After three hours of driving or so, we arrive at our destination, Saint Catherine's Monastery, officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai. The monastery was sanctioned by the orders of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, between 548-565 BCE. But,in the year 330 ACE, the Empress Helena, the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, built a church with massive granite blocks, believed to be on the site where God spoke to Moses through the burning bush.

Desert Hot Springs has long been a destination for rest and rejuvenation. Situated 20 minutes from Palm Springs’ expansive golf courses, artistic rows of palm trees and desert estates, rustic Desert Hot Springs feels a world away. It is one of the few places on the globe with naturally occurring hot and cold mineral springs. The Mission Creek Branch of the San Andreas Fault bisects the wellness getaway where one side is a cold-water aquifer while the other a hot-water aquifer, naturally heated to temperatures as high as 180 degrees by geothermal forces thousands of feet below the earth’s surface.

Heels down. Toes out. Squeeze with calves, not knees. Lighten up on the reins. Sink your butt into the saddle. So began my first riding lesson at the Arizona Cowboy College in Scottsdale which was followed by instructions in grooming, shoeing, advanced riding techniques and roping. And this was just a one-day primer to what other “city slickers” channeling Billy Crystal experience in their five-day cattle drive at the College...

The Skeleton Coast is one of the most appropriately named stretches of land in the world, a place where many hapless sailors of centuries past have mingled their bones with whale ribs and shipwrecks.