Can you get from Phoenix to a snowy wonderland (and then back to Phoenix) in 5 hours? Why yes you can - and you know we tested it for you since we love a quick trip anywhere.
First I should start by saying - there is snow in Arizona in the winter! Maybe I should be embarrassed to say this, but I honestly had no idea that was true until we moved here and heard about it from a local blogger.
The most common place to visit for snow is Flagstaff and the surrounding area, but there are also some closer towns to see if you have super limited time. This was one of those days for us.
We did our normal Saturday balletsoccergymnastics routine, and then we went home to eat lunch out in the backyard. While enjoying the sunshine, we remembered that it was still January and it would be awesome to see some snow.... so we did some research and then set out around 1:30pm in search of snow.
We started by driving up to Payson. It's a pretty easy drive from Phoenix/Scottsdale (as long as you're prepared for the changes in elevation), and they do get snow! But on this day, most of the snow from the previous weekend had already melted - leaving just the random dirty piles in the corners of parking lots. We were looking for a little more than that... and knew we had to get higher into the mountains. So we went the extra ~30 minutes north to drive through Pine to Strawberry - and it was a huge success!
Strawberry (Picking Up Empanadas)
If you haven't been up there, the town is tiny, but the road up the mountain is dotted with a bunch of cute little restaurants and tiny hotels. We drove straight through to PIEbar - a tiny empanada outpost with a lot of sweet and savory choices. There was a decent line, but it gave me time to review the menu. It's organized into sweet versus savory empanadas, and the lists are sorted by "most popular".
It's a super small place, so you can watch them actually making the food - which is awesome. I ended up picking the top 5 savory options, and our favorite was definitely the "Mountain Man" (sausage, potato, gravy, and cheese). On the sweet side, it's hard to pick, but I think the molten chocolate and lemon were the best! There isn't any space to eat inside, so instead of eating outside at the restaurant, we decided to take our empanadas to a park to play in the snow and eat at the same time.
Pine (Brewery + Playing in the Snow):
About 5 minutes back down the road from PIEbar is THAT Brewery + Pub. In our case, our stop at THAT was quick - Bill running in to grab a couple of six packs to put in the trunk for when we got home. But we did see some people quite enjoying their time at the restaurant there if you have time!
Then just 2 minutes further down the road was the "AZT Pine Trailhead" (<-- put that into Google maps). You pull in and drive a little bit up a tiny road to a larger parking lot. Next to the lot there are picnic tables, and then there is a little forest that ... on this day... had LOTS of snow!! The elevation is substantially higher than Payson, plus the trees seemed to be shading the snow so it didn't melt - but maybe we just got lucky!
We got our coats, hats, and gloves out of the trunk and sat at the picnic tables eating empanadas for a few minutes before the kids played. It was beautiful and there was plenty of snow for snowball fights, snowmen, snow angels, and just general excitement (as a snow sighting is rare for our kids!). We didn't bring saucers, but I'd suggest it as there were some small hills that were perfect for that too!
Even though there is plenty of other things to do in the area, we went to charge the car (more on that one day) and then headed home - making it back by 6:30pm. It was the perfect getaway (leaving time to enjoy the sunshine all of Sunday too! ;)).
Looking for more places with snow in AZ? We'll be writing a post on Flagstaff soon, but you should also check out Phoenix with Kids and search "snow" to find some of their recommendations too - they're a truly amazing resource for all things AZ!
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