Oak Creek Canyon: North 89A March 2, 2011

Today we drove the famous Arizona 89A north out of Sedona.  This road is also called Oak Creek Canyon Road.  It is a narrow winding road that takes you up several thousand feet to an overlook then on to Flagstaff AZ.

We stopped at one of the numerous pullouts to walk down a short trail to a cliff over Oak Creek.  When we got there one of the first things we saw was snow covering this Prickly Pear Cactus.  A sight not seen often!

 

Views of the creek and its’ surroundings.

 

 

Further along the drive and higher elevation we saw pine tree for the first time in two months.  The air here was amazingly fresh and aromatic.

The drive to the overlook was somewhat challenging for someone with inner ear problems.  The elevation changes kept the ears popping.  Here are the pictures from the overlook at the top.

 

 

This picture from the overlook shows the switchbacks on the road to the top.

Between the overlook parking area and the overlook, Native Americans have displays of silver, jewelry, and pottery.  Very nice items at what seemed to be reasonable prices.

On the way down we stopped at a National Forest Cave Springs Campground to walk around and have a look see.  The campground was closed so we parked by the road and walked in.  This beautiful stream winds through the campground.   This NFS campground has something we’ve not seen before – coin-operated showers, $4 minimum, in place of a shower house.  Since there is no water hookup using this would make sense.  I wonder if they allow us to share a shower!  ;-)

 

A campsite.  Many paved level sites, but no electric,water or sewer.

At the end of the drive we stopped at the Red Rock Cafe.  It is the highest rated cafe on trip advisor for this area.  It is a breakfast and lunch cafe that closes at 3:00.  We had some very good soup, and great salads.

Tonight we will go to the casino again for dinner.  We signed up for their players card and can get another good meal at really reasonable prices.  It wears on a guy all this eating out!

KP .. Gpa

PS.  In response to question….our camera is a Canon Powershot SX20 IS.  We bought this last May when our 5 year old Powershot had seen better days. We must admit that we are very much photography amateurs and this is an easy point-n-shoot camera with 12.1 megapixels,  20x zoom.  Since we didn’t want to have to go the next step up and invest in extra lenses this seemed the best option at the time.  I bet if we read the users guide we might get some really good pics.  We use Picassa to clean up the pics and reduce megapixels to 800 dpi before publishing.