TUCSON, Ariz. -- A sunset ride on horseback in the fall, through a forest of giant cacti in Saguaro National Park, fulfilled the dreams of a childhood spent devouring Zane Grey novels. But even that perfect ride has competition for my favorite moment in Arizona. Can anything really top waking up on the Grand Canyon’s rim to a swirling snowstorm that dissolves into a double rainbow? Or chasing the sunset in the Monument Valley from one mitten-shaped sandstone formation to the other?

From many years of visits, I have distilled my ideal, one-to-two week road trip to Arizona’s highlights. I have traveled it in all seasons, watching for occasional snow road closures north of Flagstaff in winter and for summer days in the 110s from Phoenix on south. Here are my favorites.

SOUTHERN DESERT

As I steered my horse back toward the trail, to take one last picture as I neared the end of a two-hour ride in the desert outside Tucson, Remington balked.

The white quarter horse from Bobbi Houston’s Horseback Riding must have read my mind. Forget the photo. I was fighting down the impulse to gallop back into the sunset. That’s the effect of southern Arizona’s Sonoran desert, washed over by silence and muted gray-green forms. The deserts are mesmerizing like no other landscape. But they are anything but empty. The thousands of saguaros here have stood sentinel for centuries. They don’t even start growing their iconic arms until they are about 70, and they can live more than 200 years.

There is no better place to get lost among the saguaros and their desert buddies — fuzzy cholla and spindly ocotillo plants, fluorescent green palo verde and mesquite trees — than in Saguaro National Park, its two districts a few miles on either side of downtown Tucson. Every single pullout on Gates Pass Road, the best route to the western park, is worth a photo.

Just south of Tucson on I-19, so close to the Mexican border that highway mileage is in kilometers, stands the improbably grand sign of another kind of presence in this desert: Mission San Xavier del Bac. Built in the 1700s by Franciscan friars, the blinding white Spanish Colonial church still ministers to the Tohono O’odham reservation.

Coming in from sun-drenched surroundings, the mission’s dark, candle-scented Baroque interior is dazzling, every inch covered in vividly painted faux architectural details. The cherubs and saints must have been good company for their sculptors in the utter solitude.

PHOENIX OASIS

A couple of hours north along I-10, through flat desert sprouting moonlike peaks, is Phoenix, an oasis of manicured modernity in this dreamscape. Favorite spots in the area include the Heard Museum with its superb collection of American Indian arts, and the resorts and art galleries of Scottsdale, about a 20-minute drive from downtown Phoenix.

I always try to fit in two mini-road trips from Phoenix. If I have a day, the Apache Trail goes from subdivision to remote Old West within a few miles east of the city. The road climbs into the Superstition Mountains, down cottonwood-shaded canyons and skirting lakes. In early spring, when the cacti bloom white, violet, and gold, it’s the Western equivalent of cherry blossom time.

If I only have a couple of hours before flying out of Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, my last desert escape is to South Mountain Park, a 10-minute drive south of downtown, and up its snaking road to Dobbins Lookout. With views past stands of saguaros into the whole metropolis and its 360-degree desert cradle, this is the spot for a south-central Arizona sunset, bar none.