Catherine Hollis

Phoenix in July can make a grown adult hide indoors until sunset. A few hours southeast, one old copper town sits high in the mountains and plays by different summer rules. Old miners’ homes climb the canyon walls, history lives in its museums, and creative energy runs through its streets. Here is why so many

Most Arizona road trips end at a parking lot and a quick photo. This one keeps going, straight up a steep paved path above a sparkling lake, all the way into rooms built by hand more than 700 years ago. Out in the Tonto Basin, near Roosevelt Lake, sits a set of cliff homes you

Most car museums come with a firm rule: look all you want, but keep your hands to yourself. One spot in Glendale throws that rule out the window and hands you the driver’s seat instead. Here you can slide behind the wheel of a classic, then watch the kids ride a carousel and play arcade

Somewhere on the west side of Tucson, a goat named Scooby has been in charge for years, and nobody seems to mind. He arrived as someone’s beloved pet, and he now oversees a whole crowd of rescued goats, chickens, a donkey, dogs, cats, and birds. Every one of them has a name, and every one

Out past the copper town of Ajo, where the highway points toward Organ Pipe and the Mexican border, there is a little restaurant that seems to know half of Arizona by first name. Road trippers heading to the beach stop here. Hikers fresh off the trail stop here. Even the officers working the border stop

Some of the best meals in Arizona hide in places most drivers zip past without a second look. On a busy stretch of East Main Street in Mesa, a modest storefront has been quietly feeding German food fans since 1983. Inside, servers wear traditional outfits, an accordion player works the room, and people line up

Some Tucson grocery lists never make it to a supermarket. They end up at a sprawling outdoor market in the city’s north central area, where farmers, bakers and artisans set up rows of booths week after week. Shoppers arrive with canvas bags and coolers, and many leave with a weekend breakfast, a crate of produce

Arizona summers send most of us hunting for shade, but one Scottsdale building offers a very different kind of escape. Inside, thousands of butterflies from rainforests around the world drift through a humid indoor garden, and they have a habit of landing on shoulders, hats, and the occasional delighted toddler. It is billed as the

The plan is always simple. Grab one loaf of fresh bread, pay, and head home before lunch. Then the deli case comes into view, the pierogi start calling, and somehow the shopping list grows legs. Out in Surprise, a family-run market has quietly built a loyal crowd of West Valley locals who show up for

A pound of strawberries for five bucks is normal at the big chain stores. Out in Apache Junction, shoppers have scored two pounds for a single dollar on a good day. That gap is the reason some East Valley families drive several miles past the usual supermarket just to fill their carts somewhere else. The

Some of the best fish and chips in Arizona come out of a shop so small that barely two people fit inside at once. There are no booths, no host stand, and no dining room. There is a short line on a downtown Flagstaff sidewalk, a few tables tucked into an alley, and a menu

Most bags of flour in an Arizona pantry traveled a long way before landing on the shelf. A small mill in the East Valley flips that story by grinding grains grown right here in central Arizona. One of those grains is Sonoran White Wheat, an heirloom variety with deep roots in this desert. Home bakers,

Somewhere south of Chandler, there is a racetrack where the drivers are not famous pros. They are regular people with regular cars, the same ones parked at the grocery store on Tuesday. Most Arizona locals drive right past the area without knowing it exists. This guide covers where it is, what it offers, and the

Some Phoenix shoppers spend months searching the whole state for one small Japanese sweet, only to find it waiting on a shelf off a busy west side road. That is the kind of quiet surprise this little market has been handing out since 1989. Inside, the shelves hold ramune, natto, miso paste, kombu, bonito flakes

Most Arizonans can name a dozen places to grab lunch, but very few can name a working olive mill in their own backyard. Out past the newer neighborhoods of Queen Creek, rows of olive trees grow in desert soil, and the oil made from them ends up in small cups on a tasting counter. You

Just outside Flagstaff, a quiet canyon hides dozens of stone rooms built right into its limestone walls. People lived in these homes long ago, and many of them are still standing today. A short trail lets you walk right past their doorways, close enough to see how the walls were stacked. Stick around, because this

Somewhere outside Camp Verde, at the end of a bumpy dirt road, a wolf named Luna tips her head back and howls, and a small group of people howls right back. Nobody is behind glass here. Nobody is watching from a distant viewing deck. The wolves walk up, sniff around, and decide for themselves who

Some Arizona traditions refuse to fade, and thank goodness for that. On the west side of the Valley, there is still a place where families back the car into a spot, tune the radio, and settle in for two movies in one night. Kids fall asleep in the back seat before the second feature ends.

Grocery store oranges come with a sticker and a price per pound, but a little farm in Surprise hands you a bag, a wagon, and a whole grove to work with instead. For about $25, families spend the morning hunting through rows of navel oranges, pink grapefruit, lemons, and tangerines, filling one bag with whatever

Plenty of Arizonans dream of cool pines and lake trails for retirement, then see Flagstaff home prices and quietly close the browser tab. About an hour and a half from Phoenix sits a mile-high city with ponderosa forests, granite boulders around blue water, and a courthouse lawn that still works as the town living room.

Arizona does not need a giant name-brand resort to deliver a full day of screams, splashes, and checkered flags. From a pine-forest mountain coaster on Route 66 to an Old West movie set in the Tucson desert, the state is full of smaller parks that plenty of residents have never visited. Some have been around

On the east side of Flagstaff, a small diner on Route 66 has been feeding locals, students, and road crews since long before most of today’s chain restaurants arrived. Burgers come off the grill next to platters of homemade comfort food, and the walls are crowded with antiques that tell their own quiet story about

Arizonans love to brag about the Grand Canyon, and fair enough, it is hard to top a hole that big. Up near Page, though, there is a much smaller canyon that steals the show with color instead of size. Its walls curve like ribbons of red sandstone, carved over time by water and wind, and

Some of the best food in Arizona hides in strip centers that most drivers pass without a second look. Out in Sun City West, one small storefront has quietly become a lifeline for anyone who grew up with Polish home cooking. The shelves hold imported groceries, and the hot deli turns out pierogi made the

Some Phoenix dinners are planned weeks ahead, and some start with a simple question in the car: where can the whole crew sit down tonight without a fuss? On the north side of the city, right off Interstate 17, one ranch-style dining room keeps answering that question for birthday parties, coworker celebrations, and quiet weekday

Some Phoenix families plan their whole weekend around a dinner reservation two hours north. The drive climbs out of the desert and into the pines below the Mogollon Rim, where a tiny town holds an Italian kitchen that people talk about all the way back down the Beeline. The doors open only four nights a

High above the desert near Safford, a mountaintop holds one of the most powerful eyes humans have ever pointed at the sky. Most Arizonans drive past the turnoff without knowing it exists. The machine up there is so large that it takes five sets of stairs just to reach its base. It was once called

Some hobbies live in a spare bedroom or a corner of the garage. Here in Scottsdale, one hobby got an entire park, complete with a ride-on railroad, a historic Pullman car, and a model layout that fills a 10,000-square-foot building. Kids come for the carousel and splash pad, while grown-ups quietly linger by the tiny

Most museums ask you to stand back and admire from a polite distance. On the southeast side of Tucson, one newer spot skips that rule and lets you get close enough to read the rivets on a Soviet tank. It sits in the same corner of town that already draws aviation fans from across Arizona,

Some pilots rent a plane, fly across Arizona, and land in the high country for one reason: a slice of pie. That is not a tall tale. It happens at a small diner tucked beside a runway in Payson, where breakfast comes with a front-row seat to takeoffs and landings. Model airplanes hang from the

Most people in the Valley think go-karting means a few slow laps inside a busy entertainment center. There is another option out in Glendale, and it is a lot faster. A small rental operation here hands drivers real 125cc two-stroke race karts, the same kind people actually race. It also comes with personal coaching that

Plenty of Arizonans save for years to see rows of grapevines climbing Italian hillsides, and they never notice a creekside version tucked into the Verde Valley about an hour and a half north of Phoenix. Near the small town of Cornville, a family-run estate has quietly built terraced vineyards, shaded decks, and a walking path

Most people drive down Southern Avenue in Mesa without a second glance at the college campus beside them. That is a mistake, because close to 9,000 rose bushes are planted right there, in the middle of the Arizona desert. Some of them keep blooming as late as Christmas Eve. The garden costs nothing to enter,