Sedona is the one day trip from Scottsdale we tell everybody to take, and the one most people take badly. They leave at ten, reach the red rocks at noon, circle a full trailhead lot, eat lunch in a traffic jam on SR 179 and drive home in the dark having seen Bell Rock through a windshield. The fix is simple and slightly painful: leave early, park once, and decide before you go what you’ll skip.
Our day trips overview has Sedona next to Jerome, Tucson and the Superstitions. This is the Sedona day in detail.
The drive: two hours, if you leave on time
From Old Town it’s about two hours: the Loop 101 to I-17 north, then I-17 for most of the way, then exit 298 onto SR 179, which carries you through the Village of Oak Creek and past Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte into town. The red rocks start about fifteen minutes before Sedona does, which is why the first pullout on 179 always has a dozen cars in it.
I-17 is the variable. For years the stretch through the mountains between Black Canyon City and Sunset Point was two lanes each way and a parking lot every Friday and Sunday. ADOT’s I-17 Improvement Project widened the road north of Anthem and built about eight miles of reversible flex lanes through that climb, Arizona’s first. They opened fully in 2025, run northbound Monday through Saturday and switch to southbound on Sundays (and on the Monday of a long holiday weekend), and they’ve taken the worst of the edge off. They haven’t made a Sunday afternoon drive home pleasant. A crash on the grade still stops everything, and there is no good detour. Check ADOT’s az511 before you leave in both directions.
The rules of the road up. Fill the tank in the Valley. Sunset Point rest area, at the top of the big climb, is the bathroom stop and has a better view than a rest area deserves. Signal fades in stretches. If you’re tempted to stop at Montezuma Castle on the way, do it on the way home; it’s ten minutes off the freeway, takes an hour, and the morning light belongs on the rocks.
The rules: the Red Rock Pass and the shuttle
Two systems decide your day, and neither is complicated once you know they exist.
The Red Rock Pass. Parking at most Forest Service trailheads around Sedona, Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, Cathedral Rock, Fay Canyon and the rest of the 19 sites the program covers, needs a pass on the dashboard: $5 a day, $15 a week, $20 a year, from the machines at the trailheads, the Sedona Chamber visitor center or recreation.gov (enter your plate). An America the Beautiful interagency pass counts instead. A short photo stop of about fifteen minutes doesn’t need one. Two important exceptions: the West Fork of Oak Creek lot is a separate $15 day-use fee and won’t take a Red Rock Pass, and the state parks, Slide Rock and Red Rock State Park, charge their own entry.
The Sedona Shuttle. The city runs a free trailhead shuttle Thursday through Sunday, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., from three park-and-ride lots to five of the busiest trailheads:
- North SR 179 lot (1294 SR 179, about 65 cars) to Cathedral Rock and Little Horse.
- Posse Grounds in West Sedona (about 260 cars) to Soldier Pass, which is capped at 300 riders a day.
- West SR 89A lot on Upper Red Rock Loop Road (about 91 cars) to Mescal and Dry Creek Vista, the two ways into Devil’s Bridge.
On shuttle days the Cathedral Rock and Soldier Pass trailhead lots are closed to private cars, and the city asks that Little Horse not be used as Cathedral overflow. You don’t need a Red Rock Pass to ride. The schedule expands for holidays: as of this writing the shuttle runs daily the week before Thanksgiving (November 19 to 29, 2026, with no service on Thanksgiving Day), daily December 17 to 24, and again December 26 to 31, with no service on Christmas. Dogs ride only if muzzled and leashed, or in a carrier. The park-and-ride lots fill too; the North SR 179 lot is gone by mid-morning on a cool-season Saturday.
Monday through Wednesday, there’s no shuttle, the trailhead lots are open to cars, and they fill by sunrise anyway. That’s the honest trade.
The day, hour by hour
This is the plan we’d run on a Saturday in October or April, with one real hike and no regrets.
- 6:00 a.m. Leave Old Town. Coffee in the car, breakfast later.
- 8:00. Exit 298 onto SR 179. Park at Courthouse Vista and walk the Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte loop, about four easy miles around the two buttes, with a pass machine and toilets at the lot and no shuttle rules. If you want harder, take the shuttle from the North SR 179 lot to Cathedral Rock instead: shorter, much steeper, and more of a rock scramble than a hike.
- 10:30. Drive into town. Walk Tlaquepaque, the courtyard shopping village by the creek, for half an hour, or skip it if shopping isn’t the point.
- 11:30. Early lunch. Beat the noon rush and you’ll eat outdoors without a wait.
- 12:30. North up SR 89A into Oak Creek Canyon, the best fifteen minutes of road in the state. Stop at Indian Gardens Cafe & Market, the general store that has been there since 1940 (open daily 8 to 4, kitchen closes at 3), for a coffee on the shaded back patio. In summer, this is the Slide Rock hour, if you’re there before the lot fills; in fall, walk the first mile of West Fork under the maples.
- 3:00. Back down the canyon. Pick your sunset: the red rocks go deep orange in the last hour, and almost any pullout on 179 or Dry Creek Road will do. If you want the classic, Airport Mesa has the panorama and the crowd to match.
- 5:30. Dinner in town, or start home and eat in the Valley.
- 7:00. I-17 south. Home by nine.
A Monday-to-Wednesday version works the same way, minus the shuttle and with an earlier start: be at your trailhead by 7.
Where to eat
Elote Cafe on Jordan Road uptown is the Sedona dinner people plan around: cooking inspired by the markets of Mexico, and the namesake roasted corn. It’s dinner only, Tuesday through Saturday, and the reservations go through its own website; the bar is easier on short notice. If you’re eating there, plan the sunset in town and drive home late.
For lunch, keep it simple and early. Indian Gardens in the canyon is the casual pick and the most pleasant patio in the area. Uptown’s restaurants along 89A are built for volume and priced for the view; the food is fine and the crowds aren’t.
Bring a cooler regardless. Half of a good Sedona day is eating a sandwich on a rock.
The Jerome and Cottonwood variations
Jerome instead of the trails. Jerome, the copper town hanging off Cleopatra Hill at about 5,000 feet, is under an hour past Sedona through Cottonwood. It’s galleries, tasting rooms and restaurants in buildings that look like they’re mid-slide. The Haunted Hamburger is the lunch everybody ends up at, ghost story included; budget a wait. Then walk the town, which takes about an hour if you stop at everything, and look for the old jail that actually did slide down the hill.
Cottonwood and the river. Cottonwood’s Old Town is the Verde Valley’s wine-tasting street, and above it Maynard James Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria (770 N. Verde Heights Drive) does pizza, pasta and its own wine on a patio with a 270-degree view; it’s open daily, and groups of eight or more should book. Below town, Tuzigoot, the 110-room Sinagua pueblo on a ridge above the Verde, is a short walk from Dead Horse Ranch State Park, the region’s most comfortable campground if the day trip turns into an overnight.
The loop. Up I-17, Sedona in the morning, 89A to Cottonwood for lunch, Jerome in the afternoon, then SR 260 back to I-17 at Camp Verde and home past Montezuma Castle. It’s a full, good day, and it’s about five hours of driving. Doing it all means doing each part fast. Pick Sedona or Jerome as the main event and let the other be a stop.
No car in Sedona? The Verde Shuttle runs hourly between Cottonwood and Sedona, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. You still need a car from Scottsdale.
The season, and when to turn back
Sedona sits at about 4,300 feet and runs roughly fifteen degrees cooler than Scottsdale. That makes it the summer escape and the winter trip that can see snow.
- October, November, March, April, May: the best months, and the busiest. The shuttle and the early start matter most now. Late October brings the maples in Oak Creek Canyon.
- June: hot but workable. The trails are a dawn activity; the creek is the afternoon.
- July through mid-September, the monsoon: storms build over the high country by early afternoon. Hike in the morning and be off exposed slickrock by noon. Lightning on Cathedral Rock is a real thing, and so are flash floods in the washes and Oak Creek; Slide Rock closes on high water. The monsoon field manual applies here too.
- December through February: cold mornings, short days and the occasional snowfall that turns the red rocks white for a morning. The trails are quiet, and the slickrock is slick. Check the Sedona forecast the night before.
When to turn back, which is the part nobody writes down:
- The lot is full and the shuttle line is long. Don’t circle. Drive to the next trailhead on your list, or switch to Red Rock State Park, which is never full.
- It’s 1 p.m. in July and the sky over the Mogollon Rim is turning gray. Get off the rock. The storm is faster than you are.
- You’ve reached Cathedral Rock’s saddle. That’s the end of the trail. The ledges beyond it are where the rescues happen.
- It’s a holiday weekend, or Sunday after 2. Leave Sedona an hour earlier than you planned, or stay for dinner and drive after 7, when the southbound traffic thins.
- It snowed overnight. The red rocks under snow are worth seeing from the car; the steep slickrock trails are not worth climbing until it melts.
Should you take a tour instead?
Usually not. The point of Sedona is stopping where you want, and a car does that best. The small-group tours earn their fare for a group without a car, in winter when the switchbacks ice, or when you want Montezuma Castle and a guide included. Our tours page has the ones we’d book, and the desert tours guide sorts the Jeep outfitters, which are a Sedona institution in their own right.
If it becomes an overnight
You won’t regret it. Spend the night in Sedona or Cottonwood, hike at sunrise the next morning, and drive home through the Verde Valley. Camping options run from the creekside campgrounds at Manzanita, Cave Springs and Pine Flat in Oak Creek Canyon to Dead Horse Ranch’s hookups. Away from town the sky gets properly dark, and our stargazing guide explains why that matters. More hikes, including Boynton Canyon and Montezuma Well, are in our outdoors guides.
And if you want the Grand Canyon on the same trip, read why we say stay the night first.