Hull - Moon Arizona & the Grand Canyon

TIM HULL

Arizona is authentic. Its too hot to fake it, too rugged to tell tall tales, too beautiful to commit to the hard sell. All of its institutions, its attractions, and even its mythologies were forged through hard experience, trial, and error.

This is even true of the land, built by the movement and explosion of the earthcanyons ripped open and mountains kicked up over millennia of shaking and oozing. This roiling has provided a wonderland of diversity, buildingall at oncehot and verdant desert scrublands, cool evergreen mountain forests, dry sweeping grasslands, and red-rock, river-carved, fairy-tale canyons, all of which merge with a horizon lit most evenings with postcard-ready sunsets. It remains one of the most exotic destinations in North America, with endless variety, iconic scenery, and a dark history of which the world has never tired.

You will be surprised and changed by Arizona. Here you can easily happen upon an old pioneer graveyard, forgotten and ignored, on a strip of undeveloped desert right next to a gathering of just-built dream homes. This may be the perfect image for the dichotomies of this landscape. Everything here is either ancient or five minutes old.

Theres a reason all those road movies feature scenes in the Grand Canyon State. Theres no better way to see all the state has to offer than to pile in a car and hit the open road. Less than a days drive from anywhere, you can discover something unexpected, whether it be the calm and sunny ease of life along the lower Colorado River, where houseboats and water-skiers pass by great monuments to engineering, or a chance meeting with a rare tropical bird hiding out in the riparian mist of a sky island.

In many a travelers imagination, this place is the home to rattlesnakes, tumbleweeds, and vast tracts of arid wilderness. Luckily, Arizona still has all of these; there are still trackless spaces to explore. But the face Arizona shows to most of the world belies the leaps this once isolated territory has made. The youngest state in the lower 48 is one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, and while nearly constant growth makes for sometimes rancorous debates about land use and natural resources, it serves to create in Arizona a dynamisma flux that perpetuates itself. It is never boring here, and it is always beautiful and unknowable. There is always something, or someone, being created anew ... changing ... blooming.

Arizonas 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 valleys 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 states best resorts and restaurants, nightlife, museums, and Arizonas largest airport. The citys rural desert outskirts are home to old mining towns, river canyons, and saguaro forests.

Tucson, the states 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 regions culture and history. Even better, they say a few of those myths and legends of the Old West actually happened here.

Tombstone, in Southern Arizona

Flagstaff and North-Central Arizona

Arizonas 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. Below the Mogollon Rim, the green edge of a great plateau, posh Sedona offers fine dining, self-healing, red-rock buttes, and shady streambeds.

Navajo and Hopi Country

The high desert grasslands in Arizonas 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 red-sandstone canyons in which abandoned cliff-face cities and the tracks of dinosaurs create a timeless atmosphere that can be entrancing. On the edge of