Nicole- WOW you re so smart! Arizona is not JUST desert... We DO have woods, kthx. (Speaking of, Flagstaff got hit with snow. And people say it never snows in AZ...)The Sedona/Flagstaff/Cottonwood towns are really nice and peaceful... scary spiders and snakes will be in any woods you go to, just be careful. Cold and snowing in winter, but nice if you want to get out of the valley (Phoenix/Glendale/Scottsdale, etc)edit: I agree with Pepper fully. We have everything... But an ocean.
Forested areas in Arizona primarily lie to the north and west of Phoenix. These areas are out in what are called the White Mountains along the border with New Mexico, and up by the cities of Flagstaff and Payson, extending north to the Grand Canyon.You re going to have to worry about the creepy crawlies that you would anywhere else in the country. Rattlesnakes are going to be your biggest concern, but - contrary to popular belief - those rarely kill anyways, and usually self-evacuation is an option. As for the only other poisonous snake - the coral snake - you have to literally try to get him to bite you, and when he does, all he kinda does is nibble. There so little of a threat that hospitals stopped carrying coral snake anti-venom years ago.Scorpions, of course, are of some concern. We also have Black Widow spiders and Brown Recluses. None of these are life threatening if your not allergic or stupid, and a Brown Recluse bite doesn t even hurt, initially.I have been camping and hiking in Arizona for my whole life, and have seen only four rattlesnakes, a couple of tarantulas, and a couple of scorpions. I wouldn t worry much, at all. Just don t be an idiot, and you will be fine.
There are wooded areas near Sedona in Oak Creek and from there further north. There are also wooded area in the White Mountains in eastern Arizona around ShowLow and Pinetop-Lakeside. There are spiders and snakes. There are also deer, bear, elk, etc. depending in which location you are. The geography of Arizona is quite diverse - we have everything except an ocean :)
Northern Arizona has the only wooded parts, and few of those. The rest is Sonoran or Sierran desert--dusty soil, cactus, sagebrush, etc.Virtually all woods in the continental US have spiders and snakes of some kind, but the poisonous ones in Arizona are mostly desert dwellers, not forest dwellers.
arizona is full of desert land so they dont have woods