The many slick and trendy dining, shopping, and gay nightclub options - coupled with the sunny dry climate and abundance of outdoors diversions - make this an increasingly popular lesbian and gay travel destination. The city sits low in an arid valley surrounded by mountains and high desert, its once-rugged terrain having been replaced to a large degree by massive blocks of residential subdivisions, strip retail and office developments, and oasis-like golf and tennis resorts. Little more than a desert frontier settlement just a century ago, Phoenix has grown rapidly into one of the American West’s most dynamic and exciting getaways.
