Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun

Arizona’s largest metro area holds 10 cities linked together to create a sprawling megalopolis of glass high-rises and labyrinthine, stacked freeways spreading out over a hot Sonoran Desert valley. Visitors and residents alike tend to refer to the whole area as the Valley of the Sun, or simply Phoenix, after the valley’s largest city. There are pockets of urbanity out in the sprawl, like Scottsdale with its art galleries, high-style eateries and resorts and golf courses, and Tempe with its college-town nightlife, shopping and museums. This area has the state’s best resorts and restaurants, nightlife, museums, and Arizona’s largest airport. The city’s rural desert rings are home to old mining towns, river canyons, and saguaro forests.

Scottsdale

Scottsdale suffers somewhat from its reputation as being high-toned, high-dollar, and maybe even a little pretentious. This isn’t the case, however, in most corners of the always-growing city, which has won numerous national awards for being generally livable, clean, and attractive. It’s true that you see more Hummers and Beemers within Scottsdale’s city limits than in other parts of the Valley (save Paradise Valley just to the north, a mostly residential community that is one of the richest in the nation), but a day’s visit here will likely reveal that there is much more to Scottsdale than beautiful rich people and their high-walled resorts.

Tucson and Southern Arizona

Tucson, the state’s second-largest city and the one with the most character and history, anchors this region of saguaro forests, sweeping grasslands, and quirky desert outposts. Towering Sky Island mountain ranges shoot up from the long desert seas, and the nearby Mexican border looms equally large in this region’s culture and history. Even better, they say a few of those myths and legends of the Old West actually happened here.

Flagstaff and North-Central Arizona

Arizona’s sap-scented high country begins around mile-high Prescott and rises to a great ponderosa pine forest stretching east and north. Even higher is snowy Flagstaff and the bald-rock tip of the San Francisco Peaks, their slopes variegated by white-and-yellow aspens among the evergreens. The pinelands continue across the Mogollon Rim, and on to the conifer-ringed meadows and the clear

streams of the White Mountains. Along the way, Sedona offers fine dining, self-healing, red-rock buttes and shady streambeds.

Navajo and Hopi Country

The high desert grasslands in Arizona’s northeastern plateau country are dotted with a few old cattle and railroad towns, trading posts, and an empty, pastel-painted desert strewn with broken swirling-stone trees. The Vast Navajo Nation is cut deep with redsandstone canyons in which abandoned cliff-face cities and the tracks of dinosaurs create a timeless atmosphere that can be entrancing. On the edge of Black Mesa, the Hopi live atop high cold cliffs occupied for more than a thousand years.

The Grand Canyon and the Arizona Strip

The Kaibab Plateau rises in the Four Corners tablelands in northwestern Arizona; river-cut more than a mile deep into the plateau is Arizona’s signature attraction and one of the world’s most sought-after landscapes—the only canyon on earth deserving of the grand title. Between the canyon’s forested rims is the lonely Arizona Strip, empty save for high barren red cliffs, sagebrush plains, and the water-and-red-rock mazes of Lake Powell.

The Lower Colorado River

The Lower Colorado River flows the length of far western Arizona to Mexico, creating a river-border through this barren hot zone of jagged rock mountains populated by bighorn sheep. The views are long and empty save for the toughest cactus, scrub, and wildflower. The river is a blue-and-green band of rustling, splashing life, and all living things here are drawn to it, whether they be rare birds or water-skiers.