August 22nd, 2020

Summer 2020 travel just ain’t the same with coronavirus still in effect. But a smart way to still get that vacation vibe while trying to keep your social distance is renting out a house with family or friends! This summer we road tripped to Mesa, AZ and Palm Springs, CA for a weekend away with a house full of besties.

Prepare for it to be hot. Like, scorching hot.

If you’re planning a trip to the desert in the summer, be prepared for the feeling of opening your car door to step into a life-sized oven. I can’t begin to explain the absolute necessity a pool is.

In this kind of 112 degree heat, I don’t care how pretty the backyard landscape is, you will not survive outside without a pool to cool off in. We basically lived in the water all weekend, only getting out briefly to eat and grab more High Noons  and White Claws from the fridge.

Shop for pool toys, drinks, and groceries beforehand.

The AZ heat is just so intense that the idea of having to make a grocery store trip is enough to make you question if you really need food in the first place. So in order to avoid braving the heat, we did all the grocery shopping in one go on the way in and made sure to bring enough pool toys, games, and drinks to last us the stay. Cheat code; make a list and use a grocery delivery service to make your life so much easier.

With the dry heat, you aren’t going to want to do much exercising. BUT if you wake up early enough, you can get a little low impact exercise in like yoga! I have to say, backyard yoga with my best friends was one of the highlights of the trip! Mostly because we were sweating through our eyeballs, yelling weird things at each other, and laughing like the pack of hyenas we are hahaha.

Another smart move is to wake up and prep food early.

Early morning, before the heat picks up, is pretty much the only time you will want to do any sort of extensive cooking. Of course you want to eat good food (because who doesn’t) so taking care of all the slicing and dicing so that the food is ready to throw on the grill will open up your day so that you can just relax. Plus when the kitchen heats up, the AC can only do so much to keep up so if you need the oven or stove, I suggest trying to use it early on in the day if you can.

All said and done, the desert gave me and my closest group of humans the excuse to be together, laugh until we had abs, and photo document some good memories. We’re thinking it needs to start being a quarterly thing 😉

With love,

Ashley Jo