2020 Winter Camping Trip Day23-Fay Canyon and Brim Mesa

 2020 Winter Camping Trip Day23, 2020/12/18

This was the 2nd day of the hikes in the Sedona area in Arizona. Since there are so many hikes in the area, it was hard to pick one. After searching for a while with our trail App, we picked Fay Arch and Fay Canyon for the first hike. We knew that people in the Sedona area are rather touristic type hikers, we started early to beat them: usually those people start later morning. Actually a day before we overheard the representative conversation from those tourists. The guy said, "I hike a little then look for a brewery. That is my kind of vacation." 

Fay arch

The parking lot was large, but only a couple of cars were there at 9 a.m. However, there are 10 toddlers and a couple of adults were there. Hummm. Anyway we first headed for the Fay Arch. The side trail to go to the Arch is from the main trail to the Fay Canyon. The side trail is not a official trial, and very steep, however, it is worth it! The arch is a little hidden from the main trail, but once off the main trail it will appear gradually. You can see the view through the arch, once you reach under it. In the morning nobody was at the arch and we had really nice time under the arch. Looking great view under the blue sky was priceless. When we were enjoying the scenery, we heard toddlers passing by the trail in the distance. Toddlers' voices were loud and they were continuously chatting. 

Then we headed for Fay Canyon. The rock formation in the canyon are interesting and the color is beautiful.  We climbed a little towards the most interesting rock in the canyon area and enjoyed the view. The color....what a color. It is hard to describe with words. Pictures help, but it is totally a different experience to hike in the rocks and see the actual color in person. I really recommend hiking in the desert in the West. By 11:00 a.m., more and more people hiked in the area and some yahoos started doing drone. It was very annoying! 

Canyon

To avoid drone-flying area, we went to the deeper canyon area with off-trail. The deeper canyon is really beautiful. It was a nice sunny day and the contrast with blue sky and brown layers colors of rocks were appealing. We even found a small pile of rocks that seemed to used for a house/shelter for native Americans. We sat down in the "house" and ate lunch. Lunch was again salad from Safeway. We are very happy with great view with healthy salad! 
 

What a view

In the afternoon, we tried another hike, Brim Mesa. This was my favorite hike in the Sedona area for sure. Somehow this hike had much less people, which is a big plus, but it was really marvelous view. Trees and orange rocks with blue sky....very Sedona-ish scenery. I could sit and admire the view forever. 

secret cave

The hike contains some off-trail portion, so we tried to cut off the on-trail portion, however, we encountered the cliff, so we went back to on-trail. Then again we went off-trail. The off-trail portion leads to the secret cave. The cave is above the arch, and you can actually walk on the cave. It was super cool. I was a little scared of walking there, but indeed it was a special experience. 

In this hike, the last "whoa!" thing was Devil's kitchen sink hole. The picture in the right picture. How it was formed? Rain, slightly acidic, dissolve limestone and make a cave inside. Then over a long time, finally sinkhole is made. Actually this was my first time seeing a sinkhole. What a dramatic sinkhole. It is really impressive and even shocking drop off of gigantic rocks. 

I really loved Day15's two hikes.