The Adventures of Wayne & co.: Mingus Mountain

There’s really no excuse for the lack of posts lately other than laziness. I’ve had a few Adventures that I should have blogged about but just didn’t feel like spending the time or energy writing about. Here are a couple highlights:

Doe Mountain with the family:

Mingus Mountain hike:

That's my kind of burger! (The Grind in Phoenix, AZ)

Devil’s Bridge!

Devil’s Bridge and Doe Mountain are local to Sedona, while Mingus Mountain is the mountain that overlooks Cottonwood and is about a half hour drive from Sedona proper. So that was my lame excuse for a re-cap of the last couple weeks. Maybe it’s not so lame, the pictures are practically the best part anyway.

In other news, I’m now a little more than a quarter of a century years old (yikes!). I plan on doing some Adventuring tomorrow with some of my new toys. I won’t make any promises, but it should be good (or at least interesting).

Keep Adventuring (even if I don’t)!

I woke up this morning to what sounded like someone tapping on my window. This would be pretty creepy considering I live on the second floor. But I soon realized that it was a light rain. So I got up and began my day. Eventually I got a text from one of the cooks I work with. He told me that Mingus Mountain just got some snowfall. I remember how in San Diego when we would get rain in the winter it usually meant snow up in the nearby mountains. So apparently Sedona is similar in that way. So what did I do next? I said thank you and sat at my computer… (yeah right!). I immediately threw on a jacket and headed out. I had to see it for myself.

Mingus Mountain is south-west of Sedona (where I live) and Cotttonwood (the town next door to me). The 89A west takes you just about all the way there, until I got to the Forest 104 Route, which was a dirt road. For as many Adventures as I go on I might need to get another vehicle, my Accord is barely cutting it.

I didn’t see any signs of snow for about 85% of the drive up so I began to get skeptical. I thought maybe the cook was messing with me as he usually does. Then I see it:

Well, the photo doesn’t really do it justice but what I saw was a section of the mountain where the trees had a light dusting of beautiful white power. As I got closer and closer I saw more and more patches of snow on the side of the road. At first it was mostly in the shadows and then it became pretty consistent throughout the forest floor. I eventually turned off onto Forest 104 Route and powered my way up the dirt road. When things leveled out I passed a small body of water to my right. It looked like a nice place to stop but I wanted to see how far I could go. Apparently not much further, everything after this point was either part of a church campground or U.S. government property. So I turned around and parked at the body of water, which actually had a parking lot.

Here are the signs I see:

You’ll notice a few things: 1. This was part of Prescott National Forest. 2. This body of water had no name that I could discern. 3. No Boating / Swimming. 4. At the bottom of the Self Service Pay Station sign it says that this site is currently not maintained. Sweet! The government shut down has saved me another $5! We're up to $10 total.

I started walking around taking photos. There really wasn’t much to do out here but I was happy I came out because it has been a while since I’ve seen snow.