The list keeps growing. The picks stay opinionated.
5 picks from Phoenix.
Two hours north of Phoenix and 5,000 feet cooler. A town square with an actual courthouse, pine trees that don't belong in Arizona, and a whiskey bar in a building older than statehood. Stay at a Victorian that survived the territorial days, eat dinner at a place that doesn't need a website.
Two hours south, the desert city that got food right before Phoenix did. Sonoran hot dogs at midnight, a tasting menu in a converted gas station, and a mid-century motel with a pool that photographs better than it has any right to. Stay downtown, walk 4th Avenue twice.
Three nights at the South Rim in a stone lodge built in 1935. You wake up to the canyon from your room, hike the Rim Trail at sunrise before the tour buses arrive, and eat elk at a restaurant that overlooks the thing itself. The Grand Canyon earns the superlatives—GOOT's job is to tell you when to go and where to stay.
Two hours north of Phoenix, the elevation changes everything. Ponderosa pine forests at 7,000 feet, a downtown that never became a strip mall, and the kind of burger-and-beer lunch that resets a week of bad decisions. Summer means 70° highs when the Valley's hitting 110°. Winter means actual snow.
Red rocks that photograph better in person, a spa town that earned it, and hiking that starts at your hotel door. Three nights gets you past the vortex tour buses and into the version of Sedona where the light at 7am is the main event.
