I kind of dropped the ball last year on planning our Thanksgiving trip.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.

I had an entire itinerary put together months ago, but by that point we knew my husband would be starting a new job and we didn’t know what his vacation schedule would be, so I didn’t actually book anything. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because our planned destination was Death Valley which, as you may have heard, got pummeled by Hurricane Hilary and suffered quite a lot of damage; much of the park was still inaccessible as of November.

But once he was settled into his new position, he was able to request the days off… which left us just two months away from Thanksgiving with nothing booked. So I carved out some time that weekend to research and within a few hours we had flights, a hotel, a car, and a pretty comprehensive itinerary put together for six days in Phoenix, Arizona, a city neither of us had ever visited.

The title of this post, as you may have noticed, says four days rather than six, which is because we spent two days in the adjacent Tonto National Forest. I’ll be talking about those outings in separate posts. For today, we’re going to focus on the time we spent in the Phoenix metro area itself.

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Table of Contents

• Visiting Phoenix
• Desert Botanical Gardens
• Hiking in Phoenix
• Arizona Capitol Museum
• Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)
• Arizona Science Center
• Pizzeria Bianco
• Food and Drink

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Visiting Phoenix

Our first impression of Phoenix was from the air, and holy smokes is it enormous. Logically I knew this, as I learned in my trip planning that it’s the 5^th largest city (by population) in the US. But I didn’t expect it to be quite so sprawling. That’s a lot of people in the middle of a desert, and it really put into perspective all the water-related issues that are plaguing the southwest right now. There’s no way a city that large is ever going to be able to exist sustainably in such a hot, dry climate.

The second thing we learned about Phoenix is that if you wear shorts when it’s 70°F (21°C) outside, you will immediately out yourself as a tourist. Coming from Colorado in November, we were thrilled to be immersed in the warm sunshine and packed lots of shorts and short-sleeved shirts.

For the locals, November is apparently the time of year for puffy jackets during the 50°F (10°C) early mornings and pants and long-sleeved shirts the rest of the day. At least four people commented that, based on our outfits, we must not be from Arizona.

Lesson learned.

The third thing we learned is that life in the desert comes with a whole separate set of concerns than life where the mountains meet the plains. In Colorado, it’s all about bears and mountain lions and – for me, at least – moose. In Arizona, it’s about bees and scorpions and rattlesnakes and kamikaze coyotes that come zooming across the road right in front of your car.

(We didn’t actually see any rattlesnakes or scorpions, but we did witness a coyote run faster than I’ve ever seen a coyote run and narrowly escape being hit by the vehicle in front of us.)

We also saw lots and lots of desert plant life, as Phoenix is situated in the Sonoran Desert.

The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world, thanks to its average of 7 inches (18 cm) of rain per year – much more than most deserts. A main attraction of the Sonoran Desert is the towering saguaro (sa-WAH-ro) cactus. I’d never seen a saguaro before, which is something I can definitely no longer say because we saw thousands of them on this trip.

We also learned quite a few fun facts about the saguaros. For example: 

• It takes about 10 years to reach a height of 4-5 inches (10-13 cm)
• By the age of 30 they are an average of 10 feet (3 m) tall
• They can live for 200-300 years!
• They don’t start growing arms until they are 50 years old 
• The arms are for purposes of reproduction; the cactus only flowers on the end of an arm, so more arms equals more reproductive capacity 
• The vertical ridges in their structure allows for expansion. In fact, a large saguaro is capable of storing 1500 gallons (5680 liters) of water, which is enough to last multiple years.
• A saguaro can lose up to 2/3 of its water supply and still survive

We were also curious how sharp their spines are, so as mature adults we did the very smart thing and touched them. 

They are, in fact, sharp.

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Desert Botanical Gardens 

Speaking of saguaros and other desert plants, just about every list of ‘best things to do in Phoenix’ will include the Desert Botanical Gardens. I was skeptical at first that any botanical garden could be worth a $30/person entrance fee, but in this case it felt like a relatively fair price. The place is enormous and we spent nearly four hours walking through the many desert ecosystems.

As a lover of cacti and succulents, I very enthusiastically examined the many desert plants and took far too many photos. A (somewhat) narrowed down collection is below.

Hours: the gardens are open almost every day from 8:00am-8:00pm. Advance ticket purchase is recommended.

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Hiking in Phoenix 

To experience the desert landscape without a visit to the gardens, you can hit the trails (for free) at one of the many local hiking destinations.  

Our first day in Phoenix, we visited South Mountain Park and hiked the Holberg Trail up to Dobbin’s Lookout. While you can also drive to this summit, we enjoyed the chance to stretch our legs after a morning of travel. It wasn’t too challenging, and it was a good introduction into the Sonoran Desert ecosystem.  

Hike stats: 4.78 miles (7.7 km) with 980 feet (300 m) elevation gain; moderate, as long as it’s not too hot and you have plenty of water.

On day two, we visited Papago Park and walked the short (0.25 miles/0.4 km) trail around and up to Hole-in-the-Rock, which is exactly what it sounds like. Hole-in-the-Rock was historically used by the native Hohokam people as a calendar; there is a second, less visible hole higher in the rock, through which the sun shines at different angles during different parts of the year.

A little bit of scrambling is required, so you’ll probably want to wear shoes rather than sandals, but other than that it’s not too challenging. This is right near the botanic gardens; the two can easily be combined into half a day. 

After a picnic lunch at the tables at Papago Park, we headed further north to Camelback Mountain, which – at an elevation of 2706 feet (825 m) – is the highest point in Phoenix. And it’s not an easy summit to reach. We began at the Echo Canyon Trailhead, from which the trail fairly quickly began a steady ascent. 

Little did we know, this was the easy part. Soon, the trail turns into a scramble. The first section was rather steep and smooth and there were railings provided for safety. I didn’t really use them on the way up, but I definitely clung to them on the way down.  

Beyond this point, it was a scramble almost the entire way to the summit. It was very slow going; the entire hike took us about 2.5 hours, which I guess makes sense for a trail that gains a total of 1760 feet (535 m) in just 1.4 miles (2.3 km) one-way. It was worth it for the 360° views of the Phoenix metro area. However, if you’re looking for solitude, this is not the hike for you. The trail was packed!

Hike stats: 2.8 miles (4.5 km) round trip with 1760 feet (535 m) elevation gain; difficult

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Arizona Capitol Museum 

Phoenix is the most populous state capital in the US and, as the capital, is (obviously) home to the state’s capitol building. However, the building itself is no longer in use, as the state government has outgrown it. Today, there are separate buildings onsite for the state house of representatives, senate, executive, and judicial branches, and the capitol building itself is a free museum.

There are four floors of exhibits, including the history of Arizona, notable people of Arizona, the USS Arizona (the battleship that was sunk at Pearl Harbor), a model train exhibit, and various other items. You can also walk around into the old house, senate, judicial, and executive offices.

The museum opens at 9:00am but we arrived around 8:30am and began our tour at the outdoor Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza. We should have arrived even earlier, as this was a far more extensive collection of exhibits than I expected. We had somewhere to be by 11:00am (more on that shortly) so we ended up having to rush a bit through both the plaza and the museum.

Hours: the museum is open from 9:00am-4:00pm Mon-Fri. There is free parking in the lot at 19^th Ave and West Jefferson St, and the museum is free as well.

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Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)

While my favorite thing we did on this trip was a hike east of the city, this museum was my favorite of the city attractions. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s probably my favorite museum I’ve ever been to! We spent an entire day here – almost 8 hours – and ended up skipping the final thing on our itinerary in order to spend more time touring all the exhibits.

The MIM is advertised as one of the best things to do in Phoenix and claims to have the largest collection of musical instruments in the world. I wasn’t entirely sure what this meant or what to expect, and I’m not even sure words can describe this place, but I’ll give it a try.

The first floor contains two small permanent exhibit halls – one dedicated to specific musical artists and another to mechanically-created music (think player pianos and one-man band machines). Most of the musicians were from before our time so we didn’t spend much time there, and we ran out of time to really appreciate the mechanical hall.

There are also two smaller areas downstairs where you can play various instruments, which for the music nerd in me was a highlight.

But the best part by far is the second floor, which is divided up by continent and contains collections of musical instruments from almost every single country. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. It’s unbelievable!

Upon admission, each person is given a headset attached to a little wireless receiver. As you walk through the exhibits and approach a TV screen, the sound will automatically begin playing in your headset. Not only did we get to see all of these instruments, but we got to hear many of them being played, often in conjunction with traditional or ceremonial clothing and rituals. There were also a handful of videos demonstrating the process of building the various instruments.

It took us about six hours to make it through all of these exhibits… and that was without reading most of the signs because there was just absolutely no way I was going to retain that volume of information (though I did read the name of each one, and my favorite was a percussion instrument from the Philippines called the Bangibang).

My takeaway: the diversity of musical instruments that exist in this world is almost incomprehensible. And yet, there are many similarities. For example, almost every country has some version of a drum, a stringed instrument, and a flute. There are also a lot more varieties of bagpipe than I realized. It’s clear that music has played an important role in most every culture for thousands of years.

I took so many photos; it would be completely unrealistic to share them all. Narrowing them down was extremely difficult and the main reason it took me forever to finish this post. I ended up picking a few from each area of the world. But this is about 3% of what’s actually in the museum.

There were also some more modern instruments that can only be described as bizarre.

Hours: open daily 9:00am-5:00pm; advance admission purchase recommended.

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Arizona Science Center 

Located in downtown Phoenix near Arizona State University is the Arizona Science Center. For us, admission was free with our local museum membership, so we figured we might as well give it a visit. It was interesting, but it was overall a little more juvenile than I was expecting. It was also overrun with noisy school children; all in all, this wasn’t my favorite stop on the trip, but we did enjoy parts of it.

Hours: open daily 10:30am-4:00pm; tickets can be purchased in advance or at the door.

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Pizzeria Bianco

I don’t remember how I stumbled upon the so-called “best pizza in Arizona” during my research, but I did. At first, I assumed this was just some random person’s opinion, but some additional digging revealed that it’s not. Pizzeria Bianco is widely accepted as the best pizza in the state and has been labeled as the best pizza in the US by a handful of notable food critics. The owner – Chris Bianco – has won some of the most prestigious awards in the industry.

Nonetheless, I was still a little skeptical. Best pizza in the US in Phoenix, Arizona? People wait 3-4 hours to eat here? How can any pizza be that good?

We definitely weren’t going to wait 3-4 hours, and they don’t take reservations nor do they do takeout or delivery, so we decided our best bet was to go early. We arrived just shy of opening at 11:00am and found ourselves as the 10^th group in line. Luckily, this was just enough for us to squeak in during the first wave of diners; the restaurant seats only 42 people, with eight tables and six seats at the bar.

Each group gets bottomless bread with olive oil. On the menu are two sandwiches, three salads, six pizzas, and some drinks. We chose the mozzarella salad and the margherita pizza, and then sat back and enjoyed our bread while they were prepared.

The bread is made fresh daily and was excellent. The restaurant makes their own mozzarella, grows their own herbs, and purchases all their vegetables from local farmers markets. The dough is made by hand and fermented for 18 hours. The woodfire oven is in plain view of the dining room, and we watched as the workers stretched and shaped the dough, assembled the pizzas, and placed them in the oven.

The salad arrived first, and it was absolutely delicious. The mozzarella was fresh and flavorful and the seasoning was perfect.

After about a 25 minute wait, our pizza arrived, fresh out of the oven and piping hot. It was the moment of truth. Was it really all it’s cracked up to be?

Without hesitation, my answer is yes! The crust had the perfect amount of crisp, the seasoning of the tomato sauce was excellent, and while I’m no pizza expert, this was definitely the best pizza I’ve ever had.

Hours: Mon-Sat, 11:00am-9:00pm; reservations not accepted.

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Food and Drink 

Aside from Pizzeria Bianco, we sampled just a few other places. Our hotel provided breakfast, and we had a microwave and fridge in our room so we bought groceries for some of our lunches and dinners. However, we ate one dinner out and sampled three local breweries.

Fate Brewing Company in Tempe was our introduction to the Phoenix beer scene, and it set the bar pretty high pretty quickly. Between my flight and my husband’s pints, we sampled six of their beers as well as a pretzel with beer cheese, and ended up purchasing a 4-pack of beer to go.

The next day, we stopped at Goldwater Brewing Company in Scottsdale for some post-hike libations. Once again, I ordered a flight and my husband a pint. If I had to pick, I’d say this was my least favorite of the three we visited… not because it was bad, but because the other two had some exceptionally good beers! 

The following afternoon, we were back in Tempe at Four Peaks Brewing Company, and I’m tempted to say this was my favorite of the three, though just barely. We shared two flights, sampling a total of eight beers, and the Odelay – a Mexican chocolate ale – took the crown. All eight were very good, though.  

And lastly, we had dinner at Cien Agaves in Scottsdale, where my husband enjoyed a prickly pear margarita and some chimichangas while I ordered three assorted tacos. I have no idea how this place compares to other Mexican food in Phoenix, but it was good enough for us.

(By the way, you can find prickly pear flavored everything in Arizona, and we made sure to sample as much as we could. I’m not sure what I expected prickly pear to taste like, but melon definitely wasn’t on the list. There’s almost a hint of bubblegum as well. I realize melon + bubblegum may not sound appetizing, but it is!)

There was also a billboard near our hotel advertising weed pizza, so I suppose that’s an option as well. We did not partake.

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And I think that pretty well sums up our time in Phoenix. After six full days in and around the city, we felt as thought we’d seen most everything we wanted to see and it was time to head back to Colorado. We had the last flight of the night, so we waved goodbye to the warmth and sunshine and hopped on a plane, landing just after midnight.  

Nothing says welcome back like snow and 18°F (-8°C) for our 1:00am drive home.