USA - Southwest Highlights
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is surrounded by easily navigable desert parks. Papago Park on the eastern fringe of the city provides a great introduction to desert life, and the nearby Phoenix Zoo is remarkable considering the amount of environmental design necessary to bring any sort of animal to this heat. The Desert Botanical Garden is nearby as well, showcasing the amazing flora of the desert. But the real charm is South Mountain Park. Stretching along the southern border of Phoenix, this is one of America's largest urban parks.
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
Nestled between the Sacramento and San Andres mountains in the Tularosa Basin is White Sands National Monument. These white "sands" are really a 50-mile expanse of fine gypsum that has been shed from the mountains and then been picked up on the prevailing winds and dropped into dunes, some as high as 200 feet. Surrounding White Sands are two giant military installations, Holloman Air Force Base, home to the B2 or Stealth bomber, and White Sands Missile Range, best known for its Trinity Site, where the world's first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Quickly becoming one of the trendiest addresses in the Southwest, Santa Fe's adobe-lined streets still offer some good buys on American Indian art and an insight into the life of one of America's greatest artists, Georgia O'Keefe.
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is one of those cities that one can not visit without feeling the magic of its history and nature. This magic brought eight artists from the east coast in 1912 to form the Taos Society of Artists which still lures those looking for that desert spirit. Taos Pueblo is the most photographed and familiar of all Indian towns, with its large, multi-storeyed structures facing each other across the plaza. Additionally, in the winter, Taos ranks as one of the best of the Southwest skiing destinations.
Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona/New Mexico
Thirty miles north of Ganado is Canyon de Chelly National Monument, where three great gorges have sliced through the plateau under the Chuska Mountains. Generations of cliff dwellers - Hopi and Navajo - have lived along the sandy bottoms of these washes, under cliffs which in places tower to 1,000 feet. In a way these canyons sum up this heartland of America's Indian country. They offer spectacular sculptured stone - and they offer a sense of the silence, space and great beauty that encouraged the Navajo, Hopi and their ancestors to choose this hard, inhospitable land as the heart of their country.
Monument Valley and Navajo National Monument, Arizona/Utah
Some 30,000 acres on the Arizona-Utah border Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park embraces the truly monumental Monument Valley and its punctuated horizon of graceful mesas, spires and red buttes. Monument Valley requires a Navajo guide if you are going off the main road; finding one is absolutely no problem and guided tours are a highly promoted business in the area.
Zion National Park, Utah
Here, in narrow Zion Canyon, is the most dramatic exposure of Navajo Sandstone in the West - some 2,400 feet at the Temple of Sinawava below the Zion Narrows - carved into a stunning array of sheer cliffs, twisting buttes and craggy temples by the busy little North Fork of the Virgin River.
Grand Canyon, Arizona
When you go to the Grand Canyon, go with someone. This way when you leave and it becomes but an amazing memory in your mind, you'll have someone to talk to about it. To anyone who has not gone, your words will sound, well...too grand. To someone who has gone, they will be inadequate, but perhaps spur their mind just enough to remember something new about this amazing feature.
Sedona, Arizona
Sedona has become the over-hyped New Age Santa Fe of Arizona, with high prices and overpriced art as common as millionaire mansions and four-wheel-drive tours to power-vortex meditation sites. However, Sedona is where the Cowboy Artists of America was founded, and the arts are still vital here, with many world-class artists and musicians resident or visiting.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Leave any ambivalence at home. This town demands a response to its completely over-the-top extravagance and assault on the mind and pocketbook. Still, it can be seductive and fun. Las Vegas is a neon valley of round-the-clock risk-taking and, increasingly, endless theme-park extravagance intended to make the town primarily a family, not just a gambler's, destination. See also our online city guide to Las Vegas.