By the pool

 

In Arizona we spent a lot of our time by the pool.  When we first arrived the pool water temperature was in the 50's.  This was a little frigid but it did not stop us from swimming.  But we did use the floating pool furniture a bit more, and we kept short our time actually in the water.  We found the cold water very invigorating.

Later after the pool warmed up there was more 'Marco Polo' and swimming the length of the pool under water.  The kids were impressed that I could do 2 laps underwater.  Stuey could do one. When the cousins arrived it was tossing the football around.  The trick was to catch the football in the air and pass it back before landing in the water.

Of course we had to share the pool with the bees.  They came from far and wide for water.  There is not much water in the desert and the pool must have seemed like a HUGE oasis.  At first the bees freaked out the kids and they called them hornets.  But after a while they realized that the bees meant no harm, and that they really do not want to sting you because when they do they die.  They are NOT hornets.  We found that you could even let them land on you.

Patrick

On arrival the pool water was freezing so we spent a lot of time floating around on the pool toys

Nora love, LOVED the fresh raspberries we could get at Safeway

My favorite activity was cooking brats and hotdogs on the grill fired with local catcall mesquite that I gathered in the desert

A 'Jack fruit' and it cost less than 4 dollars at the local Safeway!

A very interesting fruit - it tasted like chewing gum

Box Canyon

 

After Thanksgiving lunch everyone but me went to Box Canyon.  I had locked the keys our rental and there was not enough room for everyone in the other rental car. So I did the dishes and watched football.  At Box Canyon they saw cottonwoods growing in the desert and lots and lots of Of- Road-Vehicles (ORVs) with bright lights blaring loud music and zipping up and down the wash.  

Nora lost her phone on this trip so the kids and I returned a couple of days later (we never did find the phone and according to 'find your iPhone' it ended up by the road in a really random spot). On our return to Box Canyon I got to see the ORV cultural phenomena for myself.  According to Nora and Stuey when we returned to Box Canyon there were even more ORVs than there had been on Thanksgiving Day.

These were not the type of ORV folk that I am used to in Alaska.  Most of them were super friendly Mexican-Americans and they all had crowded campsites where they were cooking food.  Many of the ORVs were blaring Mariachi music and they had these light rods sticking up and swaying back and forth at the back of their ORVs.  The canyon air was blue with exhaust and camp fire smoke.  It was like there was some sort of festival going on.

But despite the commotion the canyon was still very beautiful.  Yellow cottonwood trees and high walls all around.  It was well worth the visit.  

Patrick

Thanksgiving

 

We had a great Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. So great to relax by a pool, read books, go on hikes, and at night play cards.  A totally different routine than our normal one here at home in Alaska.  We also ate pretty well.  

On the first day we stocked up with massive amount of food from Safeway and I was wondering how we would finish it all.  But finish it would did - on the last day there was no cream or milk for the coffee, but we managed to empty the fridge.  Most nights we would have a salad, starch and cook some sort of meat on the outside charcoal grill.

For Thanksgiving lunch I cooked up a deboned turkey.  I debone him the day before the meal and made broth from the bones while the meat itself brined.  Then on Thanksgiving I used the broth to make stuffing and filled the bird up with hot stuffing and sewed him up.  The extra broth we used for gravy.  We also had garlic and leek mashed potatoes, a salad, and Polly's Brussels sprouts.  All very good!

Patrick

Vulture Peak

 

The big hiking adventure of the trip was a climb up Vulture Peak.  This is the volcanic spire you could see from the house and that dominates the view at sunset.   It tops out at about 3400 feet, and is a 1200 foot climb from the high desert down below.  The kids and I figured that that's about the same as going for a quick ski on Pyramid.  And the elevation gain is about the same, or even a little less.  But the desert is also far, far hotter.

It was a good thing we got a start bright and early in the morning, and did most of the hike up in the shade of the peak itself. On the hike down there was no shade.

The view from the top is stunning.  The desert stretches to the horizon - a flat plain with mountains on the rims. 

Patrick

Negotiating the steep slot near the top

Prescott

 

On the one cloudy day of the trip the kids and I went exploring in the car and drove up to Prescott.  Prescott used to be the capitol of Arizona and is a really cool town.  We drove to Prescott via Yarnell and the Peeples Valley.  The road climbs like 2000 feet from the Sonoran Desert below to the cottonwoods and grasslands of the Peeples Valley up above.

All the cottonwoods were bright yellow and I desperately wanted but did not take a photo of the trees and farms near Yarnell.  Nora found my regret funny and for the rest of the trip when ever we saw a cottonwood with fall colors we took a picture - but none of them quite compared to the bucolic views of the Peeples Valley.

The Peeples Valley is very much 'old west' and reminded us of the town from the 'Cars' movie - Radiator Springs.  The road was very windy and remote and it was kind of a shock to go through a high pass at like almost 6500 feet, pine trees all around, and suddenly be in urban Prescott.  

We checked out the town square and had a really good lunch at an Italian restaurant.  Like some of the best Italian food I have ever had in my life.  And then we drove on home.  We made a loop of it and drove east from Prescott to the interstate and so back down to the Sonoran Desert.

Patrick

View from the road as we approach Prescott - a VERY slow 18 miles from the Peeples Valley

That's Vulture Peak in the distance and the Sonoran Desert down below