48 Hours in Scottsdale: The Perfect Weekend Itinerary

Welcome to Scottsdale, Arizona. In this video we're taking you on a journey through the best the vibrant city has to offer. From stunning hikes in the desert to exploring its buzzing old town packed with incredible food, art, and history, we'll uncover why Scottsdale should be on your travel radar. Plus we'll share our full two-day itinerary with spots for both adults and families and give you some tips to make the most of your time. Let's jump into it. We made it to Scottsdale, we're going to spend two days exploring. First up, breakfast at Hash Kitchen. Hash Kitchen is basically the ultimate brunch destination. On the weekends they even have a DJ here that's spinning music and they have options you've never seen on any other menu. They're especially known for their Bloody Mary bar which has skewers and dozens of different items and you can stack it as high as you want and stick it on your drink. It's basically an entire breakfast but I don't like Bloody Mary so I stayed away. We did get a little crazy with the menu though taking the recommendations and starting with the cannoli donuts, the berea hash, and Christina's tamale cakes. I'm a little worried we didn't order enough. Amy's going in for the cannoli donut. Powdered sugar right on your nose. I mean how do you eat this gracefully? That's delicious. It literally tastes like cannoli like in the best way possible with the fried donut. Don't skip this when you come here. Best donut ever. When the donut hits so good and you gotta dance. That is a super fun place for breakfast but be sure to bring your appetite. It's more of a brunch spot as you're not going to want to eat lunch after you eat that. Let's head on and explore some more. After finishing breakfast, we started our exploration of Scottsdale by going to McCormick Stillman Railroad Park. There was a lot of Christmas decor here and you can actually take a holiday ride at night time but unfortunately we didn't get tickets in advance and so we weren't able to do that. We grabbed tickets to ride the train which happens every 30 minutes on the weekdays and then we headed over to the model railroad museum to check it out. I love model railroads and it's one of my favorite things to see when I travel if they have something like this and I've gone to the one in San Diego many times myself but it was cool to go to this one with my kids. This is an incredible little museum the kids can walk up and they can press these buttons and it activates something out in the train course. So you just walk up when these are green and you just press the button and look there's the train. We spent about 25 minutes exploring before it was our time to get on the train. All aboard! When we went the ride was about 10 minutes on a 15 gauge rideable miniature railway. Along the way we saw the remains of a small western town with a stagecoach and a jail. There was also a bunch of Christmas decor that was set up for the holiday train ride. This is so much fun there's a lot to look at I bet it's amazing at Christmas time with all the lights going too. The highlight at the end of the ride was the long tunnel that was actually dark even during the day and had a bunch of fun lights inside. Again this was a great experience for the whole family and something that kids talked about a lot during our trip. What do you think? Good. I think it was good too that was fun. If you're traveling with young kids be sure to check out the western town before you leave. Oh no are you in jail? From there we drove about 15 minutes south to a great local hike that I do every time I'm in the Phoenix area. Over the years you've probably seen me do this hike with my dad and with Amy. One of the best things about Scottsdale in the winter is hiking so we're doing a short trail today and then we're going to do a longer one tomorrow. Hole in the Rock is a fantastic hike for the whole family and even those who don't normally like hiking. It's short at less than a quarter mile and even though it's a little bit steep at the end it leads to an amazing viewpoint that's great for photography. Once you make it to the top there's a hole that's about six feet tall and eight feet wide and you can walk through that and down a series of steps to an amazing view out over Papago Park. We have this beautiful view with a hole in the rock and my kids are over there playing on a slippery rock that's a slide. For some reason we were really lucky and we were the only people here but by the time we left there was probably 30 or 40 people in the hole in the rock. If you come at sunset it can be very hard to find a place to park as it's really busy. It's also a great place to watch the planes take off from the Phoenix airport. So there's lots more you can do in Papago Park. You can hike, you can go to the zoo, you can go to the botanical garden, but we're heading back to Old Town Scottsdale. We're going to get something to eat and explore some more this afternoon. For lunch we headed into Old Town Scottsdale and we decided to go to a place called Farm and Craft. We got the poke bowl, the cheese pizza, and the acai salad with chicken. It's like the complete opposite of whey this morning. Mm-hmm, balanced. We also have fun drinks. This is the matcha mule. It's very tangy and earthy. I like it. This was a great upscale spot with fun healthy food and a great vibe on the inside. Since we'd already found a place to park we decided to just walk around Fifth Avenue shops and boutiques and explore a little bit. They have an awesome and eclectic series of shops here that sell everything from bugs and glass cases to jewelry to Native American artwork and of course many different clothing boutiques. With the kids our ability to shop was a little limited but we did go into Rocket Fizz which they love and then we went into one of Amy's favorite shops which is called Uptown Hippie and basically perfectly describes her. We also stopped into a local coffee shop that we always go to whenever we're in Arizona. If you're looking for coffee while you're shopping Cartel is where to go. From there we headed to our hotel for the next few days called The Scott. This is a place that Amy had wanted to stay for a long time but it's usually pretty pricey. Lucky for us we traveled during the week and were able to get a great rate in the off season. It is a really cool property with multiple pools including a pool that has a sand walkway. More on swimming later though we just checked into the pool so that the kids could have a rest time before we went out for the evening. Next up we headed to Old Town Scottsdale to do one of my kids' current favorite activities. We're going bowling. And luckily this video is sponsored by Bolero which is right in the heart of the city. Bowling is something that everyone from all ages can do from the kids to my wife. They say the bumpers are for the kids but I for sure need them too. Okay that was actually a pretty good one. Bolero has 350 state-of-the-art locations all around the United States and it's a great way to escape the heat in the summer or even the cold in the winter. How's that? A little early. This is so fun for me because I grew up going bowling all the time with pops and to see them enjoying it, two thumbs up. Plus it's more than just bowling and they have a sports bar, arcade games, and even laser tag at select locations. We took advantage of all of that and we tried some of the menu items with our personal favorite being the chicken tenders. Guests have the option to skip the line and book a lane via the link in the description or by scanning the QR code on the screen. Yeah great job! Let's explore more Scottsdale. After bowling we decided to head back to where we were shopping earlier to go to something that they have called Scott's Dazzle which is a Christmas experience. On the way the kids smelled waffle cones being made and they convinced us that we needed to go into Jenny's Ice Cream and try a scoop. Luckily the large here has four half scoops and so we got that which was just enough for everybody to share. I don't know if we really needed this but we all got a half scoop to share and I got peaches and biscuit and you got lemon. The ice cream gave us just the energy we needed to continue to explore. The Scott's Dazzle holiday event is in its ninth year and it's free to visit and you can just walk around and take in all of the different lights and attractions they have. They have many different events throughout December as well so be sure to check the website if you're looking for one of those. I've seen a lot of these events over the years but I really enjoyed just walking along the Arizona Canal Trail and just seeing the way the lights reflected off the water. They had a bunch of installations including a horse and a Christmas present and then of course Christmas trees right along the water. I really love the Christmas tree installations on the water and it's a really cool place for kids to run around. We spent about 45 minutes just exploring and taking it all in before we started the walk back to the car. That's an epic place to explore at Christmas time. Just like that our first day is over, we'll see you tomorrow. The kids are still sleeping and I'm going out on a hike this morning and I'm going to get picked up in something a little bit unique. Check it out. And there it is my ride and as you can see there is nobody in the front seat of that car. Hello. Good morning Josh. Destination Echo Canyon Trailhead. Start ride. This is called a Waymo and it's a self-driving taxi that exists in only a couple cities around the United States currently. We saw these while we were driving around Scottsdale and I knew I had to try one so I figured this was the perfect opportunity. When you get in you're greeted by a name and you can see a map that shows how long to your destination. Then in the menu screen you can change the temperature and you can actually select the music you want to listen to in the back. From there you just sit and relax as the car drives you all the way to your destination. I am such a tech person and this is just absolutely insane. It is so cool to be able to get into a car with no one driving it and then just put in my location and it's driving me to the location. Please keep your hands off the wheel. The Waymo driver is in control at all times. You're here. Please make sure it's clear before exiting. The cost is about the same as an uber and I was really impressed with how well it did navigating me all the way to the trailhead. In case you're wondering this is a very popular hike. This is the parking lot at 7 30 a.m on a Tuesday. This is Camelback Mountain which is one of the most iconic natural formations in the entire Phoenix Scottsdale area. This trail is rated extremely difficult. We're gonna go up this side and then down the cholla side. I still can't believe that I took a driverless taxi to the trailhead. That was such a cool experience and I'm so excited about hiking this hike too. I've been wanting to do this for a long time and I love winter desert hiking. The entire trail that I'm doing today is less than 2.5 miles in length but it is incredibly difficult with 1400 feet of gain and loss. We're a quarter mile in and you can tell this trail is going uphill pretty quickly as there's the parking lot we started from. The trail starts gradually and then it hits switchbacks and then by the end you're basically just climbing up rocks to get to the summit. As you come around the bend you can see how steep this is starting to get. There's handrails that basically go up the side to help you pull yourself up. This is the main reason I didn't bring the kids is that it's just really steep in short periods and so you can't really go up there with four-year-olds. Pretty epic though and this is just basically a stair master to get up to the top of this section. I will say that if you don't like this part you definitely don't want to do this hike. It only continues to get worse from here. At least in this section you have roughly hewn stairs and you have a handrail that you can pull yourself up. There's one more section with that and then after that you're on your own. As someone who loves unique and challenging hikes though I will say this one was right up my alley. I loved just seeing what was around the next bend. When I got to the top of this section and looked on I could see little people scaling rocks going towards the summit and I knew that this was what was going to be in store for me. I was super impressed too with how difficult this trail was and the fact that I passed over a hundred people while I was hiking up on a Tuesday. It's an incredibly popular trail for the area. Just a reminder this is really not much of a trail it's more just scrambling up rocks all the way to the top. It's steep but the view is epic. I can't wait to get to the summit. The next few sections are basically just boulder fields that you continue to climb as you make it towards the summit. I do want to say you shouldn't be doing this in the heat unless you're prepared as there are signs that people have died on this trail because of heat exhaustion. In case you're wondering what Amy and the kids were up to they went and had a nice leisurely breakfast at the hotel and then spent some time in the spa. We made it to the summit. To say the views are amazing up here would be a severe understatement. You can see incredibly far because of the topography of the land. I was actually blown away by the fact that I was only 1200 feet up from the trailhead and I had views that were this good. Check it out there's a Christmas tree up here and it says Camelback Santa will be out to pose with you and give you candy canes every weekend before Christmas. After soaking in the views for a little bit longer and having a snack I started my way back down the other side of the mountain on the Cholla trail. I will already say that this is more actual scrambling so I mean look at that that's what you need to scramble down to get to the next section so I think it's going to be a lot flatter down there but up here it's like legit scrambling. I can't imagine going back down the way I came up because of how steep it was but after going down this section it's more exposed so you have bigger drops on both sides of you and some of the movements are more scrambling so you actually have to use your hands and your feet to climb down some sections on this part of the trail. Overall it's probably a little bit more gradual since it's a little longer but it definitely has some more technical moves. All this to say that this isn't a trail that you should be afraid of if you're a seasoned hiker but you should definitely know what you're getting into when you hike something like this. We made it off of the mountain that was an incredible hike definitely not for everyone though my legs feel like jello and they're going to be wobbly for the next few days I think and definitely some exposure and some scrambling on hands and feet on the way back down. I'm going to pick up the family and we're going to head on and explore some more. After going back to the hotel and picking up the kids we headed out to go to Butterfly Wonderland. Butterfly Wonderland is the largest indoor butterfly conservatory in America. Upon entering you'll watch a 15-minute 3D movie on butterfly migration before hanging out with some of the workers to see the butterflies exiting their cocoons and then going into the conservatory itself. One of the highlights for my kids is that they gave us a sheet that had all of the different butterflies on them and they were able to look at the sheet and see what each butterfly was called. Even though it was the middle of winter and it was cold outside the butterflies were very active because it was nice and humid inside. While we were exploring we saw dozens of different types of butterflies and a couple even landed on us. How much you enjoy this experience comes down to how much you like seeing butterflies but there are plenty of families here and there were adults by themselves and everybody seemed to be having a good time just watching the butterflies flying around and seeing where they're going to land. My kids stayed for about an hour in here. There's also some reptile and insect exhibits inside and there's a few fish tanks if you want to see those as well. If you're interested you can also buy crickets that you can eat yourself while you're here. Cricket caramel crunch. So whether or not that's worth it for you depends on how much you like butterflies but my kids spent about two hours there just wandering around and seeing it all and we have a lot of fun. There's also an aquarium here but we didn't visit that on this trip. The kids were tired so we just headed back had a rest time at the hotel and then did some swimming. If you're an adult who doesn't need rest time though here's a couple options of things we've done on previous visits to Scottsdale. First check out Taliesin West. Once the studio and home of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright it's now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site dedicated to the architect. You can take a one-hour self-guided tour and it's definitely a great way to learn more about the famous man. Next you could also check out the Musical Instrument Museum which is technically in Phoenix. This is one of my favorite museums in the entire world as it has thousands of different musical instruments many of which you've never seen before. You can walk around and see videos on how each of them work and it's a pretty incredible place to explore. Lastly you could head over to the Desert Botanical Garden which is 140 acres and it's located in Papago Park. There's multiple trails you can walk through and all sorts of different plant life from all over the desert. All right now back to our last afternoon Scottsdale. We're back in Old Town to explore a little bit and to go have dinner at the Mission. Our first stop was the Museum of the West. I had no idea what to expect with this museum but I was actually blown away by how awesome it is especially the exhibit they had on John Clymer who was an American painter from 1907 to 1989. His work is incredible and I'd never even heard of him before so I enjoyed just wandering around his exhibit and seeing all the different pieces he'd created. This is just one of the exhibits that you can see here and the museum was created in 2015 and it's two stories with 43,000 square feet. Depending on how interested you are in this you could probably spend a couple hours here. After that we explored the downtown a little bit more spending some special time with the official icon of Scottsdale One-Eyed Jack. This area of the city is really nice to walk around as there's some public art and sculptures you can see and then there's lots of souvenir shops that you can check out. We especially liked the Wild West Trading Post which had a lot of things for my kids to look at and then it had some cool art and it had shirts and all sorts of other souvenirs. As we left the store the sun was starting to head down and it was about time for our reservation so we walked down past the old Adobe Mission to the restaurant called the Mission which is right next door. This place came highly recommended and I would suggest you get reservations as it can get very busy on the weekends. I definitely recommend starting your time with some table side guacamole. Also when you have table side guacamole with kids you get it made with no spice and you get jalapenos on the side. I don't want the spice so not just for the kids. They're also famous for their margaritas here so we had to get one of those to try as well. As you can tell no one wants to sit with me everybody just wants to sit on mama's side. Maybe I should sit over there too. This is the two-person pork shoulder platter you got pork shoulder right there you got tortillas and then you got your toppings and you can make tacos. That is good. Everything. This is legit probably the best thing we've had in Scottsdale. So good. So if you're looking for a spot to eat I cannot recommend the Mission enough it was fantastic. We loved everything that we got. And just like that our two days of adventure in Scottsdale are done. Hopefully you enjoyed coming along with us. We'll see you on the next one. Bye. Looking for more Arizona content check out this road trip I did with my dad.