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Flagstaff & Painted Desert

Things to see in Flagstaff & Painted Desert

12 sights, museums, parks and places worth the stop.

Banded blue, purple and white badland hills at Blue Mesa under a cloudy sky

Holbrook · National Parks

Blue Mesa

Banded blue, purple and gray badlands on a spur road and a steep 1-mile loop trail in Petrified Forest National Park
Red sandstone walls of an ancestral Hopi pueblo against a blue sky at Homolovi State Park

Winslow · Historic Sites

Homolovi State Park

Ancestral Hopi villages on the Little Colorado River, with a museum, a campground and an observatory
Stone Slipher Building with its round domed Rotunda on Mars Hill at Lowell Observatory

Flagstaff · Historic Sites

Lowell Observatory

The 1894 observatory on Mars Hill where Pluto was discovered, open afternoons and evenings for tours and telescope viewing
Stone facade with a small balcony and wooden entrance doors at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff

Flagstaff · Museums

Museum of Northern Arizona

A museum of the Colorado Plateau's peoples, fossils and landscapes, founded in 1928, in a lava-rock building below the San Francisco Peaks
Pueblo Revival Painted Desert Inn with stuccoed red walls and a flagpole in Petrified Forest National Park

Holbrook · Architectural Landmarks

Painted Desert Inn

A Pueblo Revival inn on the Painted Desert rim with Hopi murals by Fred Kabotie, now Petrified Forest's temporary visitor center
Aerial view of Meteor Crater, a bowl-shaped impact crater with a raised rim on the desert plain

Winslow · Museums

Meteor Crater

A privately run impact crater nearly a mile across and about 50,000 years old, with a museum and guided rim walks off I-40
Sunset Crater's cinder cone and summit crater dotted with pines, seen from the air

Flagstaff · National Parks

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

Arizona's youngest volcano, a cinder cone that erupted around 1085, with lava-flow trails at its base
Red and white petrified log lying in dry grass with snow patches in Petrified Forest National Park

Holbrook · National Parks

Petrified Forest National Park

Late Triassic logs, Painted Desert badlands, ancestral Puebloan sites and a stretch of old Route 66 along a 28-mile park road
Stone cliff dwelling rooms under a limestone overhang beside the Island Trail at Walnut Canyon

Flagstaff · National Parks

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Cliff dwellings built under limestone ledges about 900 years ago, reached by a steep stairway trail east of Flagstaff
Circle and spiral petroglyphs pecked into a dark boulder at Puerco Pueblo

Holbrook · Historic Sites

Puerco Pueblo

A hundred-room ancestral Puebloan village above the Puerco River, with petroglyphs and a summer solstice marker
Standin' on the Corner Park in Winslow with its mural, a red flatbed truck and a Route 66 shield painted on the street

Winslow · Historic Sites

Standin' on the Corner Park

A downtown Winslow corner built around one line of 'Take It Easy', with a mural, a flatbed Ford and two statues
Red sandstone walls of Wupatki Pueblo on a rise above the grassland, with hills on the horizon

Flagstaff · Historic Sites

Wupatki National Monument

Stone pueblos built after the Sunset Crater eruption, including a 104-room village with a ballcourt