By the 1960s, Adams was suffering from gout and arthritis, and hoped that moving to a new home would make him feel better. He and his wife considered Sante Fe, but they both had commitments in California (Virginia was managing the Yosemite studio of her father). A friend offered to sell them a home in Carmel Highlands, on the Big Sur coastline. With architect Eldridge Spencer, they began planning the new home in 1961 and moved there in 1965. Adams began to devote much of his time to printing the backlog of negatives that had accumulated over forty years.