A Sedona Jeep Tour is one of the ‘must do’ activities when you visit Sedona.
Whenever you’re in the town you’ll see the famous pink jeeps whisking people onto their next little adventure.
Our tour was 1.5 hours and was the cheapest at around $60 per person.
Our Sedona Jeep Tour starts
We went with pink jeep tours and the company HQ is in a busy part of town. Leave with plenty of time to get there as there are big crowds.
We checked in at reception and shortly after were called up by our driver Brent to hop in and start the tour.
The Jeeps are modified to fit 6 passengers in, so if you’re in a pair it’s likely you’ll be put with another pair or a group of 3 – I rarely saw any with 6 in.
Be warned, its policy that one passenger has to sit up front with the driver.
Because I was a very British gentleman and let everyone else on first, this ended up being me. I obviously wanted to sit next to Annie and thankfully one of the other passengers offered to swap with me. Bear this rule in mind when you get on!
At the start of the tour, you travel along on the towns tarmac roads for about 5 minutes.
Here there’s not too much to see you get to know your driver. It turned out Brent was a part time masseuse!
After the tarmac roads, you hit the dirt track which is bumpy as hell. The transition off the tarmac hits you hard, it’s jolty and bumpy and it doesn’t become any more forgiving.
You have to wear seat belts otherwise you’ll probably fly up and hit your head!
Into the the red rocks…
From the start Brent was awesome and supplied us with fun facts that even Arizonian Annie didn’t know about.
We learnt the origin of the Name Sedona (a lady literally made it up, called her daughter it and Sedona was named after her). We also learnt the origin of Arizona states name but I forgot :(.
We were also informed why certain rocks have big black streaks running down them…
Brent was also pointing out all the different shaped rocks we could see, one looked like a battleship, another looked like an American Indians face, and another looked like a stagecoach.
The crazy rock formations
The rock that resembled a stagecoach had a large slab missing from the front that you can see in the picture below. You could clearly see there was recently rock there and Brent informed us that it was the site of a massive rock fall in 2009. The slab that fell was bigger than a school bus, now that would have given you a headache!
The stunning views
We climbed higher and higher up through the wilderness and the landscape began to open up in front of us.
We continued our Sedona jeep tour up to a vantage point overlooking the region.
This was the highest point this particular tour goes but you can book other tours that carry on up the road further and last up to 3 hours.
We spent a while taking lots of pictures up here before we started to head back down the boulder filled road.
The unplanned event
On the way back down we were all chatting to Brent when suddenly there was an almighty thud underneath the jeep! We stopped and Brent got out to have a look but couldn’t find anything.
A few minutes more driving and chatting, then BANG! If there wasn’t something broke before, then there sure was now.
Brent got out to have a look again.
“Oh yehhh, that’s us done for”
We hopped out to have a look at what had happened. It turned out one of the suspension coils had completely snapped and was now digging into a shock absorber.
Brent radioed HQ to ask for another jeep and a couple of mechanics came to look at the jeep we were currently in.
Apparently, they have a dedicated mechanic team as the Jeeps regularly need fixing due to the unforgiving road!
Whilst we were waiting for or pick up other jeeps were passing and all were making funny comments about our situation.
Annie and I really liked the fact we broke down: it gave us more time in this great area and more time to take pictures and ask questions!
After around 20 minutes a jeep came to pick us up and we headed back to base to be dropped off.
Sedona Jeep Tours are definitely worth the money and are another must do in addition to Devils Bridge.
Let’s hope you break down and get more time out in the wilderness like we did 😉
Michael x