I’m heading to Phoenix, AZ next week to visit family and I was just curious if any locals would be able to recommend me anything cool to check out. I am already planning on trying to hit the end of spring training but don’t have any other plans. I enjoy good food, art, geeky things like comic and games, and am also a LGBT but im open to any ideas!
I was just there 2 weeks ago. I’m not sure about your time, transportation, or proximity to it, but if you’ve never seen it, the grand canyon. I always thought it’d be touristy and not worth the hype, but it’s insane. 7,000ft up on a massively flat area and there’s just this massive hole in ground that’s 4x as wide as you are higher than sea level. I spent an hour hiking down south Kaibab (and 90+ mins coming back up) and didn’t even exit the white top portion of the canyon (down to ooh ahh point). It’s like 3 hours to drive but totally worth tagging onto my trip from across the country. It’s also a dark sky park. Yes, most of AZ is dark, but there’s something to be said for being in a designated stargazing area in the middle of the night. The other distant places I went to were the Meteor Crater, petrified Forest, Montezuma Castle, Sedona, and Lowell Observatory (flagstaff) where I touched the pluto discovery telescope and hung out for amazing telescope viewing from modern devices from 8-10p. Beware, north gets cold fast.
As for Phoenix, I didn’t have a car while I was actually staying there for a few days, so my travels were all walked from the Hilton resort against the Phoenix mountain reserve. I wondered if I could chuck it up that mountain and, sure enough, I could. I walked 45 mins to get there and 45 mins up to the peaks (mostly flat bike paths until the peaks) and had a gorgeous view of the city at sunset. I enjoyed the variety at 1227 Taproom with 25 beers on tap, several ciders and meads, and some seltzers as well as nearly-expired $4 mystery beer cans. The two mexican/taco joints there were cool too, but every other one I went to was cool too except for alibertos (chain) lol. For having such great winter weather, I did not get the feeling it was walk friendly. Maybe just the wrong section. Coming from a region known to be fast and rude, phx seemed so relaxed. I flew out of 30°F at home and was happy to just be outside in the 70s. Other suggestions here are probably better but it’s just amusing I was just there for the first time