Day 1
Arrival Phoenix
Depart London Heathrow – 14:30
Arrive Pheonix – 17:10
Journey Time – 10 hours 40 minutes
Located in the heart of the lush Sonoran Desert, Scottsdale is world-renowned as the lifestyle capital of the American Southwest. Scottsdale’s Native American, Hispanic and Old West heritage is celebrated throughout the city.
Overnight – Scottsdale
Day 2
Scottsdale
Old Town Scottsdale is an area with many streets, old fashion stores, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and western art galleries evoking the old cowboy era. It contains the major nightlife for the area and is a major art center of metro Phoenix. Scottsdale’s main cultural district is also in this area, which includes the high-end Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall, one of the twenty largest malls in the United States. Phoenix is the home of a unique architectural tradition and community. Frank Lloyd Wright moved to Phoenix in 1937 and built his winter home, Taliesin West, and the main campus for The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Over the years, Phoenix has attracted notable architects who have made it their home and have grown successful practices. These architectural studios embrace the desert climate, and are unconventional in their approach to the practice of design. They include the Paolo Soleri, Al Beadle, Will Bruder, Wendell Burnette, and Blank Studio architectural design studios. One of the biggest attractions to the Phoenix area is golf, with over 200 golf courses!
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Hot Air Balloon Ride in the morning
Overnight – Scottsdale
Day 3
Scottsdale to Tucson
120 Miles
Tucson lies in the borderland, a region that blends the cultures of the United States and Mexico, and has a history of settlement by ancient Native American peoples, Spanish explorers, and Anglo frontiersmen.
Overnight – Tucson
Day 4
Tucson
Tucson is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the United States – Native peoples farmed this valley 3,000 years ago.
To get a perspective of the area’s history and for a real South-Western sight visit the Mission San Xavier del Bac – standing since the 1700s. Or explore Tucson by foot. The area just northwest of Old Town Artisans is where Tucson’s elite built their homes in the late 1800s. Watch for plaques that explain the significance and history of the buildings and locations. Just south of this old neighborhood is where Tucson’s original walled presidio once stood. And well worth a visit is the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a world-renowned zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden, all in one place! Exhibits re-create the natural landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region so realistically you find yourself eye-to-eye with mountain lions, prairie dogs, Gila monsters, and more.
Overnight – Tucson
Day 5
Tucson to Tombstone
70 Miles
In the morning consider visiting Kartchner Caverns State Park – featuring a show cave with 2.4 miles (3.9 km) of passages. The park encompasses most of a down-dropped block of Palaeozoic rocks on the east flank of the Whetstone Mountains. The caverns are carved out of limestone and filled with spectacular speleothems which have been growing for 50,000 years or longer, and are still growing. Then its onto Tombstone – “The Town Too Tough To Die”! Walk the board walks where all of the famous lawmen, outlaws, gamblers, and miners walked. Relive the Wild West Days through one of the Gunfight Shows that take place daily. Feel what it was like to travel in the 1800’s and take a Stagecoach or Wagon Tour around the Historic District. Belly up to the bar at one of the saloons and have a shot of Red Eye. Visit the Court House and many other Historic Buildings that will take you back in time.
Overnight – Tombstone
Day 6
Tombstone to Holbrook
314 Miles
Late afternoon will find you in Holbrook, where the 1898 courthouse, now on the National Register of Historic Places, is the centerpiece of town. Holbrook is also gives you a “Taste” of Route 66, known as The Mother Road and The Main Street of America.
Overnight – Holbrook
Day 7
Holbrook to Chinle
123 Miles
Just a short drive will take you to the Petrified Forest – there’s no forest quite like it anywhere else on Earth!
Giant petrified logs litter this 93,533-acre landscape, uniquely preserved (“petrified”) through the happy circumstance of time, climate, chemistry and place. Also included in the park’s 93,533 acres are the multi-hued badlands of the Chinle Formation known as the Painted Desert. After a stop at the famous Hubbell Trading Post the oldest operating trading post on the Navajo Nation, serving Ganado selling groceries, grain, hardware, horse tack, coffee and Native American Art since 1878, continue to Canyon de Chelly. This 89,849-acre monument within the Navajo Reservation displays five pivotal periods of Native American culture: the Archaic, Basketmaker, Anasazi, Hopi and Navajo epochs, dating from approximately 2500 BC to the present. The park’s most famous ruin is the picturesque White House. A rim drive lets you view the sights of the canyon from above – but you will be able to experience this fascinating canyon on a 3-hour Navajo-guided private tour three hour which includes Antelope House Ruin in Canyon Del Muerto and the White House Ruin in Canyon de Chelly. Total distance traveled is 24 miles on the canyon floor.
Overnight – Chinle
Day 8
Chinle to Monument Valley
92 Miles
Monument Valley is a notable sacred site for the Dineh – the Navajos who are the Keepers of Monument Valley – a sacred unforgettable homeland and motherland to them. The special character of the area is further strengthened by the history of the Anasazis, the “Ancient Ones”, and well known for their imaginative ability, by way of concealed or secret illustration, such as, petroglyphs, pictographs and ruins known as cliff dwellings. Monument Valley once served as real-life backdrops for numerous movies, especially Westerns. For example, Stagecoach, The Searchers, How The West Was Won, Back To The Future-part 3, Thelma and Louise and much, much more. Famous photographers all over the world have chosen the time of sunset as their favorite time of the day to capture the landscape of Monument Valley. Spectacular long shades and brilliant red, flaming orange, soft purple and rich gold paint the skies, giving the buttes, spires and mesas of Monument Valley that unique, mythical beauty you will not find anywhere else on Earth.
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: “Dream Catcher Package in Monument Valley (sunset tour, meal and Native American entertainment)
Overnight – Monument Valley
Day 9
Monument Valley to Page
130 Miles
On the way to beautiful Lake Powell we recommend a stop at the Navajo National Monument, which preserves three of the most-intact cliff dwellings of the Anasazi (Hisatsinom). The sparkling blue waters of Lake Powell are magnificently framed by towering rock formations and soaring red cliffs which surround the area for as far as the eye can see.
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Lake Powell Antelope Canyon Boat Tour
Overnight – Page
Day 10
Page / Lake Powell
Spend the day exploring the area around Lake Powell. Lake Powell is 186 miles long and has 1,960 miles of shoreline, which is longer than the entire west coast of the continental United States. There are 96 major canyons to explore though you’ll need a water craft for the majority of them since access is limited because there are few roads. A few miles east of Page on the Navajo Reservation exists the most photographed slot canyon in northern Arizona – Antelope Canyon. Over thousands of years, wind and water scoured a narrow crevice in the mesa to form a slot canyon in two sections.
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Morning – Antelope Canyon Tour. Evening – Tower Butte Helicopter Excursion
Overnight – Page
Day 11
Page to Grand Canyon
133 Miles
A drive through the Painted Desert takes you to Cameron, where the Cameron Trading Post today, as nearly a century ago, serves as the center for local trade as well as a source for Native American arts & crafts. Travel to yet another highlight of your trip through the Southwest: the awesome Grand Canyon (South Rim)! Words cannot describe the beauty of this wonder, so we leave it to you to experience it.
Overnight – Grand Canyon
Day 12
Explore the Grand Canyon
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Helicopter ride. Guided tour of Grand Canyon (easy to expert day hiking trips available as well)
Overnight – Grand Canyon
Day 13
Grand Canyon to Sedona
115 Miles
In the morning visit Flagstaff, another great little town on Route 66 (famous western bar “The Museum Club” can be found here). Continue through beautiful Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona. The colorful collection of buttes, pinnacles, mesas and canyons surrounding Sedona is famous the world around for its red rock vistas.
Overnight – Sedona
Day 14
Sedona
Sedona played host to more than sixty Hollywood productions from the first years of movies into the 1970s. The small town, which served as a kind of microcosm of Hollywood history, sits about 120 miles north of Phoenix, nestled between thousand-foot-high walls of stone in lushly forested Oak Creek Canyon and the wide open space of the Verde Valley, and it was the diversity of this unspoiled landscape that made it such an ideal location to shoot outdoor scenes. Stretching as far back as 1923, Sedona’s signature red rocks were a fixture in major Hollywood productions—including enduring favorites such as Johnny Guitar, Angel and the Badman, Desert Fury, Blood on the Moon, and 3:10 to Yuma—but typically were identified to audiences as the terrain of Texas, California, Nevada, and even Canadian border territory.
ACTIVITY SUGGESTION: Jeep Tour
Overnight – Sedona
Day 15
Sedona to Scottsdale / Phoenix
175 Miles
Return to Phoenix for your flight home.
Depart Phoenix – 19:40
Arrive London Heathrow – 13:25 (Next Day)
Journey Time – 9 hours 45 minutes