• The "Shrek" franchise is returning with another sequel starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Zendaya.
• "Shrek 5" will premiere in December 2026.
• Here's what to know about the long-awaited movie. 

"Shrek 5" is heading to theaters in 2026 with a new cast member — Zendaya.

On Thursday, DreamWorks shared the first teaser for the movie, with new designs for Shrek and the main characters.

The teaser said that Zendaya is starring in the film, seemingly playing one of Shrek's daughters.

It has been 15 years since the last sequel to "Shrek," the pop culture juggernaut that turned DreamWorks into a leading film studio.

The first film won an Oscar, and the franchise made nearly $3 billion across the first four films. The "Puss In Boots" spinoff movies, released in 2011 and 2022, also made an extra billion dollars.

A "Shrek" sequel has been rumored for years, but fans were beginning to lose hope after "Shrek Forever After" provided a neat finish to the story. The decision to restart the "Shrek" franchise may be due to the surprise success of "Puss In Boots: The Last Wish," which had a slow opening but eventually made $481 million.

"The Last Wish" arrived 11 years after "Shrek," proving that there is still an audience for the films.

Here's what we know so far about "Shrek 5."

Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, and Cameron Diaz are returning for "Shrek 5."

Eddie Murphy, who plays Donkey, told Collider in June 2024 that he had started recording his lines for "Shrek 5" and said that DreamWorks plans to release a spinoff about his character.

A month later, DreamWorks Animation finally confirmed that "Shrek 5" is in the works. It also announced that Mike Myers will return as Shrek, with Cameron Diaz as Fiona.

No word yet on Antonio Banderas, who joined the franchise in "Shrek 2" as the outlaw Puss in Boots. Banderas voiced Puss in Boots in both of the spinoff movies (the first is set before "Shrek" and the second is set after "Shrek Forever After") and has made no announcement about stepping down from the role.

This could mean that the fan-favorite feline won't show up, or Banderas hasn't been able to finalize his deal with DreamWorks yet.

Walt Dohrn will co-direct "Shrek 5" with Brad Ableson, the director of "Minions: The Rise of Gru." Dohrn was a writer and artist on "Shrek 2" and "Shrek the Third," was the head of the story on "Shrek Forever After," and the voice of Rumpelstiltskin in the latter film.

The movie's producers are Gina Shay, who produced "Shrek Forever After," and Illumination founder Chris Meledandri.

"Shrek 5" will premiere in December 2026.

There are no details yet on the plot or how it will follow "Shrek Forever After."

The last movie ended with Shrek and Fiona happily raising their three triplets after Shrek learns to appreciate his life as a father.

DreamWorks initially announced that "Shrek 5" would premiere on July 1, 2026, but in their new teaser, the release date has changed to Christmas 2026.

• Elon Musk says it "might make sense" to increase pay for members of Congress.
• He said it could help safeguard against corruption — an argument Democrats like AOC have long made.
• It's a reversal from December, when he helped tank a funding bill over a modest lawmaker pay raise.

Elon Musk seems to be changing his mind about whether members of Congress should get a raise.

"It might make sense to increase compensation for Congress and senior government employees to reduce the forcing function for corruption," the Department of Government Efficiency head wrote on X on Thursday. "The latter might be as much as 1000 times more expensive to the public."

It's a far cry from December, when Musk helped tank a bipartisan government funding bill in part because it included a modest pay increase for members of Congress.

Musk's comment on congressional and government salaries came in response to a video claiming that members of Congress are enriching themselves by steering congressional funds toward non-government organizations that they're affiliated with.

Members of Congress are already prohibited by law from using their official positions for personal gain, and outside income often comes in the form of book proceeds.

Nonetheless, the argument Musk is making about corruption and salaries echoes those made by Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and good-government experts, who have warned that members of Congress may be tempted to trade stocks or be lured into employment in the private sector due to their stagnant salaries.

Rank-and-file members of the House and Senate currently make $174,000 — a figure that hasn't changed since 2009, since lawmakers have proactively blocked a cost of living adjustment every year since then.

If their salaries had kept pace with inflation since 2009, they would have been paid $217,900 last year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Though that $174,000 salary is far higher than what most Americans make, lawmakers and experts have pointed to the cost of maintaining two residences, as well as the importance of the job, as a reason why the salary should be increased.

• San Francisco-based Breakout has come out of stealth with $3.25 million in seed funding.
• The startup has developed an AI agent to manage software companies' inbound sales.
• Check out the 13-slide pitch deck the startup used to raise funding.

An AI startup that helps software companies manage inbound sales has come out of stealth and secured $3.25 million in seed funding.

San Francisco-based Breakout, which was launched by ex-Googlers Sachin Gupta and Hitesh Aggarwal, has created an AI sales representative that can show demos and handle early-stage customer interactions.

Gupta used the analogy of walking into an Apple store and waiting in line to speak to a human sales rep. Instead, an AI sales agent would "instantly" give you all the information you needed about an iPhone and "quickly get into your buying process."

One big problem with some AI sales agents is that they can often provide scripted interactions instead of personalized responses. Breakout says its tools can answer questions and offer tailored interactions depending on each customer's needs.

"Especially as companies go through the growth stage and have a high-velocity sales process, they start facing a lot of challenges around the buyer experience," Gupta told Business Insider. "That's the problem we're trying to solve."

The startup makes its money by offering a usage-based pricing package, typically starting with 300 conversations a month and scaling up from there. Breakout says it currently has five key clients.

While there is still a lot of investor appetite for AI startups, Gupta said there was equally as much noise. That makes it "an interesting position for investors," he said, "because they want to deploy capital, but every day they also get to know another company which is building in the AI space."

He added, "Investors tend to have certain business objections. They tend to ask, do you have access to data? And in our case, we don't have a dependency on proprietary data."

Breakout's $3.25 million seed round was led by led by Village Global, with participation from Recall Capital and Z21 Ventures.

With the fresh funding, the startup plans to build out its tech capabilities so it can start serving its waitlist of customers.

Check out the 13-slide pitch deck, shared exclusively with BI, that it used to secure the fresh funds.

• LTK is relaunching its app on Thursday to add new social features and expand beyond shopping.
• Other social-commerce apps like Flip have similarly moved into general entertainment.
• The companies are stepping up efforts to blend entertainment and shopping as they chase users.

For social-shopping apps, commerce alone isn't cutting it.

LTK, a platform that lets users buy products from creator videos and posts, is relaunching its app on Thursday to encourage more everyday content from its users.

"We're moving from being a shopping app to really being a lifestyle app," Amber Venz Box, cofounder of LTK, told Business Insider.

LTK's new feed lets users discover videos by geography and topic, such as fashion, parenting, cooking, and travel. It still wants creators to tag items in videos (that's how the company and its affiliate partners make money), but it hopes they'll vlog about other parts of their lives without any intent to push products.

The app also plans to roll out more strictly social features, like the ability to connect with friends.

It's not the only commerce platform looking to broaden its appeal in recent months. Flip, a TikTok-like app once composed purely of videos tagged with products, opened up to other content in July. It now hosts everyday videos it calls clips, which run the gamut from movie scenes to creator-on-the-street interviews and other types of content that would live on a general entertainment platform.

"The idea of social commerce over the last five years was that everyone built it to be a commerce platform where there's somebody selling you the product," Flip's CEO Noor Agha told BI.

Agha said Flip's clips feature is part of a push to merge entertainment and commerce. "If we cannot solve both, social commerce will never actually go mainstream," Agha said.

The opportunity is huge for companies in the category that can build an audience, as platforms like TikTok have shown. In a December EMARKETER forecast, the research firm predicted the number of US social-commerce buyers would hit 100 million in 2024, with sales crossing $100 billion in 2026. Social-shopping startups like Whatnot and ShopMy have pulled in tens of millions of dollars in new funding in the past few months as they chase new users.

TikTok made entertainment a must-have in social shopping

The push among shopping apps to add general entertainment is likely a response to the rise of TikTok's e-commerce platform, Shop. The app built an audience of more than a billion users globally through social entertainment before introducing commerce features.

"A lot of the social-shopping apps are trying to reverse engineer that entertainment component into their apps to make them more sticky and to keep users and audiences coming back," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER covering retail and e-commerce.

Social platforms in the US have spent years testing features to get users to buy stuff in-app, with mixed results. TikTok finally showed that consumers, if prodded enough, would get on board.

Canaves said TikTok has shown that social commerce can work, "but it needs to be grounded in content, and typically that's entertainment content and creator content."

Ultimately, that reverse engineering feat may be tough to pull off. In February, Amazon nixed its TikTok-like shopping feed, Inspire, in another sign that shopping-only video feeds lack staying power.

But relying on platforms like TikTok or Instagram for distribution is also risky for startups that don't want to be subject to the whims of Big Tech. Instagram, for example, has pulled back on commerce features in recent years.

LTK recently partnered with TikTok to integrate affiliate links within the TikTok app. But TikTok generally keeps its e-commerce features in-house. The company's future in the US is also uncertain due to a divest-or-ban law that targets the company and its owner ByteDance.

For social-shopping startups, building an entertainment platform where they can control everything may be the best path forward.

Putting social in social commerce

Making shopping feel more social is key to retaining users and growing an app's audience. Venz Box said a big part of that is tapping into the relationships users have with brands and the creators themselves.

LTK is encouraging creators to post more lifestyle content to the app so that users feel as connected to the creator on LTK as they do on larger platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

"We started investing in order to be the place that they retain, nurture, and grow their community," Venz Box said.

Community is a buzzword for social apps overall and has driven several trends in social shopping. Substack has several shopping-focused newsletters with established online and IRL communities. Meanwhile, TYB, a shopping-rewards platform cofounded by apparel brand Outdoor Voices' Ty Haney, is focused on building and maintaining communities of superfans with challenges and group chats.

Ultimately, every app is fighting for a share of the internet's most valuable commodity: consumers' time.

"I am willing to sacrifice that not every piece of content has something to buy in it because the opportunity set is so much larger if you can go deeper with people," Venz Box said.

The quality of global democracies hit an all-time low in 2024, and the U.S. continues to be seen as a "flawed democracy," according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual Global Democracy Index report.

The big picture: More than one-third of the world population now lives under authoritarian rule, according to the index.

• The overall global Democracy Index score has fallen from 5.52 in 2006 to a historic low of 5.17 in 2024, down from 5.23 in 2023.
• The index ranks countries on a 0 to 10 scale, based on ratings for 60 indicators that are grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture.

Driving the news: Even among regions that improved or saw no change in 2024, discontented populations increasingly turned to anti-mainstream or insurgent parties.

• The U.S., which was downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy" in 2016, saw some positive developments in 2024, the report found, including the smooth election and political engagement. But low trust in media and institutions, political gridlock, lobbyist influence and sharp inequalities persist.
• The score for North America — where Canada is the only "full democracy" — remained unchanged.
• But the unpopularity of current prominent political leaders threatens to undermine North America's score moving forward, the index cautioned, noting that heightened cynicism toward electoral processes and possible declines in voter participation could trigger a fall.

"If insurgents come to power and fail to improve governance and deliver tangible improvements for citizens, there is a risk that disaffection and political [polarization] will grow," Joan Hoey, the director of the Democracy Index, said in a statement.

Zoom out: Western Europe was an outlier as the only region in the world that saw its average index score improve (by 0.01 points).

• Norway ranks highest in the region — and in the world — with an overall score of 9.81.
• France was downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy" in 2024 amid a year of political unrest and deteriorating confidence in government.

South Korea, which was among the top 10 "worst performers" in the index last year, similarly slipped into the "flawed democracy" category after the chaos that unfurled late last year following impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's shock martial law declaration.

Yes, but: Despite the general decline, some democracies are on the rise: The Czech Republic, Estonia and Portugal moved up to become "full democracies."

Go deeper: U.S. slips to new low in international corruption index

• Blue Origin announced its all-women space crew, including Gayle King and Katy Perry.
• This mission marks the first all-female crew since 1963, led by Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez.
• The 11-minute journey will use Blue Origin's reusable, autonomous New Shepard rocket.

Jeff Bezos' fiancée is headed to space.

Helicopter pilot and former journalist Lauren Sánchez will lead an all-women crew, including "CBS Mornings" cohost Gayle King and pop star Katy Perry lifting off to space this spring on a Blue Origin spaceship.

The six-person crew will also include research scientist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Sánchez "brought the mission together," Blue Origin announced on Thursday.

"She is honored to lead a team of explorers on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come," it added.

The 11-minute journey will take a six-person crew past the Kármán line, which is the "internationally recognized boundary of space." Blue Origin says it will be the first all-female flight crew since Valentina Tereshkova's flight to space in 1963. It marks the 11th human flight with Blue Origin's New Shepard program, which uses Blue Origin's reusable, suborbital rocket system built for human flight. The rocket is fully autonomous with no pilots.

Sánchez is following in Bezos' footsteps with the launch.

The first passengers of the New Shepard program included Bezos and his younger brother Mark Bezos, who owns a private equity firm and volunteers as a firefighter. The crew had about three minutes to float around before gravity pulled them back toward the ground.

"I'll tell you something very interesting: zero gravity feels very natural. I don't know if it's because it's like a return to the womb," Bezos later said in a podcast interview.

Bezos also said that the crew on his flight experienced the overview effect — or overwhelming feelings that astronauts can experience when viewing the Earth from space.

"You see how fragile the Earth is. If you're not an environmentalist, it will make you one," he added.

However, in a later flight, "Star Trek" actor William Shatner also flew up to space with Blue Origin's New Shepard program and had a less pleasant experience. Shatner wrote in his book that it was a dark experience for him that "felt like a funeral," and he experienced "the strongest feelings of grief" during the trip.

"I love the mystery of the universe," he wrote. "All of that has thrilled me for years…but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold...all I saw was death."

"I had a different experience because I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us," the actor wrote. "Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound."

Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight company headquartered in Washington. It's owned by Bezos and currently headed by former Amazon exec Dave Limp. Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has said it's his "most important work.

• I tried Ina Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù.
• The pasta recipe tastes like a cross between a Bolognese and baked ziti.
• I made the dish for a small dinner party, and it was a huge hit.

From a light summer garden pasta to a rich five-cheese penne, none of Ina Garten's pasta dishes have ever disappointed me.

Her weeknight Bolognese is one of my favorites, so I was excited to try another "Barefoot Contessa" red-sauce pasta when I found the recipe for her baked rigatoni and lamb ragù.

While Garten's weeknight Bolognese cooks in 30 minutes, her baked rigatoni takes over an hour. Would the extra effort be worth it?

I decided to find out.

Ina Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù includes red wine, two types of cheese, and a lot of veggies.

To make Garten's comforting pasta dish, you'll need:

• 1 pound of ground lamb
• 1 pound of rigatoni (Garten recommends De Cecco)
• 1 can of crushed tomatoes (such as San Marzano)
• 1 pound of fresh mozzarella
• ½ cup of freshly grated Italian Parmesan cheese
• 2 ½ cups of dry red wine (Garten recommends Chianti or Côtes du Rhône)
• ⅔ cup of heavy cream
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 3 large carrots, diced
• 1 medium fennel bulb, diced
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon of whole fennel seeds, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes

Before we got to work on the ragù, we began prepping all our vegetables and herbs.

There's a lot to this recipe, so it might help to have a sous chef. I had my friend Zach, who loves making pasta, on hand to help me with this cooking project.

First, per Garten's instructions, I chopped my yellow onion, diced my carrots and fennel bulb, minced the garlic, and roughly chopped the fennel seeds.

Then, we heated olive oil in a Dutch oven and began adding the ingredients.

First, we added the onion, carrots, and fennel to the pot.

We sautéed the veggies for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until they began to brown.

Next, we added the lamb, along with the garlic and fennel seeds.

We let the mixture cook for eight minutes, breaking up the lamb with a wooden spoon and stirring until it was no longer pink.

The room filled with a delicious scent as we threw in the rest of the sauce ingredients.

We added the tomato paste and two cups of red wine (I went with Chianti), along with the oregano, red pepper flakes, and some salt and pepper.

I also threw in the San Marzano tomatoes, which I crushed in the pot with a wooden spoon.

Then, it was time to let our beautiful sauce simmer.

I brought the Dutch oven to a boil, then lowered the heat and let it simmer — partly covered — for 40 minutes.

Per Garten's instructions, I also stirred the sauce occasionally while it was cooking.

While the sauce was simmering, we prepped our rigatoni.

I brought a large pot of water to boil, added salt, and then threw in the box of rigatoni. Garten recommends cooking your noodles until they're "barely al dente."

After 40 minutes, it was time to add more red wine to the sauce.

I took the Dutch oven off the heat and stirred in the remaining half cup of Chianti.

While waiting for the pasta to finish cooking, we prepped the cheese.

Garten's recipe calls for grating half of the fresh mozzarella on a box grater and slicing the other half.

Grating mozzarella is no easy feat. We tried one of Zach's tricks — putting the cheese in the freezer for a bit to harden it — but the task was still a struggle, so we ultimately used a knife to chop up the rest.

Once the pasta was ready, we tossed in the eggs and cream.

First, we whisked the eggs and cream together in a bowl, then added it to the rigatoni.

We added our mozzarella to the pasta, then tossed everything in with the lamb ragù.

We threw in some more salt and pepper, per Garten's instructions, and mixed everything together.

It was finally time for the last step as we transferred the pasta into a baking dish.

We sprinkled everything with Parmesan cheese, then arranged the slices of mozzarella right on top.

The dish already looked delicious, but, alas, we'd have to wait. We set the timer for 40 minutes and popped the dish in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once our pasta formed a beautiful crust on top, we knew it was time to eat.

We took the baking dish out of the oven and sprinkled some parsley on top before serving it to our very excited (and very hungry) friends, who thought it had been worth the wait.

"The melted mozzarella on top of the lamb ragù added the perfect amount of creamy cheesiness, and the lamb was melt-in-your-mouth cooked to perfection," my friend Tyler said. "The sauce was so good."

"The dish reminded me of a cross between Bolognese and a baked ziti!" my friend Sara added. "Definitely a labor of love, but to someone not cooking, highly worth it!"

My sous chef, Zach, also loved the taste, although he didn't agree that it was worth the extra effort.

"As Prue would say on 'The Great British Bake-off,' it was worth the calories — but I wouldn't say it was worth the time," he said. "While it was definitely fun cooking it, I think you could genuinely make a dish that was 90% as good with just focusing on the ragù and broiling the pasta versus fully baking it."

The cooking process for Garten's baked rigatoni was definitely laborious, and I agree with Zach that the lamb ragù would make an incredible sauce even without the extra baking time. But you can also make most of the dish a day in advance. Per Garten's advice, just follow all the steps for the ragù, refrigerate it, and bake it just before serving the next day.

We served the pasta with Garten's "outrageous" garlic bread. It was the perfect meal for a small dinner party.

Garten's "outrageous" garlic bread was so good that it almost stole the show from the lamb ragù. Everyone loved the crunchy exterior, and the lemon zest and parsley on top added a nice brightness to all that garlic.

"I could have eaten an entire baguette's worth of the garlic bread," Tyler said.

Overall, the two dishes were perfect comfort food, just as Garten promised. When winter feels never-ending — as this one certainly has — what better way to get through than with some garlic bread and ragù?

• Romanian lawmakers approved a bill allowing its military to shoot down drones over its airspace.
• The NATO country has seen Russian drones entering its territory, with some crashing on its land.
• Russia has targeted Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure near NATO's borders.

Romania could start shooting down drones that enter its airspace after lawmakers approved a new bill on Wednesday.

The legislation allows Romania's military to "destroy, neutralize, or take control of" unnamed aircraft illegally breaching its airspace.

It's set to be signed into law by interim President Ilie Bolojan.

Romania, a NATO member bordering Ukraine, has seen regular incidents of Russian drones entering its airspace or crashing on its territory since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Last month, Romania's defense ministry said that its investigation team had found Russian drone debris in two areas near its border with Ukraine.

Romania has also scrambled fighter jets in response to Russian drone activity. In July, two F-18 jets were dispatched after Russian drones attacked Ukrainian civilian targets and port infrastructure near their shared border.

In September, two Romanian F-16 fighter jets and two Spanish F-18 jets were also deployed after Russian drones targeted Ukrainian infrastructure nearby.

Drones have been a hallmark of the war in Ukraine, with both sides using the rapidly evolving technology to devastating effect. This has raised the alert level in nearby countries.

In an interview last year, Gheorghita Vlad, Romania's defense chief, advocated for legal revisions to empower the military to shoot down drones.

Other countries neighboring Ukraine, including Poland and Latvia, have also reported Russian drones illegally entering their airspace.

NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah told BI in September that "shooting down drones or missiles violating Allied territory are decisions for national authorities."

"We are strengthening Romania's defense," Mircea Abrudean, Romania's interim Senate president, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

"Romania's safety is non-negotiable," he added.

Abrudean also said another law passed in the Senate on Wednesday would allow Romania's military to better collaborate with NATO partners on its territory during peacetime missions and military operations.

• I lived in Tucson, Arizona, as a child. After leaving for college, I hadn't been back in 15 years.
• Recently, I visited Tuscon as an adult and it was even better than I expected.
• The city was filled with excellent food, hiking trails, and beautiful sunset views.

I live in Oregon and enjoy traveling, though I usually focus on exploring new places or returning to beloved spaces in the Pacific Northwest again and again.

However, my most recent trip was a bit different: I returned to where I grew up for the first time in 15 years. Although I was born in Canada, I spent second grade all the way through middle and high school in Tucson, Arizona.

As a kid, I didn't enjoy Tucson. Once I was accepted to a university in Washington State, I left the Sonoran Desert as quickly as I could and never looked back.

Years later, though, I wanted to see the place where I'd spent years growing up — this time through the lens of an adult and visitor.

My visit to Tucson was nothing like I'd expected. After spending several days exploring the city, I was surprised by how much I loved it, and I'm already booking my next flight back.

The opportunities for exploring the outdoors were abundant.

Although my parents instilled a love for the outdoors in me as a child, it wasn't common for us to head out and explore nearby trails.

Fortunately, over the past few years, Tucson has added many more accessible hiking trails, easily connecting visitors and locals to nature in just about any direction from the city's core.

I found myself especially impressed by Sabino Canyon, which I remember visiting several times as a kid. Years later, I'm impressed that the robust recreation area offers something for everyone.

The canyon has a paved main path, excellent for runners and walkers, and an unpaved trail for those seeking a more difficult hike.

For those with mobility issues or who simply want a leisurely way to see the landscape, the Sabino Canyon Crawler is a wonderful option. The electric shuttle travels up through the canyon, and passengers can listen to a narration about local wildlife while they ride.

Visitors can ride the shuttle up and back down the entire way or choose their own level of adventure. I loved that I could get off at the top and walk back to the visitor center to see parts of the canyon up close.

I'm still thinking about all the good food I ate.

In an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations," the chef visits El Charro Café. Established in 1922, the family-run spot is known as the oldest operating Mexican restaurant in the United States.

The restaurant is still located in an old house and carries on its tradition of making carne seca — a dish featuring beef that has been dried on the rooftop in the desert sun before being shredded and simmered with tomatoes, onions, and chilies.

Growing up, I'd never visited El Charro Café. I'm grateful I went now, as I loved experiencing the taste of history that lives on in this beautiful building.

Another food highlight on my trip was stopping for a baguette at Barrio Bread, which makes use of heirloom, drought-tolerant grains grown in the Sonoran Desert.

I also encountered incredible tableside-made guacamole at almost every Tucson restaurant I visited.

The coffee scene is something special.

Tucson has a pretty impressive collection of local coffee roasters, which means my trip had no shortage of great beverages.

I had no complaints about my visits to Caffe Luce and Yellow Brick Coffee, but my visit to Exo Roast Co. was truly the standout.

According to its website, Exo collaborates with small producers in Mexico and roasts its beans on-site. I visited its Simpson St. location and immediately loved the charm of the space.

The late-1800s adobe-style building houses a sunny courtyard with plenty of lively plants, with historic details inside, including exposed wooden-beam ceilings and stunning terracotta-hued tiled floors.

I loved sipping an orange-cardamom latte and eating the flakiest croissant while enjoying the community feel of this space.

I found comfort in driving up Mt. Lemmon for sunset.

For two summers, I worked at a scout camp on Mt. Lemmon — the highest point of the Santa Catalina Mountains that tower over Tucson on its north side.

Although I loved my experience as a camp counselor and the people I met, I didn't have as much appreciation for this geological wonder as I do now.

The sunsets I experienced during my visit were just as spectacular as I remembered. Taking a drive on my last night in Tucson and stopping at a mountain viewpoint to take in the color show with the city below was a highlight of the trip.

Visiting Saguaro National Park was much more enjoyable as an adult.

Saguaro National Park is uniquely split up into two sections, with the city of Tucson in the center.

While planning this visit, it dawned on me that I had attended elementary school just five minutes from Saguaro National Park East.

We had driven through the park almost daily, or I had ridden the bus past countless collections of saguaros, a cactus species.

I didn't realize how special that was as a child, but exploring the park as an adult gave me a better appreciation for the landscape of the Sonoran Desert where I grew up.