Mesa

Mesa is the third-largest city in Arizona and the population anchor of the East Valley. Long thought of as a sprawling suburb, its downtown has reinvented itself around the Mesa Arts Center — the largest arts complex in Arizona — plus a growing strip of restaurants, breweries, and the ASU campus that now sits in the city core.

Baseball runs deep here: Sloan Park is the spring-training home of the Chicago Cubs and routinely leads the Cactus League in attendance, while nearby Hohokam Stadium is the spring home of the Athletics. Cubs fans flood Mesa every February and March.

Mesa is also an outdoor launchpad. The Salt River and Tonto National Forest to the northeast offer tubing, kayaking, and the famous wild horses, while Usery Mountain Regional Park and the nearby Superstition Mountains deliver some of the metro's best desert hiking. The city's deep agricultural roots show up at u-pick farms like the seasonal citrus and produce stands east of town.

Add the Arizona Museum of Natural History (with its dinosaurs and a three-story flash-flood exhibit) and a downtown light-rail stop, and Mesa makes a full, varied day in the East Valley. Summer heat pushes the hiking and river days to early morning; the rest of the year is prime.