Arizona Verde Valley Visit

We spent April 3 - 10 in the Verde Valley area, staying outside of Cottonwood, AZ.  This is definitely an area that we will be back to the visit.  So much to do in the area and a total surprise that they had such nice wineries.  There was a great winery right outside the entrance to the Thousand Trails park called Alcantara.  This was a home that was made into a winery, so it was very homey - you find a seat in the main living area or on the deck or patio and they came to you to do the poutings.  They were also very dog friendly.

There wasn't much grass in the park and the "girls" weren't allowed on it so that was probably the biggest negative.  They kept pulling us towards the grass and we kept pulling them back to the doggie area which was sand, rocks, and weeds with stickers.  Kyna decided to give up and just do her potty on the pavement.  She is definitely becoming a desert dog.  Lexie not so much, but loved her "lap time".  We didn't see much wildlife, but did see lots of eagles.


Couple of the highlites of this stay include:

Old Town Cottonwood - great barbecue and mexican food and we also enjoyed a couple of wineries:
We tasted at Pillsbury Wine Company, Fire Mountain and Burning Tree Cellars.  Definitely recommend Burning Tree Cellars - all of their wines were great.

Tuzigoot National Monument - another visit with our National Park pass.  This was a pueblo that was occupied between 1100 and 1425 A.D.  Over the years it crumbled and became a pile of rocks and crumbled mud until the National Park Service restored some of the rooms and used the additional rocks to make up the visitor center and buildings.  Next time we'll visit Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well.

Jerome - loved the wineries and they had some great galleries and history of mining copper.  Great views since we were up in elevation to about 5200 feet.  We enjoyed a couple of wineries and among many galleries we enjoyed, the Kaleidoscope and art glass gallery was quite interesting.    We enjoyed the Passion Cellars and Echo Canyon Winery which is being phased out so all the wines we tasted were 10 - 12 years old.

 

Sedona was also a great place to visit with great views and galleries.  We visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross that was built on the hillside by a local rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude with some inspiration by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Sedona had one of the top 25 galleries in the United States that we really enjoyed as well as an entire shopping village of just craft shops and galleries - Tiaquepaque Village.  Outside of Sedona we stopped at one additional winery that we had heard  about, Passion Cellars, which had great wines at good values, but our wine cabinet in the motorhome was full!!!

Went onto Williams to the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park.  We checked out the train ride to the Grand Canyon Park along with the pet resorts for a future visit which helped split up our drive to Vegas.  Another place we would love to visit for a long period of time.  Williams is on the historic route 66 and there were many sites around the city to see.