Schnebly Hill
Benci hasn’t been feeling well so we have spent most of the summer at home but he was finally (mostly) back up to speed and we were PUMPED. (seriously this dog is more expensive than all of our camping gear combined; he’s at the vet every week it seems). We wanted to head up north to escape the heat, and decided we would finally do Schnebly Hill after many recommendations.
We left Saturday morning, on time for once I might add. Whenever we set a time to depart you can expect us to leave about 30+ minutes later. I know I know, you’re all shocked. But don’t worry, we hit a 35 minute delay when we pulled into the Starbucks drive thru for some coffee and they had only 2 people working.. With our caffeine in hand we headed up the 17 towards flagstaff and took exit 320 towards Schnebly road. We took Schnebly road for ~12 miles to Schnebly Hill Vista Overlook.
Right when you’re pulling up to the overlook there are signs saying “no camping beyond this point”. We were kind of bummed because it had the most beautiful views. We pulled over at the overlook and there happened to be a pink jeep tour stopped there as well. Casey hopped out to see if they knew when the camping restriction ended and she told us if we backed up about 20 feet from the “No Camping” sign, there was a road up the ridge that had beautiful spots. We climbed up the ridge and picked a spot with a beautiful view of Sedona.
The camp site didn’t offer much in the way of shade, which sucked because although it's not 103 degrees like Phoenix, it was still quite warm in the 80s. There was a tree a little bit above camp that we set our chairs and table up under. The wind on the ridge was insane, like hurricane level it felt, but was quite refreshing when you were up in the roof top tent. Casey grilled up some carne asada for dinner and then I made us quesadillas with it. So simple and so easy, and absolutely DELICIOUS. We ate dinner with our feet dangling over the edge of the ridge while Benci played Lion King next to us.
We had cell service and the Chargers preseason game was on (minus the 2 hours that Andrew Luck took up to give his retirement speech) so we climbed up into the tent and hung out for the rest of the night. The wind settled down at night and made for beautiful sleeping conditions. We were visited by something in the middle of the night, but I scared it off by frantically waking Casey up. We suspect it was a coyote or mountain lion, but we will never know.
We woke up and made some coffee and took in the views one last time. We cheated on breakfast this time, and had some blueberry muffins we bought at the grocery store. We packed up camp and headed out to hit the “Merry Go Round” that is about 1.6 miles away. To get there you will want to head out of the campsite and take a left to continue west on Schnebly hill road. There is also a way to head home by continuing on Schnebly road and head back home through Sedona, but it is quicker to go back the way we came, so after a few photos we hopped back in the truck and headed home.
I think this was probably one of my favorite campsites to date. I know i say this every time, but I mean it! The views from camp were BEAUTIFUL and because you are so close to the no camping zone you’re very secluded still. We had probably two other campsites around us, but that was it. Definitely will be going back to this spot as often as we can.
