Things to do in Scottsdale, lifted

Frank Lloyd Wright bought this patch of desert at the foot of the McDowells in 1937 and spent roughly twenty years building his winter home and studio here with his apprentices. The walls are what Wright called desert masonry: local rocks stacked in wooden forms with the flat faces out, then filled with concrete.

It's Scottsdale's only National Historic Landmark and part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing for Wright's 20th century work. The self-guided audio tour runs about an hour and includes a clip of Wright's own voice, which is a lot stranger and cooler than it sounds.

Paolo Soleri was an artist and architect with very big ideas, and Cosanti is where he built some of his strangest earth-cast structures, right in the middle of Paradise Valley. The site is on the Arizona Register of Historic Places.

The draw is the windbells. Artisans cast them in bronze by pouring molten metal from crucibles, or shape them from Arizona clay, so no two hang the same. Bell sales help fund the nonprofit Cosanti Foundation that Soleri and his wife Colly started in 1965.

It bills itself as the largest indoor butterfly conservatory in the United States, and once you're inside the warm, humid conservatory with thousands of butterflies drifting past your face, you won't argue. Stand still long enough and one will land on you.

Before the main room there's a 3D film about migration and metamorphosis, and the Emergence Gallery is where you can watch chrysalises split open in real time.

Next door to the butterflies, at Arizona Boardwalk, is a full-size aquarium with more than 2 million gallons of water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. It has more than 6,000 animals, including sharks, sea turtles, penguins and otters, plus a giant Pacific octopus.

The stoner highlight is the Voyager theater: stadium seats that slowly rotate past a series of 46 foot viewing windows. They call it the world's only revolving aquarium. You sit, the room turns, the fish keep doing fish things.

SMoCA opened in 1999 inside a former movie theater that architect Will Bruder stripped down into a clean, minimal box.

The permanent reason to go is Knight Rise, a James Turrell skyspace in the outdoor sculpture courtyard. You sit on a concrete bench around a round room and look up through an elliptical opening in the ceiling. The edges are so sharp the sky seems to drop down into the room, and lights in the walls quietly shift how its color reads. The museum says it's free and open whenever the museum is.

Scottsdale leans hard into its cowboy past, and this is where that gets taken seriously. Opened in 2015 and a Smithsonian Affiliate, the museum covers art and history from across the American West: cowboy gear, Hopi pottery, Western painting and old film posters of cowboy and Native American movie stars.

The building is worth a look on its own. The ribbed concrete outside is meant to read like saguaro ribs and throws shade across the walls, and the courtyard has a weeping wall that recycles rainwater and AC condensation into the landscaping.

Every Thursday evening, galleries along Main Street and Marshall Way stay open and the sidewalks fill with people drifting between openings. It's a weekly thing, not a festival, so you don't have to plan around it.

Cowboy art in one room, something wildly contemporary next door. The point is to wander. A stoned stroll through a dozen white rooms with good lighting is one of the best cheap nights in this town.

Soleri again, this time over the Arizona Canal at the Scottsdale Waterfront. The pedestrian bridge was dedicated in 2010 and it doubles as a solar calendar: it sits on a true north axis, and a narrow gap between the tall pylons sends a shaft of light along a red stripe on the deck at solar noon. On the winter solstice the shadow runs longest.

On the plaza side, Soleri's Goldwater Bell hangs inside the pylons. The rest of the Waterfront is a short walk away.

The preserve covers about 30,580 acres, which puts it among the largest city parks in the country, and Gateway is the front door. It has real parking, flush toilets and water, which matters more than you think when you're out early.

The Gateway Loop is about 4.5 miles with roughly 700 feet of climbing. It's a solid intermediate hike with a saddle viewpoint halfway that's made for a long water break and a long stare.

Tom's Thumb is a granite tower about 140 feet tall sticking out of the ridge like, well, a thumb. Climbers first topped it in 1965. The trail to its base is about 4.25 miles round trip and strenuous, with the steep part on the switchbacks.

It's worth the burn. The overlooks along the way have names like Vulture View and Raven Roost, and from the top you can see all the way to downtown Phoenix.

A well-kept city trail that runs about 2 miles one way past the granite knob of Pinnacle Peak, with roughly 1,300 feet of cumulative gain if you go out and back.

No dogs and no bikes on this trail, so it stays mellow. The park also runs interpretive hikes, plus sunset and full moon hikes and astronomy talks. Doing the trail under a full moon is the move if you can catch one on the calendar.

This is the flat, easy one. The greenbelt is about 11 miles of parks, lakes, paths and golf courses running through the middle of Scottsdale. It started as a flood control project and turned into the city's backyard, with more than two dozen underpasses so you can ride or walk long stretches without hitting cross traffic.

Bring a bike and roll past lakes, parks and golf courses for as long as you feel like. It runs through McCormick Ranch and down into South Scottsdale.

Floating over the Sonoran Desert at sunrise is about as close as you can get to a weightless body high without anything in your system. Valley balloon companies launch just after the sun comes up, and flights usually last 45 minutes to an hour, with three and a half to four hours for the whole outing including setup and the traditional toast after landing.

Sunrise flights run year round with at least one big operator, and some also do sunset flights in the cooler months.

The town's tourism folks point to the east side of Fountain Park as a good stargazing spot. It's a 64 acre park around a lake with the famous fountain in the middle, which for decades was the tallest in the world. It runs for 15 minutes every hour from morning into the evening, unless it's windy.

Catch the last fountain run of the night, then let your eyes adjust and look up.

Over 21,000 acres of county park on the far side of the McDowells, with about 50 miles of multi-use trails and real camping. The night sky here is wide open.

Camp a night and skip the drive home. The park also does evening hikes. Bring binoculars at minimum. The Perseids in late summer are the big show.

Spring home of the San Francisco Giants since 1984, at Osborn Road and Drinkwater Boulevard. It holds about 12,000 and has old-school charm, with intimate seating that puts you close to the action.

The best part is location. You can walk to it from Old Town, which means nobody has to drive, and you're steps from food and bars after the last out.

The shared spring home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies, built in partnership with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. It was the first spring training facility built on Indian land and holds about 11,000 with mountain views around the 140 acre complex.

It regularly leads the Cactus League in attendance, so expect a crowd.

If Cosanti hooked you, this is the full dose. Arcosanti is Soleri's experimental desert town, an urban laboratory built since 1970 by more than 7,000 volunteers to test his idea of arcology: dense, compact living instead of sprawl.

Guided tours run through the day, and there's a cafe and a gallery that sells the Cosanti windbells.

A 1,264 acre reservoir with about 22 miles of shoreline, cliffs dropping straight into blue water, roughly 25 minutes past Fountain Hills. Rent a kayak or paddleboard, take a boat cruise or just park it at Butcher Jones Recreation Site for swimming and picnics.

You'll need a Tonto pass for the day use areas. And again: this is federal land. Enjoy the water, keep the weed at home.