Outside >>

• Best Way to Spend a Summer Day Outdoors Without Breaking a Sweat
  Salt River Tubing
  U.S. 60 East to Power Road, North to the Salt River Recreation Center
  For a relaxing way to cool off on a hot summer afternoon, float down the Salt River with hundreds of your closest friends and Pantera fans. White-water rafting this isn't. Instead, it's a relatively smooth ride (But watch out for those rapids!) to the relaxing tune of '80s hair metal. Open... More >>
• Best Place to Go Camping Without Leaving the Valley
  Usery Mountain Recreation Area
  3939 North Usery Pass Road, Mesa
  480-984-0032
  It's just eight miles north of U.S. 60 on Ellsworth Road, but this county park lets those short on time or thin on camping experience get away from it all. Usery Pass has 73 desert campsites, clean restrooms and showers and hiking trails for every experience level. (We recommend the Merkl... More >>
• Best Place for a Private Hike
  Black Mountain,
  Carefree/Cave Creek
  Squaw Peak is beautiful all the way up. Camelback Mountain gives us a workout, and if we can hang in, we're treated to truly mesmerizing views of the Valley below. But these trails are so darn crowded. It's just not a relaxing hike when we're staring at a stranger's churning buttocks inches... More >>
• Best Day Hike to Help You Forget Phoenix
  Peralta Trailhead, seven miles north of Gold Canyon
  One minute you're staring at the willy-nilly sprawl of Apache Junction, the next you're so isolated and lost in time you feel in danger from Apache warriors. From Peralta Trailhead, you can either head to the right on the Dutchman Trail or left up through the steep-walled Peralta Canyon to the... More >>
• Best Fall Day Trip for the Family (1 Comment)
  Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum
  U.S. 60, three miles west of Superior
  1-520-883-0320
  The 1.5-mile hike through the 323-acre Boyce Thompson Arboretum, the state's oldest and largest botanical garden, is gorgeous any time of the year. But only in fall, as you walk down through the steep-walled Queen Creek Canyon, do you pass through hundreds of different tree species from... More >>
• Best Urban Hike
  Trail 100 from Dreamy Draw Recreation Area
  2424 East Northern
  602-262-6696
  Squaw Peak's backside may be its best side. After a wet winter, the trail is lined with globe mallow and California poppies along the first pitch; a mile farther up and over the saddle, the vegetation has not been trampled by the aggressive procession of treadmill gym rats humping and huffing up... More >>
• Best Hard-Core Day Hike
  The Flatiron Trail,
  Lost Dutchman State Park
  This is one of those trails that's like a video arcade game -- it keeps getting tougher and tougher until it finally beats you. It's only 2.5 miles from the trailhead to Flatiron, one of those cruelly majestic sentinels of the Superstition Mountains. The problem is, the last .9 mile climbs... More >>
• Best Genuine Desert Golf Course
  The Snake Hole Golf and Country Club
  Near U.S. 60 and Idaho Road in Apache Junction
  480-982-1537
  A lot of uppity Valley golf resorts call themselves desert courses, but the reality of it is this: At those places, the whole point is to stay out of the desert. Well, good luck with that at Snake Hole, which isn't so much a golf course as it is an undeveloped quarter section of gravel and... More >>
• Best Golf Course to Gawk at the Scenery
  Gold Canyon Golf Resort's Dinosaur Mountain Course
  6100 South Kings Ranch Road, Gold Canyon
  480-982-9090
  You know your game is going to suffer when you find yourself discussing light and composition rather than club selection. Perhaps that's what makes the Dinosaur Course so difficult: It keeps you blathering on about Asher Durandesque panoramas as you thoughtlessly plunk drive after drive into the... More >>
• Best Day Trip Into Arizona's Prehistory
  Casa Grande National Monument, Coolidge
  1-520-723-3172
  If your kids' idea of history is watching '70s-coifed Michael Landon preside over Little House on the Prairie, perhaps it's time to take them to the Big House in the Desert -- better known as Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. Built around 1350, the four-story Big House sits at the center of... More >>
• Best Professional Bike Shop
  Domenic's Cycling
  1004 South Mill, Tempe
  480-967-7700
  By overcoming testicular cancer and trouncing the competition to win the Tour de France -- arguably the most grueling sporting event in the world -- Lance Armstrong taught us that nearly anything is possible. So, whether you want to live the Armstrong dream of winning the Tour or just to make it... More >>
• Best Place to Walk Away Your Worries
  Franciscan Renewal Center
  5802 East Lincoln Drive, Paradise Valley
  480-948-7460
  As a rule, we snicker at anything resembling a religious experience -- particularly one that's being used as the center of a friend's birthday celebration. But when another guest insisted, "Oh, be a good sport," we rolled our eyes and went to the unusual fete -- at a labyrinth located behind the... More >>
• Best Way to Enjoy a Hummer
  Desert Storm Hummer Tours
  480-922-0020
  Even if you're not impressed by gunshot saguaros and sweeping desert vistas, surely you have to be impressed by a 7,000-pound sport utility vehicle, right? Jesse Wade hopes so. Wade has been giving off-road tours of Tonto National Forest for 10 years and finds that Grand Canyon-eschewing... More >>
• Best Scenic Drive on a Harley
  Bartlett Lake, Tonto National Forest
  We completely understand why our dog loves to ride in the car with his head out the window. Ears a-flappin', tongue a-lollin', nose a-sniffin'. While the helmet law keeps our ears from flapping, nothing lets us experience all the sounds, textures and smells of our Sonoran landscape better than... More >>
• Best Place to Get Soaked
  Arizona Biltmore's Paradise Pool
  A pool and your money are soon parted at this luxury resort, where non-paying guests will sigh contentedly as your stress and cash quietly drain away under the swaying palms. Spy tanning celebrities, cut in front of children waiting for the 92-foot water slide, or swim up to the bar for an $8... More >>