Stoner Phoenix
The one rule, then we're done with rules
Almost everything on this page is a park, a preserve or a public venue, and you can't smoke at any of them. So the play is always the same. Sesh at home, eat something, grab water, then go. Edibles are the friend of the long museum afternoon. Get there by light rail, rideshare or a sober friend, never behind the wheel. Our where to sesh guide covers the details (general info, not legal advice). That's it. Go have fun.
Best museums in Phoenix to be baked in
The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), north Phoenix
The best museum in Phoenix to visit high, and it's not close. The MIM sits on Mayo Boulevard near Tatum, up by Desert Ridge, and it's enormous. Every visitor gets a wireless headset, and here's the magic. You don't press anything. You walk up to a display and the headset starts playing video and music from that exact corner of the world, the instruments in front of you suddenly alive in your ears. Step away and it fades. Step to the next case and a totally different country starts singing.
Baked, this is borderline spiritual. You'll drift from West African kora to Andean panpipes to a Balkan brass band, and every few steps the soundtrack of your afternoon changes on its own. The galleries are organized by region, so you can literally walk around the planet. There's an Artist Gallery with instruments from famous musicians and an Experience Gallery where you can bang on drums and gongs yourself, which you will do, loudly, and nobody will judge you.
The Heard Museum, Central Avenue
The Heard is on Central just north of McDowell, and it's one of the great museums of Native American art anywhere. It's also a beautiful building, with shaded courtyards, fountains and that cool Spanish Colonial calm the old Central corridor does so well. The baked move is to slow way down. Look at the weaving, the pottery, the katsina dolls, and notice how much detail is packed into every piece. It rewards a quiet, attentive head, not a giggly one.
The Phoenix Art Museum, Central and McDowell
A couple of blocks from the Heard, so make it a double. The Phoenix Art Museum is the biggest art museum in the Southwest and it's a fantastic wander. Big rooms, cold air, plenty of benches. Go in with no plan, follow whatever looks shiny, and let your brain do its thing. Rotating shows come and go, so check what's on, but the collection alone is worth the trip. Both museums are right off the light rail, which turns this into one of the easiest stoned days in Phoenix.
The Arizona Science Center, downtown
The planetarium was rebuilt into the Dorrance Dome, a giant LED dome with a picture so bright and sharp it messes with your sense of up and down. Lying back under a space show high is basically time travel. The rest of the center is aimed at kids, so time your visit for when it's less of a field trip zoo.
Desert outings in the middle of the city
The Desert Botanical Garden
In Papago Park, between the red buttes, the Desert Botanical Garden is the most beautiful place in Phoenix, period. Thousands of cactus and desert plants on winding trails, with the Papago rocks glowing behind them. Go at golden hour. When the low sun backlights the cholla and the spines light up like neon fiber optics, you will forget what you were saying mid-sentence. The saguaros look like they're watching you. In a nice way, mostly.
Spring is when the wildflowers and cactus blooms go off. Winter evenings bring the luminaria nights, a long-running holiday tradition where the paths are lined with paper lanterns. Check the garden's calendar, because those sell out.
Papago Park and Hole in the Rock
Hole in the Rock is the shortest, easiest scramble in the city. A few minutes of climbing up a sandstone butte and you're sitting inside a natural window, looking out over the zoo, the airport and the whole east side of town. Sunset is the move. It gets crowded, the rock gets slick, and people do get hurt up there, so wear real shoes and don't freelance off the main route. Papago is a city desert park, which means no smoking anywhere on it. Sesh before, then come watch the light change. More hikes in our Phoenix mountains guide.
The Phoenix Zoo
Also in Papago Park, next door to the garden, which makes for one of the best combo days in town. The zoo is spread out along desert trails, so it feels more like a long walk with animals than a concrete zoo. Go in the cooler months and early in the day, when the animals are actually awake instead of lying under a mister like the rest of us in August. Watching orangutans or a giraffe while slightly high is pure, uncomplicated happiness.
Roosevelt Row and the light rail
Mural walks on Roosevelt Row
The arts district north of downtown is a free outdoor gallery. Walk Roosevelt Street east from Central and you'll pass mural after mural on old brick walls, bungalow galleries and little shops, then work the side streets around Fifth Street and Garfield. The art walks happen monthly and they're a big, loud, crowded street party, which is great if you're feeling social and a lot if you're feeling sensitive. For a calmer baked stroll, go on a random weeknight evening and have the murals to yourself. Our Roosevelt Row neighborhood guide has the food and the side streets, and Coronado and Garfield are a short walk east for the historic bungalow eye candy.
Ride the light rail end to end
A slightly ridiculous idea that's secretly great. Get on the B Line and ride it, with no destination, as a passenger watching Phoenix scroll by. Start at the north end by old Metrocenter, where the train rides a raised viaduct over the I-17, then roll down 19th Avenue, east on Camelback, south on Central through downtown, under the freeway and across the Salt River all the way to Baseline. You see the whole spread of the city in one trip: the downtown towers, the old Central corridor, strip malls, palm-lined neighborhoods, the river bottom and South Mountain filling up the windshield at the south end. Window seat. Headphones. A playlist you love. Nobody's driving, which is exactly the point.
Want more? Transfer to the A Line downtown, which heads east past Sky Harbor toward Tempe and Mesa. Not our turf, but the bridge over Tempe Town Lake at dusk is a good look.
Fun things to do in Phoenix at night
Stargazing
Honest truth: you're not seeing the Milky Way from Midtown. Phoenix is one of the brightest cities in the country after dark. You can still catch the moon, the planets and the brightest stars from a backyard, especially on clear winter nights after a storm scrubs the dust out of the air. For the real thing, get a sober friend to drive you an hour or more out of the Valley in any direction, away from the glow, and let your eyes adjust for twenty minutes. Then lie on a blanket and lose your mind a little. The city's mountain preserves keep set hours and ban smoking anyway, so plan your dark sky trip for somewhere legal and well beyond the city.
Closer to home, the Dorrance Dome at the Science Center is the cheat code, and a high-rise rooftop downtown gives you a glittering grid that's its own kind of night sky.
Movies and food
A dark, cold theater is an elite night out, high. Our best movie theaters in Phoenix page has the recliners, the IMAX screens and the dine-in picks. After, hit the late-night eats guide, because you will be hungry.
Pool days
The most Phoenix thing on this page. From May to October the pool isn't a luxury, it's infrastructure. A floatie, a cooler of cold water and fruit, a speaker at low volume, and an edible at home an hour before. Lie there with the misters hissing, the sky an absurd shade of blue, a monsoon cloud building over the mountains in the afternoon. Peak Phoenix.
Some real talk. Heat and weed together dehydrate you fast, so drink twice as much water as you think you need. Shade is not optional. Nobody goes in the water too high, and nobody swims alone. Your own pool or a friend's backyard is the move, since apartment pools and hotel pools are public spaces and usually ban smoking. Hotel day passes and resort pools exist all over town if you don't have a pool friend, just keep the sesh at home and the vibe on the deck.
When the first cool morning in October arrives, swap the pool for patio season and go back to the top of this page. Our seasons guide lays out what to do when, and the munchies guide handles the inevitable.
