State Nickname:
Grand Canyon State

State Motto:
"God Enriches"

State Summary:
Ahhhh, Arizona, a place where you can drive with your windows down at any time of year.  Summer heat notwithstanding, when the sun goes down on this desert landscape, so can the car windows.  The minute the glass disappears into the door, warm breezes with scents of desert scrub brush or Ponderosa pine fill the car. Arizona is a state with is own natural aromatherapy year round, and you often find yourself settling back into your seat with a long sigh of relaxation.   I just love driving in Arizona. 
 
One may think Arizona is flat and bland, but in truth, it has an elevational change of 12,000 feet! Arizona’s lowest point is only 70 feet above sea level where the Colorado River drifts through the Sonoran Desert.  Yet, did you know snow and ice are common in the Grand Canyon in the winter?  It’s a beautiful site when the white dusting of snow sits on the crags and niches of the orange red walls of the canyon. 
 
Driving Arizona lets you feel the changes in topography as you watch it change outside your car windows.  It is hot and dry with sparse cacti and desert juniper in the south where Arizona shares the Sonoran Desert with Mexico.  As elevation rises, you notice Saguaro cacti become more numerous and more spectacular.  Then you pass into the Red Rocks area and Sedona you see the brownish green of lowland desert be replaced by soaring mesas of red and ochre stone.  You start seeing trees like gamble oak and quaking aspen line creek bottoms. Then you ascend the Mogollon Ridge (say “Mug-ee-yon”.)  Below are the dusty tones of the desert, but around you is green grass and fir trees that whisper in the wind and lead to   Flagstaff.  Here is the largest contiguous forest of Ponderosa Pine plus skiing in the winters.  You can also ski in Tucson, believe it or not.  Continuing on you find Arizona’s highest point, Humphreys Peak (12, 637 ft.)  Its all forest, but when approaching the Grand Canyon, you suddenly break out into the great desert highlands of Utah and Colorado, where the Painted Desert touches the Four Corners in all its beauty.
 
So if you think Arizona is dry and flat, go drive it!  Plug into your Blitzify app to know where help lies in case of an auto emergency.  Blitzify can find you safe, caring, roadside assistance by accredited service stations who won’t “take you for a ride”.  Just take a tip from me…if you are driving a normal car on a dirt road and the only other vehicles on you see are 4WD trucks like a Ford F-250s or Chevy Silverados, turn around and get back to the pavement quickly, or resign yourself to changing a tire soon. Blitzify can help you with that too!