Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Last Updated: July 13, 2026
DeAnza Springs Resort is in eastern San Diego County. At an elevation of 2,600 feet it’s considered high desert with warm days and cool nights. DeAnza is on 500 acres adjacent to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, offering endless miles of remote hiking trails. It was a perfect getaway from the COVID-19 madness after leaving Ajo and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Last Updated: July 13, 2026
Ajo sits at the western edge of the Tohono O’odham Nation, about 40 miles north of the Mexican border and roughly 2.5 hours from Tucson. It’s one of the closest towns to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and in late May 2020 it was one of the few places in southern Arizona with an available RV spot — most parks in the area were full, partly because of workers constructing the border wall nearby.
The name has two competing explanations. In Spanish, ajo means garlic — and some early Spanish explorers apparently found wild garlic growing in the area. But the Tohono O’odham people have a similar-sounding word, o’oho, meaning paint: they obtained red pigment from mineral deposits in this region for centuries before any Spanish explorer arrived. Take your pick.
Last Updated: July 12, 2026
Tucson in late May 2020 was different. COVID-19 had shuttered the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, closed Western Way’s pool and clubhouse, and pushed most snowbirds north weeks earlier than usual. The campground was nearly empty. But the Sonoran Desert didn’t get the memo — it was putting on one of the most spectacular bloom seasons we’ve seen in years, and we had it almost entirely to ourselves.
The catch: it was running about 20 degrees hotter than normal. We’d timed the trip for the saguaro bloom, which typically peaks in late April to early May when highs hover in the low 80s. Instead, we got 100°F every afternoon. Early mornings cooled into the 60s, which made dawn walks and hikes genuinely pleasant — we just had to be done before 9 a.m.
Last Updated: July 12, 2026
Willcox sits in the Sulphur Springs Valley at 4,167 feet — cooler and wetter than the desert floor at Tucson or Phoenix, and surrounded by some of the most historically significant and visually dramatic country in southeastern Arizona. We’ve stopped here twice, drawn first by the wine country and again in spring 2020 when we needed a low-key base after a long drive from Elephant Butte, New Mexico. The wineries were closed on that 2020 visit — COVID stay-at-home orders were in effect — but the backcountry around Willcox was very much open, and we spent a week exploring Chiricahua National Monument’s back roads, the Fort Bowie National Historic Site, and the remote Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge. The area more than earned its place on our return list.
Last Updated: July 12, 2026
Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico and one of the most extraordinary cities in America — the oldest state capital in the country, founded by Spanish colonists in 1610, sitting at 7,199 feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It has been an art hub for over a century; Georgia O’Keeffe, Willa Cather, and D.H. Lawrence all found their way here, and today Santa Fe’s art market is the second largest in the United States after New York City. The adobe architecture, the canyon light, the galleries along Canyon Road — we wanted to experience all of it. COVID-19 had other plans. Nearly everything was closed, and we moved through the city mostly from a distance, filing it away for a proper return visit. From Eagle Nest, it was a two-and-a-half hour drive through the mountains and then south along the Rio Grande.
Last Updated: July 12, 2026
From Amarillo, Texas, we headed west and then north into the mountains of northern New Mexico — a five-hour drive that climbed steadily from the flat Texas Panhandle to the high alpine country around Eagle Nest at 8,300 feet. The drive itself provided an early complication: somewhere along the route, either diesel fuel contamination with water or the rapid change in altitude was causing the engine to run rough under load. Purging the fuel filter helped, but a visit to the Freightliner dealer in Albuquerque was clearly going to be necessary. We filed it away and pressed on. What was waiting at the end of the drive was worth every mile of it.
