Exploring the Vibrant Life of America’s Deserts in the Spring

Blooms, Birdsong, and Blue Waters—A Springtime Road Trip through the Southwest

By Oana Harrison

PUBLISHED in ROVA Magazine, March/April 2025 issue

The desert: dust, death, and desolation. Or at least that’s how I used to think about it before our springtime road trip to the Southwest. Eight months into a full-time RV year that my husband, David, and I had embarked upon, we headed west through Texas to New Mexico, Arizona, the California coast and back. Along the way, we discovered unique places in the Chihuahua, Sonora, Mojave, and Colorado Deserts. The Southwest offered incredible natural nuances, from shifting sand dunes to endless canyons, to lush oases and blue lakes. This landscape I’d once viewed as dead and quiet, the desert was teeming with life. And nothing prepared me for the intense orange-purple sunsets or the Technicolor desert in bloom.

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Kelso Dunes: The Singing Dunes of California

When in the Mojave Desert, one must play in the sand—and what better place to do so than on the Kelso Dunes? Kelso Dunes, also known as the Kelso Dune Field, is the largest field of aeolian sand deposits in the Mojave Desert. Protected by the Mojave National Preserve, the dunes are located near the town of Baker, San Bernardino County, California.

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