If watching this as a slide show, you might want to slow it down to 30 seconds or more on the control at the bottom of the screen --or just put it on pause and manually advance to the next slide. You can move ahead with the right arrow, or go back with the left. Phoenix is in the Sonoran Desert, the southwest portion of the US before you go all the way west --to California. South is Mexico, north Nevada and Utah, east New Mexico. Northeast of the metropolitan area is the Salt River, dammed up from the Roosevelt Dam (upper right where the largest lake, Roosevelt, can be seen) erected in the early part of the last century, followed by three other major dams; recreational lakes replace flood plains, chasms, falls, rapids, and pools. It's our desert, and it's our river.