Today marks day #1 of our Arizona road trip and my anxiety is on level RIDICULOUS! Why you ask? Well because I have 3 National Parks on our itinerary and we’re seeing them all, LIKE IT OR NOT!
Ok…I admit I am intense. Anxiety is my fuel for getting things accomplished! I’d venture to say my family doesn’t love me for this, but they are used to it by now so they don’t even know any differnt.
One major “to do” on our Arizona road trip was to collect as many National Park cancellations (stamps) as possible. Ok…so maybe it was just MY goal and my family got drug along. Initially they were not excited, but they soon realized Arizona has some pretty cool national parks (NP).
In this blog…
- Our National Park Goals
- Places to eat near Sedona
- Montezuma Castle National Monument
- Sunset Crater Volcano
- Wupatki National Monument
💜What’s your favorite thing to do at each park? I’d love for you to share in the comments section. 💜
Our ”hikes” are always kid friendly in DISTANCE. My Tween is ZERO excited about any hiking we plan on doing, where I could hike for miles and miles and enjoy every minute. Therefore most of our visits are planned based on her “fitness level/desire”.
Our National Park Goals
- ✅Official Park Sign: Take a picture at the official park sign. I print wallets of these for our passport. They are too cute! FYI often parks have more than one sign if there are multiple entrances. Order this collapsable tripod with remote and never beg a stranger to take your pic again.
- ✅Visitors Center : Each park has a visitors center that has a little store with souvenirs & typically a museum of some sort.
- ✅Unigrid: Official park brochure. They give a little history on the park, maps to trails, and other activities you can participate in.
- ✅Cancellations: If you haven’t grabbed a passport book yet get yours today! As soon as we enter the visitors center the hunt is on for the cancellation station. They can be inside, outside, tucked in corners, BIG or even small. Most parks have a minimum of 2 stamps, a park specific cancellation and a junior ranger cancellation. Some parks have extra landscape stamps or even more for different sections of the park. If you check the NPS app they will tell you what passport cancellations are available but I found this isn’t always exhaustive. BTW ALWAYS CHECK YOUR DATE BEFORE STAMPING!
- ✅A Memory: We participate in one “thing to do”. This can be a hike, sightsee (a ruin for example), or another available adventure (bike, kayak, boat…)
I recommend downloading the app alltrails. You can research trails, read reviews, and view personal photos to get a good idea of what you might be getting into. Trails are also listed by difficulty and an estimated completion time will be in the trail description.
Go one step further and subscribe to the app for the option to download trail maps. They load right onto my Garmin watch so I never feel lost. One thing I’ve realized is directions to the trail head are much more accurate vs google or Apple Maps.
Places to eat near Sedona
- Red rock cafe: our original plan was to stop here for brunch/lunch on our way to the castle. I was SUPER bummed to pull up to a renovation mess and the restaurant closed (A major con to planning by the internet). The owner/manager?? was pretty helpful in suggesting the following options, thankfully that lightened my attitude a bit.
- PJs Village Pub: where we actually dined. Service was super quick and I was impressed considering it was basically one older gentleman covering the floor alone. We didn’t expect much because we were in a bar, but our food was fantastic! Check them out if your looking for a big food selection.
- Butterfly Burger
- Pisa Lisa
*On the way thru Sedona you will pass the Chapel of the Holy Cross. At the very least lay your eyes on the church in the rocks.
Montezuma Castle National Monument
~58 minutes from Flagstaff (our hotel)
~40 minutes from Sedona
We spent our morning exploring the Red Rocks of Sedona. Beautiful! Check out how that adventure went for us here. Once we returned our ATV unharmed 😄 we jumped in our rental and headed south to Montezuma. Montezuma Castle was the first of three parks we will hit today.
✅Official Park Sign
The park sign is located near the park gate, which closes @4:45 and is one mile from the visitors center.
✅Visitors Center
Hours: Sunday thru Saturday 8am-4:45pm
The visitor center is small, well kept, and tucked away into the rocks. As you enter you will be required to pay the entrance fee or show your pass. Restrooms are the first thing you reach ( Thank Goodness! Tiny bladder over here).
Cost: $10 for over 15 yrs of age (pass good for 7 days) or show your America the Beautiful Pass (A MUST BUY!! And good for 4 people)
Inside this Arizona National Park you will find a small store with your typical NP items (stuffed animals, books, & souvenirs) and a corner museumfor a little insight into the area.
✅Cancellation Station
The station was setup right outside the back entrance towards the ruins.
You can see this station has 2 cancellations, a Park cancellation and a Junior ranger cancellation. My tweens book looks a mess but she loves to stamp it with the junior ranger and the park cancellation. Just FYI for our younger visitors there are books made just for these cancellations. Ask the park rangers for your junior ranger packet and badge.These are fun to collect and they come with fun little activities. My T(w)eens are past the interest for these but they are cute and make the parks a little more fun for children.
✅Unigrid
As you can see in the pic above, you can grab the brochure right at the cancellation station. This is notalways the case. Sometimes you have to request it from the park rangers desk.
For me these are fun to collect, but also you can get an overview of the NP. This brochure has 2 parks combined. We only had time to visit Montezuma Castle on this trip, if you have more Tuzigoot has it own visitors center and is ~35 minutes away.
✅Our Activity
As we were jumping out of the car my husband asked me if he would need his hydration backpack for our hike. Check him out he his ready to go!!
Weeellll…I really thought he might but as soon as we crossed the back threshold of the visitors center, and also the trailhead, my t(w)eens could NOT stop laughing and my husband immediately side-eyed me.
This is the view as soon as you step out of the visitors center. Can you see the dwellings in the limestone cliff?? YOU’RE ALREADY THERE!
Ok, so in my defense it was HOT!!! and I’m not sure why but I was thinking the trail was ~a mile long and sometimes my youngest can make a mile last an eternity depending on her mood.
Welllllll….the trail is actually .4 miles and that’s if you do the whole loop. .4!!!! and he has a hydration pack on! OK I admit I set him up for failure but it was worth the laugh we had. It still makes us giggle to think about it.
This trail is super easy and the reward is more than worth it.
Covered benches line the trail across from the ruins. A great place to use your binoculars! We purchased ours about 5 years ago. Amazon no longer has our pair in stock but these are very similar, affordable, and have great reviews.
If we had more time…
- Hike Montezuma Well Trail
- Visit Tuzigoot National Monument: ~35 minutes away
- Enjoy Slide Rock State Park nearby
Wupatki National Monument & Sunset Crater Volcano
Soooo did you know that park rangers can pull you over for speeding? 🚔 Well I didn’t but I do now. There is absolutelyno signal for GPS in the park, and the roads are wide open and lonely. I was just cruising along enjoying the landscape when BAM!!. Blue lights! Next thing you know I’m stopped with a ranger behind me radioing in my info😖. I was lucky enough to only receive a warning, but it taught me a lesson for the rest of the trip….use CRUISE CONTROL!
Getting There
From Montezuma to Sunset Crater ~1hr 13 minutes
From Montezuma to Wupatki ~1hr40 minutes
Wupatki to Sunset Crater~20 minutes
Again I say, everywhere in Arizona is a drive, but if you’re like us and the landscape is not your usual views, this time will fly by.
From montezuma we decided to head to Wupatki first because Sunset Craters visitor center is CLOSED due to a recent fire in the area.
✅Officail Park Sign
✅Visitor Center & Unigrid
Hours: 9am-4:30
Fee: $25 (one vehicle for 7 days) or Show your America the Beautiful Pass.
This covers both Wupatki and Sunset crater.
Wupatki visitors center is literally in the middle of no where. It’s pretty plain on the outside, so I didn’t expect the unique architecture on the inside.
Sunset Crater Visitors Center is temporarily closed.
✅Cancellation Station
Right inside the front entrance you will find the cancellations for Wupatki. Since sunset is temporarily closed I requested that cancellation from the ranger on duty. They also have a station setup outside the closed visitors center if you prefer.
✅Our Activities
OK I really don’t know why or how but it happened again, the water pack made an unnecessary SECOND appearance. You would think after 16 years of marriage he would of learned his lesson by now😂. A positive spin is no one went thirsty on our .7 mile adventure at Wupatki Pueblo Ruins.
Make sure you grab a laminated flip book as you exit the visitors center. As you tour the ruins the numbers placed thruout match the corresponding flip book page. Each page gives a little insight and description into what you are looking at and what used to be. Without it I would of been lost. Shoutout to the always helpful park rangers posted at this NP for suggesting it before we headed out.
If hiking isn’t for you a driving tour of scenic Loop Road is a relaxing option. There are 35 scenic miles to drive and connects both parks. Depending on whether you stop at the various pull offs this could take 1-2 hours.
After exploring the pueblo we continued our driving tour towards Sunset Crater Volcano.
Sunset Crater is a dark skies park and is open 24-7. We didn’t enjoy any stargazing but
we did stop off at A’a Lava Trail. This trail is visible from the road and has a pull off if hiking is difficult for you.
Walking among the cooled, jagged lava was easily in my top 3 for our Arizona Road Trip.
It was unlike anything I’ve seen before.
This trail was very short (.2 miles) but could be difficult due to the unlevel, jagged ground.
If you have more time…
- Walk Paved Lava Flow Trail
- Walnut Canyon National Monument: I’m pretty upset about this one. It was literally 15 minutes from where we stayed and somehow in all of my planning I didn’t realize it until it was too late.
- Lava Cave: Make sure you bring headlamps.
- Lowell observatory: This is where pluto was discovered and was on the top of MY personal list of things to do in Arizona. We were supposed to visit after the parks but due to the weather they were “shelter in place”…aka closed! Just a reminder that no matter how much I plan God is the only one in control.
Although we experienced a couple of disappointments on our first day we were able to add 3 more National Parks to our passport collections. 3 down a million to go! HaHa Thanks for letting me share our exeriances and I hope they help you plan your next great vacation. Until next time…Keep Adventuring!💜
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