Red rocks of Sedona Valley

Wednesday August 4th 1999

After a long taxi ride through rush-hour traffic and an enervating delay at the ticket queue, where Murphy's law struck with a vengeance, we caught the greyhound from LA. In fact, we caught the bus earlier than the one we'd planned to, but it drove to San Bernardino and then waited for our original bus to catch up, so we were no quicker in the end. This was not one of our best Greyhound journeys - the guy in front of Veronika snored incredibly loudly, and the driver of the bus was determined to find every pothole in the road - in fact, at one point when there weren't any, he decided to mount the pavement to keep us on our toes! After a long night, we eventually arrived in Flagstaff at just before 6 in the morning, and walked our way to the most excellent Grand Canyon International Hostel.

Rock formations in the Sedona Valley

Our early arrival meant that we had to wait for a while to check in, but we were offered a free cup of coffee while we waited. Both Veronika and I had very good first impressions of the hostel - we'd stayed in a dingy and unpleasant hostel in San Francisco, and in a clean but sterile hostel in Toronto, but the Grand Canyon hostel in Flagstaff was inviting and lively. Despite the minimum of sleep on the overnight bus, we opted to go for a hike in the Sedona Valley, a decision we were not to regret. As only four hostellers wanted to go on the hike, we went by car, which added to the friendly feel of the trip. We picked up some free spring water which some kind soul had connected to a standpipe by the road side en route - a necessity in the heat of the desert, although it turned out not to be so necessary in the Grand Canyon the next day.

A particularly prominent rock

We walked for a couple of miles along one of the trails into the valley (which covers a huge area with many trails laid out), and the views of the rock formations were simply beautiful. The red rocks consist of sandstone with a high iron oxide content - the sandstone is easy to erode, and the iron gives it the fabulous red colour, as in the Grand Canyon. This area was originally inhabited by Native Americans who would move from a shady spot in the summer to a more sunny spot in the winter. They built their homes in eroded places around the valley, partly for natural shelter and partly for defensive reasons. There are numerous ruins in the area, some of them dating back around 1000 years, and many of them are built into cliff faces or at the top of fairly steep rocky slopes. When you get to them, you can understand why they would build a home there - in the picture below, the shade of the cliff face provided extremely welcome relief from the incessant sunshine and dry heat.

Veronika in front of the ruins of a native home

In the picture above, probably only the lowest layers of the walls are original - despite the warnings and penalties, it seems many people visiting these sites cannot resist messing around with them. In fact, the gray area inside the walls is the remains of a recent fire.

Another interesting aspect of the Sedona Valley is the plant life, which is extremely adapted to the hot dry climate. Apart from scrub, the two main types of plant are the yucca plant, which has as I discovered extremely sharp points and which was extensively used by the Native Americans to make waterproof baskets and for thread; and a type of cactus, whose sharp needles (presumably evolved to trap flies) make excellent toothpicks in addition to being an irritating if not actually dangerous hazard - Veronika was speared several times by them.

After our hike in the desert, which would not have been overly strenuous were it not for the extreme heat and dryness, we needed cooling off. Our guide drove us to a river fairly nearby, where we used the fairly strong currents to full effect as a natural water slide. This was so much fun that I decided to go for a second run, thereby also allowing Veronika an opportunity to take a picture. About half-way down the route, a man standing on the river bank called to me and said something, then told me to just relax and literally go with the flow. This I did, but it was only after I got out of the water that Veronika, who had been standing next to the man taking photographs, told me that in fact he was warning me about a water snake which had swum across the river in front of me. I'm glad I didn't catch that when I was in the water, as I would have instinctively panicked (I don't like snakes), thereby probably provoking the snake into biting me.

Fergus sliding down the river - somewhere in this picture is a water snake!

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