My favorite place on earth is Arizona and I have visited the state once. Every year, the state attracts hundreds of international and local visitors. Arizona has a diverse climate and is big enough to offer visitors enough room to explore. In addition, it is home to several world-famous tourist sites, such as the White Mountains and the Grand Canyon. The various landscapes spread across the state also allow visitors to participate in different and limitless activities every season. The Phoenix Plate boundary is a tectonic plate in Arizona but has disintegrated into the Charcot Plate (Tobin 729). A part of the main Phoenix Plate moved southwest through subduction and merged into the neighboring Antarctic Plate. Therefore, Arizona is a favorite destination for many people due to its diverse climate and appealing geological formations.
Arizona boasts many geologic formations that serve as tourists attraction centers. The main destinations are Page, Grand Canyon, Winslow, Sedona, Chinle, and Flagstaff cities (Hastings). The formations’ sites include the Cathedral and Bell Rocks, Meteor Crater, the Outlaw Trail, Spider Rock, Mogollon Rim, and Horseshoe Bend (Hastings). Cathedral Rock is in Sedona city and has red desert hills. It has three saddle points that require short but steep climbing. The lower parts of the saddle points are exposed to the sun and are made of bare red rock. Bell Rock in Sedona is a photographer’s haven due to its wide base and small cone-shaped top. The 5.8 km Bell Rock Pathway provides hiking opportunities to visitors (Hastings). The Meteor Crater & Barringer Space Museum, in Flagstaff City, is a preserved meteorite crater owned and run by the Barringer family because the man was the first one to argue that the crater was a result of a meteor.
The Outlaw Trail is located in Sedona City and covers 11.8 miles with an elevation of 1467.95 ft. It offers tourists great views of the cliff dwellings of Native Americans and formations of red rocks. Spider Rock is the site of a geologic formation aged over 230 years and rising up to 800 ft. (Tobin 725). It is located on the south rim of the Canyon. Navajo lores treat the site as a sacred place, believing it to be the home of the legendary Spider-Woman. Geologists argue that Spider Rock resulted from hillslope and stream erosion processes around the canyon (Hastings). Mogollon Rim in Payson town is a geological and topographical feature extending over 320 km as part of the Colorado Plateau. It is famous for the Coconino Sandstone and Kaibab Limestone cliffs. The escarpment is almost 8,000 ft., resulting from faulting and erosion (Hastings). It is a tourist attraction site offering hiking opportunities and magnificent cliff views.
Horseshoe Bend is located in Northern Arizona toward the Grand Canyon’s northeast. Unlike the preceding geologic formations that resulted from hillslope erosion, faulting, or meteor, Horseshoe Bend was created by the movement of water that encountered sandstone barriers constraining it to creating sharp bends where it found weaker rocks. The Colorado River in the Horseshoe Bend appears as an incised meander at the canyon’s bottom. Arizona’s geology dates back to the Precambrian age and is characterized by sandstone, limestone, erosion, and faulting. For more than 900 million years, the state experienced Shallow Ocean and terrestrial conditions except in secluded basins (Tobin 714). Geologic formations are divided into Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic periods. In conclusion, all of these features make Arizona outstanding for physical activities during winter and summer. Tourists enjoy the marvelous creations of nature under the full sun during the summer while interacting with Arizona’s welcoming locals.
Works Cited
Hastings, Karen. “13 Top Rated Tourist Attractions in Belize.” Planet Ware, 2020.
Tobin, Benjamin W., et al. “The Distribution, Flow, and Quality of Grand Canyon Springs, Arizona (USA).” Hydrogeology Journal, vol. 26, no. 3, 2018, pp. 721-732.