Your ultimate desert playground!
Mesa, the third largest city in Arizona, is home to a number of interesting museums, beautiful parks, and a variety of activities that are suitable for tourists of all ages. Surrounded by the natural Sonoran Desert beauty of Tonto National Forest, Mesa, AZ, is a place for outdoor recreation that you shouldn’t miss out on!
While you’re in Mesa, you can take part in a wide variety of entertaining activities, and what’s more fantastic is that your place to stay is not even a problem! There are hundreds of vacation rentals in Mesa, AZ, nearby that you can find at a reasonable price. Here, you’ll have easy access to the area’s most famous natural attractions, including Superstition Mountains, Apache Trail, Salt and Verde Rivers, area likes, and museums. You can also enjoy the region’s canyon-carved waterways and endless trails. So, if you’re looking for a playful, reinvigorating, and extreme adventure like no other, take a look at the eight best things to do while in Mesa.
1. Take a look at Mesa Arts Center.
The Mesa Arts Center, located on East Main Street in downtown Mesa, is a 210,000-square-foot performance and visual arts center. It is Arizona’s most prominent arts complex and one of the top Mesa attractions. The center also serves as a school for performing arts students. There are four public art venues for plays and exhibitions, including the 99-seat Farnsworth Studio Theater and the 1,600-seat Ikeda Theater; five art galleries; and 14 performing and visual arts classroom studios. The structure is a work of art comprising steel, glass, concrete, water elements, and vibrant color.
2. Visit the Usery Mountain Regional Park
Usery Mountain Regional Park has camping areas, mountain biking and hiking routes, and breathtaking scenery. The park has 73 campsites with picnic tables, BBQ grills, and other amenities, where you can occasionally go scorpion hunting and stargazing at night. Furthermore, the park has more than 29 miles of trails for hiking, equestrian riding, and mountain biking that you and your loved ones can enjoy.
3. Experience Hot Air Balloon Ride
Fill your bucket list with a one-of-a-kind experience as you soar over the gorgeous Sonoran Desert in a hot air balloon and take in the stunning panoramic views of the city from above. There are numerous hot air balloon rides available in Mesa, as multiple companies offer hot air balloon rides. You may also enjoy the sunrise in Mesa because companies offer breathtaking sunrise flights!
4. Enjoy the beauty of the Sonoran Desert.
The Sonoran Desert is home to over 2,000 plant species. The desert’s botanical diversity supports an even larger diversity of animal life, including more than 500 species of birds that migrate and nest in the area and more than 200 species of fish, reptiles, and mammals. Mountain hiking, wildlife viewing, and birding, a popular sport in Arizona, are among the activities available in the Sonoran Desert.
5. Desert Hiking Trails
Hiking routes for people of all ages surround Mesa, with varied degrees of difficulty and distances to pick from. Some of Mesa’s most popular hiking trail locations include Usery Mountain Regional Park, San Tan Mountain Regional Park, Lost Dutchman State Park, and Tonto National Forest.
6. Enjoy water recreation activities.
Although Mesa is located in the middle of a desert, tourists can take advantage of the city’s proximity to a water recreation paradise thanks to its convenient location. You could enjoy desert boating, rafting, kayaking, water skiing, or even wakeboarding in addition to hiking, trailing, or riding in a hot air balloon. In addition, you can go to Golfland Sunsplash, a waterpark in Mesa that is well-known for its 29 different water activities. Some of these thrilling rides include Thunder Bay and Sidewinder, amongst many others.
7. Explore Arizona’s Museum of Natural History
Spend the day at the Arizona Museum of History if you are interested in learning even more about the history of the South West, but with a focus on how the region’s geography and geology have shaped its past. The museum began as a modest collection of artifacts, but it has since expanded to cover an area of more than 74,000 square feet and now contains more than 10,000 historical photographs of the local area. The museum has some large installations, such as a recreation of a prison in Arizona, a goldmine, and an indoor waterfall that spans three floors. The museum’s goal is to educate and engage visitors.
8. Enjoy the beauty of the Rose Garden at Mesa Community College.
This is the Southwest’s largest rose garden, and in addition to being a lovely garden for visitors to enjoy, it also features a study area and a botanic laboratory. More than 9,000 roses of more than 300 different varieties call the Mesa Community College Rose Garden home, where they bloom and thrive, much to the delight of visitors, tourists, students, and children who come for a visit.