Phoenix families take the motorhome north in summer chasing the first cool night, and it arrives on the second evening, parked in ponderosa pine around Williams. Up there a July night finally wants a blanket. The week runs on from the pines to the orange slickrock around Lake Powell at Page and the buttes of Monument Valley, long interstate grades and then open two-lane across the Navajo Nation, the kind of mileage a family motorhome handles well. Dinner rides in the fridge and the kids ride at the dinette window.
Back home the valley is brutally hot all summer, and the plateau is where the heat finally lets go. Winter reverses that. The valley becomes the pleasant half of the state, and the high stops can freeze overnight, with the Grand Canyon near 6,800 feet and Monument Valley at 5,564.
I-17 and I-40, up to the pines at Williams
The first day is the climb out of the valley on I-17, the saguaros thinning and then gone as the interstate gains the plateau. Sedona's red rock and the Verde Valley sit just off the route, and a parked week among those cliffs is its own trip on the Sedona RV page. On the loop, keep climbing to I-40 at Flagstaff and roll west into the ponderosa around Williams for the night.
The South Rim is the day that follows, the whole family at the railing watching shadow fill the canyon, and the rig sleeps outside the gate in Tusayan or Williams. How a motorhome does the rim, in the park and out, lives on the Grand Canyon RV page.
Page and Lake Powell on US-89
US-89 drops north off the plateau through open painted desert to Page, where Lake Powell fills a maze of flooded side canyons under cliffs of orange slickrock. It's the loop's water day, a boat or a swim in the afternoon, then the lake going pink and purple from the edge of town at sundown.
Page is also the hookup night, the one to plan the others around. Page Lake Powell Campground has full-hookup RV sites and takes reservations direct, so hold that site before you choose a rig, check its length against the class you want, and use the night to dump the tanks and refill fresh water after any dry nights up top.
Monument Valley on US-160
US-160 carries the rig east across the Navajo Nation to Monument Valley, where sandstone buttes stand 400 to 1,000 feet over red sand and the view is the one a generation of westerns put on film. The tribal park's 17-mile loop road winds between the formations on deep sand, open with first-come, first-served entry as of September 2026. Walk a stretch of it before you commit a full-size motorhome to that sand.
The circle doesn't have to close here. From Monument Valley the road carries on north through Utah toward Salt Lake City, or east into the Rockies and down to Denver. The shorter version turns west from the South Rim to Las Vegas, trading a week of dark skies for the Strip, and Los Angeles is the long desert run for a trip that wants to finish on the Pacific. Cruise America lists one-way rentals out of its Phoenix hub in Mesa, and its locations in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver and Los Angeles are where a rig on these routes is returned.
Spring training and the valley's RV resorts
By late February the valley has turned into baseball country, with 15 major-league clubs training across 10 ballparks around Phoenix. The days fall into an easy shape, an afternoon game in the sun and then the resort pool while the light goes gold on the mountains, and the rigs spend those weeks in the resort belt across Mesa and Scottsdale.
Those ballpark weeks land on top of the snowbird winter, so baseball families and winter residents chase the same resort pads and the same rigs from late February through March. Reserve the resort site first, since in spring training season the pad is the harder booking, and let its rules and site size pick the class of rig.
On an off day, Lost Dutchman State Park sits under the Superstition Mountains east of town, Canyon Lake fills a desert canyon on the Apache Trail, and Lake Pleasant spreads across the valley's north edge. Past Tortilla Flat the Apache Trail is no road for a motorhome, and those close-in desert nights for two are the campervan page's trip.
