Is it worth it? Does it warrant all the money, time and effort that it takes to travel over 1,500 miles in sometimes unpredictable winter weather?

What is so important about traveling the same roads, staying in the same towns and doing the same things year after year? What is it that makes us yearn for our departure date?

Is it that the winter vacation to Fountain Hills has become our “time clock” of the year? Is each year measured from the time we leave the Valley of the Sun until we return?

Things have changed a lot since we first started coming to the Valley 30 years ago. I remember when we first tested taking a winter vacation. We had little time off work, so we flew.

I remember it taking so long to get to Fountain Hills from the airport. People would tell me how much they enjoyed a winter vacation. They spoke of it as a feeling. They called it “the draw.”

I questioned that there could be such a feeling. However, now I agree. I saw something recently that made the draw real. It was something beautiful, but I had no camera. I decided that such a view was something that I must try to capture. I waited in the same place at the same time the following late afternoon with camera in hand.

Seeing such beauty made me understand what those people were saying. The evening sky was cloudless, rich in floor and forming an upper from of the evening view. The distant hills showed only a desert color. The tall spout of water from the famous fountain sent a white column of water far into the sky.

The people had been correct when they called the desire to visit such a place “the draw.”