Best Small Towns in Arizona Part 2

[Music] what's going on everybody just living in arizona now and today we're going to take a look at the best small towns in arizona part two if you haven't already seen the first one we'll put a link in the comments below for you guys to be able to watch that one also so in this video we're going to show you the second half of the best towns and there's going to be a third one coming up let's go ahead and get started all right so in no particular order we're going to start out here in the white mountains in northeastern arizona in greer so this one is going to be at high elevation really high up there about 8 000 feet now greer is about a four hour drive away from phoenix it does take a little bit of wind through the hills to get all the way up there but uh some of the nearby towns are gonna be springerville and eager they do have airports but they're really small the most common valley around there is the little colorado river not the big colorado but the little colorado one of the things that makes grier so popular with people down in the valleys of tucson and phoenix is it's about 20 to 30 degrees cooler in the summertime so when it's 110 in phoenix it'll be 80 in the middle of the day at the hottest point in greer and that's really appealing to a lot of people down in phoenix and tucson now in the winters it gets snow packed i mean really thick heavy snow up there um no joke snow now if this is your first time to living in arizona now this channel you can subscribe and turn on the bell to get notified when a new video comes out also we appreciate everyone for crushing up the like button on our videos here to help get the algorithm to push the video out to a larger audience and thanks to everyone who drops a comment and shares it with their friends and family who are also thinking about visiting arizona with you now one thing i will say about grier if you do plan to visit here don't expect the nightlife and the bars this is more of a relaxing place to go if you like aspen trees and uh streams and real raw wilderness not a party place we have a couple of those places on this list but this isn't one of them one of the things you really like to do up here is fly fishing if you get a chance uh do some hiking in the woods and uh just keep an eye out for the wild turkeys and maybe even some black bears most of them are pretty friendly though shouldn't be a big problem all right now we're gonna head down to southern arizona just off the border with mexico down to one of my favorite towns hands down across arizona two buck now this place is really chill it's a old historic town in fact if you look back way back in time you'll find some serious information about arizona history and the spanish along the deons uh uh trail over here so the day on the trail connects with camino real and the 21 missions over in california [Music] now it is about 30 to 40 minutes south of tucson a little bit further away from people in phoenix if you're trying to come down here from phoenix it's going to take you about two and a half hours sometimes a little less depending on traffic but the big appeal out here is arts if you're into wine drinking wine tasting and some of the finer things in life especially understanding the art culture and the gastronomy of arizona you're gonna get that down here in tubac it's pretty lush too considering it's a desert but it's a lush desert kinda in a river valley here [Music] so you will want to visit the gallery and museums down here and if you had just southie here you'll come across one of the missions it's tuma kakori so this is the tumakikori national monument here up the road about 40 minutes is the san javier mission so there's two missions in this area south of tucson but this one's a little bit further south towards mexico to makkah quarry you guys can check it out still pretty well preserved and in my opinion i don't know why they don't talk about it more i think it's an undervalued mission in all of the deons of trail and if you guys are into horseback riding or doing anything like that there's a lot of that down here in two bucks so wine tasting uh art and horseback riding three things you'll want to check out when you come down here all right so next up on the list is actually my hometown and i've actually been kind of hiding it from you guys a little bit but this place really is amazing it's in far north phoenix it's called cave creek some of you guys already know about the secrets of beauty of cave creek back here they've got a lot of different high desert homes and they have artists they call them the hidden in the hill artist festival so just like tubac you're gonna have a rich history from the mining and the cowboys and the frontier town of great restaurants and food but like i said i grew up here i know uh cave creek like the back of my hand i was here for the first 18 years of my life basically so um i'm going to tell you guys a little bit more about this in one of the videos that's coming up but we're just going to kind of go through cave creek really quickly and show you some of the stuff they have up here if you follow us on instagram at living in arizona now you've already seen one of our posts from here cave creek is growing pretty quickly it's almost over 12 000 in population in this area if you go to the neighboring town of carefree it's also booming all the way up into desert mountain where north scottsdale kind of meets there's a lot of people moving out here once they discover it they're kind of like wow this is what i moved to arizona for that's why i kind of hide it because once people see it they're going to want to move here in droves but being that i grew up out here in cave creek one of the things that i really pride myself in about my hometown is the friendly people people up here are really relaxed um you know they're just it's easy to get along with people out here and uh it takes a real special unique person to not get along with people out here that's how easy it is to get along so just people come from far and wide and they all just kind of get in step and everyone just becomes friends and it's you know they look out for each other up here in cave creek and you see that old extinct volcano there that's black mountain to the east of black mountain is carefree to the north and west is cave creek so the big thing out here is the biker bars and the cowboy bars there you go the rodeos and the bikers anyways moving right down the road here all the way back up to the white mountains again this time we're going to go just outside of greer not so high up but we're going to pine top lakeside now this is another one of those escape from the heat in the summertime towns without having to go all the way back up to canada you go right on up here to pinetop lakeside i've mentioned this in a couple of my other videos i don't know if you guys know this or not but some days out of the year arizona is known to have the coldest place in the nation and the hottest place in the nation now typically when that happens the coldest place is up here in the white mountains like around greer and some of these areas over here by mount baldy and then the hottest place will be somewhere around the colorado river valley like bullhead city lake havasu city or yuma but um anyways back to pinetop lakeside [Music] so being that pinetop lakeside is a popular resort and second home area for many people from the valleys the weather up here in the winter gets snow packed in the summer it's beautiful nice weather it did have a big fire up here some of you guys may know about it in 2002 the rodeo chadesky fire that was pretty pretty bad at threat in the town and there was a lot of evacuations out there so um people do bring rvs and other mobile homes to live up here in some of these rv parks but it's kind of hard to get a place up there because so many people are fleeing to get up there most of those spots are taken but you don't necessarily have to buy a cabin or land up here to get a place you bring your rv or mobile home and again just a really small town with friendly people all right so anyways we're going to head north west out of phoenix to a town called wickenburg this was actually one of the original settlements it's named after the man who uh founded and settled the wickenburg area which was a mining settlement okay so the main mining settlement is another ghost town just outside of town called the vulture city mine and in fact wickenburg's history goes back to a point where it actually helped establish the farming industry in phoenix which made it to be a larger settlement which it eventually would become so a lot of phoenix uh settlement and foundation and growth is owed to the settlement up here in wickenburg but you can see this is an old western town now when i say that i like this place and i recommend it it's pretty it's really cool to check it out because of the history and you guys can come up here and you know grab a bite to eat check out the old town and walk around do a museum history tour those are the two things i recommend up here but it's good to see it because of its uh founding of the phoenix valley as a fertile plane for the farming that would take place to feed the miners up here in vulture city and wickenburg and being that it is a cowboy town you can also ride horses up here i really like the high desert environment just the natural topography is really nice and again just a friendly reminder if you haven't already subscribed to this channel you can hit the subscribe button turn on the bell to get notified when a new video comes out and thanks to everyone who crushes up the likes for the youtube algorithm [Music] and also sharing it with your friends and family who you think should see this video and join you on these tours around arizona but as you can see wickenburg here it is growing actually uh it's no longer a hidden gem like two bach or maybe even greer is uh it's kind of experiencing a boom like cave creek and pinetop lakeside are experiencing as people discover it they're like hey it's kind of nice up here it's peaceful and then they move out here and then the next thing you know wickenburg kind of loses its old uh old western feel and it becomes the next scottsdale who knows but as you can see it is along the old railroad i think this is the santa fe railroad but i'm not sure uh the santa fe railroad might be north of here but there is a railroad that is active bnsf trains always go up and down i don't think it's called the santa fe i forget what it's called someone in the comments please let me know anyways moving right along here we'll go on to the next town to show you guys what's going on around arizona with these other small towns [Music] now there is so many small towns around arizona to feature and highlight and we're going to keep doing that on the third and maybe even a fourth one because there is that many small towns to highlight but this one here along the route 66 is winslow arizona you know the song by the eagles standing on the corner in winslow arizona such a fine sight to see something like that i don't know words exactly but this is winslow when you're up there going from flagstaff say towards new mexico or maybe towards meteor crater or even uh i don't know who knows maybe going to petrified forest or eager or greer whichever way you want to go down that old route 66 route you come to winslow get out of the car stop take a picture you know do a little souvenir shopping at the corner markets get out stretch the legs that's the kind of place that winslow is it's not a place to stay i'm not saying go up there and get an airbnb and do all that i'm saying when you're uh looking for a cool place to go take some pictures and just stop in an old historical route 66 site that's what you're gonna get over here in winslow now aside from the route 66 history there's also a lot of native american trading posts out here that you may want to check out too um for me i really enjoy just cruising the road in between flagstaff all the way out to new mexico i like new mexico in fact i was thinking about doing some more videos where we even go towards new mexico into new mexico to places like silver city gallup chaco canyon even utah zion national park arches national park a little bit of california like joshua tree and even south into mexico so let me know in the comments if you guys want some out of state southwestern regional stuff that people in arizona like to do now as you guys know every once in a while like throw a challenge at you and this one here up in crown king is a challenge because the road up here yeah you could take a toyota corolla but it's going to be a rough ride for that old toyota corolla but hey at the top of this bradshaw mountain overlooking peoria and lake pleasant and even black canyon city up the old bumblebee you know the bumblebee highway you kind of come off that and you take the dirt road up here that's what this is there's a couple cool stops along the way but when you get up to the top of the mountain there you're gonna come across a town up here called crown king they call it crown king i don't know why maybe because it's at the top of the uh mountains it's like the highest point around arizona or phoenix you can actually get some pine trees up here but i find it to be really beautiful up here you can take the senator highway around we even have a video on here off-roading the center highway from crown king to prescott but do not do it unless you have an off-road vehicle it's not one of those like walk in the park kind of off-roads it's really a bit of a um rough ride and it does take a couple hours it's not it's only 23 miles or something like that it's not very long but it takes a while but crown king you know people come up here to do the uh um go to the lake i forget the name of the lake i want to say it's like dead cowboy lake or something like that dead man lake i can't remember now obviously you wouldn't want to go to the lake called death but hey i mean people do go there at the camp um it's a really cool pine area just outside of phoenix is high up there in elevation but basically this is a day trip just out of phoenix you know it's an off-road track you get nice views pretty good hikes up here pine trees it's a great place to go to beat the heat or even get some snow if you're looking to get some snow uh in february or january when it gets really cold in phoenix you'll get snow up here and it's only about an hour and a half to two hours outside of phoenix depending on where you are but uh it's pretty good pretty cool place to see if you uh become a local eventually you'll make your way up here to prom king i like it i mean for me it's a great spot i've come here as a kid a couple times with my family and even after being a kid coming up here with my friends [Music] you

Channel: Living in Arizona Now

Views: 221,322

Keywords: Arizona, moving to Arizona, visit arizona, small towns in Arizona, arizona tourism, Greer, pinetop lakeside az, greer az, crown king az, winslow arizona, tubac az, Tubac, Things to do in Arizona, places in Arizona, where to go in Arizona, best places in Arizona, best town in Arizona, things to do in arizona, living in arizona, moving to arizona, cave creek arizona, Cave Creek, wickenburg az

Id: sBoDSfkoyMU

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020