Arizona First: Traveling Close to Home

Traveling close to home is part of living at our pace. You can go, and you can still get back to the same kitchen the same day.

I already write destination guides for Arizona and other places closer to home at Travel at My Pace. I won't rewrite those reviews here. The point on this site is simpler. A zoo morning, a Sedona overlook, or a lake at the water's edge can fit a full household life, especially when heat, walking, and energy have to be part of the plan.

Good first guides, if you want the trip planning itself: the Phoenix Zoo, Sedona without the big hikes, and Lake Powell the easy way.

Close-to-home travel still has to pass the same tests as a longer trip. How hot will it be? Where can I sit? Who is coming, and does the day work for the slowest person in the group? What does the evening look like when we get back to Anthem? I wrote about those questions in How I Decide Whether a Trip Is Worth the Energy, and about mixed-age days in Traveling With Kids and Older Relatives.

A too-hot day trip that looked harmless on the calendar can still be the wrong kind of outing. If a trip only works when you come home and pretend you are not tired, it is not our kind of trip. That's true of a long flight, and it's true of a Saturday that got away from us.

I still want the farther trips. Joanna and I have been to Japan twice, and I'm glad we went. The point of this page is not to shrink a life. It's to keep a life that can include a zoo morning, a Sedona overlook, a lake at the water's edge, and a quiet day at home, without treating any of those as a consolation prize.

The pace is the same one I wrote about in The Pace I Travel Is the Pace I Live. Leave room for heat, a place to sit, and the day after. Then go anyway.