Arizona is known as "The Grand Canyon State" and with good reason. Weith nearly 5.9 million annual visits, Grand Canyon National Park is the second most visited in the nation. Two lesser-known national parks also call Arizona home - Petrified Forest in the northeastern part of the state and Saguaro in Arizona's southwest corner, each with a comparatively paltry 800,000 or so annual visits. All of the parks lie within three and a half hours of Phoenix and its modern Sky Harbor International Airport. Snowbird season, named for the influx of visitors from the north avoiding winter weather, begins in November and runs through April. My husband and I took advantage of Arizona's abundant sunshine this past November to visit its three national parks and some of its other interesting sites.

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