With limited time, we only explored the Saguaro National Park – West. The sheer amount of these tall cacti blows your mind, once you start driving through the protected land of the national park, where they grow every few feet for as far as the eyes can see. There are multiple points of interest and hikes, including some ancient rock carvings, and some awesome viewpoints overlooking the valleys surrounding the park. All the travel guides recommend this park over its eastern counterpart because of the density of the cacti. We visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, but were not as impressed. This is a small zoo and landscape/flora display mostly appropriate…

Holidays in NYC are on the bucket list for many people, and there are certainly BIG reasons to experience it at least once. We squeezed in our trip right between Christmas and New Years Eve, and we certainly made the most of it. We stayed in Harlem, in a very spacious (by NY standards) studio apartment on 125th St, very close the subway, and a walking distance from the historic part of Harlem, the Apollo theater, and many churches. Our welcome dinner was at the famous Red Rooster restaurant, and we even managed a subway ride that night to the Times Square to see the famous walls of lit up…

My friend Kelly and I picked an odd time to visit New Mexico, some might say, but we usually get restless right around February, when the grey skies and constant rain in Western Washington can be tolerated no more. New Mexico offered a wide variety of weather upon our arrival, with upper 60s and sunny skies on day one, and a snowstorm that gave us plenty of jitters on the way to the airport at the end of the trip. On our first day we enjoyed the old town in Albuquerque and spent some time guessing all sorts of nonsense when looking at the ancient rock carvings at the Petroglyph…