🏜️ Desert Life 🌵
I spend about half of the year out in the Sonoran Desert, and I can't wait to make it full time. Where I am it's about 110°F most of the year (summer ☀️ is from March to November, and the other three months are a spring/fall blend. Winter is maybe two weeks of 40°ish, but with the sun out it feels like 70° with a chilly breeze. Dry heat/cold is fun; if you keep your head covered and stay in the shade/sun respectively, you're all good to wear summer clothes all year round.
I am a desert girl; when it is 100 degrees outside, i am content. Where I am it is about 105 degrees at sunset and I love it. You can find me out at dusk just basking in its glory, relieved that, wherever I go, I don't need to bring a jacket. The desert feels like home to me in a way that nowhere else does.
🍍 Sweet Drinks 🍹
One of the greatest joys of being in the Sonoran area is trying prickly pear lemonade. The fruit of the prickly pear (the fruit is called a tuna) is ridiculously sweet; you can eat the fruit as is, or blend it into a puree to strain into lemonade. Picking the fruit is risky to fingers so there are tools and makeshift tools to do it (the fruit has tiny spines on the skin), but it's worth trying if you find a vendor selling it. It's sweeter than strawberry lemonade and takes the bite out of the lemons without killing the flavor.
🌇 Evenings ✧🌠
My favorite time is sunset, especially out here. Desert sunsets put ocean sunsets to absolute shame; you'll see shades of pink, orange, purple, red, and blue that you won't find in the city, the mountains, or the seaside (the heat and the dust play a huge role). The heat is cozy at sunset; your skin isn't burning under the sun and it's just warm all around. The best is lying out at the pool as the sun goes down and watching the bats come out.
🌠 Bat Watching 🦇
Speaking of pools and bats, pool lounging at dusk is a delight because the bats come out to swoop over the water, and this girl adores bats of all sizes. This area gets an assortment of insect, fruit, and nectar bats. The nectar bats I've seen personally have been almost hummingbird sized! The littlest ones like the flowers on mesquite trees, so if one of those is growing in your yard, keep an eye out for hummingbirds that fly funny at sunset.
🐆 Animal Neighbors 🦅
Other animals that are local are coatimundis (similar to a raccoon), ringtails, javelina (wild peccary), bobcats, mountain lions, roadrunners, jaguar🐆 (yes, seriously), gila monsters, scorpions, and all kinds of lizards and snakes (desert geckos are so cool). It's not unheard of to have about half of these end up in your yard througout the year in the more rural areas. A lot of people set up a trail cam with a water dish nearby to both help out the local fauna and to catch a glimpse at their natural neighbors.
Further out by the rivers you might catch a glimpse of river otters or even wild horses...
🏜️ Not Just Sand ⛰️
If the saguaro cacti and prickly pear across the sand aren't your thing, it's easy to switch scenery in about an hour's drive. There are rivers with natural slides, waterfalls, red mountains, pine mountains, towns, cities, villages, hiking trails, petting farms, botanical gardens, zoos, aquariums... the only thing missing is a beach.