I used to think summer was the best season, but that love ended when I moved to the southwest in high school. My dad was working for an IT company that decided to open its new corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. Right before they were set to open, they decided to send my dad and a slew of others there when they initially failed to hire enough new employees for the facility. He wasn’t happy, and neither was my mother. As part of the Phoenix metropolitan area, Scottsdale is in an official desert climate. Temperatures can exceed 110 degrees in the summer season during the worst heat waves, with temperatures as high as 115 being possible as well. We started taking trips to New Mexico after my grandparents moved there for their retirement. They bought a condominium in the Ladera West neighborhood of Albuquerque, right between the Ladera Golf Course and the Petroglyph National Monument. The first thing I noticed when we visited Albuquerque was how much cooler the air felt to my skin compared to the city we had just left hours prior before getting onto Interstate 40 and heading east into New Mexico. My sister and I spent a summer staying without our grandparents and we had a blast compared to Phoenix. Temperatures were in the low 90s, which is comparatively good when you consider the 112 degree summer Phoenix recently had. If you want to live in the desert without melting into a puddle, Albuquerque is a good option. Although the real estate market is getting tighter here like it is in every other major American city after the COVID pandemic.