Arizona

Experience the Majesty of Arizona’s Red Rock Country

Published June 14, 2016 | By Clark Norton

Horseshoe Bend in Arizona’s photogenic Red Rock Country. Photo by Michael Madsen.

When I moved to Tucson in late 2015, one of the first people I looked up was Mitch Stevens, who runs a tour company called Southwest Discoveries, which specializes in hiking and walking tours in some of Arizona’s most spectacular scenic areas.

While Southwest Discoveries is relatively new, Mitch is an old hand at leading hikes and tours, with an extensive background at the helm of Sierra Club outings. He’s particularly interested in drawing baby boomers to his tours, which is how we originally connected.

Mitch has lived in Arizona for decades and is a walking encyclopedia in the geology, archaeology, history, and culture of the Southwest.

Arizona’s searing summer heat levels off in Autumn, with October and November ushering in perfect hiking weather that lasts throughout the winter and into spring.

Red Rock Country

Mitch has… Continue reading →

The Agony of Old Guidebook Disposal

Published April 21, 2016 | By Clark Norton

Guidebooks that have served me well.

I’m in the process of cleaning out the rest of our possessions from our house in upstate New York to complete our move to Tucson, Arizona.

Our house in Tucson is maybe half the size of our house in New York, and therein lies a problem: what to do about the hundreds of books that we no longer have room for and can’t afford to move anyway?

The problem is particularly acute with one genre of books that dominate my old office: travel guidebooks.

To say that I have a sizable collection of them would be a bit of an understatement. They date back to my earliest trips abroad in the 1970’s and continued proliferating in the decades since, reaching a crescendo in the early 1990’s just before the Internet began turning print guidebooks into dinosaurs.

Still, being a baby boomer… Continue reading →

Posted in Alaska, Arizona, Baby boomer travel, California, Guidebooks | Tagged Alaska, California, Dominican Republic, Eyewitness Guides, Fodor's, Frommer's, Insight Guides, Lonely Planet, Michelin, Rough Guides, travel guidebooks | 5 Comments

Scottsdale, Arizona: Splendor in the Desert

Published January 14, 2016 | By Clark Norton

Saguaro cacti along a trail in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale. Photo by Sheldon Clark

Except for some brief stops at the Phoenix, Arizona, airport, I hadn’t been in the “Valley of the Sun” region for about 30 years until recently, when some friends invited us to spend a few days in their timeshare at the Sheraton Desert Oasis resort in Scottsdale, which lies north and east of Phoenix.

My memories of the area weren’t particularly positive. Our previous Phoenix visit — poorly timed for August, when it was 110 degrees in the shade — was spent futilely searching for the “there” there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. If there was a downtown Phoenix, we couldn’t find it back then. It just seemed to be a mass of sprawl in the desert.

Because I had imagined Scottsdale to be just another Phoenix suburb, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of… Continue reading →

Posted in Adventure travel, Arizona, Baby boomer travel, California, Hiking, Resorts | Tagged Arizona, desert, hiking, McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale, Sheraton Desert Oasis, Sonoran Desert | 12 Comments

According to government and private surveys:

Leading-edge baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) and seniors account for four out of every five dollars spent on luxury travel today.
Roughly half the consumer spending money in the U.S.--more than $2 trillion--is in the hands of leading-edge baby boomers and seniors.
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) travel more than any other age group.
When asked what they would most like to spend their money on, baby boomers answered “travel” more than any other category, including improving their health or finances.