Every time I woke up last night I wandered to the window to check the weather. It's snowing. It's stopped. It's snowing. It's stopped.
There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground when I went down to breakfast this morning. It's chilly out, but not as cold as it looks, and the hotel staff are outside building what they tell me is the biggest snowman they've ever had. Of course I had to run back to my room for my camera and Rover. The silly little red dog wanted his picture taken with the snowman. He wouldn't come out of my pack yesterday, no rain for him. But snow, now that's something else altogether!
Here's the wonderful snowman built by the hotel staff. And yes, that's Rover sitting on his shoulder!
Look, I can climb trees! And there is snow here. I didn't think we would see this cold wet white stuff this weekend.
Oh, Denise just said that I should introduce myself. I'm Rover, and I travel with Denise. I really like bike tours, but I think I could get used to this hiking stuff too. Hmmm, I wonder where we'll wander next?
Ah, time for breakfast. A good day for oatmeal! And a good day for talking to some of the other guests and to the guest services manager. I was going to walk down the street to a little gas station to pick up an ice scraper, but it turned out that the hotel had one at the front desk. With the borrowed scraper, it took just a short time to clear off the car. I was afraid there was going to be ice underneath the snow, but it was just very wet snow. I hear the snow was pretty bad up in Flagstaff - they had to close Interstate 17 last night!
OK, where to go. I had marked a bunch of hikes in my Sedona Hikes book, but I needed to take another look to find hikes closer to town, and hikes that didn't do too much climbing. I needed to find something where the snow was at least starting to disappear so I could see the trail! I did the Airport Loop trail this morning. Very pretty since the clouds were starting to lift - in one direction at least. I took the first half of the trail at slower than my normal pace, picking my way across slippery rocks (not too many of them, but I didn't want to take a chance), and taking lots of pictures. The back side of the hike was faster, once I passed the end of the airport runway and made my way through some streams that were flowing across and along the trail. Then there was flatter footing, and it was easier to walk at my normal pace. The red mud that was stuck in my boot treads disappeared in the snow, but then I picked up more mud on my hike. Luckily the hike ended in snow again, so I'm not leaving red boot marks wherever I go!
As I finished my hike, I realized that while the sun was peeking out when I look toward Oak Creek, the clouds were hovering over the rocks in the direction of Sedona. I stopped back at the hotel for a quick warm-up cup of coffee, and it started snowing again! Good timing... I'm inside and not out on a trail!
I just checked the weather at home - it's 50 degrees there, and 33 here. Hmm... sometimes you just can't time things right. But, this is still a good trip for me despite the weather - it's a good change of scenery. Of course I'm finding that since I didn't come anywhere close to hiking all of the places that I'd planned, I'm going to have to come back again. That doesn't really surprise me - I don't seem to know how to go to a place (that I like) only once!
It's still flurrying a bit, but I'm going to head out again for another short hike.
One more hike: out in sunshine, back in serious snow!
After my stop at the library I took advantage of a change in the weather to head out to the Soldier Pass Trailhead. The sun was peeking out, and the red rocks still had quite a covering of white powder. It was a very pleasant walk out along the trail. There were a couple of other cars in the parking lot, but I didn't see any other hikers this afternoon. I heard some other people, then saw them up ahead. I thought I caught up with some other hikers, but it turned out that they were on a jeep tour. The jeep and foot trails intersected at a couple of points.
I walked, took pictures, walked, tried to miss the mucky mud, walked, took pictures, forded a stream, walked some more. I don't think I quite made it to the end of the trail, but the trail started looking like it was heading up a rocky streambed, and I decided that was enough for today. I turned and started heading back, and it immediately started snowing again. It was mild at first, but it became a more intense storm. I tried to capture the snowflakes with my camera, but I think the camera screened out all of those white blobs! Snowflakes? Not really, more like soft pellets.
A beautiful hike, a beautiful day, a beautiful place!
Messy!
