Arizona: Saguaros, Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater

Capital: Phoenix

Largest City: Phoenix

Population: 7.1 million

Admitted: 1912

Arizona is located in the southwestern United States. It is notable for having the Sonoran Desert and being very hot. Along with the desert, it also has the Grand Canyon, which is one of the largest canyons in the world. It stretches for 277 miles and the Colorado River flows through it. In April of 2021, my husband and I visited Arizona on a trip out to a few western states.

Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Park

We began our visit at the Grand Canyon National Park. Since it is the Grand freakin' Canyon, I decided to stay in the national park, which typically does not happen since the hotels in the national parks are usually above my ideal price range. We arrived in the late afternoon. We had dinner at what seemed like the only restaurant in the whole park, saw a couple of elk and grabbed a few souvenirs. My keychain from the park is probably the most disappointing out of all the national parks I have been to. The hotel had non-existent cell-phone service and no television, so it definitely felt like we were in the backwoods.

In the morning, we awoke early to see the Grand Canyon before the crowds arrived. We just walked around the south rim. It was massive and very grand. The morning sunshine made the colors of the rock pop-out nicely.

Early morning viewing of the Grand Canyon

The second national park we visited was Saguaro National Park. The park is divided in half by the city of Tucson. The park was not busy at all, and we completely fell in love with the massive cacti. Saguaros are native to the Sonoran Desert, which include parts of Arizona, California and Mexico. The flowers that bloom from the saguaro in May and June are Arizona's state flower.

Wishing I could take a saguaro home with me at Saguaro National Park

Historical Arizona

While the national parks were lovely, we still visited a few more monuments and historical aspects of the state, including:

• Meteor Crater National Landmark - Around 50,000 years ago, a meteorite crashed in Arizona and the impact left a crater. At the crater impact site, you can see the crater, visit a museum and a gift shop. You cannot go inside the crater, only view it from a platform.

• Montezuma Castle National Monument - Around 700 years ago, the Sinagua people built and lived in this neat historical cliff dwelling. They used ladders to get into it, and the national park service did tours into the monument until the 1950s. Now, you can only view it from below. With our national park pass, it was free.

Viewing the cliff dwelling from 700 years ago at Montezuma Castle National Monument

• Tumacacori National Historical Park - This was a Catholic Church used by Spanish missionaries in the 1600s. Much of the church is still intact. The park also features a museum and orchard. With a national park pass, it was free to visit.

The Cities and Towns

While in Arizona, we also stopped at a few notable towns and cities:

• Sedona - Sedona is a scenic city with lots of red rocks and tourists. While there, we went to Chapel of the Holy Cross that is notable for being built into a red rock.

Visiting a chapel built into red rock in the scenic city of Sedona

• Jerome - Jerome grew due to cooper-mining. Once the cooper was gone, it became a ghost town. It went from nearly 10,000 people in the 1920s to less than 500 today. The most fascinating thing about Jerome was the sliding jail. The sliding jail has moved 200 feet from its original location.

• Nogales - Since we like to do different things, we drove the furthest south we could go in the state until we reached Nogales where we had a lovely view of a gigantic border wall. Because of Covid-19, we could not cross the border into Mexico, but I definitely was extremely tempted after we spent double the hotel prices on our side of the border.

• Tombstone - We went here on a whim as I saw we were nearby. Tombstone is famous for its wild west history and inspired the 1993 film with Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell. While there, we went to an interesting cemetery which had a lot of gruesome deaths listed on the tombstones such as "head ran over with a wagon wheel." Whether it was factual or not is hard to say, but it definitely fit the wild west vibes.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed my trip to Arizona. It was not super hot when I went, so maybe if I went in the summer, I would have been more turned off from the state. However, it had a lot of variety to offer with the landscape, the Grand Canyon, the saguaros and the historical parks. I would like to return one day to experience more of what it has to offer.