Three months in Tempe, Arizona: Desert days, student nights, and life near ASU
We came to Tempe for what was supposed to be a three-month stay, a temporary stop while we searched for a house. But the desert had other plans. What began as a stay quickly turned into a quiet love affair with a place that felt half-city, half-campus, and entirely alive.
Our apartment was near downtown, within walking distance of the Arizona State University campus. Most mornings began the same: the smell of roasted coffee drifting from the corner café, the faint clatter of skateboards on the pavement, and the sound of the Valley Metro Streetcar gliding past.
We woke to the energy of a town that never really sleeps, just shifts gears between study, work, and play. Tempe rests in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area: 10 square miles of desert bordered by the Salt River, the Papago Buttes, and broad Arizona skies. According to the City of Tempe, the town began as a small 19th-century agricultural community and transformed after World War II into the lively university city it is today. It feels like a crossroads: part desert oasis, part innovation hub, part college town.
At the heart of it all is Arizona State University (ASU), one of the largest public universities in the country, with nearly 80,000 students on the Tempe campus alone. The campus radiates outward like a small city of its own: red-brick buildings, palm-lined walkways, fountains, and wide lawns that stay surprisingly green even under desert sun. ASU gives Tempe its pulse. Students live in residential communities across campus, in modern high-rises downtown, or in shared houses and apartments tucked into quiet neighborhoods just beyond the main quad. Walking through Tempe feels like moving through a young city within a city: people reading on grass, working at open-air cafés, hauling studio projects or instruments to class.
Our time in Tempe followed a rhythm that mirrored student life more than adult life. Our weekend mornings were for walking: sometimes to Tempe Town Lake, where joggers looped the water’s edge and rowing crews sliced across the surface like brushstrokes. The lake is only a few decades old, a man-made stretch of the Salt River that turned dry riverbed into a blue centerpiece. In the early mornings, it feels like a private lake shared with a few dozen locals and a colony of ducks. We’d grab coffee and sit beneath the shade of date palms, watching the city wake.
The light in Tempe has a texture to it: bright but soft around the edges, a kind of constant gold that makes everything, from concrete to cactus, glow. The desert air is clean and dry, like standing inside a sunbeam, and after rare rainfall, that familiar scent of petrichor rolls through the streets; earthy, electric, and fleeting.
Afternoons were for house hunting. Tempe’s neighborhoods unfold like stories in transition: century-old bungalows on Ash Avenue, mid-century homes shaded by mesquite trees, and sleek new condos rising near the streetcar line. Between showings, we’d stop for late lunch on Mill Avenue, where students pour out of classrooms and pack the patios. The dining scene in Tempe is a study in contrasts: burgers and burritos beside vegan cafés and Thai curry bowls, Mediterranean kitchens next to rooftop bars. The Tempe Tourism Office proudly lists over 175 locally owned restaurants downtown alone. We learned quickly that meals stretch longer here. Maybe it’s the heat, or maybe it’s the pace of people who’ve learned that the best time of day starts when the sun begins to sink.
Evenings were for the desert sky. Sometimes we’d explore a neighborhood café or grab groceries from a local market. Other nights, if early enough, we’d just walk back through campus, past the Hayden Lawn, the library tower glowing in the half-light, palm trees shimmering under the last threads of pink and violet sky. Tempe is unique because of its scale: small enough to feel intimate, but alive with thousands of lives in motion. Even outside the university, the community hums with events: arts festivals, live music, farmers’ markets, and outdoor yoga on the lake lawn. ASU brings in lectures and exhibitions from around the world, while the city’s own Tempe Center for the Arts hosts performances that spill onto the lakeside terrace at sunset. It’s a town that learns, performs, and celebrates: all under the same orange sky.
By mid-April, the air warms into something you feel more than breathe. The sun burns bright but not cruel yet, and the sky deepens into that signature Arizona blue. Every surface: the sandstone walls, the campus paths, the rooflines, seems to radiate memory. Tempe’s color palette belongs to the desert: terracotta reds, ochre browns, pale pink stucco, silver sage, and the impossible turquoise of sky reflected on glass. By evening, the tone shifts to lavender and apricot, the kind of light that makes you want to linger just a few minutes longer before the heat releases. When the wind moves, it smells faintly of dust and citrus from neighborhood trees. You can tell the city was built on the river’s edge; it carries a subtle freshness rare in desert towns.
We came here to find a house, but Tempe gave us something else: a rhythm. We woke with students and walked with them; we sat in the same cafés, rode the same trams, and learned how the city breathes between semesters. We learned that ASU isn’t just a university: it’s an identity. It fuels innovation, art, sports, research, and community pride. It keeps Tempe young, creative, and constantly in motion.
Explore art from this Collection
This story is part of our Dry heat Collection, a series of large postage stamp wall art celebrating Arizona. Each artwork captures the colors, textures, and spirit of Arizona through a lens of travel and memory. Discover related pieces like Dry heat No.1 and Dry heat No.2, or explore all works in the Dry heat Collection.
Each piece is designed and printed in large-format detail; a postage stamp for your walls. View all collections or learn more about Ana.
