I used to visit Oak Creek Canyon and swim in the early 70's. Cant get tot the water for the houses, today.
One of the most scenic drives you can make is to start in Flagstaff, go south thru the canyon to Sedona, then thru Cottonwood and Prescott to Quartzite, south to Yuma and west to San Diego.
Me too, I live in Flagstaff so when I was a teen I went to Oak Creek every weekend I could in the summer. Now it sucks from over crowding, lack of parking, having to pay to get in, and finally every low life from the big city hangs out there, well except for rude and smelly tourists. I seriously haven't gone to Slide Rock in 30 years because of the aforementioned.
Flagstaff is a commy faggot liberal city now because of NAU. I'll leave it at that.
It is a beautiful and temperate place to live though but kind of lacking in water as far as streams. Well we have shit creek which is the RiodeFlag, and lake Mary has ugly brown water.
The nicest thing I can say is we have few flying insects which I must say is the #2 thing I like about living here. If we get a nice monsoon season, like this year, it is just gorgeous and green "for AZ".
You couldn't pay me to live in Phoenix or Tucson!
Camp Verde isn't a bad place to live but the small town atmosphere is leaving because of - you guessed it, commy faggot liberals moving in.
Ashfork area still has reasonable land prices but it's juniper landscape and is a small town. Same with Seligman.
The White Mountains is a very pretty place and gets more moisture and has more lakes and streams. I wouldn't mind living there myself.
I have a thing for Idaho but when I retire it's going to be near high altitude for 3 seasons , then if I can work it out somewhere else for winter.
BTW Alpine WY, Star Valley, and the Ketchum Idaho areas are awesome places to vacation and camp.