Black Canyon Lake is a scenic 78-acre trout fishing lake on the Mogollon Rim in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest — a quiet alternative to the more visited Rim Lakes, with forested shoreline, electric motor boating, and wild horses known to stop at the water's edge.

The confluence of the East Fork and West Fork Black River in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is one of Arizona's most rewarding dispersed camping destinations — reached via the short but rough Home Creek Road (FR 8750), with trout fishing, a spillway swimming hole, and genuine high-country solitude at nearly 7,500 feet.

The West Fork of the Black River along FR 68 in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is one of Arizona's most rewarding high-elevation dispersed camping destinations — a clear mountain river at 7,740 feet surrounded by towering ponderosa pine, wild horses, abundant wildlife, and a short hike to Colonel Spring for fresh cold water, in the heart of White Mountains country that bears the scars and recovery of Arizona's largest wildfire.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior, Arizona is the oldest and largest botanical garden in Arizona — a 392-acre living museum of over 12,000 arid-land plants from the deserts of the world, set along Queen Creek at the foot of Picket Post Mountain, with five miles of trails, the historic Clevenger House herb garden, world-class birding, and three nationally accredited plant collections.

Bradshaw City is one of Arizona's most rewarding and least-visited ghost towns — a former gold-mining boomtown established in 1863 in the Bradshaw Mountains of the Prescott National Forest, once home to nearly 5,000 residents, now a dispersed camping destination where stone foundations, collapsed homesteads, springs, and a wooden mining structure survive in the ponderosa pine forest at 6,358 feet above Yavapai County.

C.C. Cragin Reservoir — more commonly known as Blue Ridge Reservoir — is one of the most distinctive high-country lakes in Arizona, a narrow canyon-bound reservoir near Happy Jack that looks more like a river than a lake, fed by three watersheds at 6,700 feet, stocked with rainbow, brown, and tiger trout, and surrounded by the ponderosa pine forest of the Mogollon Rim Ranger District in the Coconino National Forest.

Canyon Lake is the most scenic of Arizona's four Salt River reservoirs — a 950-acre lake tucked into the winding canyon walls of the Apache Trail with 28 miles of shoreline, 1,300-foot volcanic cliffs, hidden coves accessible only by water, and the famous Dolly Steamboat narrated cruise where bald eagles, bighorn sheep, and peregrine falcons are regular sightings in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains.

The Casa Grande Domes were four massive concrete structures off I-8 in Casa Grande, Arizona — built in the late 1970s as a computer manufacturing facility that was never completed, abandoned for decades, covered in generations of graffiti, and demolished in 2023. Two visits across seven years documented the domes in progressive deterioration — from damaged but standing to structurally collapsing — before the site was cleared entirely.

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Coolidge, Arizona preserves the largest known prehistoric structure in North America — a four-story Hohokam adobe Great House built around 1350 CE, protected by a massive steel canopy, designated as America's first archaeological reserve in 1892, and surrounded by the remnants of a sophisticated farming civilization that irrigated the Sonoran Desert for over a thousand years.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico is one of the most significant and least visited archaeological sites in North America — a UNESCO World Heritage Site preserving thirteen major Ancestral Puebloan great houses built between 850 and 1250 CE in a remote canyon that served as the ceremonial, economic, and astronomical center of a civilization spanning 50,000 square miles of the Colorado Plateau.

Chevelon Canyon Lake, nestled on the Mogollon Rim in northern Arizona, is a serene, hidden gem offering fishing, hiking, and camping. Accessible via a challenging hike, this narrow reservoir is surrounded by rugged canyon views, perfect for nature lovers seeking adventure.

Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains near Portal, Arizona is one of the most biologically diverse canyons in North America — a birding mecca with 370+ species, spectacular rhyolite cliffs, year-round flowing streams, multiple campgrounds, waterfalls, and dispersed camping across one of Arizona's most rewarding sky island ranges.