Weekend at the Hotel California

 I guess this was my summer for living out songs by The Eagles.  First, I went and stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  And then in July, I checked into the Hotel California.

This version of the Hotel California is a small hotel in Palm Springs.  My husband and I have stayed in many small boutique hotels here over the years, usually to celebrate our anniversary in late July.  Palm Springs is a local getaway for us, as it's only about an hour and a half away.

We like the desert, and we like it when it's super hot -- call us crazy, but that's the vibe we enjoy out there: 95 degrees after sundown, walking around the downtown area on Palm Canyon Drive, people watching and window shopping, sitting under a mister at an outdoor restaurant, sipping on a cocktail. 

Because I like to change things up and check out the many hotels in this town, we've rarely stayed at the same lodging twice: not because anything was wrong per se, but just that there are so many options, and I want to experience them all.

So when it came time to book our anniversary weekend this year, I spent my usual hours of intense research over on TripAdvisor.  The #2 favorite (at the time I looked) was the Hotel California.

Arizona Road Trip: Jerome, Montezuma's Castle & the Westin Kierland

Arizona Road Trip 2011: Days 6-8

The old mining town of Jerome

After four nights of relaxing in our cabin at the Forest Houses Resort, it was time to pack up and move on to the third and final stage of our Arizona roadtrip. We checked out on a Monday morning and headed south down Highway 89, saying farewell to the stunning red cliffs in and around Sedona. The first stop of the day was the old mining town of Jerome. Jerome is an interesting town, located high up in the hills, and many of the old buildings seem to be literally dangling out over the valley below.

Jerome seems to exist now as mostly a tourist stop, but the word out there is that it's becoming a bit of an artist's enclave. I wonder if this is really true, as all the shops and restaurants in town seemed geared (and priced) toward the tourist trade.

Arizona Road Trip: Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona & Beyond

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. 

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.

Arizona Road Trip: Cameron & the Grand Canyon

A chronicle of our Arizona road trip, from June 8 to June 16, 2011.

Days 1 & 2: Cameron and Grand Canyon National Park

We rolled out the driveway a little after 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, pumped with anticipation for this year's road trip. Traveling up our local stretch of Interstate 15, we were headed for the eastbound Interstate 40, the major artery from Southern California into northern Arizona. Last year, we'd traveled north to visit grandparents and family living outside of Portland. The year before that, we'd traveled north again, to the beautiful coastal region around Big Sur and Monterey. This year, it was time to head in a different direction: east for Arizona!

I started developing the master plan for our trip back in February. I've found that often, the best lodging choices book up early in the year, and this trip was no different. Because I hadn't considered visiting Grand Canyon National Park way back in the summer of 2010, even by Feb. '11, the vast majority of lodging within the park was already booked up – and at this early stage, I had very flexible dates. All I knew for sure was that we wanted to travel sometime in June, to avoid the worst of the summer heat and crowds. But I was already too late: plugging dates into the reservation system at the official lodging site revealed that the historic El Tovar Lodge,  and the cabins and rooms at Bright Angel, were already booked fairly solid. So, if you're even thinking of a trip to the Canyon, and want to stay conveniently within the park, I recommend firming up your plans and making your reservations as early as possible at the National Park lodging website, maintained by Xanterra: Grand Canyon Lodges.com

My first plan of attack when considering any destination is, of course, the web. (Make that, hours and hours on the web.)  But when I need to sink in deeper, I look to guidebooks, where I can easily flip back and forth, and also get vetted, verified information and opinions about a place. So I checked out the Frommer's Arizona from the library, and spent several late nights filling my head with ideas. One idea I got from the guidebook was to avoid the crowded southern entrance to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (and also avoid the overpriced chain motels clustered in Williams, the biggest nearby town), and to enter the park from the less-traveled eastern entrance.

From the Frommer's, I discovered Cameron Trading Post (declared a “Find” by Frommers).