Oak Creek Canyon

State Route 89A runs the fifteen miles between Sedona and the rim below Flagstaff, and it is one of the great short drives in the West — a climb of roughly 2,200 feet from red-rock desert into ponderosa forest, ending in a stack of tight switchbacks that haul you up the canyon's north wall to Oak Creek Vista. It was among the first roads in Arizona designated a scenic byway, and the reason is out every window.

The canyon is the work of Oak Creek, a spring-fed stream that has spent millions of years sawing down through the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The walls read like a diagram: rust-red Schnebly Hill sandstone at the bottom, a bright cap of white Coconino sandstone on top, dark basalt where old lava flows spilled over the rim. In places the walls stand two thousand feet above the water. The creek keeps the floor green and cold — cottonwood and Arizona sycamore, trout in the pools, and in late October a run of gold-and-red foliage that pulls half the state up the canyon on weekends.

Seven miles up from Sedona, the drive's best stop is Slide Rock State Park, forty-three acres of what was the Pendley homestead — an apple farm Frank Pendley proved up in the 1910s, its orchard and packing barn still standing. The park's name comes from the creek itself, which pours over a chute of slick red sandstone worn smooth enough to ride; on a July afternoon the natural water slide runs shoulder to shoulder. Farther north, the West Fork trail turns off into one of the finest slot-canyon walks in the state, red walls closing in over a shallow stream.

Two practical notes the postcard leaves out: parking at Slide Rock fills early, so come before mid-morning in summer, and cell service drops out entirely inside the canyon — which most drivers, once they have slowed to the pace the switchbacks demand, decide they do not mind.