Cathedral Gorge State Park, Lincoln County, NV

Hiked March 29 and March 30, 2025. I had been "to" Cathedral Gorge once before, stopping on the way to or from Great Basin National Park. But that was on a pre-blog trip, a long time ago, probably ten years before the Great Basin hikes that did get blogged. And that trip was just a view from the overlook. It was nice, but didn't really resonate.

Then, more recently, I started getting things on my facebook feed from Cathedral Gorge that looked a lot more amazing that I experienced. Keep in mind, I'm skeptical of some of those views, because my personal experience and feeling when hiking, for example, Angels Landing was not nearly as spooky or stress-inducing as videos I have seen of the same hike. In fact, I took a second or third hike Angels Landing, because the video experience was so much more dramatic than my recollection. In that case, I confirmed that, no, with with chain, the dropoffs were really not very threatening. Still, figured my one trip to Cathedral Gorge was pretty surface-only, and a long time ago, so another trip was in order.

So those videos I saw of Cathedral Gorge made me want to revisit the place, and, especially, to experience it from within the gorge rather than from above.

From the Las Vegas area, it's 2 1/2 to three hours driving time, depending on where in the valley you are starting from and what time you leave, because, especially for folks southeast of the Spheghetti Bowl, you'll have to drive through that aggravating interchange. Once through there, it's north on I-15, which is also US-93, for about 21 miles, to where the "Great Basin Highway" (US-93) separates from I-15 and heads due north.

There's a rather unattractive Love's truck stop on US-93, near I-15. After that, there are no formal flush-toilet rest areas between that and Cathedral Gorge, though there are a few smaller gas stations along the way. There's also the visitor center for Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, where we did stop, both coming and going (more on that in the next post). And that's about it. Otherwise, it's a pretty lonely drive. Not really any chain restaurants along the way, other than I think the occasional Subway in a gas station.

There is a BLM office in Caliente, about 14 miles south of Cathedral Gorge, which I would like to have stopped at, but they're only open on weekdays. There are about five major historic rock art sites not far off the route to Cathedral Gorge, but all require some amount of driving on dirt roads. I wanted to see which could be reasonably accessed by someone driving a Camry, and how long the walks would be from any parking areas to the rock art. Not able to ask that, but I did find some flyers for those sites at the regional state park visitor center at Cathedral Gorge, so I have that to work off of, in the future.

The closest town to Cathedral Gorge is Panaca. There are no "regular" motels in Panaca, but there are at least two "bed and breakfast" properties (both owned or operated by the same group of folks). Other than that, you'd have to camp in the state park, or stay a motel back in Caliente.

We checked in to the "Pine Tree Inn," because this one had breakfast on site, while a review for the other B and B said you had to drive to the nearby "affiliated" site for your food. That being the case, I figured I'd rather stay where the food was!

Price was about $100 a night. Room was comfortable. Private bathroom attached. Locking bedroom door. Microwave and refrigerator shared, upstairs. Also, frozen or shelf-stable food available for purchase, which would be a major convenience, since there is no real restaurant in Panaca, either. So if you didn't bring your own dinner or snacks, you would either buy it from the B and B (reasonable prices) or starve. We brought our own food.

After dinner, I drove the 10 or 15 minutes into the park, paid my entry fee at an automated kiosk ($10 for a non-NV plate on my car), drove to the end of the day use road, and wandered. Even just wandering a fraction of a mile from the parking area, among the slotted canyons, eroded in the clay, was pretty amazing. The hard but easily eroded clay made some fantastic shapes. The blue sky contrasted with the yellowish shale, which photographed warmer than it appeared to the naked eye, because my cell phone camera has no IR cutoff filter. (That's why you can see IR tv remotes light up when you point them at your cell phone camera). Pigeons apparently nest in some of the openings in the clay.

After 20 minutes or so of messing around inside the gorges, I walked the Juniper Draw Loop trail. I was initially confused by a closure sign, but that only applied to a spur along this trail. The loop itself was open. It's about three miles long, so less than 90 minutes, even with lots of stops for pictures. I managed to finish before dark, though somewhat after sunset. My day pass, by the way, said I had to be gone within one hour of sunset. So I'm not sure how things work if you want to do astronomy or astrophotography but not camp in the park. I encountered no park personnel during my visit. Even the visitor center was unstaffed when we popped in, the next day.

The next morning, I returned to the park. I brought back my non-hiking wife, who I thought would enjoy even the short wanders into the slots, which she did. Cost me another ten bucks, but it was worth it.

There's another hike that would have taken me up the west side of the gorge (Hawk's Ridge trail, about four miles), but I figured I had experienced the main vibe for the park, already. Then we went back to our B and B and ate breakfast. Tasty, by the way.

Skipping the morning hike let us leave Panaca earlier. I already planned to stop for a short hike in Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, so I knew I had another 60-90 minutes in addition to the drive time to go to get back to Henderson. So, away we went.

Bell Rock Pathway and Vicinity, Red Rock Ranger District, Coconino National Forest, AZ

Hiked March 16, 2025. After the drive down from Kingman and the visits to the Crane Petroglyphs and Montezuma Castle, we drove back up I-17, exiting again at Exit 298, AZ-179. Left turn at the bottom of the ramp and you're on your way toward Sedona. Our motel tonight was the Kokopelli Inn Sedona, although it's actually in the village of Oak Creek, a bit south of Sedona. It was priced somewhere around $250 a night, or 27,000 Wyndham Rewards Points, which is what I used.

Room was nice, the location worked, and the price, while very high by my standards, was about what other rooms would go for in the area. And I've got plenty of points, so although the value for the points was not particularly good (less than a penny per point), it did mean no out of pocket expense, which is a plus.

The price included a light breakfast. "Overnight oatmeal" was the main attraction. With available dried fruit and nuts, it was pretty hearty. Beyond that, it was toast, muffins, coffee, or juices. I grabbed a muffin, but wound up eating two oatmeals, instead. The muffin went home with me. At home, one of the cats found it, and chewed it up. Stupid cat. :D

The hike was after a late lunch. We wanted to eat at a place in actual Sedona, but the traffic was terrible, followed by the impossibility of finding parking, so we wound up driving back to where we started from and eating at Los Betos, a local Mexican food chain that we first became acquainted with about 25 years ago (!), during my wife's internship in Tucson.

After a bit of resting up, I walked out of the room, down the stairs, and headed north. My Alltrails showed an access to the trail system by just heading along the residential streets, east of AZ-179. Unfortunately, that was a lie. Accessing the trail would have required crossing a signed No Trespassing area. So I had to backtrack a bit to get back to the main highway, and approach via the large (but mostly full of cars) parking area that is the south trailhead for the Bell Rock Pathway.

I had no real destination or route in mind, other than going mostly north, and trying to make a loop of it. My intial though of going around Courthouse Butte was nixed, on account of it possibly taking too long. I only had about two hours of daylight, and, despite having Alltrails, could not be sure about the difficulty if I did start the loop and then ran out of daylight.

So I just wandered around Bell Rock. Ended up going counterclockwise rather than clockwise, as I would have preferred, just because there were some young women ahead of me who turned that way, and I didn't want them to feel like I was following them. I mean, if I knew where I was going, I could have just accelerated past them, but because I didn't know where I was going, I had to keep stopping at each trail crossing to confirm my direction.

And because this is a heavily used trail, there are a LOT of crossing trails, and a lot of unofficial trails. Even with the heavy signage, it was easy to get misdirected. Matter of fact, later that hike, I encountered an "older" couple (meaning probably a little younger than me) who couldn't find their car. I directed them to go back the way I came and make a left, and it would take them back to the parking lot. But then, about an hour later, as I made my way around Bell Rock, there they were again, heading north, rather than south. I sure hope they were parked where I thought they were parked, because, otherwise, who knows how long they had to walk after dark!

In any event, Alltrails says I walked about 4 3/4 miles, mostly flat, and got back to my room somewhat after sundown, but before it got dark. No doubt, could easily spend several days hiking the area and visiting other ancient indigenous ruins. But it was only a long weekend for me, and I had to get back.

Incredibly scenic place, but also pretty heavily travelled. Still, not hard to get some breathing space, once you got away from the road.

The next morning, before breakfast, we made a quick drive north to see the Chapel in the Rock. It was one of two things I saw pictures of before going, and wanted to see.

Turns out if you go early, the road to the top is gated, so I could only take a picture of it from far below.

I was told that around spring break is their busy time, and it surely was busy. The debacle of trying to eat in Sedona was off-putting, but, man, those rocks sure are pretty. It's as gorgeous in real-life as it was in pictures. I'd like to return again, with more time for hiking. Would also be great in a monsoon -- you could see stains where short-lived waterfalls must run, after those rains or after the snowfall melts. That would also be amazing.