Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

Arizona

Hiking the Washes of Saguaro National Park West, Tucson, Arizona

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Last Updated: May 4, 2026

Our last full day in Tucson always carries a particular weight — we know we’re about to leave the desert behind, and we want to make every hour count. We spent it the best way we know how: dropping into the washes of Saguaro National Park West. The washes are not always officially named trails — they are the sandy, sometimes rocky stream corridors that cut through the Sonoran Desert floor, dry most of the year but alive with plants and animals in every season. When you leave the paved loop road behind and step into a wash, you enter a different side of the park entirely: quieter, wilder, and full of surprises.

Michael Huntley physician travel blogger hiking a desert wash in Saguaro National Park West Tucson Arizona with towering saguaro cacti on the rocky hillside above
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Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: A Summer Desert Oasis

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Last Updated: May 2, 2026

We’ve called the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum a desert oasis more than once over the years — and on this summer 2024 visit, that description felt more accurate than ever. No matter when you visit, the museum offers something that the surrounding Sonoran Desert doesn’t always provide in abundance in late June and July: reliable water, reliable shade, reliable green, and wildlife that stays active rather than retreating to burrows in the heat. This was our third dedicated visit in recent years — after spring 2018 and winter 2023 — and the museum continues to evolve, surprise, and reward. Some things were better than ever. Some were still recovering. All of it was worth the visit.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum grounds in summer 2024 showing the lush green desert oasis maintained year-round with water features and native Sonoran Desert plantings

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Tucson Sunsets, Arizona: Why the Sonoran Desert Sky Performs Almost Every Night

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

Tucson, Arizona sits in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, and one of the genuine and reliable rewards of spending winters here is the sunset. The combination of high desert elevation, dry low-humidity air, open western horizons, and the regular procession of high-altitude clouds rolling in off the Pacific produces evening skies that perform almost nightly — even on otherwise unremarkable days. After many seasons watching the western horizon from Western Way RV Resort, we still walk out a few minutes before sundown more often than not. Sometimes the show is quiet; sometimes the entire western sky catches fire. Either way, Michael’s camera stays close.

Tucson Arizona sunset over the Tucson Mountains showing brilliant orange and red Sonoran Desert sky photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer
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Tucson Museum of Art Centennial, San Pedro Chapel & the Hugh Norris Trail to Wasson Peak, Tucson, Arizona

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

This spring 2024 stay in Tucson, Arizona brought together three of our favorite kinds of days in one stretch: an art museum, a piece of small-town history, and a long desert hike. The Tucson Museum of Art was celebrating its centennial — a milestone for any cultural institution and especially for one in a city Tucson’s size — and we paired the museum with lunch at the long-popular Cafe a La C’Art next door. A separate afternoon took us out to the historic San Pedro Chapel in the Old Fort Lowell neighborhood, and a third day put us on the Hugh Norris Trail climbing to the top of Wasson Peak in the Tucson Mountains. As a ceramicist and photographer with a long-running interest in Western and Latin American craft traditions, Michael had been looking forward to the TMA visit for the entire stay.

Tucson Museum of Art Arizona exterior in downtown Tucson photographed during the museum's 100th anniversary year by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer
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Sabino Canyon, Tucson, Arizona: Hiking, the Sabino Canyon Crawler & Year-Round Water in the Catalinas

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

Sabino Canyon sits about 10 miles northeast of downtown Tucson, Arizona, tucked into the southern foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains and carved by Sabino Creek as it tumbles down from the high country. It’s one of the most rewarding stretches of public land in the entire Tucson area — a true Sonoran Desert canyon with year-round water in stretches, an extraordinary diversity of habitats stacked between the saguaro forest below and the pine-oak woodlands above, and an accessibility that makes it possible to spend an hour or a full day here depending on what you have time for. Michael has been here many times when visiting Tucson in the past, but it still surprises us.

Sabino Canyon Tucson Arizona showing the Santa Catalina Mountains foothills and the desert canyon walls carved by perennial Sabino Creek photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer

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Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

The Raptor Free Flight presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona is the kind of program that makes you reorganize a Tucson stay around it. It’s an open-air demonstration in which Sonoran Desert raptors and other native birds — Harris’s hawks, crested caracaras, great horned owls, Chihuahuan ravens — fly completely untethered through a designated outdoor area, passing low over a seated audience on routes designed to reveal how each species actually hunts in the wild. There’s no glass between you and the bird; there’s no leash; there’s no enclosure overhead. Just open desert sky and a sequence of trained native raptors choosing their own flight paths. We first attended the Raptor Free Flight on an earlier Tucson stay, and Michael has been back repeatedly since — it remains one of the single best wildlife photography opportunities anywhere in the Southwest.

Crested caracara at the Raptor Free Flight presentation Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Tucson Arizona showing the distinctive black crest white throat and red orange facial skin photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer

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