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Advent Horizon posted:2. Palm Springs or San Diego, visit Joshua Tree, do some desert exploring, maybe visit the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I've only ever done San Diego as a destination instead of as a base for a proper road trip, but that's also because I love it and there's easily a weekend-to-a-week's worth of things to do inside San Diego proper. San Diego Zoo itself, the museums in Balboa Park, the rest of Balboa Park, the restaurants in/around San Diego, the beaches... I've driven by Joshua Tree countless times but never actually stopped. It's also filed away in my mind as "LA" (along with the giant windmill farm) because if I'm going to San Diego I'm on the 8 instead of the 10. Likewise there's the Imperial Dunes if you want to go nearly all the way to Yuma. Advent Horizon posted:3. Phoenix, drive up to Flagstaff and say hi to some friends, maybe go over to Monument Valley and see stuff that way? Here you've got an assload of options.  Personally I'd recommend on the way up, leaving Phoenix by way of US60 via Morristown/Wickenburg, then taking US93 to AZ89 through Congress, Yarnell (there's a monument to the Granite Mountain Hotshots there now), and then on to Prescott. The road gets pretty fun between Wilhoit and Prescott, with a lot of mountain curves and steep grades. Keep on AZ89 to AZ89A, which takes you to Jerome via the second-greatest driving road in the state. (The first being the former AZ666 / now AZ191 between Alpine and Morenci but that is a literal road between nowheres.) Jerome is full of haunted tours and tasty ice cream and a winery run by a guy who's really good at screaming, and it's built onto the side of a goddamn mountain. From there your path to Flagstaff is further along AZ89A, via Sedona. I know you hate Jeeps but last I checked nobody in Sedona rents prepped LCs, so, swing by and rent a Rubicon from Nena Barlow and she'll hook you up with everything else you need to know about the trails. There are some amazing offroad trails that are all so close to each other and Sedona itself that you don't even bother airing up driving from one to the next. A few do require permits that are very limited (Soldier Pass is 12 personal vehicles per day, for example) so you'll want to plan at least that part out in advance. When you're done in Sedona, Flagstaff is just a relatively short run further up AZ89A. Plenty of neat things to do in Flagstaff - my favorites being Lowell Observatory in town, and Cinder Hills OHV area just slightly northeast of town. You can also check out Sunset Crater, or keep going north until you get to America's Buttcrack, the Grand Canyon. I would actually recommend taking I17 south from Flagstaff to Phoenix for at least three reasons. One, it's actually a reasonably interesting road in its own right. Two, it'll put you in range of taking the front way into Crown King, a tiny old mining town on the top of a mountain. There is the back way, but that's an all-day trail in something far more capable than you're getting at the airport. Three, it'll also have you drive right to Rock Springs Cafe, where you can get some amazing pies. Strong recommendation for Lemon Meringue, and worth ordering in advance so they actually have some left when you get there. Depending on your flexibility on scheduling, I would recommend doing the I17 leg on whichever day is the opposite of most people - it gets some hellish traffic northbound on Fridays, and southbound on Sundays. And because I just remembered these and can't be assed to work them into the relevant bits above - from Flagstaff, if you want you can drive an hour east and go stand on a corner in Winslow. Or you can drive half an hour west and go to Bearizona and/or the Grand Canyon Deer Farm. Or north of Prescott Valley there's an alpaca farm that does tours for something like  - their site is broken because of course it is, but it's these guys.
IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 06:08
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Advent Horizon posted:I don’t actually hate jeeps, I just have a bad history of catching rental jeeps on fire. I’m up to 4 now. Winter weather in AZ, even in the high country, is nothing like what you're used to. Certain high-traffic dirt roads get shut down for the season regardless of actual conditions (north rim of the Grand Canyon, Schnebly Hill Road in Sedona, etc), but by and large road travel is unaffected by snow. There are often entire winters where there's not enough snow at any one point in time to actually cause problems. AZ89/89A is considered a fairly critical road by ADOT so even if enough snow has fallen to require plows, it's right on the top of the list along with I17 and I40. There's actually three main ways north from Phoenix to Flagstaff - AZ89 up the west side, I17 up the middle, and AZ87 on the east through Payson and then either way east to Winslow or cutting back to I17. It's rare, but not impossible, that snow closures can impact all three simultaneously. If you end up here when there's actually a storm forecast, recommend keeping an eye on ADOT's Twitter because as far as I can tell it's the first thing they update. I've never done Monument Valley myself but that looks easily doable as a day trip from Flagstaff - three hours there, plenty of time to check things out, three hours back.
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Sep 26, 2022 16:38
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