Arizona road trip: when to go, what to see and how to plan it

The South Rim, the most visited, is open year-round and served by a free shuttle between viewpoints. The North Rim, 300 metres higher and wilder, is only reachable by car from mid-May to mid-October. Descending into the canyon is no small matter: the Bright Angel and South Kaibab trails drop more than 1,000 metres, and aiming for the river in a single day is discouraged. Allow at least one night on site for a sunrise and a sunset.

Two hours south of the Grand Canyon, Sedona is ringed by towers and arches of red sandstone. The Cathedral Rock, Devil's Bridge and West Fork hikes are done early before the heat and full car parks. Jeep tours reach the less accessible formations, and the Chapel of the Holy Cross is set into the cliff. The mining village of Jerome, clinging to the mountainside, rounds out a day. Sedona stays expensive for lodging.

Around the small town of Page, the Antelope slot canyons, Upper and Lower, are visited only with a Navajo guide, booked several weeks ahead. Horseshoe Bend, a bend in the Colorado, is a 20-minute walk from a paid car park. Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon Dam reservoir, is toured by boat or houseboat from Antelope Point. The best canyon light is around midday.

To the south, the Sonoran Desert is the only place in the world where the saguaro grows, a candelabra cactus that can live 200 years. Phoenix lines up golf courses and resorts, with the Desert Botanical Garden and, in March, baseball spring training. Tucson, more modest, borders both sections of Saguaro National Park and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The whole south is best avoided from June to September, when temperatures exceed 40 °C.

The east of the state keeps its Wild West sets: Tombstone and the OK Corral gunfight, Bisbee and its copper mines. Further north, on the Navajo Nation, Monument Valley unrolls its buttes along a 27-kilometre track, and Canyon de Chelly holds Anasazi cliff dwellings still farmed by Navajo families. Petrified Forest park and the Painted Desert close the loop toward New Mexico. It links easily with California to the west.

At 2,100 metres, Flagstaff is a university town surrounded by the world's largest ponderosa pine forest, crossed by Route 66. It is the cool base for the Grand Canyon in summer, and the starting point for Sunset Crater and the Wupatki ruins. The Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was discovered in 1930, is visited in the evening. In winter, the Arizona Snowbowl resort opens on the San Francisco Peaks, the state's highest summits.