Gorgeous weather and the company of 13 Trailblazers made for a great day on the Bell Trail in the Wet Beaver Creek Wilderness area. The trail starts on an old jeep trail, with a combination of black volcanic rock, lava flow remnants and the Sedona red sedimentary rocks above us on our left, and occasional brief glimpses of Wet Beaver Creek down below to our right.

Before too long, we ascended just a slight bit onto a red rock ledge. It’s single file at this point, unless you want to take a long tumble down to the creek!

We make it to our destination around 11 AM, and it takes us a while to settle down to lunch, as the scenery and rock formations at the popular swimming hole known as “The Crack” keep us buzzing around taking pictures.

We all take turns posing on the Beaver’s Tongue formation, which looks like a huge diving board. So tempting to take a dive right in, but a) the water is pretty cold right now, and b) it doesn’t appear to be super deep.

What a hard place to leave! A couple of us had dipped our feet in the creek for a quick cool off. But as we are gathering our gear to move on, we hear the playful screams of a young woman who jumps into the creek – yikes, she’s brave, and she admits it was pretty cold (thus the screams!), but refreshing.

A few more minutes and we arrive at Bell Crossing. Some of the group can’t resist crossing the creek to take a quick peek up the trail, but since this is the turnaround point for the day, before too long they cross back across the creek so that we can start heading back.

Some of the group does a quick side hike up the Weir trail, but everyone meets back up at the trailhead to discuss the après-hike activities. We finally decide to all check out the fall colors in Oak Creek canyon, and then head to dinner at Oaxaca Mexican restaurant.

Apparently the fall color viewing had its own price of admission, in the form of a medium sized traffic jam coming into downtown Sedona (although, sadly, that’s getting to be pretty standard for weekend traffic in Sedona...).

But we finished on a high note of tasty food and nice sunset shots of the nearby rock formations.