With the Rocky Mountains and the famous Route 66 both passing through New Mexico, there are some obvious attractions to explore, and that's before you consider taking a day out to explore Roswell to look for UFO wreckage, or Los Alamos (where the atomic bomb was developed). The other major towns are the capital Albuquerque (home of an amazing hot air balloon festival), and the tourist hotspot Santa Fe up in the mountains. Santa Fe is an artistic centre, and there are many museums and galleries to explore, as does nearby Taos. Santa Fe has a lot to recommend it, there's the art scene, the scenic beauty of this city at 7,000 feet, and then there's the diversity of the arts, food and people themselves. It has a very small, compact downtown, which is easy for a family to walk around, and a host of film festivals, art festivals, wine festivals and other special events throughout the year.

The US state of Arizona is one that features a fantastic diversity of landscapes and areas of geological interest. North Arizona is famous for the Grand Canyon, a colourful chasm with steep rocky walls more than a mile deep and stretching some 277 miles alongside the Colorado River. Other notable destinations in North Arizona include Flagstaff set alongside the San Francisco Peaks which has the largest ponderosa pine forest, Museum of Northern Arizona, and is close to a number of national parks and monuments. On the south side of Arizona lies the city of Phoenix, the largest in Arizona. Notable day trips in Phoenix include the Heard Museum which is one of America's largest collections of Native American art, Phoenix Museum of History, as well as the Desert Botanical garden which has a great collection of desert plants.