While their kids were partying at the Coachella Music Festival in April, Julia Rabe and Ken and Diane Siegal-Doud took off for Box Canyon where, according to Rabe (pictured), they enjoyed a “riot of spring-blooming flowers, cacti, ocotillo, lizards, and one very shy desert tortoise.” Rabe, who moved to Santa Barbara in high school, had her daughter Naomi here 21 years ago, and works as a Spanish-to-English translator, has been reading The Indy since the News & Review days. That’s no surprise, given that her mom, Claire Rabe, was The Indy’s first-ever poetry editor, but we’re always stoked to hear someone exclaim, “You guys rock!” And we do, even, apparently, in the desert. Send your Indy travel pics to tips@independent.com.