Driving Interstate 10 between Los Angeles and Phoenix is boring, to say the least. I joke that all I have to do is point the car east and put it in cruise control, then fall asleep in the back seat. While that’s both an obvious joke (please don’t do such a thing) and not quite…
Editor’s note: it gives me great pleasure to introduce you all to Reina Abreyava, our newest writer here at The Royal Tour. I’ve known Reina for more than a decade now. She is smart, kind, driven, and downright wonderful. She is also, as you’ll come to find out, one heck of a writer, with her…
Editor’s note: In my Ultimate Guide to Southern Arizona, I called Tucson more of just a place to stay rather than a place to see. Sam, our wandering rabbi here at The Royal Tour, proves me wrong in this terrific look at the city and region. For more of his stories, click here to visit…
Page, Arizona sits at the northern border of the state, just a couple miles south of Utah, where Glen Canyon Dam (and bridge) allows passage over the Colorado River. To the east lies Lake Powell. To the west is a mysterious area called the Arizona Strip, the northwest corner of the state that is separated…
Perhaps no natural wonder on Earth is as recognizable as the Grand Canyon. It has been said that it is the one place on the planet that, no matter how high one builds it up in one’s mind, lives up to expectations. Iconic, magnificent, Grand Canyon is a bucket list item for just about every…
It is one of the most iconic photos on Instagram, seeming to come right out of a Windows background. Horseshoe Bend, where the mighty Colorado River makes a perfect U-turn, is a bucket list destination for so many people, myself included. But it is just one part of a much larger system, defined by the…
Since the start of the pandemic, Antelope Canyon, considered by many to be the most beautiful slot canyon in the world, has been closed. The canyon lies on Navajo lands just outside Page, at the northern tip of Arizona, and - like all Navajo lands - has been closed to the public for health and…
Images of the American west and its complex history seem to focus on ideas of lawlessness, of wildness, and of conflict. In popular culture, we picture the gun fight at the OK Corral, miners fighting each other for claims to get rich quick, taverns and brothels being the closest things to “civilization” within a hundred…
Bright blue skies, the way it seems only Arizona can do bright blue skies, greet me as I begin my walk, the kind of sky that makes you feel so small and insignificant, like standing next to the Pacific Ocean. White puffy clouds break up the blue here and there. Having dropped their rain a…
What makes a culture impressive? What makes a building project awe-inspiring or an engineering feat worthy of praise? Questions like these spiral through my head as I gaze at the ruins of Casa Grande, a four story building constructed by the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People. The desert air here in central Arizona is dry and…