Founder · Editor · Photographer
Founder, Travel Blogger, Content Creator, Photographer & Influencer
Kimberly Conner is an Arizona-based travel writer, content creator, and photographer who founded AZ Travel Tips to share honest, on-the-ground guides to the Grand Canyon State. She has spent the past several years personally exploring, photographing, and documenting Arizona's day trips, hidden gems, scenic byways, and outdoor adventures for a community of 230k+ engaged travelers across Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Her work focuses on the trips most visitors miss — the slot canyons without a permit lottery, the small mining towns reborn as artist communities, the seasonal moments (poppy superblooms, aspen color, monsoon waterfalls) that reward people who plan around them. Every guide on this site is something she has personally done, often multiple times, in different seasons and with different travel companions.
Beyond travel writing, Kimberly is a working photographer whose images of Arizona landscapes have been shared widely across social platforms. She lives in Arizona full-time and writes about it the way you'd want a knowledgeable local friend to — practical, opinionated, and free of tourist-brochure language.
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Phoenix has one of the most generous travel radiuses in the country. In under two hours you can be in red rock country, a pine forest, or a former copper-mining town. After years of running these routes, here are the 15 day trips I actually do — and the ones I quietly stopped recommending.
Tucson sits at the convergence of the Sonoran Desert and four sky-island mountain ranges. That gives it a day-trip radius that runs from saguaro forests to pine-covered 9,000-foot peaks. Here are the 12 trips locals actually take.
Arizona's icons get the crowds. Its quieter places get the magic. Here are 20 hidden gems — slot canyons, mineral springs, ghost towns, and overlooked state parks — that I've documented over years of exploring the state.
If you only have one day in Sedona, this itinerary will give you the best of the red rocks without the parking nightmares or the tourist-trap meals. I've done this exact loop dozens of times.
Arizona has more federally designated scenic byways than almost any other state. After years of driving them, here are the ten that consistently deliver — with routes, must-stops, and seasonal notes.
Jerome was once the richest copper-mining town in the territory. Today it's a working artists' community of about 450 people clinging to the side of Cleopatra Hill. Here's how to spend a perfect day there.
Hidden in a forested canyon between Payson and Pine, Tonto Natural Bridge is the world's largest natural travertine bridge — a 183-foot arch over a green pool. Here's how to visit it well.
Floating the Salt River is a Phoenix summer institution. Here's how to do it right the first time — including the parts nobody on Instagram explains.
27 miles. Five ecosystems. One pie shop. The Mount Lemmon Scenic Byway near Tucson is the most underrated short drive in Arizona.
Once a stagecoach route, now one of Arizona's most spectacular drives — the Apache Trail (AZ-88) winds past three lakes and through deep Superstition Mountain country. Here's how to drive it well.
Havasu Falls is the most photographed waterfall in Arizona for a reason. It's also a 10-mile hike with a permit lottery that fills in minutes. Here's what the trip actually involves.
Phoenix gets winters in the 70s. Flagstaff gets snow. The 2-hour drive between them might be the best in-state getaway in Arizona for a long winter weekend.
Prescott is the easiest summer escape from Phoenix — 5,400 feet of elevation, a historic courthouse plaza, and Whiskey Row's saloons still pouring after 150 years.
Bisbee was the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco at its peak. Today it's a quirky arts town built into a canyon — and one of the best small-town stops in Arizona.
When the winter rains cooperate, Arizona's desert explodes into color for about 3 weeks in March. Here's where to chase the wildflower superbloom.
Same sandstone, two very different experiences. After running both tours multiple times, here's the unvarnished breakdown of Upper vs. Lower Antelope Canyon — which one fits your trip, and which one is overrated for what you'll pay.
Horseshoe Bend went from local fishing pull-off to one of the most photographed spots in the Southwest in about a decade. Here's how to see it without spending an hour in a parking line or fighting for tripod space at the cliff edge.
Six to eight hours at the South Rim is more than enough for a great first visit — if you plan the right two viewpoints, one short rim walk, and skip the tourist-bus loop. Here's the route I use whenever friends fly in for a single day.
Saguaro National Park is split into two halves with Tucson sandwiched between them. They're not interchangeable — the eastern Rincon district and the western Tucson Mountain district feel like different parks. Here's how to pick the right one for the day you have.
Monument Valley is far from everywhere — and that's the entire point. Here's how to plan a one-day visit so the drive in feels like the start of the trip, not a tax you pay to see the mittens.
Flagstaff gets all the summer-getaway press, but Arizona's White Mountains — three hours east of Phoenix — sit at 7,000+ feet, run 30 degrees cooler than the Valley, and stay refreshingly under the radar.
Lake Powell is most famous for week-long houseboat trips, but you can absolutely get a great day there without booking a boat or selling a kidney. Here's the realistic first-timer's plan.
Tombstone gets dismissed as a Wild West tourist trap, and parts of it earn that label. But strip away the costumed re-enactors and you're left with a remarkably intact 1880s silver-mining town that's genuinely worth a half day from Tucson.
Imagine a smaller, greener, almost-empty version of Bryce Canyon. That's Chiricahua National Monument — a forest of volcanic rock pinnacles 2 hours east of Tucson that fewer than 60,000 people visit a year.
Oak Creek Canyon is the 14-mile drive between Sedona and Flagstaff that gets called 'Arizona's other Grand Canyon.' It's a different scale of wonder — narrower, greener, and twistier — and arguably the single most scenic stretch of asphalt in the state.
Camelback is the most-hiked mountain in Phoenix and the most-rescued. Here's what the trail signs don't tell you, and how to actually have a good day on it.
The Superstitions are the most cinematic mountains in the Phoenix metro area — and 40 minutes from downtown. Here's how to do them as a real day, not a windshield tour.
Williams was the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by Interstate 40, and it's the one that kept the road's character most intact. Here's what to actually do there.
Page is the unsung capital of northern Arizona — a small town that happens to sit on top of Lake Powell, next door to Antelope Canyon, and 10 minutes from Horseshoe Bend. Here's the weekend plan.
Petrified Forest is Arizona's most overlooked national park. It's drive-through-able in 3 hours, walkable in 6, and the strangest geology in the state.
Two national monuments, one loop road, almost no crowds. The Wupatki–Sunset Crater loop is the best half-day in northern Arizona that nobody talks about.
Kartchner Caverns is the rarest kind of show cave — wet, living, still growing, and protected from the start. It's also one of Arizona's most strictly-managed attractions, so visiting takes planning.
Three and a half hours from Phoenix, 30 degrees cooler, and lined with trout lakes. Pinetop and Show Low are the Valley's summer escape and most Phoenicians underuse them.
Cave Creek is the Phoenix metro's holdout Western town — saloons, motorcycles, art galleries, and the start of some of the best desert trails in the Valley. Carefree, next door, is its sundrenched twin.
Mount Graham rises from 3,000 feet of cactus to 10,720 feet of spruce-fir forest in 35 miles of paved switchbacks. It's one of Arizona's great sky islands, and almost nobody outside of southeast Arizona knows it exists.
Sedona's 'vortexes' are the town's most famous and most-misunderstood attraction. Here's what they actually are, where to go, and what you'll honestly experience.
Cathedral Rock is the most-photographed formation in Sedona and the shortest 'real' summit hike in town. It's also where most visitors underestimate the scramble. Here's what to know.
Devil's Bridge is Sedona's iconic natural arch and one of the most photographed hikes in the state. Three different trails get you there — here's how to pick the right one.
Watson Lake outside Prescott is a small turquoise reservoir wedged between 1.4-billion-year-old granite boulders. It's one of the most photogenic places in Arizona, and it's 90 minutes from Phoenix.
Yes, Arizona has wine country — and it's good. The Verde Valley grows grapes at 3,500 feet between Sedona's red rocks and the Black Hills. Here's how to do the trail in one day.
Sabino Canyon is Tucson's backyard — a creek-fed canyon at the foot of the Santa Catalinas with year-round water, an electric shuttle, and some of the most underrated swimming holes in southern Arizona.
Mission San Xavier del Bac is the oldest intact European structure in Arizona — a stark white 1797 Spanish colonial church rising out of the Tohono O'odham Nation, 9 miles south of Tucson.
The Mogollon Rim is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau — a 200-mile cliff that splits Arizona in half. Driving the top of it is one of the great Western road trips, and it's 90 minutes from Phoenix.
Tonto National Monument is the cliff dwelling everyone in Arizona has driven past and almost nobody has visited. It overlooks Roosevelt Lake from a 700-year-old Salado-built alcove and deserves to be on more itineraries.
Boyce Thompson Arboretum is Arizona's oldest and largest botanical garden — 400 acres tucked under Picketpost Mountain east of Phoenix. It's a perfect spring half-day and one of the best photo locations in the state.
Hoover Dam from Phoenix is a long day — about 9 hours of driving for 3 hours on-site. Here's how to make it worth the trip (and when to skip it).
If you only have time for one Sedona hike, make it this one. The 3.6-mile Bell Rock & Courthouse Butte loop is mostly flat, jaw-dropping at every turn, and works for almost everyone.
Slide Rock is a genuine natural water slide carved into red sandstone — and one of the most-loved (and most-crowded) spots in Arizona. Here's how to do it without the misery.
For about three weeks in March, Picacho Peak turns into an orange ocean. The rest of the year it's a serious — and seriously underrated — climb with steel cables and a 360-degree summit view.
Wickenburg gets blown past on every drive north out of Phoenix. Stop. The Desert Caballeros Museum alone is worth the hour, and the town is the rare Arizona Western that hasn't been turned into a costume.
Locals call it the Mini Grand Canyon. The Salt River Canyon crossing on US-60 between Globe and Show Low is 2,000 vertical feet of switchbacks and red-rock drama almost nobody plans for. Build in an hour and it becomes the best part of the trip.
US-191 between Clifton and Alpine has 460 curves in 123 miles and almost no traffic. Locals call it the Devil's Highway. It's one of the most underrated drives in the American West.
Arizona's first designated American Viticultural Area sits an hour south of Tucson at 5,000 feet, where the grasslands roll out to the Mexican border. It's also the prettiest drive most Arizonans have never done.
Catalina State Park is the easiest way to feel like you've left Tucson without actually leaving. Dense saguaros, real mountains, and the Romero Pools hike that ends in a chain of granite swimming holes.
Hannagan Meadow sits at 9,100 feet in the middle of Arizona's wildest country, with the closest stoplight 80 miles away. It's where you go when you actually want quiet.
It's part theme park, part real history — and once you accept that, Goldfield is one of the most enjoyable half-day trips from Phoenix.
More than 250 bird species, 15 species of hummingbird, and the only place in the U.S. where you might see an elegant trogon — Madera Canyon is a one-hour drive from Tucson and worth every minute.
Only 50 people per day are allowed into Aravaipa Canyon. The trade for that hassle: a year-round perennial creek, 1,000-foot red walls, and the kind of silence that doesn't exist on Arizona's famous trails.
Ten minutes off I-40 outside Flagstaff sits a national monument most people drive past — and shouldn't. Walnut Canyon hides 800-year-old Sinagua cliff dwellings you can walk right up to.
A 110-room Sinagua pueblo crowns a small ridge above the Verde River — and you can walk through it. Tuzigoot is the under-loved companion to Jerome and the Verde Valley wine trail.
Globe and Miami are real working towns, not curated tourist stops — and that's why they're worth the 90-minute drive from Phoenix. Historic architecture, Besh-Ba-Gowah, antiques, and the best chile relleno east of the Valley.
Most of Arizona's rivers run underground. The Hassayampa surfaces for five miles near Wickenburg, and the lush cottonwood forest it creates is one of the last of its kind.
Camelback gets the headlines, but Piestewa Peak is what Phoenix locals actually hike — steep, fast, in-and-out, with one of the best city views in the Southwest. Here's how to do it right.
Prescott has trademarked the title 'Arizona's Christmas City,' and once you see the courthouse plaza after dark, you stop arguing. Here's how to plan the holiday weekend.
Yuma averages 308 sunny days a year — more than anywhere else in the United States. In January, when Flagstaff is buried, Yuma is 70°F and you can hike in shorts. Here's a real weekend plan.
Canyon de Chelly is one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes in North America — and most visitors blow through in 90 minutes without ever actually entering it. Here's the version that respects the place.
Only 64 people per day are allowed at The Wave. The advance lottery has about a 4% success rate. Here's what the permit system actually looks like in 2026 and the strong backup plan if you don't win.
Most people who drive past Kingman on I-40 have no idea there's an 8,400-foot pine-forested mountain range 14 miles away. Hualapai Mountain Park is one of Arizona's most underrated escapes.
Tempe Town Lake and Saguaro Lake get all the attention. Lake Pleasant is bigger, cleaner, less crowded, and 45 minutes from downtown Phoenix. Here's how to actually use it.
Roosevelt Lake is 90 minutes from Phoenix, holds more water than Saguaro and Canyon and Apache combined, and almost nobody from Phoenix has ever boated on it. It deserves a whole lot better.
Greer is Arizona's improbable alpine village — 8,500 feet, around 600 residents, log cabin lodges that have been operating since the 1890s, and summer highs in the 70s. It exists. Almost nobody goes.
Lost Dutchman sits at the base of the Superstitions 40 minutes from downtown Phoenix. The view from the campground at sunset is one of the best in the state — and the hikes range from family-easy to genuinely brutal.
The Verde Canyon Railroad runs a 4-hour round trip through a canyon you can't access any other way. Most tourist trains are a gimmick. This one is genuinely one of the best in the country.
Meteor Crater is 50,000 years old, three-quarters of a mile wide, and so well-preserved that NASA trained Apollo astronauts here. It's also a privately operated tourist site with a $25 ticket. Here's the honest take on whether it's worth it.
Lowell Observatory sits on Mars Hill above downtown Flagstaff — it's where Pluto was discovered, where the expanding universe was first documented, and one of the best night-sky experiences in the Southwest.
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