A Dog-Friendly Trip to Williams, Arizona

On our April 2025 road trip from Colorado to California, we stayed for one night in Williams, Arizona. That morning, we started in Morro Bay, California, and drove through Joshua Tree National Park. We were done with Joshua Tree in the early afternoon, and from there it was about four more hours to Williams. We debated stopping sooner (in Needles or Kingman), but Adam felt comfortable going all the way to Williams.

However, soon after we crossed into Arizona, I started to feel off...dizzy, nauseous, queasy. I chalked this up to car sickness and maybe some questionable fast food. We were approaching Williams, so I closed my eyes and focused on keeping it together.

Unfortunately, I did not keep it together. Almost instantly, I went from feeling "a little off" to soul-crushingly sick. Some kind of food poisoning or stomach flu hit me like a truck, and I found myself getting sick on the side of I-40 in the middle of nowhere. Adam and the dogs were very brave and supportive. Given how late it was, we had no choice but to keep going, even at a painfully slow pace (I believe we had to pull over about 483 times before we made it to Williams).

La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Williams-Grand Canyon Area

Because of our many, many stops, we got to the Williams La Quinta quite late. Apologies to La Quinta, but I can't say I remember much about getting there, because I was in the depths of possibly the worst acute illness of my life. From what I do remember, the Williams La Quinta was nice and well-updated (and I say this as someone with a lot of La Quinta experience).

Our room was comfortable and spacious. I spent most of the night in the bathroom and shower, but the hours of sleep I got in between were great (and I certainly could have done worse, bathroom-wise). Adam and the dogs seemed to get a good night's sleep in the normal sleeping areas. Another positive note for this La Quinta: they had a very nice and convenient grassy area for the dogs. We stopped there on our way out after checkout.

Once again, apologies to the Williams La Quinta. If I get the chance to return, I'll try to not be horribly sick so I can give a better review.

Bearizona 

I'll be honest, we stopped in Williams exclusively for Bearizona. When I was planning the trip, I saw that along our route was a dog-friendly drive-through safari, featuring wolves (one of my favorite animals). Obviously, we had to go. However, when the actual day came, I wasn't sure I was up to it, given that I was still not feeling well. Adam came through once again and convinced me that we should go (he knew how much I'd been looking forward to it). So we made it to Bearizona, with only a few stops along the way.

After we bought our tickets at the entrance, we got an interesting suggestion about our cargo box. Apparently, the wolves find stuff like that *very* interesting, and when you're in proximity to wolves, you don't want to be very interesting. The folks at Bearizona kindly let us leave our cargo box at the entrance so it wouldn't become a wolf chew toy (we picked it back up on the way out).

We started driving through Bearizona, pretending to be interested in the non-wolf animals.

Maya and Piper seemed pretty excited about the deer, goats, and bison, and I had fun seeing their reactions.

Eventually, we made it to the wolves! The combination of my lingering sickness and the fact that you're not supposed to stop meant I didn't get to take as many pictures as I'd hoped, but it was still awesome.

The dogs were very interested in the wolves – I like to imagine they were wondering why they couldn't go play with the big shaggy dogs.

After the wolves, we got to see bears, some of which were even pretty close. Because you're not supposed to stop near the wolves and bears, you're encouraged to loop around multiple times. Unfortunately, I really wasn't feeling up to it, so we only went through once. 

I don't know that I can recommend Bearizona if you have the worst stomach flu/food poisoning of your life. However, I can definitely recommend Bearizona if you love animals (especially wolves and bears) and want a chance to see them up close with your pups.