A chronicle of our Arizona road trip, from June 8-16, 2011
Days 3-5: Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona, Meteor Crater & Winslow
We all have our favorite things, when it comes to travel and lodging. Some of us book escapes to resorts with fancy spa treatments, or maybe you favor sleek, modern hotels with big poofy beds dressed in 600-thread count Egyptian linens. As for me: I'm a sucker for funky little cabins near the water.
For the next phase of our Arizona trip after
Cameron and the Grand Canyon, we stayed for four nights in one of those funky little cabins, just north of
Sedona, in beautiful Oak Creek Canyon. Our plan was to use the cabin as a sort of base-camp for exploring the local scenery and other nearby attractions. I knew ahead of time that I wanted to avoid staying in a traditional hotel room for this leg of the trip: it's supposed to be a vacation, right? But "vacation" also often means taking the people who live in our house and stuffing all of us into a room that's somewhere between 200-600 square feet for several days, depending on the size of a hotel room. Relaxing? Not so much.
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| Our cabin, "The Barn" |
Thankfully, a very thorough search of the 'net (and thumbing again through my Arizona Frommer's) turned up the
Forest Houses Resort.
Located right on Highway 89, which runs north-south from Flagstaff down to Sedona, the cabins at
Forest Houses are tucked in amongst the trees and rocks, and are fairly hard to see from the road. When I called to check on reservations back in February, I was lucky to be able to book us into a large-enough cabin, with an upstairs king-sized bed and bathroom, and two twin bed and bathroom in the ample living area below. The Forest Houses seems to be one of those places that families in the know return to again and again, year after year, and the cabins can be reserved up to a year in advance. (And yes, that probably means that if you're reading this in July of the year, the cabins for next June are already booking up fast.)
Now, if you're the type of person, as mentioned above, for whom “vacation” should imply granite bathrooms, plush linens, and daily maid service, then funky forest cabins are probably not your thing. Or maybe you're like me, and can appreciate the fun in both types of vacations. Yes, there were shrieks every morning from the kids, when they found a new batch of spiders lurking on the bathroom tiles. Yes, there were moths who battered themselves against the screens at night, but the screens in our cabin, “The Barn House,” were all in good shape, so no flying critters made their way inside. The full kitchen was amply stocked with dishes and utensils, and it's always such a relief to be able to fix quick meals, rather than finding a place to eat out for every meal. Oh, and if you travel with your pet, most of the cabin on the property allow pets.
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| Entrance and patio at The Barn. |
On our first full day at Forest Houses Resort, we stayed close to home and explored the creek, accessed by a trail that began near the rear of our cabin. This was the “creek” part of Oak Creek Canyon, and it was a great time: the water was a pleasant temperature, and the kids made good use of their new water-shoes as they scrambled and picked their way over rocks and boulders in the creek and splashed around. And for me, there was a great feeling of peace that I was always feel beside beautiful running streams, remembering that quote from the famous old Greek who said something about not ever stepping into the same river twice. I soaked my feet, and soaked up the moments.
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| Monkey Boy in Oak Creek |
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| Oak Creek, at Forest Houses Resort |
The next day, we visited Slide Rock State Park. Slide Rock was only about ten minutes south of our cabin, and the water is the same creek – but what a different creek it was. Here, the water runs deep, deep enough for scores of young people to jump off the high red rocks into deep green pools below. And the depth of the water meant that it was significantly colder. It was hot outside, somewhere in the low 90s that day, and the heat radiated off of all those red cliffs. The heat made the icy temperature of the creek that much more shocking. In fact, my daughter, who had so enjoyed her creek-splashing the day before near our cabin, was reduced to frustrated tears when she just couldn't quite acclimate to the chilly water. (After the lunch break she rallied, and was able to get in and enjoy herself, in the end.) (But it was still cold.)
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Slide Rock: Hot red rocks, cold green water
Slide Rock: arrive early; it gets packed in summer! |
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We woke up extra early the next morning to take a
Pink Jeep Tour into Sedona's red rock back-country. We'd booked the “Broken Arrow” tour, the tour widely considered to give the best overview of the landscape. The
Pink Jeep tours aren't cheap, but they offer a great way to really get up close to the beautiful and iconic red rocks. And, by booking the first tour of the morning, we were able to take advantage of a special Automobile Association (Triple A) discount that was significantly cheaper than a full price tour. Our tour guide was Ken, a friendly, polite and informative guide (he cracked a joke about how, since his name was Ken, he didn't have Barbie with him in the pink jeep). Ken took us up and down very bumpy trails, pointing to rock formations and asking the kids basic geology questions to get them thinking about the formation of all those rocks. He also made frequent stops so that we could get out, hike around, and take pictures. Overall, our jeep tour was a blast – my son, who loves monster trucks and any vehicles with big tires, was thrilled to go off-roading in the open-air Jeep, and we all laughed, shrieked and held on for dear life as we went up and down some very steep and bumpy trails.
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| Pink Jeep tour guide, talking geology with Monkeys |
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| Pink Jeep in the Sedona back-country |
Did I mention that we took the first tour of the day? At about 2 hours long, our tour felt leisurely, but it ended before we knew it, and it was barely 9 a.m. What to do with the rest of the day? Back into the car, and off another mini-road trip: up north again, up Highway 89 to Flagstaff, and then east, to the
Meteor Crater. The many billboards on the highway advertising the crater make it seem like an old-fashioned roadside attraction:
turn now to see the giant meteor crater! But in fact, the crater is the real deal, one of the “largest and best preserved” impact craters in the world. And you know what? It's big. Impressively big. It's the
other impressively big and geologically significant hole in the ground that Arizona has to offer, and the visitor's center and museum are hands-on and informative. What is also impressive here is the variety of license plates found in the attraction's parking lot: the kids spotted car after car from other states besides California and Arizona, some from as far away as Minnesota, Georgia, or New Jersey.
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| Big Hole: Meteor Crater. Note the people on the platform in the middle left for size context |
Next up was yet another touristy stop: Winslow, Arizona. When I found out that there was a bronze statue “
standing on a corner,” and commemorating the famous line from The Eagles song, I had to see it. So we pushed further east on Highway 40 to Winslow, a small, depressed town that nevertheless has a rich history, and some interesting sights: it is a former major stop on Route 66, and the home of the
La Posada Hotel, a National Historic Landmark built by architect Mary Jane Colter, who also built the
Desert Tower that we visited at the Grand Canyon. But really, that's not why we went to Winslow. We went all the way out to Winslow, just so that I could stand on that corner in Winslow, Arizona, and “take it easy.” Directly across the street from the bronze statue of the generic young '70s dude holding a guitar is a souvenir shop, with speakers blaring out a non-stop rotation of Eagles songs. It's quite a tourist destination, especially when you realize that it's not just built around one song, but instead on just
one line inside of one song. Fabulous!
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| Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Note the mural behind me: (girl in a flatbed Ford). |
And so that was our stay in and around Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. Our four nights at the Forest Houses Resort were peaceful and relaxing, and our days were a good mix of laid-back and action-packed. Since I'm always on the lookout for the next cool destination to discover, it's rare that I ever want to return to the same location twice. And yet, I can easily see us returning again to this “resort” alongside lovely and burbling Oak Creek, perhaps even getting lucky enough to snag one of the sweet cabins that are literally built creekside. Next time.
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| Driving over the creek as we left Forest House |
Next Up: Days 6-8: Jerome, Montezuma's Castle, and livin' large in Scottsdale.
Links of Interest:
Visit Sedona, official tourism bureau site, with links to attractions & lodging
Forest Houses Resort -- cabins along Oak Creek, north of Sedona
Slide Rock State Park, official site
Pink Jeep, site of the jeeps, info on tours and reservations
Meteor Crater, official site
Standin' on the Corner, official site of the park & bronze statue in Winslow, AZ.
La Posada Hotel, site of the "last great railroad hotel" in Winslow, AZ.
Read about days 1 & 2 of our Arizona trip, in Cameron & the Grand Canyon.
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