Arizona is very good flying. But its an even better base to fly from. Don't just stick to arizona, get the sectional charts and challenge yourself, me and a mate hour built there in Feb....not a single day we couldn't fly and had a great 5 day trip up the west coast from Las Vegas to San diego to LA to Santa Barbara to Palm Springs. That trip alone included some very character building stuff from uncontrolled airspace to being radar vectored through the VFR route into North Las Vegas Airport to navigating the VFR Shoreline Zone Transit of LAX on specific VOR radials. To sum up.....great flying.
I can seriously recommend Westwind Aviation based at Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix....they bent over backwards to makesure that the 2 172's we had block booked were always available with 50hr and 100hr checks begin done overnight especially and instructors giving us some great inspiration and advice where to go. Sorry this isnt a sales pitch and I dont work for Westwind but was thoroughly satisfied with them. If you look at them definitely block book the aircraft so its yours and yours alone while you're there. I can highly recmommend N54715 or N123GJ. Don't be afraid, they look beaten up but they're great little planes and dirt cheap to hire.
Oh, whilst we were there John Travolta flew his private fleet in which are looked after by Westwinds Maintenance partners next door so you can have a gander at what he has to play with.....any tail numbers ending JT at Deer Valley belong to him.
Hope this helps.
2W2R
