2023 Cottonwood Arizona

After our stay in Tucson, we headed to Cottonwood. We really weren’t sure what we were going to do while there, but with a little digging we came up with plenty. We stayed for 3 weeks, but it still wasn’t enough time to see and do everything we found to do.

To our surprise, one morning we woke up to a few inches of snow so we just hung out and enjoyed the view.

During our stay, we visited Quartzsite for an RV show, Wickenburg and Jerome but unfortunately we didn’t take any pictures.

On one of the days we took a day trip to Sedona for shopping and lunch. On our way back we stopped at Chapel of the Holy Cross. This chapel is amazing. It was built in the red rock buttes in the mid 1950’s. It’s a great place for reflection as you can sit and observe the alter.

Driving toward Sedona from Cottonwood you can see Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, Praying Hands and other named rock formations. There are many hiking trails in and around these rock formations that are very popular especially on the weekends. There is very limited parking at many of the trail head locations, but the city of Sedona offers a free shuttle service to the various trail head locations. The shuttle service is very busy over the weekends.

On our way to Winslow to stand on the corner and take it easy, we drove through Flagstaff and checked out the visitor center which is in an old train station. After Winslow we headed to Meteor Crater Natural Landmark. It’s estimated that a meteor hit the location around 50,000 years ago with the energy of more than 20 million tons of TNT.

Petrified Forest National Park is an area where fossilized wood estimated to be more than 200 million years old is scattered across the Painted Desert. A bonus to this park is that it has a section of Route 66 that runs through it.

We hiked the V Bar V Heritage Site to see petroglyphs (images carved, incised or scratched into stone).

Another was the Palatki Heritage site to see ancient cliff dwellings and pictographs (painting on stone).

Walnut Canyon National Monument is another ancient cliff dwelling we visited. We were able to hike a path that took us into Walnut Canyon past several of the cliff dwellings. It’s amazing to think people lived in the cliff walls along the edge of a canyon.

Montezuma Castle National Monument is another cliff dwelling that can be seen along a paved path. Jeff and I were amazed by the size and location of this cliff dwelling.

Tuzigoot National Monument was a community where people built and lived in rooms of a pueblo that consisted of rock walls and it’s believed they had organic roofs. This is another unique habitat we found while exploring Arizona.