The Red Rock Issue

The best hour in Sedona is the one before the trailhead lots fill, and almost every decision in this issue comes back to it. The town sits at about 4,350 feet in central Arizona, ringed by the sandstone buttes and canyons of the Coconino National Forest and strung along two highways that meet at a junction everyone calls the Y. April is the heart of the spring season, which runs roughly from March into May: warm days, cool nights, the trails and patios at their best, and for exactly those reasons the busiest and most expensive weeks of the year. Come now, and plan around the crowd.

Where you sleep decides how much of the morning you keep. Uptown, just north of the Y, is the walkable centre of galleries, cafés and jeep-tour desks, and the busiest, priciest part of town. West Sedona, running west along 89A, is the everyday town, with the grocery stores, better value and the west-side trailheads for Devil's Bridge, Soldier Pass and Boynton Canyon close by; it is also where you will find the house in our Collection, Sedona Pickler, four bedrooms built around a heated, air-conditioned indoor pickleball court. The Village of Oak Creek, several miles south on 179, is the quiet base under Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte, and Oak Creek Canyon trades the red rock for ponderosa pines, the creek and a slow, winding road to everything else.

Whichever you choose, you need a car. Most people fly into Phoenix Sky Harbor, about 120 miles and two hours south, and drive up Interstate 17. Once here, the city's free Sedona Shuttle does the hard part: it runs from park-and-ride lots to five of the busiest trailheads, including Cathedral Rock and Soldier Pass, and while it runs, the small lots at those trailheads close to private cars. Everywhere else in the forest you park with a Red Rock Pass on the dash, or a federal America the Beautiful pass, which is accepted in its place. Shuttle days shift with the season, so check them before you rely on them.

Then the rocks. Cathedral Rock looks best from Red Rock Crossing, reflected in Oak Creek; Devil's Bridge, the largest sandstone arch around Sedona, rewards a dawn start from Dry Creek Vista or Mescal; the Chapel of the Holy Cross, built into the rock in the mid-1950s, is free to enter and open daily. For a day away, the Verde Valley wine country is half an hour south-west, with the tasting rooms of Old Town Cottonwood and the hillside mining town of Jerome above them, and the Grand Canyon's South Rim is about two hours north, better with a night than as a rushed round trip. Sedona is also a certified International Dark Sky Community, so stay out after dinner and look up.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief