Imagine a place in Southern California without freeways, a place without strip malls, smog, or freeway-clogging traffic. Then, imagine a necklace of grassy islands where eagles soar and foxes run, where abandoned olive groves and ripening figs attract ravens. Imagine crystal-blue ocean waters, where the golden Garibaldi swims through swaying kelp forests beneath wave-battered sea caves, undisturbed by cargo ships and oil platforms.

As the snow continues to pile up in the Rockies, thoughts not surprisingly turn to warmer settings, and Saguaro National Park in southern Arizona is a great place to explore in early spring. Wildflowers are coming up, temperatures are warming, but not too hot or too cold, and crowds seemingly have gone elsewhere.

I noticed it in a Traveler article around Thanksgiving. A short mention of two nights in December when Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde National Park would be lighted by luminarias.

We recently returned to southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park for a third time. The previous visits took place a number of years ago and were rushed affairs when we were headed for other destinations. In each case we made a short stop at the park’s Oasis Visitor Center just outside the town of Twenty Nine Palms and drove south through the park to Interstate 10 without another stop of any consequence. Mostly, we were there to see the unusual trees (actually, they aren’t trees) that serve as the park’s namesake with little time for exploration. Unfortunately, we missed the largest concentration of trees and failed to appreciate much of what Joshua Tree National Park has to offer. That was our loss.