A maple highlights the fall color along the West Fork of Oak Creek.
My wife and I have always enjoyed an autumn trip to close out the summer season. For us it has marked the end of the prime hiking season and ushered in the colder, wetter weather of late fall and winter. Typically we have gone to the eastern Sierra Nevada for these trips but this year we decided to get a little more ambitious and head down to Arizona. Our kids are old enough to really appreciate the different environment and we always want to expose them to new parts of the world and different ways of life. This seemed like a perfect time to head down to the desert, which the kids have had very little exposure to.
It was a grand trip, hitting Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, various destinations around Flagstaff, Sedona and the Sonoran Desert before heading over to Los Angeles for a quick taste of Southern California (to our kids, “southern California” has always meant San Francisco, or possibly Carmel. Little did they understand there is a lot of California further south from there!). Everything was met with a new wave of awe or enthusiasm, as they explored one new, spectacular landscape after another. In the end, the surprise stand out for them was the Sonoran Desert, which we experienced with a great campsite at Lost Dutchman State Park in the Superstition Mountains. The requests are already in for a return to the desert next year. We shall see…
For myself, it was great to get back to the southwest. California will always be my home by the southwest will always claim a significant part of my heart. I feel refreshed from our time there and ready to take on winter. Bring on the weather!
-
- Sunset at Furnace Creek.
-
- Zabriskie Point. Not exactly U2’s pose, but they were trying.
-
- A maze of canyons.
-
- Exploring deeper in the maze.
-
- First morning at the Grand Canyon.
-
- Hiking down below the rim.
-
- Windy at Lipan Point.
-
- Are there better conditions for scrambling?
-
- First exposure to prehistory at Wupatki.
-
- Wupatki sunset.
-
- The spectacular Inner Basin.
-
- Autumn in the Inner Basin.
-
- Cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon.
-
- Some serious scrambling in Sedona.
-
- Awesome red and white sandstone view from the Twin Buttes.
-
- Sandstone scrambling.
-
- A spectacular Sedona sunset.
-
- We had the best campsite in Sedona, including our own private part of Oak Creek.
-
- Fall color in our campsite.
-
- West Fork relaxation.
-
- Idyll in the canyon…
-
- Contemplating the way forward.
-
- While the hordes stuck to the trail, we did an excellent boonie stomp up the creek.
-
- Reflections and sandstone.
-
- Sandstone “hammers of the gods” in a remote section of canyon.
-
- A false kiva, but very cool.
-
- A howling coyote.
-
- Learning a hard lesson about the desert.
-
- Sonoran sunset.
-
- Saguaro ribs
-
- Exploring the cacti at sunrise.
-
- The first warm water beach for these kids.
-
- Santa Monica sunset.
-
- Not a bad end to the trip.
-
- Crabs at sunset.
-
- Griffith Observatory.
-
- Los Angeles is HUGE!
Hike Mt. Shasta 
Very nice! Thank you for sharing … your kids are so lucky!
~~~~~~~~~~
*Warmest Regards,Cynthia L. Henderson*
Thanks for sharing! Looks like a great trip.
What a great trip, and I know you covered a lot of ground. One of favorite trips as a family was to Sedona over Memorial Day, before the kids were in kindergarten. Northern Arizona is beautiful.
I’m glad that you enjoyed breezing through Los Angeles…only 600 miles from home, a drive I have learned to bear in one sitting.
Great pics! Is LA really “warm water”? It’s still the Pacific. Texas “beaches”, now that’s warm water.
I am not sure if the LA beaches are as warm as the Gulf beaches but they are definitely A LOT warmer than the beaches in northern California. For my kids, that has been their only comparison, and it is a pretty stark difference.
Awesome Bubba! thanks for sharing
Pingback: Hike Mt. Shasta