Stuff to do in Phoenix after the sesh

The best stoner museum in the Valley, and it isn't close. MIM opened in 2010 and holds more than 15,000 instruments and objects from nearly 200 countries and territories. Your wireless headset starts playing on its own when you step up to a display, so you're watching a local musician play that exact instrument in that exact country. It's channel surfing the whole planet.

The Experience Gallery lets you bang on drums and pluck harps. The Artist Gallery has gear and stage outfits from Elvis, John Lennon and Taylor Swift. Plan on a long visit.

Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio, built over about twenty years by Wright and his apprentices from desert stone and sand. It sits against the McDowell Mountains and is the only National Historic Landmark in Scottsdale. The buildings look like they grew out of the ground.

Pick the self-guided audio tour, which includes a clip of Wright talking, or the guided tour, which hits more stops. Book ahead, then grab dinner in Old Town Scottsdale.

Architect Paolo Soleri, who studied under Wright, lived and worked here from 1956. He poured concrete over mounded earth and dug the dirt out once it set, so the place feels like a curved, hand-sculpted cave. It still makes the famous bronze wind bells, and the gallery is full of them.

Most weekdays you can watch a bronze pour. Pours skip weekends and the hottest days and get canceled for weather, so check first.

Soleri outgrew Cosanti and in 1970 started building Arcosanti, his experimental desert town, about seventy miles north off I-17. Concrete apses, round windows and terraced buildings on a mesa edge, like a set from a sci-fi movie nobody made.

Tours and overnight stays are still offered, but the foundation has cut way back on staff, so confirm before you drive.

The old planetarium got rebuilt as the Dorrance DOME, a 360-degree dome made of thousands of LED panels instead of a projector. It seats 200 and runs space shows and immersive films. Lying back under it with your mind already loose is as close to floating in space as most of us get.

Expect kids by day. It's walkable from the rest of downtown Phoenix.

Opened in 1959, it's the largest visual art museum in the Southwest, with more than 18,000 works including Monet, Picasso and O'Keeffe. Stoners come back for Yayoi Kusama's You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies: a dark mirrored room of tiny hanging lights that repeat forever.

The room has been here since 2006 and was restored and moved to the first floor. Stand still and let it work on you instead of filming it.

Dwight and Maie Heard started collecting Southwest art after moving to Arizona in 1895, and the museum opened in 1929. The collection runs around 40,000 items from Indigenous peoples across the U.S. and Canada, heavy on Arizona: pottery, baskets, textiles, jewelry and Katsina doll carvings, old and contemporary.

It's slower and quieter than the art museum, with courtyards and a memorial to Native American veterans outside. It's a few blocks up Central.

The arts district runs roughly McDowell down to Van Buren, Central over to 7th Street. Murals cover the walls and alleys, including the one locals call Mural Alley along 1 1/2 Street. Walk it in daylight, then come back for dinner. Our Roosevelt Row guide has where to eat.

First Friday is the monthly self-guided art walk run by the nonprofit Artlink since the 1990s. Galleries and pop-ups open across Roosevelt Row and Grand Avenue, with musicians, vendors and food trucks in between. Loud, crowded, great people-watching. There's a smaller Third Friday too.

Roosevelt Row's grittier sibling, roughly 7th Avenue to 19th Avenue between McDowell and Van Buren. Small galleries, working studios, painted planters and more murals, all on the First Friday circuit. See our Grand Avenue page for food.

The calmest way to take in the Sonoran Desert. Paths wind past giant saguaros, spiky agaves and cactus shapes that look like they came off another planet. Everything's labeled, so you can finally name that blob-shaped thing in your neighbor's yard. It runs seasonal art installations and evening events, so check what's on. Bring a hat.

A red sandstone butte with holes carved by wind and water and one big chamber looking west over the city. The trail is about two-tenths of a mile with a couple hundred feet of climb from near the visitor center. Easiest payoff in Phoenix.

The Hohokam appear to have used sunlight through a hole in the ceiling to mark the solstices and equinoxes. Sit with that a minute. Take the path around the back, since climbing the front face is how people get hurt.

The camel-shaped mountain in the middle of town. Both summit routes, Echo Canyon and Cholla (off Invergordon Road), are rated extremely difficult by the city: steep rock, handrails, real scrambling. Not a stoned stroll.

Trailheads open sunrise to sunset, no dogs, and lots fill early on weekends. Arcadia sits at the base for breakfast after.

Camelback's slightly less brutal neighbor. The Summit Trail climbs about 1,200 feet on a rocky, stair-step path to a 360-degree view of the Valley. Relentless, but more trail than scramble. The rest of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve has mellower wandering.

More than 16,000 acres, one of the largest city parks in the country. Hike, bike or ride up Summit Road to Dobbins Lookout, the highest public point in the park, for the whole Valley grid laid out flat below you.

Let a sober friend drive Summit Road: blind corners, narrow stretches, steep drop-offs and cyclists. Some Sundays it's closed to cars entirely.

The garden's holiday tradition, well past its fortieth year. Thousands of hand-lit luminarias line the paths with twinkling lights in the cactus. Walking a desert trail lit by flickering paper bags is a very Phoenix kind of magic. It runs select nights in the holiday season, so book when dates drop.

The closest International Dark Sky Community to metro Phoenix, with the McDowell Mountains blocking much of the city glow. Town parks are good for spotting the Milky Way on clear, moonless nights, and the town has been building a dark sky discovery center with a big telescope and planetarium.

About 40 miles east at the foot of the Superstition Mountains, far enough out for a properly dark sky. There are campsites and a few climate-controlled cabins, so you can stay over instead of driving back.

State park, state rules: no smoking it there. Next door, Tonto National Forest is a certified dark sky park, but it's federal land, where cannabis is federally illegal.

A couple hours up I-17: red sandstone buttes, pinnacles and canyons against a deep blue sky. The crystal shops and vortex talk are either your thing or great joke material. The scenery is the real deal.

Most of the trails are in the Coconino National Forest's Red Rock Ranger District, and some trailheads need a parking pass. The Sedona Shuttle skips the pay-to-park scrum. Oak Creek Canyon, just north, has cool water on a warm day.

The biggest thing you will ever see. Standing at the South Rim rearranges your sense of scale, high or sober. It's a long haul from Phoenix, so make it an overnight.

National park means federal law, and cannabis is illegal there, possession included. Rangers enforce federal law, not Arizona's. The canyon doesn't need help.