Dear Sir/Madam,

We are driving from Phoenix to Sedona in Oct’11 this year and are trying to work out what the weather will be like? Do the roads get affected at this time of year and also is it still a good time of year to see the Grand Canyon?

Appreciate your assistance.
Regards – Nicole R.

Colored Leaves in Sedona - Jeff Johnson

Hi, Nicole.  I’m willing to bet you’ll have smooth sailing the entire trip.  Phoenix is often still in the high 80s/low 90s in late October, and Sedona about 10 – 15 degrees cooler during the day, certainly cooler at night, but you should not have trouble with snow on the roads.  Yes, the Grand Canyon is still a great destination at that time of year (it always is) but particularly with regard to road conditions.  I doubt you’ll have trouble with snow that early in the fall/winter season at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, though the temperatures will merit wearing several light layers you can add and remove as the weather dictates (high temps are around 60 degrees at the end of October.)

(I am assuming you mean the South Rim, as it’s the most accessible from Sedona. The North Rim will be closed by mid-October.)

Here are links to average annual temps and snowfall for the three cities you mentioned (you may have to scroll down to see the weather tables):

• Scottsdale Weather
• Sedona Weather
• Grand Canyon Weather

Enjoy your trip, Nicole!

– ChristinaToo

Dear Arizona Travel:

We plan to travel by car to Flagstaff in May and spend two days and two nights. We would like to spend one day in Sedona and one day at the Grand Canyon. What would be the best way to accomplish this?

J.G. — Austin, TX

Hello, J.G. This is a great question many of our readers are probably also asking.

Both Sedona and the Grand Canyon South Rim can be accomplished as day trips, starting from Flagstaff and going outward.  If you’re driving up from Phoenix, why don’t you go through Sedona first on the way to Flagstaff?  Take I-17 to Highway 179 and travel up through Sedona and see the sights.  Check out this suggested driving tour of Sedona for tips on seeing the best of Sedona by car and on foot.

Assuming you arrive in Sedona in the morning, you could see Sedona and be in Flagstaff by dinnertime.  Try Beaver Street Brewery for a casual dinner, or Pasto or Tinderbox Kitchen for a more upscale, foodie-worthy meal.

The following day, head out for the Grand Canyon bright and early.  You can either drive yourselves and see the South Rim on your own, attending free Ranger Talks, walking the Rim Trail, and having a nice lunch at the El Tovar Hotel, or you could drive from Flagstaff to Williams early in the morning and do the all-day round-trip Grand Canyon Railway journey. The GCR is a great way to relax and take in the Grand Canyon plateau, and you’ll have plenty of time at the Rim itself to do almost everything I mentioned above.  You board the train for the return trip about 3pm, and pull back into Williams around 5pm. Then you can have dinner at the Railway resort hotel, or in the town of Williams (try the Grand Canyon Brewing Company or the Red Raven Restaurant) or drive 25 miles back to Flagstaff for more dining and nightlife choices.

Enjoy your stay in Flagstaff! You’ll love touring Northern Arizona this way!

– ChristinaToo

Dear Arizona Travel:

We are coming with a school group on a mission trip and we were wondering if there is any where along the south rim where there may be free parking or where we could see the canyon at a reduced rate.  Thank you so much for your help.

Crystal R., Virginia

Hello, Crystal!

No. To get close to the South Rim, to any of the overlook areas, you must drive into the National Park and pay the entrance fee, which is $25 per private vehicle.

You see, the entrances to the park – at either the village of Tusayan to the south, or at Desert View to the east – which is where you pay the entrance fee, flank the boundaries of the National Park, and are located 5 and 30 miles from the Rim respectively, so any overlook spots, with parking lots and paths up to the Rim are within this boundary.  (There are no additional fees to park, by the way.)

You really can’t see anything until you get into the Park, park your car in one of the parking lots, and walk up to a 1/4 mile or so to the rim. The surrounding area is a forested plateau, so you can’t really see the Grand Canyon from the highway.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, check out this street-level image from Google Maps of the entrance gate at Desert View:

View Grand Canyon South Rim East Entrance Gate (Desert View) in a larger map

… and here is the street-level view of the south entrance gate near Tusayan:


View Grand Canyon South Rim Entrance Gate in a larger map

Do you see how the trees and any slight elevation, such as an embankment on the side of the roads, dominate the horizon and naturally prevent you from seeing down into the Grand Canyon? You truly have to walk up to the edge of the Rim to look down into the chasm and across the views below the horizon.

I will tell you that the entrance fee is worth every penny and your school children will never forget the experience of seeing the Grand Canyon. Enjoy your visit!

PS: We wrote a similar post a couple years back… check out Dear Arizona Travel: Can you see the Grand Canyon from the highway?

–ChristinaToo

A family scouting Prescott looking for a place to live may not appear unusual, however with the Kruse family, the world is watching.

Now a subject for an upcoming reality series, Victor and Lori Kruse along with their children, Anna Marie and Anthony, are on a 10-month trek that launched this past month after Victor’s official retirement, visiting 32 states to find the town that fits, will be here in Prescott until Monday.

Victor’s sister, documentary producer Linda Kruse, is shooting the project called “Kruising America,” which should air in the fall of 2007 on a yet to be determined network.

Originally, the family planned to stop in town for the day, but the cordiality and feel compelled them to stay longer, said Kruse.

Kruse said a company, now dropped from the project, originally pitched the idea for an assembled fake family, but she decided to film her brother’s for the real deal.

Kruse said her brother’s family was living in Egypt, one of four continents they lived in over the past six years, when she called him to ask if his family still was considering retiring and looking for a place to live in the states.

Victor said his family was longing to come home when his sister called. He had served with the military all over the world for 20 years and had never seen much of the U.S.

“We wanted to see the country. I defended it for 20 years and I’d never been west of the Mississippi,” said Victor Kruse, 42.

Victor said that with his retirement money and savings from not spending much while living overseas with the military, and the related tax advantages, he and his wife concluded that it was feasible to take the time off for the road trip, home schooling their children through a North Carolina-based program.

The couple both had family all over the country and were not looking to settle anyplace specific, and that he, the son in a military family, and his wife both moved around a lot in their youth, he said.

“I didn’t really have these long-term ties to draw me back to the same place, and Lori is basically the same way,” he said.

“It is such a blessing, because at this point in your career, you never get to travel much,” said Lori Kruse.

For the family and Victor’s sister/producer, the arrangement seems to be mutually beneficial, Linda Kruse is getting a real story of a family on the road comparing cities to live in and the family definitely is having a unique experience of seeing each town.

“I told him ‘we’re not going to interfere with your life and get into the group dynamics,’” said his sister, adding that sometimes working with her brother’s family “is like herding cats.”

“For them, it’s cost effective, because we’re really going on this trip,” said Victor, whose family is living in a fifth-wheel RV pulled by their pickup truck.

It’s early in the road trip, but Prescott seems to be making an impression.

“Aside from all the hoopla and everything, there’s a genuine feeling to it. A nice hometown feeling,” Victor said.

The family plans to hike during the weekend and attend Prescott’s Oktoberfest.

Follow the Kruse’ adventure at www.KruisingAmerica.com.

Source: By LORIN McLAIN, The Daily Courier, Sunday, October 22, 2006

It was the ride of their lives – a summer road trip from Santa Barbara to New York. Can their friendship last 3,600 miles? Now this is reality television!

After The Oprah Show‘s huge 20th season, what do you do for a summer vacation? How about doing what Oprah says “was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done.”

Time for a road trip!

Oprah says she got the idea from a Chevrolet commercial from her childhood. The ad, with its catchy “See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet” jingle, always aired right after Lassie. “It was 30 seconds that really stuck with me for several decades,” Oprah says.

Now, years later, Oprah was going to do just what that jingle said – see the U.S.A. in a Chevy Impala. This epic journey would start in Santa Barbara, California, and end 10 days and 3,600 miles later in New York City…just in time for the Tony Awards…

Oprah and Gayle in Sedona, Arizona!

…As Oprah and Gayle get closer to Sedona, Arizona, the breathtaking scenery gives them a second wind. “The best part of this road trip for me was getting a chance to see the beauty of this country,” Oprah says. “It really is incredible. I have to say that after we got to Sedona, it was like a breath of fresh air.”

With the windows rolled down, the smell of pine trees fills the car. They even stop for a “Kodak moment” to take pictures of the mountains. “Now this was worth the trip,” Oprah says…

Arizona Travel says: Oprah and Gayle visited New Frontiers natural foods market in Sedona as well as the Beall’s Outlet. Then they were off to Holbrook, Arizona where they intended to stay in a “motel room in the shape of a tee-pee” at the Wigwam Motel. And even though she’s one of the most famous women in the world, Oprah went unrecognized by the innkeeper!

After deciding not to stay at the Wigwam Motel after all – there just weren’t enough tee-pee wigwams for their large 18-person crew – the Oprah crew was off to continue their road trip. While in Arizona, Oprah attended a pow-wow with the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona.

The Arizona portion of Oprah and Gayle’s road trip aired on KTVK 3 TV Phoenix on September 26, 2006.

Arizona! Magical land of sun, sage, sand, saguaro and scorpions!

Yet in my 12 years in Southern California I’d never set foot in the Grand Canyon State. That all changed the week before Memorial Day.

Undeterred by rising gas prices and rising Arizona temperatures, I filled up my tank, loaded up with CDs and set off to see friends in Tempe.

Some observations from the road:

• Billboard spotted along the 10 Freeway: “Banning: We Have What You Need.” What I needed was a freeway out of Banning, and Banning delivered.
• Deep into eastern Riverside County, I grew sleepy. Possible culprits: 1) Mile after mile of unchanging desert, or 2) “The Very Best of Jackson Browne.”
• Gram Parsons made for great desert driving music, though. And traveling solo amid the arid landscape, rocky hills and open sky was unexpectedly relaxing.
• At the McDonald’s in Blythe, a single cheeseburger was $1.29, while a double cheeseburger was $1. Hmm.
• Across the Arizona border in Tonopah, an exit in the middle of nowhere is labeled “411th Ave.” Numbered streets don’t even go that high in Manhattan.
• My friends told me to exit on Baseline Road. I had to stop myself from exiting when I saw a sign for 16th Street.
• Not only does the 10 Freeway go through Tempe, so does the 60 Freeway. As one Tempe friend put it: “You’re just up the street.”
• In Arizona, instead of palm trees at the entrance to every shopping center, they have a cluster of cactus, the iconic saguaro kind with the upraised arms. Cool.
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Scottsdale home, studio and school, Taliesin West, made for a fun tour.
• Wright, of course, is America’s best-known architect. One of his sons, John Lloyd Wright, has a different legacy: He invented Lincoln Logs.
• Arizona is home to a roadway named Carefree Highway, the subject of a Gordon Lightfoot song, “Carefree Highway.”
• You were expecting “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”?
• The Superstition Mountains inspired the name of numerous local fixtures. A favorite: the eerily named Superstition Office Plaza.
• P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is based in that hotbed of Asian culture, Scottsdale.
• A Jeep tour of Sedona’s canyon is well worth doing.
• Speaking of canyons: At last, I can say I saw the Grand Canyon. It lives up to its adjective. Yes, it’s basically an enormous ditch. But if anything in this life is grand, it’s that canyon.
• From the south rim, I thought the north rim, five miles across the vast canyon, looked fake, like a painted backdrop. My colleague Mike Brossart assures me that from the north rim, the south rim also looks like a painted backdrop. Maybe the whole thing’s done with mirrors.
• Not far from the Grand Canyon is Flintstone Village, a classic roadside attraction — the less charitable would call it a tourist trap –built to resemble Bedrock. You pay $5 and wander amid full-size replicas of Fred and Wilma’s home, their pet Dino, a post office, a jail, etc.
• You can also slide down the Dino Slide, the metal of which might burn your fingers on a hot day, he wrote bitterly.
• Frankly, Flintstone Village is lonely, depressing and half-derelict. But then, what do you expect? It’s, like, a million years old!
• I knew I wasn’t in California anymore when, on my last night in Arizona, I saw this sign on the greeter’s station in a pleasant Tempe coffee shop: “No Firearms Allowed.”
• Perhaps, as with smoking and nonsmoking sections, the coffee shop greeter should simply ask customers cheerfully, “Firearms or no firearms?”
• After filling up at a Circle K in Tempe — only in these times would $3.03 per gallon seem like a bargain — I headed for home.
• Anxiety-producing Riverside County freeway sign: “State Prison Next Exit. Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”
• In a brilliant planning move, that same exit has a rest stop. It was full of people eyeing each other warily.
• I stopped at the General Patton Museum in Chiriaco and at the Cabazon dinosaurs, which seem to have been taken over by the intelligent design crowd. They’re pushing the idea that humans and dinosaurs existed in the same era.
• Did they do their research at Flintstone Village?

David Allen, the modern Stone Age columnist, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail d_allen@dailybulletin.com, call (909) 483-9339 or write 2041 E. Fourth St., Ontario 91764.

Many people visit Sedona, Arizona, only as a brief stopover on the way from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, but this oasis in Red Rock country is worth more of your time for its unrivaled natural beauty and for its arts and restaurants. And some believe it offers spiritual renewal at mystical New Age energy spots.

Don’t believe the natural beauty claim? Surf over to sedona.net and click on “Live Sedona Views” for Sedona webcam of the Red Rock formations surrounding the town. There are souvenir shops galore, but for a real treasure to remind you of your visit you’ll want to scan “Art Galleries and Artists” to learn about the galleries offering unique works by local artists and members of the Navajo, Hopi and other tribes of the Southwest. And for a pleasant shopping stroll, go back to “Shopping & Services” and look for the Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village.

Before you decide to spend all your time in the galleries, click on “What to Do” to get an overview of the local tours, especially the Jeep tours, along with spas, recreation and sightseeing.

Did the videos jog your memory? Hollywood has been using the area for nearly as long there have been movies, especially for westerns, and it still is a background for numerous commercials. The Sedona Film Office has lists under “Film History” and “Recent Projects.” John Wayne, Joan Crawford and Burt Lancaster are just a few of the stars who worked here.

All those scenic canyons and ridges threading through the area provide opportunities for great hiking trails, both inside and outside the city. The Coconino National Forest has a special Web site for Red Rock Country where you can click on “Maps & Brochures” to see how extensive the network is. Your best bet for seeing details is the map in “pdf” format and the downloadable Recreation Guide. Just remember, even though Sedona’s elevation is higher than that of the desert city of Phoenix, it still gets hot on those trails in the summer.

For a side trip, the old copper mining community of Jerome almost became a ghost town but has evolved into a mountainside (the switchback roads are not for squeamish drivers) arts and crafts colony with a great view.

In the opposite direction, Flagstaff is a university town offering cooler, pine-scented air (elevation 7,000 feet) with the 12,000-foot San Francisco Peaks in the background. It’s a convenient gateway to the Grand Canyon and nearby sights such as Meteor Crater and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.

How to Make Family Road Trips Good, Healthy Fun

Here, a suggestion for Arizona family-oriented road-trip vacations:

Grand Canyon: Many tour companies offer Grand Canyon packages that include lodging, several meals, and guided hiking, rafting or air tours. The terrain can be challenging; this kind of package is best suited for children at least 10 years old.

from May 2006 issue of budgettravelonline.com

Driving the loop from Phoenix to Sedona is to travel from the past to present in the footsteps of the famous and infamous, through some of nature’s most stunning scenery…