Family Vacation in Cottonwood AZ

When we purchased our Thousand Trails membership, it included a free week at a Getaway Cabin once a year for five years. Since we are always traveling in the RV, this was a perk that we didn’t anticipate using. Our daughter Katie has taken advantage of our free cabin the past 2 years. This year, she booked the cabin at Verde Valley for the first week we were there.

It was wonderful to have family come and visit us on the road, especially at this beautiful park and area. Katie, Jon and little Rosie arrived late on a Friday night but luckily I was able to get the key and stock the refrigerator earlier in the day. They got in and pretty much went to bed that first night so they were surprised and thrilled to see the views the next morning.

every where you look in this area is simply stunning

The weather wasn’t the best over the weekend, cool and rainy at times, but we still found something to do every day. Since it was their vacation, we hit many more tourist spots than Tim and I ever do in a week. I think we saw most of the sites in this area that first week. I don’t remember the order we did things so just going to cover each site.

Montezuma’s Castle and Montezuma’s Well: these two National Monuments are fairly close together and misnamed because Montezuma was never here. Montezuma’s Castle National Monument preserves cliff dwellings of indigenous peoples in this area between 1100 and 1425 AD. It is so impressive to see these dwellings up in the cliffs. Try to imagine how they built this and accessed it without modern day tools. I don’t know if Rosie appreciated the cliff dwellings but she definitely enjoyed running on the paved paths below the dwellings that ended at the river. She also earned her first Junior Ranger badge here.

the paved trail ends at the river and smaller rooms can be seen in the cliffs as you walk along the path.

Montezuma’s Well was also not visited by Montezuma and it isn’t a well. This body of water is a natural sinkhole formed by the power of water from an underground spring. Every day, the Well is replenished with 1.5 million gallons of new water. The paved trail goes around the top of the well and provides great views of the well and the landscape around it. You can walk down many steps to the cave below but we passed on that. The water overflows from the well through the cave and reappears on the other side at an outlet. Most interesting is that fish cannot live in this water due to the high CO2 content. There are 5 species that live here that are not found anywhere else in the world. Rosie earned another Junior Ranger badge here.

Tuziigoot National Monument was my favorite of the 3 national monuments we visited. It is another historical site of pueblo ruins. Approximately a thousand years ago, people began to build a little hilltop pueblo that eventually grew to be one of the largest villages in the area. The pueblo was estimated to have 110 rooms. The trails wind up the hill around the pueblo ruins and to an overlook of the Tavasci Marsh. At the top of the trail, there is a fantastic view of the Verde Valley and Verde River. The site was once a large hill that archeologists decided to excavate and it was amazing that they found the ruins of the structure underneath. Of course, Rosie got her 3rd Junior Ranger badge at this park. Katie and Jon stopped at another park on their way to the Phoenix airport the day they left so on her fist time visiting national parks, she ended up with 4 badges.

Out of Africa Wildlife Park was really close to our RV park and was probably Rosie’s favorite place since she got to see many animals up close and even fed a giraffe. We arrived at the park just as they opened and started with the open air safari ride. The bus really got close to some of the animals although others were far away on the hillsides. The highlight of the ride was feeding the giraffes. The one giraffe poked his head into the bus when the driver offered a special treat. After the ride, we walked through the entire park and checked out all of the animals. In a few spots the rangers were feeding the animals so again we got to see them really well. We got to the ranger program at lunchtime, so grabbed some sandwiches and watched the presentation. This was geared to children and the animal they discussed was a skunk. At the ended everyone got to pet the skunk. Definitely a good park to visit in this area, especially for families.

the giraffe took the leaves from her too quick to capture the picture but I at least got this pic.

Jerome AZ is an old mining town up in the mountain outside of Cottonwood. We drove over there on a cool and slightly rainy morning but we still had a great time in this town. Definitely a cool ride winding up the mountain to this little town and we continued on up to the old mine and Haynes (a ghost town) first. I wasn’t sure if it was something Rosie would like since it was mostly old dilapidated buildings and lots of old trucks. Well to our surprise, there were animals to see here too. When we bought our tickets they asked if we wanted to buy food to feed the animals. Rosie loved feeding the goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and a pig. After touring the old mine, we went into Jerome and had to really search for parking. It is definitely tight in this town with the hills and windy streets. We eventually snagged a spot and found a good Mexican restaurant for lunch and then visited the town museum. It is hard to believe that this town burned down at least 3 times and they kept rebuilding. Eventually the mine closed and it became a ghost town but it is a big tourist attraction today.

feeding the pig made their hands very dirty

lots of rusted out trucks and mining equipment.

yes this was a live goat sticking his head out for some food.

Old Cottonwood AZ is another area worth visiting. The main street in this town is filled with many wineries and little shops. While Jon watched Rosie, Tim dropped Katie and I off there so we could spend an afternoon browsing and sampling wine. We visited 3 of the wineries for tastings so it was good that we had a designated driver. On another day, Katie, Rosie and I stopped there for lunch at a diner in an old gas station. The food was good, especially the chocolate milkshake that I got and the chocolate milk that Rosie had. Yummy!

Jon and Katie asked me to say over one night so they could get up really early and hike out to Devils’s Bridge in Sedona to see the sunrise. Devil’s Bridge is the longest natural sandstone arch in Sedona.This is a very popular spot and often there is a line and long wait to climb up to the top and out onto the bridge. They wanted to get there early and beat the crowd. They had a 1.8 mile hike in the dark to get there and then had to scramble up the steep rock stairs to reach the top and an incredible view. I don’t know if I am in shape to do that anymore but I highly enjoyed their pictures so I stole a few to share. If you can handle a moderately difficult hike, this is the one for you.

I know this is a long post so you will be happy to know that this is the last place I will cover. We decided to visit Red Rock State Park one morning and then drove into Sedona for lunch. This park was a better one to visit with Rosie since we could do an easy hike and still have some great views of the red rocks of the area. There are hiking trails along the banks of Oak Creek and then you can climb up to hills of red rock. We mostly walked along the creek with Rosie, then Katie and I hiked up to one view point while Jon took Rosie back to the visitor’s center since he couldn’t take the stroller up the rocky hill. If you are in the area, I highly recommend this pretty state park.

jon and rosie below us as katie and I climbed up closer to the rocks

Wow, are you worn out? It was quite a busy week so you can see why we just relaxed for the rest of our stay!

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