Winslow – La Posada - Lunch

Imagine yourself a relative visiting the family hacienda; a guest of the wealthy Don and his cultured family and friends. Stay in one of the last existing Fred Harvey hotels with its grand rooms, their beautiful furnishings, and six foot long porcelain bathtubs. Wander through the gardens and the splendid ballroom, arcades, lobby and courts. Lunch will be here at the Turquoise Room Restaurant.

Petrified Forest/Painted Desert Visitors Center

Petrified Forest National Park is a surprising land of scenic wonders and fascinating science. The park contains one of the world's largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood, dinosaur fossils, multi-hued badlands of the Chinle Formation, portions of the Painted Desert, Native American Indian ruins, archeological sites, and displays of 225 million year old fossils.

Canyon de Chelly – Check in

Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, the cultural resources of Canyon de Chelly--including distinctive architecture, artifacts, and rock imagery--exhibit remarkable preservation integrity that provides outstanding opportunities for study and contemplation. Canyon de Chelly also sustains a living community of Navajo people, who are connected to a landscape of great historical and spiritual significance--a landscape composed of places infused with collective memory.

 More information www.nps.gov/cach/index.htm

Monument Valley Visitors Center – Photo opportunities and 2 hour van tour of Monument Valley. This great valley boasts sandstone masterpieces that tower at heights of 400 to 1,000 feet, framed by scenic clouds casting shadows that graciously roam the desert floor. The angle of the sun accents these graceful formations, providing scenery that is simply spell-binding. The landscape overwhelms, not just by its beauty but also by its size.  The fragile pinnacles of rock are surrounded by miles of mesas and buttes, shrubs, trees and windblown sand, all comprising the magnificent colors of the valley.  All of this harmoniously combines to make Monument Valley a truly wondrous experience.  Enjoy this beautiful land.

Cameron Trading Post, Navajo Reservation

For nearly a century the Cameron Trading Post has been a Grand Canyon lodging haven for travelers, traders, vacationers and explorers who come from all points of the globe. Just 30 minutes from the Grand Canyon National Park entrance, the Cameron Trading Post is more than an Indian lodge or Grand Canyon hotel. Established in 1916, the Cameron Indian Trading Post has become a showplace for fine Native American art and Southwest art.

The Grand Canyon - East Gate loop at Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is more than a great chasm carved over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. It is more than an awe-inspiring view. It is more than a pleasuring ground for those who explore the roads, hike the trails, or float the currents of the turbulent Colorado River. This canyon is a gift that transcends what we experience. Its beauty and size humble us. Its timelessness provokes a comparison to our short existence. In its vast spaces we may find solace from our hectic lives. The Grand Canyon we visit today is a gift from past generations.

Sedona and Chapel of the Holy Cross

Sedona, and the immediate environs, is a special and unique place. With the awe-inspiring red rock formations plus the splendor and diversity of Oak Creek Canyon, it is considered a locality equal or superior to many national parks. Located in the high southwestern desert under the rim of the Colorado Plateau at an elevation of 4,500 feet, it is blessed with four mild seasons, plenty of sunshine and clean air.

Tour departs: Friday 8:00am and returns Sunday 5:30-6:30pm

Tour dates:  Tour departs 3^rd Friday of each month

Across Arizona Tours reserves the right to substitute comparable hotels when there is no availability at the hotels mentioned.

Special arrangements are available for your accommodations pre- and post-tour, which include reduced hotel rates, complimentary continental breakfast and complimentary airport shuttles. These arrangements are not included in the tour price. Please call for details on how to set up these arrangements.

You may call us 24/7 at our office, toll-free at 1.888.533.1813 or 602.233.1813 or email us here.

DeGrazia Studios

A landmark of Southwestern art and architecture in Tucson, Arizona, the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun welcomes visitors from all over the world. The adobe gallery was designed and built by artist Ted DeGrazia, who achieved worldwide acclaim for his colorful paintings of people and places of the Southwest. Opened in the early 1960s, the gallery was designed to exhibit and preserve his oils, watercolors, bronzes, enamels, ceramics, stone lithographs, serigraphs and jewelry. Today the 13-room gallery showcases permanent and rotating exhibits of DeGrazia originals, and the gallery gift shop offers a wide variety of merchandize and prints of his work.

More information www.degrazia.org/Splash.aspx

Tucson Artisan District

Located in Tucson’s historic El Presidio neighborhood, adjacent to the Tucson Museum of Art, these distinctive shops and art galleries are housed in a 150-year-old adobe complex, featuring a central courtyard, with restaurants and a Mexican cantina. Specialties include handcrafted Southwestern jewelry, art, and craftworks.

 More information www.oldtownartisans.com/

Saguaro National Park

Tour and stop at Visitors Center with movie

The unique Sonoran Desert is home to the most recognizable cactus in the world, the majestic saguaro. Visitors of all ages are fascinated and enchanted by these desert giants, especially their many interesting and complex interrelationships with other desert life. Saguaro cacti provide their sweet fruits to hungry desert animals. They also provide homes to a variety of birds, such as the Harris’ hawk, Gila woodpecker and the tiny elf owl.

Yet, the saguaro requires other desert plants for its very survival. During the first few years of a very long life, a young saguaro needs the shade and protection of a nurse plant such as the palo verde tree. With an average life span of 150 years, a mature saguaro may grow to a height of 50 feet and weigh over 10 tons.

 More information www.nps.gov/sagu/

San Xavier Mission

Mission San Xavier del Bac is situated in the Santa Cruz Valley nine miles south of Tucson, Arizona. Framed in the warm browns of the surrounding hills and the violet shadows of more distant mountains, it rises, brilliantly white from the desert floor of dusty green mesquite and sage. The imposing dome and lofty towers, the rounded parapets and graceful spires etched against the vivid blue complete a skyline with a graceful enchantment.

Tubac Artisan District

One of the state’s oldest communities. Ruins of Spanish military post and old adobe mission plus shops and art galleries. Tubac was established in 1752 as a Spanish presidio (fort). Working artists' studios now surround the grounds which once served as the home for a Spanish military garrison. Tubac remembers its origins at the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park located in the village's Old Town, and no visit to Tubac is complete without a stop at our State Park.

Tumacácori National Historical Park

Tumacácori National Historical Park in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley of southern Arizona is comprised of the abandoned ruins of three ancient Spanish colonial missions. These are the picturesque ruins of a mission established by Father Kino.

Tombstone

Tombstone, in Cochise County, Arizona, is no doubt the most famous and glamorized mining town in America. Prospector Ed Schieffelin was told he would only find his tombstone in the San Pedro Valley. He named his first silver claim Tombstone, and it later became the name of the town. Incorporated in 1881, “The Queen of the Boom Towns” is situated on a mesa between the Dragoon and Huachuca Mountains at an elevation of 4,540 feet.

While the area became notorious for saloons, gambling houses and the O.K. Corral shootout, in the 1880s Tombstone had become the most cultivated city in the West. Underground water flooded the mines though, and falling silver prices ended the boom in 1904. Surviving the Great Depression and relocation of the County Seat to Bisbee, in the 1930s Tombstone became known as “The Town Too Tough To Die.”

(stop at Birdcage for passes)

Walk to center of town (2:00 will be OK Corral show)

Break for lunch and browsing

Depart 4:00pm

Boot Hill

This is the cemetery where the good, the bad, and the evil were buried in old Tombstone. The graves that elevated Boot Hill to its place in infamy as a theme for Western movies, cowboy novels and shoot'em-up lore are still there to be seen. Included are Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers, Frank and Tom, victims in the renowned Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The marker denoting their graves notes that they were "murdered on the streets of Tombstone, 1881."

Tucson – Dinner LaFuente Restaurant (6:30 –7:45)

Mexican cuisine

Tour departs: Friday 8:00am and returns Saturday 9:00pm-10:00pm

Tour dates: This tour departs the first Friday of each month.

Special arrangements are available for your accommodations pre- and post-tour, which include reduced hotel rates, complimentary continental breakfast and complimentary airport shuttles. These arrangements are not included in the tour price. Please call for details on how to set up these arrangements.

You may call us 24/7 at our office, toll-free at 1.888.533.1813 or 602.233.1813.

While you can book as few as 1 person on this tour, the tour requires a minimum of 4 total passengers in order to depart. Across Arizona Tours reserves the right to cancel this tour if the minimum is not met by 7 days before tour departure.