Lisa’s Travels

Towards the end of our trip in Arizona, we visited the Verde Canyon Railroad. This was, I think, a four hour train ride into the wilderness of Arizona. We were able to see areas of Arizona that you would only see if you were on the train. There are two classes of tickets you can buy for this ride. First, there is coach which will run you $54.95. When we booked this, they didn’t have any coach available, so we had to buy first class tickets which ran us about $79.95 a piece. First class does include appetizers and a glass of champagne. Honestly, I wish we could have saved our money and went coach. We spent a ton of the trip on the outdoor car where you could see out better.

This is a trip that older people and people with kids would want to do. I also recommend doing this trip early in your vacation. By the time we did this, we were almost sick of seeing the “red rock” since that’s all we had done for six days at this point. However, this did end up being a great relaxing day.

The customer service here is excellent though. We got lost on the way there (since this is located in Clarksdale, and we were staying in Sedona). Their customer service representative stayed on the phone with us until we got there.

The Verde Canyon railroad (formally the Verde Valley Railroad) was financed by Senator William Clark. It was built in one year for $1.3 million dollars in 1911. (Today, the cost would be $38 million). The railroad was not used for several years until Dave Durbano bought it. To quote him,

“I purchased the rail line from Clarkdale to Drake, sight-unseen, based on freight figures alone. Like many of the railroads built at the turn of the century, I knew this one had played an important role in Manifest Destiny, but when I made my first trip through the canyon, I was awestruck at the natural beauty and undisturbed wilderness through which we passed. I knew others would want to see the Verde Canyon in this same, unique way, where history was only a part of the journey.”

The views are beautiful from the train.  Here are few of the pictures that we took:

If you are looking for a nice relaxing day, I would recommend the Verde Canyon Railroad.