago I took my family to Red Rock State Park. We weren’t there long, just long enough for lunch, to take some photos on the Kingfisher Bridge, help our toddler find fish darting between the shadows in Oak Creek and visit the Wedding Tree where we had gotten married. Overall it was a great experience before nap time and we helped support the Arizona State Parks. Parking, even on a Saturday at the height of tourist season, wasn’t bad at all.
Our local city and county governments certainly deserve criticism for the poor traffic planning, but even so, traffic troubles here are no where near as bad as the major cities from which most Sedona residents fled.
The most anti-tourist residents are those who built the petty empires and financial largesses off tourists or those who serve tourists and now want them to all go away. Or they demand we end destination marketing while simultaneously inviting visitors to come out to Sedona and use the “transformational energies” that are here.
If Cognitive Dissonance was a bird, it would be on our city’s flag.
That said, we tend to forget that most of the tourists who come are going to the most popular places, because that’s where they’ve been told to go by social media and Instagram, which, for instance, has so many photos of Devil’s Bridge you would think it was our claim to fame, rather than the out-of-the-way trail it was 10 years ago.
Despite all the hassle residents claim we have to endure to get to the creek or a trail, access to all but the busiest points is manageable if you’re patient and explore just a little bit. Most tourists, like the ones lugging a 12-ounce bottle of water in Chuck Taylors, Vans and fresh-out-of-the-box New Balance low-tops rather than proper gear, rarely go more than a mile down a trail.
So if you have just a bit of adventurousness, a map and the bare minimum of hiking gear, can get lost and enjoy the forest away from any strangers for a little bit this weekend, enjoy the weather and get outside.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
Sedona area trail maps
Download these maps from the Red Rock Trail Fund:
