A league with the Devil

Well, that's what it felt like, and we definitely weren't IN league with the Devil.

We went Sedona for Memorial Day. We brought a friend who doesn't hike much and we thought we'd take her to our favorite spot, West Fork in Oak Creek Canyon. We read about a natural bridge in Sedona called Devil's Bridge we hadn't seen yet and we thought we'd stop there first and then go on to West Fork. Everything we read said it was a quick little hike to the spot with spectacular views.

 See? straight from the website:  "The rugged sandstone arch tucked away in a small canyon a couple of miles off Dry Creek Road is a popular destination, and for good reason: a short and easy hike, fairly easy access to the trailhead and panoramic views of Sedona's cream-and-salmon cliffs."

Let me just say, after this trip and a similar trip were we explored a canyon called Hell's Canyon we decided to stay away from hikes with any names like Hell, Devil, Lucifer's Gate, Purgatory... because they seem to turn out to be just that. It took ALL day to hike to this crazy bridge. There was a road we had to hike first to even ge to the trailhead. That probably took 40 minutes. 2 girls kept saying they had to go to the bathroom so we stopped every so often to find a nice secluded bush only for them to say 'never mind, I'll hold it.' We finally got to the trailhead and we hiked some more. At this point it got difficult because the trail wasn't clear where we were supposed to go so we wandered a bit and got lost a lot. We took turns sitting with the girls in the shade while one of us explored trying to find this crazy bridge. Our friend was done and didn't want to hike any more. We knew we had a long hike back and we'd better find this Devil's Bridge after coming this far. After getting lost some more and meeting other hikers who assured us it we were almost there we found a nice cave like overhang that we could rest in and Brent and I took turns searching for the bridge again. We were told we were almost there. We also met other hikers who couldn't find it either. Brent and some other hikers went straight up some natural steps next to were we were resting. About 15 minutes later I heard Brent calling me from afar. I looked up and Brent was this little tiny spot on top of the rocks way above us. He was standing on the bridge. We just couldn't tell from the angle we were at. If you look close, Brent is the tiny blue speck in the middle of the picture.

  I climbed up and saw the Bridge after he came back down. Our friend wasn't going up, and the girls certainly weren't going up. The bridge was spectacular, very narrow, and it freaked me out to go on it, but I did.

 Then we turned around and took the long hike back. It took just as long as we were tired, out of water and we still had to stop at different ideal looking bushes as 3 girls now had to go to the bathroom, but could never quite manage. So tough being a girl in the wild. By the time we finally got back to our van, all we wanted to do was go get something cold to drink, some dinner and go home. Which we did.