'I visited the US town that's more magnificent than the Grand Canyon'

10 June 2024 , 05:00

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'I visited the US town that's more magnificent than the Grand Canyon'

Our bright pink jeep teetered on the rim of a near-vertical rockface. I somehow expected our manic driver would now reverse and take us back to safety. But of course he didn’t.

The engine roared. The girls next to me squealed. And over we went. The back of the jeep – and all of us in it – was hoisted aloft like the end of a see-saw as we inched downwards. I was now no longer able to contain my own squeals.

“There’s no weepin’ in jeepin’!” our driver, Roger, hollered with a wicked grin, before continuing to effuse anecdotes, jokes and facts, as if he wasn’t driving down a 70-degree incline. This was by far the most off-road part of my road trip round Northern Arizona. In fact, this was the most off-road I’d ever been.

Not long before, I’d been gawping in awe at the incredible landscape that surrounds the small city of Sedona. As I had been all day. As I had been for the last few days.

Gritty in pink – Jeep tour around Sedona (DAILY MIRROR)

There were so many magnificent rusty red mountains and rock formations. Peaks and pinnacles. Cliffs and canyons. Like a smaller Monument Valley, yet just minutes from town. I’d never seen anything like it.

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“God may have created the Grand Canyon, but he lives in Sedona,” driver Roger had said. I don’t think he was exaggerating.

Our tour group had flown in a few days previously. It was a sunny Friday afternoon when we’d landed in Phoenix, in stark contrast to the dismal British November we’d left behind.

The state capital is nestled on the northern edge of the giant Sonoran Desert, but we didn’t hang around, instead hitting the highway north into the mountains and up onto the start of the Colorado Plateau.

As we climbed, the temperature dropped along with the night. Our destination was the former capital, Prescott, up at 5,300ft. Once on the frontier of the old Wild West, the pretty little city is now a world away from its former incarnation as a gritty gold and silver-mining town from where brutal campaigns were waged against the local Native American tribes.

Saloony tunes – Whiskey Row in Prescott, Arizona (Shutterstock / Chris Curtis)

Chris Granet