Friday, Sept. 6, will be the date for the first of the city of Sedona’s four Red Dirt Concerts, taking place at Posse Grounds Pavilion at the Barbara Antonsen Memorial Park on Posse Grounds Road.
For the last eight years, the fall concert series has kicked off the fall festival season in Sedona and, by extension, the fall tourist season.
We’re covering the musical acts, starting last week, with a schedule in today’s edition of The Scene.
The Sedona Winefest will return to Posse Grounds Park on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 28 and 29. Local wineries in the Verde Valley and wineries from around Arizona will bring their vintages to the park for two days of tastings, sales and live music.
The Sedona Arts Festival opens at Sedona Red Rock High School on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12 and 13, bringing artists from all over the Southwest to Sedona for an outdoor festival. Proceeds benefit a scholarship fund for SRRHS students.
The Sedona Car Club’s 41st annual car show will also be held Oct. 12, at the Sedona Airport. The car show pairs with the Sedona Airport Family Fun Day, which is an open house at the terminal featuring vintage airplanes, high-tech aircraft, military aircraft and fighter planes, both historic and replicas. The event is hosted by the Sedona- Oak Creek Airport Authority, a nonprofit organization that manages the airport on behalf of Yavapai County.
This year’s list of aircraft has not yet been announced, but past years have brought in World War II-era bombers and transport craft, a Ford Tri-Motor from the 1930s and combat jets. Last year, the U.S. Marine Corps flew in a massive Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey and two combat helicopters, a Bell UH-1Y Venom and Bell AH-1Z Viper. A B-24 Liberator bomber named “Executive Sweet” used to visit and offer flights, but the aircraft has since become a museum piece.
The inaugural Toast the Trails event will be coming the week of Oct. 12 through 19, benefiting the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund.
The Sedona Arts Center’s 20th annual Sedona Plein Air Festival will return from Oct. 18 to 26. Painters from around the country will spend nine days painting outdoors around Sedona and the Verde Valley with a final sale at SAC of the works they created during the week. I own a few small pieces I’ve acquired over the years.
The city will host the Great Pumpkin Splash on Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Sedona Community Pool. The city may add a fall festival to this event following the announcement that the Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks has canceled its annual Oktoberfest.
Fortunately, the town of Clarkdale will still host its annual Clarktoberfest downtown on Oct. 5, for those looking to drink fall beers and listen to music.
The highlight of the fall is the Safe and Fun Trickor- Treating event, happening on Thursday, Oct. 31. My eldest daughter asks me at least once a day how many more days there are until Halloween.
This will pair with two events at Tlaquepaque, the Marigold Mural Project, which features large blue panels painted with marigolds and calaveras on which visitors can write messages to loved one who have died, followed by Dia de los Muertos the following weekend.
Down in the Village of Oak Creek, the Oak Creek Arts and Crafts Show will return to Sedona Vista Village on several dates: Sept. 13 to 15, 20 to 22, and 28 and 29, and Oct. 4 to 6, 18 to 20 and 25 to 27.
The Thunder Valley Rally will bring motorcycles and classic rock bands to Cottonwood on Sept. 20 and 21, the Jerome Ghost Walk will take place Friday and Saturday, Oct. 4 and 5, and the 65th annual Fort Verde Days will kick off with a parade on Saturday, Oct. 12, and events through Sunday at Fort Verde State Historic Park.
Sedona’s festivals also draw tourists from around the Verde Valley, Northern Arizona and Phoenix and we can expect more traffic on Sedona’s roads, especially on the weekends, but overall, traffic and tourism is down from the 2022 peak. We saw a considerable spike in 2021 after national and worldwide pandemic restrictions and lockdowns lessened, and visitors were eager to get out and make up for lost time and missed vacations, but those numbers have fallen back to the baseline.
The fall tourism season is less busy than the spring as Sedona residents cope with six weeks of rolling spring breaks around the country. In the fall, those overall tourist numbers are spread over a longer time period.
Enjoy what events local organizations have to offer, leave early, don’t be afraid to carpool or walk a bit further from where you have to park and enjoy the fall festivals.
It’s the tourists and their spending that make these big events profitable for organizers, after all, allowing us to enjoy far more events than are offered in other towns our size.
