Prickly Pear Inn

About Prickly Pear Inn

Paul and Cherie Morina came back to the Valley of the Sun after running a hotel and convenience store business in Alaska, fell for a hacienda-style property above a meandering plaza on Cave Creek Road, and built something that could only exist in this specific town. The lobby is Grumpy Ole Mule Mercantile, a well-stocked western shop where you can grab a bottle of wine for the balcony, pick up a trail map, or buy a gift worth giving. It doubles as check-in. Cave Creek does much of the work. Frontier Town is directly across the street. The Cave Creek Museum, art galleries, Elysian Desert Distilleries, and a main street built for wandering are all reachable on foot. Eleven individually named rooms are arranged around a courtyard on Prickly Pear Plaza.

What Prickly Pear Inn Is Known For

What Prickly Pear does better than most is put you in the middle of the thing you came to see. Properties in the Phoenix metro area sell proximity to Cave Creek as a day trip. Here you are sleeping above the main street, walking to Frontier Town before the crowds arrive, and hearing the town come alive below your balcony in the evening. For a boutique property in a western town with real bones, that is not a small thing.

Amenities

• WiFi
• Full kitchen in every room
• Private deck or balcony (most rooms)
• Free underground covered parking
• Stumblina's Cantina on-site
• City Creamery Ice Cream on-site
• Local artist paintings in every room
• No resort fees or hidden charges

The Room

Each of the rooms is individually named and individually decorated. The Bearded Room, the Bunny Ears Room, the Purple Room, the Pancake Room, the Santa Rita Room: each has its own look within the same rustic-modern register. All rooms include a fully equipped kitchenette with a full-size refrigerator and freezer, cooktop, microwave, toaster, and in-room coffee maker; pillowtop beds; a TV including HBO; an in-room safe; and free WiFi. Rooms 203 through 209 have large private patio decks, many with mountain views. Rooms 201, 202, 210, and 211 share access to a large covered common patio deck furnished for outdoor relaxing. Bathrooms run large, with walk-in showers in some rooms and separate vanity areas in others. Paintings by local artists hang on the walls. The rooms feel like someone made deliberate choices about what you would find in them.

The Grounds

The Inn sits on the second story of Prickly Pear Plaza, a hacienda-style property built around a courtyard of umbrella-shaded tables and covered patios along Cave Creek Road. The plaza level below the rooms holds Stumblina's Cantina for lunch and dinner with alfresco seating, City Creamery Ice Cream, Grumpy Ole Mule Mercantile, Copper Rose Salon and Spa, and Teeslanger T-shirts. El Encanto restaurant is immediately next door with a courtyard and pond of its own. Free underground covered parking sits directly below the building, with a 7-foot height limit. In an Arizona summer where temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees, getting your car out of direct sun is not a small thing.

The Experience

Staying at Prickly Pear is staying inside Cave Creek rather than outside looking in. The town's shops and restaurants are visible from your balcony and reachable on foot, and the morning before the trail gets busy is a good time to take a coffee out to the deck and watch the desert come alive. Roger and the team are named by guest after guest as the kind of staff who go well beyond the transaction: making restaurant recommendations that consistently land, accommodating last-minute reservation changes without friction, and occasionally offering to drive guests somewhere when they need it. The full kitchen in every room means you can reheat leftovers from next door, keep wine cold for the balcony, or start the day without leaving the property. Repeat guests are a noticeable pattern in the reviews. That pattern is not an accident.

Details

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Things to Do Near the Sonoran Desert foothills, north of Scottsdale