It’s been two summers since my family and I took our first big road trip, mostly following a south-to-north itinerary from Phoenix to Denver, with lots of glorious detours along the way. It was all new to me and my two children—Elena and Adam, who were 11 and 7 at the time—though my wife, Rebecca, had made some of the stops years ago on a summer teen tour. What a testament to the trip—and to the things we saw, the adventures we had, and how well we generally got along—that I can still recount the trip’s day-to-day highlights without referring back to my notes.
In broad strokes, we planned it to have two distinct parts: the first half of the trip was about seeing amazing things; the second half was about doing amazing things. But really, every day had some of both.
It began in Phoenix. We arrived in the early afternoon and immediately drove north until we came to our first wondrous sight, the red rocks of Sedona. The transition was magical, from scrub and cactus to some of the most beautiful land formations I’ve ever seen—and a boutique luxury hotel called L’Auberge de Sedona, whose dining patio overlooks a creek. Once there, we were tempted to stay longer than the intended one night, but after ogling the rocks at sunset and then again in the morning, we somehow managed to head north as planned for a five-hour car ride to tour another brilliant red-rocking landscape.
Monument Valley rests on Native American land along the Arizona-Utah border. If you haven’t been there, you’re probably more familiar with its iconic structures than you realize from movies and TV commercials: imagine craggy and other-worldly bursts of beauty with innocent names like The Mittens and The Three Sisters. Do a late-afternoon to sunset private tour with a local guide, who will have access that you won’t driving around by yourself.
Considering that Sedona and Monument Valley offer some of the most amazing natural spectacles in the world, we thought our trip was off to a good start. It got even better. The next day, we headed east to Four Corners, the only spot in the continental United States where four contiguous states meet. Every tourist in the area makes the stop and takes a picture straddling the four states. We followed suit and compared notes with other travelers with creative Southwest itineraries.
Next up was Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. The park has been scorched by wildfires over the years, but its world famous ruins—the remnants of early continent dwellers who lived there from about 600 to 1300 A.D.—are remarkable to behold and contemplate, especially the dwellings that former inhabitants had built on cliffside landings. It’s amazing to see the primitive but ingenious dwellings that allowed human beings from an earlier time to organize and survive (though Mesa Verde has a very nice modern hotel and dining hall for 21st century adventures).
After Mesa Verde, we began our slow ascent up through Colorado. The first stop was Durango, a small mountain town with a pleasant mix of decent shopping and restaurants and lots of outdoor fun. We stayed at the DoubleTree by Hilton, a fine place to decompress after the overwhelming wonders of the past few days. The next day, we took a restored railroad up from Durango to Silverton, a historic mining town, traveling up and around the mountainside for about three and a half hours. But the real treat was visiting an historic mine, and then a wider tour of the surrounding mountains with a guide who was a former miner (with an expertise in explosives) and about as learned as someone could be on matters of geology, mining, climate, and the history of the area.
Remember how I told you there are two halves to this trip? To give the second half its due, I need to bypass a few more of our adventures in the southern end of Colorado (except to say: visit the town of Ouray and enjoy the hot springs that are piped into the town pool). There was a transition day of driving about five hours north to our final accommodations, the Osprey at Beaver Creek, where we stayed for a few days before flying out of Denver to return home. Beaver Creek is well-known as a family-friendly ski mountain, but like a lot of the great Colorado sky towns, it’s just as wonderful as home base in spring and summer for all sorts of outdoor adventures: hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking, ATV touring, river rafting, white water rafting, the works.
And the Osprey itself–contemporary, spacious, comfortable, luxurious, and located right at the base of the mountain–was just the perfect place to stay. I want to give a special shout out to its lounge, which was an oasis of delicious food in a town where we didn’t have much luck on the culinary front. But everything else was great, and we built each day around a big adventure: first an ATV guided tour of Beaver Creek mountain, then rafting on the Colorado (a slow part of the river, which was fast enough for my family), and, finally, a day of fly fishing, which I’ve been dreaming about every since I saw the movie “A River Runs Through It.” I was not as good at it as Brad Pitt was.
I’m not sure how much of our grand road trip has seeped into my children’s memories, but hopefully they’ll at least remember that we shared a big adventure as a family. Inspired by the trip, I’ve been ready to take on another for a while now, maybe picking up where we left off, sort of, and starting in Yellowstone to head up to Canada. What do you think?
Keep reading for more Southwestern cities we love.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family.
