Devil's Bridge and Happiness

I've been wanting to hike the Devil's Bridge trail in Sedona for a few weeks now, ever since I saw a pic of someone walking across it.  I finally found two other people who also wanted to take that hike and off we set for it on Sunday morning.

Absolutely beautiful day for a hike -sun shining, stunning blue sky, red rocks soaring overhead.  The sage is starting to bloom and everything is greening up from the winter.  Heide remembered sunscreen and I remembered water for us all.  We all wore hiking shoes.

From Dry Creek Road to the trailhead is about 1-1/2 miles along a hilly forest road with lovely western views.  The first part of the trailhead is an easy uphill slope.

Then you get closer and it gets steeper... then you get to the bottom of the Devil's Bridge, and it is basically straight up... straight up as in using both hands for balance around some very tight curves with really straight drops. 

Heide looked at me and said, "Okay, this is real, are we gonna do this?"  Nothing was going to stop me at that point.  We were almost there!

I was carrying my water bottle and Heide offered to put it in her backpack.  Both hands really were necessary on some parts!

We got to the top.  The trail goes higher than the bridge itself, and from that angle, it seemed very, very narrow, and very very high.  Still, I was going to try to walk across it.  I'm not afraid of heights, but my balance is terrible -I'm insecure on rocky ground.  Heide stayed on the entrance side, and Grace and I headed over to the bridge.

Once we were there, it was a lot wider than it looked, and we easily marched on out and posed for pics.  Heide edged over to the beginning of the bridge and we sat there and chatted a bit, drinking water and enjoying the really amazing view.

As we sat there, Heide poked my arm and said, "WHAT are those guys doing?? That is straight down!!" pointing to some guys across the way, climbing their way down the red rocks.  I looked at her, "Heide, that's what we just came up!"  Her eyes got really big. "I'm glad I hadn't seen that before we took the trail!" and we both burst into laughter.

The way down of COURSE seemed shorter than the way up, even though a few parts we sat down and scooted down the rocks instead of trying to balance on them,  We skipped on back to the car, greeting people, answering questions, and once advising some ladies arriving at the road entrance that perhaps flip flops weren't the best thing to be wearing on this particular hike.  They also didn't have water with them.  (These are the people who end up getting rescued!)

We were proud and starving by the time we got to the Barking Frog to celebrate over guacamole and several pitchers of water.  This was one of the most amazing hikes I've ever done, and even though it was only five miles round trip, seemed like a world away from normal life.