Ride Like a Local: Sedona, Arizona [Podcast #291]

Ride like a local in Sedona, Arizona. Kevin Adams is our guide as we explore this mountain bike destination to discover the best trails and learn about the groups that maintain them.

Ride Like a Local is a podcast and article series dedicated to exploring the best mountain bike destinations in the world through the eyes of the riders who call these places home. We’ll find out about the must ride trails and the groups that maintain them, and also where to find pizza and beer after the ride.

Kevin Adams is a board member for the Verde Valley Cyclist Coalition, a nonprofit group working to promote cycling in the Verde Valley, including the town of Sedona, Arizona. Kevin also is the President of the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund that raises money for the maintenance and enhancement of the non-motorized trails near Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek. In his spare time, he’s the Chair of the Arizona State Committee on Trails. Of course he’s a mountain biker too, and he’s been connected to the local scene for almost a decade.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the complete interview using the player above.


This episode is sponsored by Explore Brevard.

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What makes Sedona and the Verde Valley stand out to you among all the mountain bike destinations?

Three things. The land, the Verde Valley is central Arizona encompasses about 714 square miles, approximately 100 miles north of Phoenix. And only about 17% of the land is privately held. So it includes five incorporated municipalities and numerous unincorporated communities. I live in one, the Village of Oak Creek. The Coconino and Prescott National Forest, five state park facilities, five public elementary school districts, three national monuments, vast acreages of state trust land, native American lands, mountains, canyons, three perennial flowing creeks, and the Verde River. And of course the iconic Red Rocks of Sedona.

A second item is the people. Many Sedona and Village of Oak Creek area residents are from somewhere else, and are here by choice and truly care for the land and our way of life. And finally, the trails. There’s over 400 miles of trails on public land, open to mountain bikers in the Verde Valley.

Has it always been like that? Have there always been that many trails open to bikes?

No. It’s been growing each year since I’ve been here, a couple of things that have happened just this last trail season, our trail season goes from late October to late April early May because in the summer, it’s just too darn hot and monsoons come through, if we have monsoons. Last summer we had a non-soon, but this last season, the Red Rock Ranger District built two trails in the Village of Oak Creek one called Rabbit Ears, because it goes up to an iconic rock feature that looks rabbit ears, and the other called Little Rock. They connect and they form a loop that goes off the big park loop here in the Village of Oak Creek. So that’s just the latest of new trails that have been put in here. And I think later on, we’re going to talk about trails and I can go into more detail.

Well, let’s dive into it. A lot of people have heard of Sedona as a mountain bike destination. For someone visiting for the first time, what are your two or three must ride trails or trail systems that people are going to want to experience?

Well that depends on your skill level. Sedona is a place where, as our former chamber president was fond of saying, you can ride to the ride. That said you can quickly go over your head on the technical trails here. So if you have high risk tolerance, there’s the three Hs: High on the Hog, Hangover, and Hiline.

Hangover trail. Photo: Greg Heil.

My go-to trails are the trails in the Village of Oak because I can ride to them from my house. And that’s on both sides of Arizona, 179. The Western Gateway in West Sedona, which was just recently completed in March of 2020. There’s 29 miles of trails in there. I don’t ride them all, but the vast majority of them are to my tolerance level and the Blowout Wash Trail System in the Prescott National forest near Cottonwood.

Which of those would you say are sort of family-friendly rides?

Roundabout trail, the cultural center in West Sedona, the lower Blowout Wash trails, the Campus trail, Courthouse Butte and Bull’s Eye over in the Prescott National forest and the Big Park Loop in the village are the closest. I would call it a family friendly ride, but expect a few short hike, a bike sections.

Even I don’t clear all the Big Park Loop in the village every time, but most of it is pretty family friendly. We take elementary school students on it. But just about anywhere in Sedona, you will find some places that even I, who live here and ride the trails all the time, don’t clear every single thing.

You mentioned the three Hs. What makes those trails so challenging? I mean, are we talking boulders and rocky stuff or some of the things I’ve seen there are real slabby rides where it’s kind of steep and is that the main technical challenge?

Exposure and rocks? Yeah. One of them, Hangover, it has both exposure to the side as you go around it and above you because the hangovers. Cliff’s Hiline has a chute that you got to go down through, and as you’re going down, you have to navigate, not hit a branch of a tree as you’re going down it. And they’re just very rocky. So as you’re riding up them if you hit your pedal or hit a rock and stop and you don’t get unclipped, there’s some drop.

Well, what are some of the lesser known trails where riders can get away from the crowds?

Oh, well, the trails in Sedona and in the Village of Oak Creek draw about 3 million annual visitors on them.

But yeah, a lot of people will come here on their way to the Grand Canyon or back, or just to come here just for the red rocks. But I’ve noticed that once you get about three eighths of a mile from a trailhead, the traffic goes down tremendously. And with over 400 miles of trail just right in the Red Rock Ranger District not all of that’s open to mountain biking, of course, because some of it’s in wilderness, but there’s over 400 miles of trail.

There’s even more in the Verde region of the Prescott National forest, the other side of the Verde River. It’s not hard to escape the crowds and Jeff, if you truly want solitude, I recommend the Dead Horse State Park trails in Cottonwood. 10% of the trail mileage there is in the state park and 90% in the Coconino National Forest. And I did a 15-mile ride there Saturday. It was upper 70s, no humidity, just a gorgeous day. The only people I saw in the whole 15-mile ride were the other riders in my group.

That’s surprising. But good to know that most people don’t make it too far past the trailheads. Even if you pull up and a parking lot looks really full, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be running into a lot of people once you get out there a little bit.

Yeah. Like I said, it’s not hard to find solitude here.

Well we mentioned that you’re involved in a number of trail advocacy and organizations that support trails and biking in the Verde Valley region. Who builds and maintains the trails in the area; is there one main group or is it kind of a team effort?

It’s a team effort led by the land manager, which is primarily the Red Rock and Verde Ranger Districts of the two national forest and Arizona State Parks and Trails. And they’re heavily augmented by volunteers from the community and organizations such as the Friends of the Forest. Friends of the Forest does about 30,000 volunteer hours a year for the Forest Service here.

And it’s not just maintaining trails. They man the visitor center, they’ll go out and clean up graffiti. I mean they do a wide range of things and the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund raises about 75% of the cost of the Red Rock Ranger District’s trail crew, which is two full year and 10 seasonal crew members the last several years.

And they cover a bunch of different areas, but one of them is trails. And right now they’re looking into creating a similar organization to the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund to fund trail maintenance outside of the Village of Oak Creek and Sedona. That’s basically who builds and maintains them.

Well, how does the funding work? Is most of it donations or are there tourism taxes that are kind of going toward that?

Yes, yes, and yes. There are four ways the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund raises money. First, is through business sponsorships. There’s a program in Sedona called Trail Keepers. It started back in 2016 with 25 local businesses committing to contribute a thousand dollars for five years that was matched by the Chamber from bed tax money from the city.

At the end of the second year, it was so popular ten businesses were added for three years and at the end of the third year, 15 businesses were added. So the last two years it was 50 businesses contributing a thousand. And now we’re in the process of starting Trail Keepers two. Trail Keepers get their name on three trailheads. Also the chamber does some marketing for them that they are trail friendly businesses.

Secondly, there are the donors, both individual donors and major donors.

The third source is grants. We write a lot of grants here.

And finally events. The Verde Valley Cyclists Coalition is the bartender at events, and they sell the tokens. So you can get a beer at the Sedona Mountain Bike Festival and we always partner with the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund to do a raffle and the raffle is generally bike-related stuff. Plus we get some hotels to offer and we put some vacation packages together. You might get two nights at Enchantment Resort, plus two meals at this restaurant, free bike rental from this bike shop, along with a free guided tour type of things.

Well, how can visitors support the work that all the groups are doing there to build and maintain trails?

Well, a couple of ways. There are cairns that we have in seven places around Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek. It’s kind of interesting, the money there gets, especially after a rain, it gets really filthy. And I like to joke, you have to launder the money. You put it in the sink, you wash it, you put the bills in the dryer before.

And several of the businesses, especially the hotels we have what we call a trail bucks program where when you check into the hotel, you’re asked, “Would you to donate a dollar a night or so much at night to support the trails?” And so that money comes into the trail fund and goes to hire either contract crews or the trail fund has a collection agreement with the Forest Service and it goes to fund the full year and the seasonal tracker. So there’s a lot of different ways. And of course you can go to the Verde Valley Cycles Coalition’s website, or the Sedona Red Rock Trail Funds website, give a donation if you’d like.

It sounds like it’s pretty easy to contribute and there are a lot of opportunities to give back. Does it ever feel though, as a volunteer and a resident, someone who lives in the Verde Valley, does it ever feel sort of thankless, like you’re doing all this work for people who just kind of come in and take advantage of the trails and then they’re gone? Or do you get a kick out of seeing a lot of people coming and visiting and enjoying the trails?

Well, as the Sedona mayor likes to say, there’s a lot of people that think Sedona is getting too crowded and traffic’s terrible. Coming from Washington, D.C. I like to tell people there’s no traffic here.

It’s all relative.

Yes, yes it is. But the Sedona mayor likes to say, “If 40 some years ago when I first came here, if the people that lived here had that attitude, then you wouldn’t be here now.” So I’m one of the ones who welcomes the tourists. I was a tourist here once and I go on vacation and I go to places that I’d like to feel I’m welcomed there and not, some type of outsider, but not everybody here has that view, which is one of the reasons why it’s fun to be here because diversity of opinion works.

And the folks who are raising the money and showing up at the volunteer work days, we look at it as giving back. We don’t look at it that, ‘Oh my God, we’re out here because the tourists are tearing up the trails.’ One summer monsoon will do more damage to the trails than all of the tourists combined all year. Some people feel that way, but as you know talking to a trail stewards, we’re not here for the recognition, we’re here because we love the land.

Are there good places to rent decent mountain bikes for the day or even the week?

Absolutely, Jeff. Matter of fact, sometimes I look at the bikes they have for rentals and I’m jealous. But three of them come right off the top are Thunder Mountain Bikes in Sedona, Absolute Bikes in the Village of Oak Creek and the Verde Valley Bicycle Company in Cottonwood. They all rent high, I mean, you can go from a basic mountain bike all the way up to a $10,000 mountain bike, if you want to rent it. And there are a couple of other bike shops that rent bikes, but for some reason they’re not VVCC sponsors, so I’m not going to…

[That’ll] give them some incentive to join you.

Maybe.

Are there tour operators or clubs or sort of group rides that visitors can connect with if they want to ride with some local mountain bikers?

Absolutely. Hermosa Tours and the Sedona Mountain Bike Academy, both are in Sedona. They offer individual and group riding tours. And if you send an email to [email protected] or get to connect with local writers, that’ll usually hook you up. But if I’m one of the ones that ride with you, be prepared for me to hold out my hat afterwards to help maintain the trails. And I’ll usually bring beer.

And the Verde Valley Cyclists Coalition holds a Friday what we call our FUNdraiser Ride. And we have free beer and soft drinks when we do it. We do it from mid October to mid May.They alternate between the Blowout Wash and the Yavapai College Trail and that’s on the first and third Fridays of the month.

And Dead Horse State Park we meet at the Verde Valley Bicycle Company, the other Fridays of the month. And then the funds go to help build a new trail at the Blowout Wash. What we did, Jeff was we took a ride we would normally do anywhere, anyhow, posted it on Meetup, got beer donated to us, and show up with beer and a little donation box and we raised about $2,000 a year for the trail construction. And between mid May and mid October, because it just gets too hot during the middle of the day here, we moved the ride up to Campbell Mesa and Flagstaff, and the funds that we raised there and go to support the Flagstaff trail initiatives work.

And if you want to find out when there’s rides here, the VVCC has a Meetup called VVCC mountain bike rides, and you can find out more details on any of the rides that we do. And if you email the board and there’s a ride going on, we’ll get you invited. And the next thing you know you’ll be hooked and be moving here and you’ll be joining our circle of friends and telling people, thinking you died and gone to heaven.

I’m super impressed with the number of ways that the groups figured out to raise funds because it’s not cheap to maintain all those trails and to maintain them at the level of quality that people have come to expect from Sedona.

Well, like on our Friday fundraiser ride, I put my helmet down and I put a $5 bill in it. And I tell people only the trail gods know if you give or not, nobody cares. If you want to show up… I’ve had people go, “Oh, I forgot money.” Well, come next week and pay twice. It’s more to have fun and to drink beer. And if we can raise a few bucks to create new trails, we’re happy to do it. And I mean, no one’s going to, like I said, only the trail gods know.

Speaking of beer, where do people hang out after the rides? It sounds maybe parking lots, but are there also bars or breweries that tend to attract mountain bikers?

There’s Famous Pizza and Beer in West Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek. That’s a popular apres ride hangout. Steve Buysse the owner of both of them is very supportive of the trails and the community because I mean, he sees a lot of people they’re in a riding gear. There’s That Brewery in Cottonwood, Oak Creek Brewery in Sedona.

Oak Creek Brewery in Sedona has a beer garden and nice and shady to go for beer afterwards. And then there’s the Sedona Beer Company in uptown Sedona. They have a beer garden and the Belfry Brew Pub is brand new, opened up in Cottonwood. And I’ve been there, the beer is great.

If you like food, there’s Colt Grill in the Village of Oak Creek and Cottonwood, there’s G Burgers and Farm a Go-Go in Cornville, they’re local favorites. Señor Bob’s in Sedona, he has great burgers and talks and it’s… I mean, I think it’s nine bucks and you can get a good sized hamburger, some fries and a soft drink.

And then for breakfast, the Red Rock Cafe, the Village of Oak Creek has a three pound island size cinnamon roll along with other breakfast staples.

And if wine is your thing, there’s several wineries along Oak Creek and nearby Paige Springs. So there’s plenty of places to go afterwards.

What’s your favorite beer of all the local beers you got to that you prefer.

Oh my goodness. [My favorite is] Oak Creek Amber, out of the Oak Creek Brewing Company. And that brewery has one, I think it’s called the Arizona Trail Ale. That’s also pretty good.

So what about places for people to stay? Is there camping available sort of outside of town? I’d also like to know about bike-friendly hotels or other options for lodging.

There’s dispersed dry camping in the National Forest, outside the Sedona city limits here, or outside of the Village of Oak Creek. And the Forest Service has several campgrounds up in Oak Creek canyon, along with campsites, with showers at Dead Horse State Park and Cottonwood. There’s also some RV parks and Camp Verde, Cottonwood and Sedona, if that’s your thing.

And just note that especially during the busy season, in the spring and the fall, many of these campgrounds and RV parks fill up so reserve early. And then as we talked about earlier, many of the Sedona hotels and VOC hotels cater to mountain bikers, some of them have bike wash and bikes fix it stations and they also contribute to the trail maintenance as Sedona Trail Keepers.

As I talked about before, vacation rentals are a touchy subject here locally, the Arizona state legislature took away the ability to regulate them locally. Locals are concerned that some neighborhoods are turning into retail hotel establishments. So if you go the vacation rental route, just be respectful and imagine if you lived next door to a place that had parties at any given evening.

I mean there’s no shortage of places to stay here. And like I said earlier, in Sedona and Village of Oak Creek, you can ride to the ride. It’s that cool. And then you come back from the ride like Sedona, Rielle, Arabella, the Hilton, they all have bike wash stations bike fix it stations. So I mean, if they really recognize that mountain bikers are coming here and if they have the amenities they’ll attract them.

You make a good point about just keeping in mind, being respectful if you are visiting from out of town.

Yeah. Well, and I think it’s more of just if you live in a residential neighborhood, the last thing you want is to be surrounded by houses that are really hotels.

If you wanted to live near a hotel, you’d have bought a house near a hotel.

It sounds like the best time of year to visit is going to be October to May. Is that right?

Well any time is a good time of year to visit because, in the summer the trails are less traveled. But we ride early, I mean, Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time. So on the summer solstice at about 3:45 AM, it’s light, my bedroom faces east. I have real high windows that don’t have curtains. So I’m usually up at the crack of dawn and out riding before it gets hot. And I have the trails all to myself and, so riding here in the summer, we’re riding early and then as the seasons go on, we ride later and later in the day.

And I like to joke, we only have winter here at night during the winter months. So yeah, and then there’s plenty of other places like I said, in the summer we do a lot of riding up in Flagstaff and sometimes in the winter we go down south. So you can ride 365 days a year here, and there’s something about having your ride done by eight o’clock in the morning and having the rest of the day to do other things.

Well, one of the big events, that’s pretty well-known among mountain bikers is the Sedona Mountain Bike Fest, which I believe is usually March of each year. Are there other races or events or festivals that people can kind of plan their trip around, or maybe try to avoid if they’re looking for a little more solitude?

Well this year the Mountain Bike Festival is going to be held November 12th through 14th, because it was one of the last festivals that went before the pandemic kind of shut that down. Mike Rainey who puts it on, he’s also one of the co-owners of Thunder Mountain Bikes. There’s no mountain bike races here yet.

Photo courtesy Sedona Mountain Bike Festival.

Really?

Yeah. Part of it could be just the technical nature of the trails. But as the Blowout Wash and Cottonwood gets more developed, maybe down the road, but if you like mountain bike racing the Mountain Bike Association of Arizona, they put on a popular bike race series across the state between January and May each year.

They start down in the Valley, in the Phoenix Metro area in January, and then they move out to Lake Havasu and do a race, and then they move up to Prescott and then up to Flagstaff as it gets warmer and so this move to higher elevation. And the Mountain Bike Association of Arizona they’re a nonprofit and they actually, the race proceeds they invest back throughout the state into different trail systems. So they’re also giving back, so that’s pretty cool.

If you want to avoid crowds, there’s always something going on in Sedona, probably the biggest thing is the Sedona Film Festival, which usually is in March some years, it overlaps with the Mountain Bike Festival. There’s always something going in Sedona and the Verde Valley, there’s no shortage of things.

But trail related, the things that fill up the trails is the Mountain Bike Festival. And so if I’m not selling beer tokens during a festival, I’m down riding in Cottonwood or somewhere else because the trails get pretty crowded and usually people start showing up the Monday prior and they make a week out of it for the festival, so that the trails stay pretty crowded.

It sounds the trail building and trail maintenance is kind of a constant thing. What are the plans to expand or improve trails within the next year or two? Are there new trails coming online or are some of the trails being reworked that people should know about?

Yes. In both forests, the Red Rock Ranger District of the Coconino is working on the NEPA to improve the trail system in the Turkey Creek area of the Village of Oak Creek. And we expect to break ground as early as our 2022/2023 field season.

This past field season saw the Red Rock Ranger District construct two new trails. I talked about them earlier, Rabbit Ears and Little Rock. And the 29-mile Western Gateway Trail System in West Sedona was completed in March, 2020. And it broke ground November 8th, 2018 and was done in just two seasons. And then across the Verde River in the Prescott National Forest, the Verde Ranger District is in the process of implementing, what they call their VTAP, Verde Trails and Access Plan. That’s 180 miles of new trail going in the Verde over the next decade or so. The first VTAP project, the Blowout Wash, over the last two seasons they’ve completed 14 miles a new trail, and that’s near Cottonwood and Cardell, and the views from up there, you get about up to about 4,200 feet. You see the entire Verde Valley, you see Sedona, you see the San Francisco Peaks up in Flagstaff.

I mean, it’s just gorgeous. I mean don’t get me wrong Sedona is gorgeous too, the iconic Red Rock views, but you don’t see the San Francisco peaks anywhere, unless you go way, way, way up into the wilderness and you don’t see the entire Verde Valley like you do over there. And then when they finish their VTAP, it’s going to be followed by their VRAP, the Verde Recreation Access Plan. And that’s going to add another 120 miles of trail over there.

And within the next decade, mountain bikers are going to be able to ride from near the top of Mingus Mountain, that’s a little over 7,000 feet elevation drop over 4,000 feet on nine miles of singletrack to the Verde River, crossing to Dead Horse State Park, and ride the Lime Kiln trail to Sedona. But that’s going to be an epic day.

Once that gets opened, that you can start at the top of Mingus mountain, I’m sure there’ll be some outfitters coming in to do shuttles up to the top and let you ride down and you’d finish basically an old town Cottonwood, and there are plenty of restaurants there and then breweries and things like that. The Verde has 300 miles of more singletrack planned, 14 are on the ground and we’re raising money right now to start.

They’re going to be building the Copper Chief trail starting this fall, that’s about eight miles. That’s going to link what they’ve been doing towards Cottonwood/Clarkdale heading more towards Camp Verde, and it’s going to connect to the Black Canyon Trail. This is the National Recreation Trail, this is the Mingus Black Canyon Trail that will eventually get you up to the top of Mingus Mountain.

And there’s other things; there’s the Sun Quarter Trail, that’s going to take you from Phoenix all the way up to Utah. That’s going to come through the Verde Valley. There’s just trail development happening in Camp Verde in Beaver Creek in Cornville.

I mean, it’s the other communities in the Verde Valley are seeing people coming to Sedona to mountain bike. Like I said only 17% of the land here is privately owned, so there’s plenty of public land with easy access. So trails are just exploding here. I’m just so excited and that as Sedona, we’re running out of space to build. Turkey Creek was about the last place around Sedona to expand. So now it’s expanding throughout the Verde Valley so what was it? 714 square miles. That’s our playground.

Wow. That’s crazy. What’s driving it, it sounds like is it tourism? Is it these smaller communities saying ‘we want trails so that more people will visit’?

Well, it’s a combination, one people are recognizing and especially during the pandemic, getting outside is very helpful. It’s also, for quality of life for the people that live here and then to help expand, the economy. So people are recognizing that people will come if there’s high quality trails and it’s not just maintaining the trails, I mean you have to have good signage, so do the work upfront. Put the signs up, go get lost, so others don’t have to go get lost. A friend of mine writes a blog about hiking in Arizona and she says, “We got lost you don’t have to.”

It sounds like trail users and user groups must have a really good relationship with the land managers, and this massive new trail system you’re talking about, is that Forest Service land or is that the BLM?

No, it’s Forest Service. It’s the Verde Region of the Prescott National Forest. They’ve been seeing what their sister organization, the Red Rock Ranger District and the Coconino was able to do for Sedona and all this stuff just didn’t happen yesterday. This is years in the making there. I think the VTAP, Verde Trails and Access Point, got its origins in 2008.

So we’re at the implementation part which is always exciting, but there was so much work to get to this, all the NEPA and all the public meetings and everything that you have to do to create new trails, and follow the law on public land especially federal public land.

Is there anything else that mountain bikers need to know before visiting the Verde Valley and Sedona?

You may run into some or all of the 63 Red Rock Bike Patrollers on your ride anywhere in the Verde Valley. I’m a patroller. It was started about a decade ago with two people. Now at 63 mountain bikers, each patroller carries a first aid kit and are on a trail to assist, educate, and inform. The biggest question we get is, ‘can you tell us where our car is?’

And we always answer that question with a question. Can you please tell us where you parked your car so we can tell you how to get back?

The Sedona Chamber installed seven bike fix it stations in the spring of 2019 at high use trailheads at Faye Canyon, Sedona Bike Skills Park, Adobe Jack, Chuckwagon, Bell Rock, Sugarloaf and Yavapai Vista Trail Heads. And you can find their exact locations at visitsedona.com and then just keep searching in there and you will find it. And if you rent a bike, please ask the bike shop to fix a bear bell on the bike and let it ring as you ride. The bell’s noise is far less annoying than hitting a hiker or scaring an equestrian’s horse while you’re out riding. Believe me.

And since we started putting them on the patrollers’ bikes, we get a lot of positive compliments from hikers and equestrians, ‘thank you for wearing the bell. I heard you.’ Send an email to [email protected], and VVCC president, Marty Glen will arrange for you to have a bell to take home with you.

Marty’s right now working to have the bells available at the seven bike fix at station, so you can take a bell, go for your ride, come back, drop it off. Or if you don’t, take it home with you. We’d rather you ride with the bell and because like I said, especially three-eights of mile from a trailhead, you’re going to come up to the trails are more heavily trafficked and it’s just courteous. And if you have a car and want to park at approved Red Rock Ranger, District trailhead with a pit toilet and other amenities, there’s a fee for doing so. The Red Rock pass costs $5 for one day, $15 for a week, or $20 for a year.

And it can be purchased at each pay site, the Sedona visitor center, many local retail establishments. And the last thing I’ll say that if you park your car in a neighborhood in Sedona, that’s by a nearby trailhead because the trailhead is full, you’ll more than likely find your car towed.

And if you’re going down Dry Creek Road and you see it’s just a zoo, keep going down Dry Creek Road, heading north, and right before you hit the bridge at the Dry Creek, there’s a little turn off to the left, if you go back in there, it’s a old shooting range. But that’s where we park.

You’re blowing up your secret spot?

Well, we’ll see how big this podcast is. No, eventually people will know about it. It’s not a terrible secret but it’s just a good place to go and you can access the trails, right from there and it’s almost like having your own secret place and the Forest Service is working to build a new trailhead about a quarter mile from it.

Find out more at vvcc.us and visitsedona.com.