Slide Rock State Park: Freezing But Fantastic Fun

After hiking up to Devil’s Bridge again with my parents, we headed back towards our Airbnb in Flagstaff but made a stop along the way – Slide Rock State Park.

Slide Rock State Park gets its name from the smooth rock bed of Oak Creek that runs through the park. It’s a fantastic little swimming hole that has a strong enough current from the creek that you can go sliding along and down the rocks.

We’d had a number of people recommend it, but we didn’t get a chance to visit it when in Arizona last year, so we wanted to make a concerted effort to check it out this time.

We weren’t disappointed.

Slide Rock is in a very pretty setting. That’s not too surprising seeing as Sedona is a stunning part of Arizona, but it’s a particularly pretty part that has red canyon walls rising either side, lush green vegetation and Oak Creek running down its middle. As you walk towards Slide Rock Swim Area, there’s a little store on the right where you can get drinks, ice cream, etc.

We visited at the beginning of May, so it wasn’t anywhere near as busy as I imagine it gets in the height of summer. We didn’t arrive until about 4pm, so half of the swim area was already in the shade.

Slide Rock State Park is partially dog friendly. Dogs are allowed in the park, but they’re not allowed in the swim area itself which, for most people, is the whole reason for visiting the park in the first place. We had our dog Truffles with us as she’d joined us on the hike up to Devil’s Bridge, so my dad kindly offered to walk her around seeing as he wasn’t planning on swimming and sliding in the water.

He still got to experience our fun from a distance though because there’s a Clifftop Nature Trail that runs alongside Oak Creek from up above. Certain parts of the trail allow you to get a little closer to the edge in order to look down at the swim area.

When you get to Slide Rock Swim Area, there are a couple of larger swimming areas at first, but we continued up the creek a little further to get to the start of the natural water slides.

Shae was the first of us to brave sliding down. It’s not scary going sliding at Slide Rock State Park – what took the bravery was getting in the water in the first place as it was freezing! She was soon underway though, letting the water current push her down the water slides.

There are a couple of sections where you have to swim along a bit further to get to the next slide, then off you go again.

After Shae had gone down first, it was my mum’s turn and she enjoyed it too. It took a bit of cajoling from Shae to get me sliding as the frigid water on certain parts of my body wasn’t an appealing prospect, but I went down in the end and I’m glad I did as it was so much fun.

The first time Shae went sliding down she’d worn our GoPro on her head, so when she decided to go a second time she held on to it using a floating grip so that she could record it from a couple of perspectives. Here’s a video she put together showing both perspectives so that you can enjoy it too 🙂

Final Thoughts

I can see why so many people recommended Slide Rock State Park to us as it’s a beautiful and fun location to go swimming and sliding, especially if you visit after hiking in Sedona. I’d love to visit again in the future a little later in the year once the water’s a little warmer though!