The most recent Rewards Canada family vacation had us visiting Scottsdale and Sedona, Arizona. With only a day trip planned to Sedona it seemed fitting to try out a tour – now the RC family isn’t huge into tours, we usually like to explore on our own however with not too much time to spend in Sedona we wanted to see lots of the area without taking hours hiking around. The solution? A jeep tour! There are several off road tour operators in the Sedona area that offer Jeep and Hummer tours. The most popular and probably the most highly reviewed that we found was Pink Jeep Tours so we decided to go with them.
Pink Jeep tours offers a whole bunch of different Jeep tours and itineraries. As it we had never done one before and were also somewhat time constrained with a 2 hour drive to Sedona and back in the same day we looked at the shorter tours they offer which are 2 hour tours. The most popular tour they have is Broken Arrow, which is also exclusive to Pink Jeep which means no other tour companies offer this route is the one we chose. This tour seems ideal as it’s not overly crazy but has enough bumps, climbs, descents to make an off-road enthusiast happy not to mention some amazing scenery! We booked the tour several weeks in advance on Pink Jeep’s website and used my Platinum Card from American Express to pay for it. Pink Jeep codes as travel so it earns 2 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent (same would go for the Gold Rewards or Cobalt cards) and is also an eligible charge for the full Pay with Points option of 1,000 points to a $10 statement credit. I would recommend booking in advance especially if you are looking to go on the weekend or during a busy holiday period. We visited on a Friday of President’s Day weekend (same as Family Day here) and the Saturday and Sunday were already quite full when we booked so we went with the Friday.
On to the tour! We had six people travelling in our group and the Jeeps seat seven so there was a fun lady from California who joined our crew for the 2 hour tour. After you check in at Pink Jeep Plaza on Highway 89A in North Sedona you are told to go to the passenger waiting area about 15 minutes before your booked departure time.
As departure time nears they have a ‘greeter’ who details what will transpire next – the guides will come out and call your name and then take you to your Jeep.
You’ll board the Jeep, buckle up and off you go! It the took the Jeep about ten minutes to get through Sedona to the trailhead. I’m guessing it didn’t used to be that long however Sedona is a victim of success and is now a travellers mecca with lots of people visiting it and with that comes traffic. He said that our traffic was nothing – on the busiest days of the year they sometimes have to cut tours short so that they can make it back to the Pink Jeep Plaza on time for the next tour.
The tour itself was amazing and the scenery alone is worth it:
Our guide Stephen was awesome and we were so happy we had him as our tour guide! He was funny, outgoing, friendly, knowledgeable, didn’t beat around the bush and more! Stephen definitely made the tour very enjoyable. He discusses the local geology, history of the area, history of Pink Jeep, went into details about the Jeeps, the trails and more. He even revealed a fault line through Submarine Rock which is evidenced in this photo:
Not only did we visit Submarine Rock, the tour also took us to Chicken point where you can see the Two Nuns – named so as on the other side of them is the Chapel of the Holy Cross and then closed out with a ride down the Devil’s Staircase.
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| The Two Nuns |
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| Devil’s Staircase |
We took a bunch of photos and videos of the tour and chances are you will as well so make sure your phone has lots of juice! I should also mention Stephen is a great photographer, he took some amazing photos of our family! I haven’t pieced together our videos from the tour just yet so if you want to see it in action here’s a video from Pink Jeep Tours detailing Broken Arrow:
Overall we weren’t sure about a jeep tour as we’ve seen them before in places like Palm Springs and have avoided them but if they are all like this one then you can bet we will be going more of them in the future! In fact, we are already saying that we need to return to Sedona and do another one of the tours – perhaps a longer one!
Have you been a jeep tour before? Are there any you have loved? Or disliked? Let us know!
Click here to learn more about Pink Jeep Tours*
All photos via the author
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