Besides the Valley Verde Train, we'd like to do one other day trip duirng our week in Sedona and don't want more than about a 45 minute drive each way. A shorter drive works fine too.

Candidates are

(1) Montuzuma's Castle // For DS 17, though, the last time he was there he was just 12, so he might enjoy seeing this again. // I think, though, I've just been here a few too many times and maybe do unfair comparisons of this to Mesa Verde which DS has never been to, but Montezuma's Castle is a favorite of some in our group who go on every Sedona trip. They are leaving the itinary to me, though, this trip, as they get to Sedona way more often than we do.

(2) V-bar-V heritage site (We've never been.) // We did Palatki last time we were in Sedona when we had a high clearance vehicle and enjoyed this. This sort of sounds like a sister place (with more petroglyphas). I'm guessing we'd enjoy this.

(3) Jerome (We've never been.) One of our company's Claims Managers who I am in regular meetings with over the phone just loves this place, thinks it' so quirky and fun / her favorite tourist place to go in all of AZ. She lives in Phoenix. Not sure what we'd do here (wander art places, stop at Audrey headframe park, stop by the Gold King mine area??) // Might be worth trying - not sure I'd know if we'd like it or not unless we give it a try. // More about us -- not really into shopping or wandering stores. Did a recent gold mine tour in Breckenridge, Colorado which was to my surprise quite interesting. It was one of those things we just did to kill some time (downtime from skiing), that ended up instead of being cheesy quite enjoyable and educational).

Note: I haven't been to Tuzigoot either, so that could be (4). It didn't initially make it to the list, though.

I'm kind of leaning to (2) V-bar-V heritage site, but don't have too much of a clue. I hear Montuzuma's castle and Jerome mentioned on this forum way more often as day trips that people do rather than this one which has be second guessing. But given how much we like Palatki (also not mentioned as often as the others) and the good Tripadvisor reviews, it may be a good choice. So which of these three would you choose for us and why?

The main purpose of the trip is to hang out in Sedona, but with a full week there we were thinking of putting one of these on the tentative itinary.