Day 10: Sedona to Phoenix

Your schedule today depends on what time your flight home leaves from Phoenix. It's only 125 miles from Enchantment to the airport, but when you factor in dropping off your rental car, riding the shuttle to the terminal, and the inevitable traffic snarls around this metropolis, you should allow three and a half hours—four and a half during rush hour.

Assuming your flight doesn't leave until the afternoon, you have a couple of sightseeing options along the way. The first and best is Jerome, a onetime copper boomtown with nine lives. Jerome became a ghost town when the mines shut down in the 1950s, revived with the arrival of hippie squatters in the '60s, and today is a less polished and more manageable version of Sedona's touristy artist colony. Be sure to stop at the Jerome Artists Cooperative Gallery (502 N. Main St.; 928-639-4276), which displays the works of 35 different artists in media ranging from jewelry and batik to photography and painted gourds, and at the Liberty Theatre (110 Jerome Ave.; 928-649-9016), which is being restored to its original 1918 glory. The best place in town for lunch—indeed, one of the 25 top restaurants in the state, according to Arizona Highways magazine—is the Flatiron Café (416 Main St.; 928-634-2733; entrées, $6–$11), shoehorned into the narrow end of a wedge-shaped building. The "kitchen" consists of an espresso machine and a few toaster ovens, but the salads and panini are fabulous.

If you've walked the length of Jerome's downtown and still have time to spare, hop on I-17 and drive north two exits to the Montezuma Castle National Monument, one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. Preservation dictates that visitors stay 100 feet below the ruins at the base of the valley, but even from this distance you'll be impressed with the skill and tenacity of the Southern Sinagua people who constructed this twelfth-century apartment building without aid of pack animals or wheels (early Anglo settlers attributed the fine craftsmanship to the Aztecs, hence the name). The quick jaunt from I-17 to Montezuma Castle and back should take just 30 minutes. From here, the red-rock landscape will slowly give way to saguaro cactus and the vast exurbia of Phoenix and Scottsdale, signaling the end of your American Southwest adventure.

Bonus trip: Moab
If you've got an extra day to add to your trip, spend it in Moab, the adventure-sport capital of the southwest. Since you've already dedicated your first day in the area to Arches National Park, here are three options for a second day, to mix and match as you choose:

Mountain biking —Moab has long been the center of the mountain-biking universe (though its Jeep trails are getting superseded by the single-track routes being built in Jackson Hole and other towns up north). The Slickrock Trail is perhaps the town's most famous, but should only be attempted by experienced bikers. Otherwise, the guides from Rim Tours can take rookies and novices out for a half- or full-day tour gauged to any ability level (800-626-7335; rimtours.com).