Sedona – Flagstaff Camping Trip

FALL BREAK, OCTOBER 2019

During my freshman year at ASU, our fall break happened 1 or 2 weeks after the Sun Saga. The spontaneous nature of our Sun Saga weekend has inspired many of our adventures this year. Originally for fall break, my friends and I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon and hike down to the bottom and camp out , but we came up with the idea too close to fall break. We would have needed to get a permit at least a few weeks prior in order to do so.

Instead my friends and I decided to go camping in Sedona. We weren’t really prepared to be honest with you. But that didn’t matter because, like always, our adrenaline and excitement for the trip carried us through. Luckily one of us was smart enough to say we should bring our comforters for camping that night. The temperature ended up dropping to about 30°! I was not expecting that – at that point I didn’t even know any of Arizona got snow! (For those also unaware, Flagstaff gets snow!)

The morning of, Dylan, Rita, Lexi and I made our way to the dining hall – which was a proud sponsor of our meals for the trip! We filled multiple sandwich baggies with different types of cereal – of course we got Cocoa Puffs! In addition to cereal, packed little donut holes, some other type of pastry, and fruit into sandwich baggies. Lastly, we stocked up on uncrustables from the POD market, our second sponsor of this road trip. That was it! We weren’t really going for the whole healthy vibe for our meals, we were sticking with the cheap way!

Our first stop on the trip was the Arizona Biltmore! Lexi and I were taking Interior Design 101, and an extra credit project available for our class included taking a picture in front of the Arizona Biltmore and write a paragraph about our experience! It was a cute little pitstop and great to see some of Arizona’s history!

Here is my corny pic :)

Finally, we were on our we go SEDONA!! The drive is always my favorite part. We took ~the Jetta~ and she did great. She did struggle up some hills but the important thing is that she got us from point A to B. We all took turns queuing songs – we all had different music tastes but they blended well. We had to bring a speaker since ~the Jetta~ didn’t have an aux cord and her radio didn’t work outside of Phoenix. I think I actually turned Lexi and Rita into country music fans this day!! They weren’t big country listeners before but they felt the good vibes that it brought to our road trip. I don’t think Dylan is anymore of a country music fan than he was before – he loves his Drake and Taylor Swift!

Going back to the part where we weren’t really prepared, that was an exaggeration. Because we weren’t prepared at all. We didn’t know what activities we were going to do, where we were going to sleep, what our meals were going to be the next day, nothing. We did, however, have a tent that Rita borrowed from a friend! We decided to practice setting up the tent on our dorm floor about a week before our trip to ensure we could make ourselves a shelter – shout-out to BRENNAN for being the best Community Assistant at ASU. We set it up outside his room and when he came home he thought it was the most crazy/random thing ever. But none of us had really set up a tent before so we needed the practice hahaha. BUT we had a former boy-scout (shout out to the troops) with us (Dylan) and he kept us safe and put our tent up without a problem!

We were planning on camping in Sedona but there were no open AND free campsites (remember our vibe for the weekend was ~free~). We continued on to Flagstaff, not on purpose but we were just following the road we were on, hoping we’d eventually come across something! I think we actually were driving on a scenic drive that is pretty well known! It makes sense because the drive was absolutely breathtaking!

Long behold, after ~the Jetta~, using every ounce of strength that she had to climb the mountain, we eventually came across a FREE campground!! It was like finding gold! At the campsite, there were 3 different loops where you could set up camp. I think we chose the second one. We set up our tent and arranged our sleeping area and then decided to check out where we ended up.

We hiked around for about two hours and found this super cool swimming hole. We didn’t actually swim in it because we couldn’t find a way down, but it was very serene! If you go right after a rainfall it will turn into a waterfall! However you probably won’t be able to walk up stream. Thanks to Dylan’s Boy Scout skills, we safely found our way back to to camp.

I totally think that this campsite is hidden gem material. There were only a few other campers there that same night. Also, there wasn’t really much of a sign for it. I did happened to find the location of this campsite if you are interested! I’ll leave those details at the bottom of this post :)

What is a camping trip without s’mores and a campfire?! We needed to drive back into town to get some supplies for our fire & s’mores. We found this adorable little camping market where we bought firewood, lighter fluid & s’mores ingredients. Then we ventured a little more to find some bathrooms (can’t go in the woods the wholeeee time ammiright).

We ended up finding this super cute park with a small creek that also had a restroom. And Rita got to put her LIFESTRAW to the test!!! And so did Lexi and I hahaha. Rita had bought this a while ago and brought it just incase she found a stream to test it on! This was a very exciting moment for her hahaha. The trick to using a life straw is that you have to use it in flowing water, otherwise all of the bad stuff just sits there and it isn’t as clean as running water. After our success with the lifestraw, we explored the creek a little more until the sun began to set, making us a little chilly.

When we got back to camp, we decided it was time to set up our campfire. Dylan started the fire while Lexi, Rita and I went searching for some large rocks we could sit on. We ended up sitting on a blanket I’m pretty sure, because the rocks were too heavy to carry! For our dinner, we had some more cereal and treated ourselves by roasting the uncrustables on the fire. It was so good! There’s nothing like a hot meal!

Rita seems to remember there being jack-o-lanterns at our campsite! I think we put them in the fire to see if it would ignite the fire more but I don’t think it worked haha. Rita says that she debated eating them since we were low on food (yuck).

Also, one of our neighbors at the campsite gave us their leftover wood and igniter fuel since they were heading out! We only used a little of it, but we really appreciated the gesture!

I noticed the moon had been SUPER bright that night so I tried to take a pic of it! I wished it had come out clearer but when I had shown my friend the photo (she did photography), she was impressed that my iPhone was able to capture this!!

The next morning, we wanted to do some hiking in Sedona before we headed back to campus. We had dry cereal for breakfast, left over from the day before and then headed back into town. We didn’t go hiking in the red rocks. But we parked in a random parking lot and explored behind some businesses in town. There had been a path so we thought we were okay! But we were actually told to leave because we eventually came across a stream that was in someone’s backyard haha. Oops!

Afterwards, we grabbed lunch at Chipotle and then headed back to campus! This was such a fun road trip with my friends and I’m sad that our fall break got cancelled for this upcoming year. That’s alright though, we’ll just have to cram our spontaneous adventures into Saturday and Sunday :)

Locations mentioned in this post:
The Arizona Biltmore : 33.523, -112.023 (Phoenix)
Camping spot : 35.054, -111.726 (Flagstaff)
Creek we found with restrooms : 34.971, -111.751 (Sedona)
Creek we weren’t supposed to be at : 34.864, -111.762 (Sedona)

Have you camped in Sedona or Flagstaff? Where’s your go-to spot? Let me know in the comments! :)

One response to “Sedona – Flagstaff Camping Trip”

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[…] and Rohini. I’d never been to Downtown Flagstaff before, the closest I’d been was camping just outside of Downtown Sedona, and the location was technically within […]

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