“Our goal with High Country Motor Lodge was to celebrate Flagstaff and Route 66’s storied roadside culture and the region’s undeniable natural beauty,” says John Grossman, the CEO of Marc & Rose Hospitality, which operates the lodge. “Throughout the property, darker color palettes are showcased alongside rustic woods and 1960s-inspired fixtures and furnishings, hearkening back to when Route 66 began to flourish.”
The cabins — which are in the small town of Christopher Creek, about 20 min-utes east of Payson — offer a relaxing getaway for couples and larger groups. Property manager Shannon Moore says guests use the cabins for everything from weekend trips to weddings and family reunions. “People come up just to enjoy nature,” she says. “Some people never leave the cabins, but others go out for hiking, fishing and other activities.”
The story of Posada began when the owners, Rich and Sara Combs, embarked on a road trip across the American Southwest a decade ago. After stopping in and falling in love with Joshua Tree, California — the inspiration for The Joshua Tree House, the couple’s suite of properties — the pair made their way to Tucson. Later, in 2018, the Combses found the abandoned inn, which had been built in the late 1970s by Merv Larson, a former director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
The revamped motel opened in January 2023 with 48 rooms, an outdoor entertainment venue and award-winning restaurant Chilte on-site. According to Rebel Hospitality’s vice president of marketing and brand, Cynthia Davis, the opportunity to revitalize the Egyptian was a no-brainer. “We really had this vision to turn it into something completely different that Phoenix doesn’t really have much of,” Davis says. “The fact that it’s in the Grand Avenue arts district made it even more attractive.”
When Tanya Duarte describes the historic Gadsden Hotel to first-time visitors, she compares it to a geode. "You look at the outside of the building, and you see a pretty generic 'rock' of a building," says Duarte, the hotel's manager. "It doesn't really stand out. Then you bust it open, walk in and it's this gorgeous gem inside."
The Fryes — Karen, a software engineer, and Matt, a carpenter — were living in Tucson several years ago when they took a road trip to this old mining town at the foot of the Coronado Trail. “We fell in love with the landscape,” Matt recalls, but a dilapidated building along Park Avenue, on the east side of the San Francisco River, also caught their eye.
A project of the Ajo-based International Sonoran Desert Alliance, the nonprofit inn and its conference center are on the 7-acre Curley School campus, which once housed Ajo’s elementary school and other educational buildings. Constructed over the first half of the 20th century, the classic Spanish Revival complex, complete with a bell tower, was a point of pride when Ajo was a booming copper mining town. But in the 1980s, the mine closed and many of Ajo’s residents left with it.
But Shep’s also boasts a history as rich as that of this former silver mining boomtown. Its thick adobe walls date to the mid-to-late 1800s, when the building was constructed as a stagecoach stop. Later, it was used to house miners and their families, and after that, it became a motor court along Second Street, which at that time was the main route through town.
That place is Backland, which opened in September 2022 on a 160-acre Kaibab National Forest inholding about 10 miles southeast of Williams. The parcel was homesteaded in the 1920s and hosted ranching and sheepherding operations over the years. Now, it’s home to a concept that combines an immersive, ecologically conscious experience in nature with many of the comforts you’d find in a luxury hotel.
At first, you might feel a tinge of panic: What will I do with myself? But after a few hours of sitting in an Adirondack chair on the front porch while watching deer grazing in the meadow, you’ll stop thinking about your phone and start listening to the wind blowing through the pines.
