Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Springdale was settled in 1862 and has a population of less than 1,000 people. Located just outside of Zion National Park, it only has an area of 4.6 square miles. Springdale is mostly a tourist town with plenty of restaurants and shops.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
