Travel & Transportation

Goodwill is my best friend. The Dollar Store is a close second.

Each place that we’ve had an extended stay (3-4 weeks) has been missing some little everyday need: colander, vegetable peeler, potholders, for example. Some we’ve been able to work around; in one place I made a square apple pie – just used a cake pan because there was no pie plate. It tasted just fine. Some missing items you just don’t want to work around; it’s easier to go buy a corkscrew (Dollar Store) than trying to open a bottle of wine without one. The house in Omaha last fall had absolutely no lamps, only ceiling lights in every room, which was not comfortable. Thank heavens for Goodwill with its variety of $3 – $5 lamps. The house’s owners are generally okay with you leaving those things behind when you move on. And if not, then back to Goodwill they go.

The Scottsdale house was no exception. Everyone who hears Scottsdale thinks, “oooh, swanky” but Scottsdale is as diverse as any city with its pockets of luxury, pockets of working-class neighborhoods, even pawn shops just two blocks south of the touristy Old Scottsdale area. Ok, yes, maybe Scottsdale is skewed a little more to the wealthy vs nonwealthy, but it still has its Dollar Stores and a few Goodwills.

The house we rented was a nice, basic house in one of the modest neighborhoods. Even there many houses have swimming pools. We didn’t, but what we did have in the back yard was a putting green. But, inexplicably, no putters! Goodwill to the rescue. Fifteen dollars later we had two putters and a three iron.

The other reason we rented this house was the canal outside our back gate. The greater Phoenix metropolitan area has over 80 miles of canal trails with lights, landscaping and public art. Some fishing is allowed. Ducks swim in the water (people don’t!). Walking just a couple of miles south on “our” canal brought us to Papago Park, the Desert Botanical Garden, and a great overlook to the zoo.  

^{The canal trail goes through a tunnel under McDowell Road; swimmers go all the way through too.}

^{Looking south to the zoo from top of a sandstone formation in Papago Park.}

Staying in Scottsdale was a combination of exploring the new and revisiting the remembered. We met there 40 years ago, both lived in the area a few years, and then after we moved to Maine I would go back to visit my parents many times over the 35 years they lived in Sun Lakes, just southeast of Phoenix. But you know the saying “you can’t go home” – well, you can go but it may not look the same at all.

A metropolitan area of 5 million people is not the type of area we would have chosen to stay were it not that we did live there once and thought it’d be fun to see it all again. I recognized names of roads: Alma School, Baseline, Buckeye, Camelback, and geographic features: Camelback Mountain, Papago Park, the Tempe Butte, but not much else! Tempe, the little college town with our favorite used bookstore, movie theater and spaghetti restaurant is now a city of high-rise dorms and major commercial buildings.

But all the changes just gave us new things to explore! One of the most unexpected was the Musical Instrument Museum in northern Phoenix.  The founder of the museum was a CEO of Target Corp who recognized that most musical museums in the US focus on Western music and instruments. He had the idea to showcase instruments played every day by people worldwide. The museum currently has a collection of more than 8,000 instruments from more than 200 world countries. As you approach each country’s display the headphones you are wearing play the music while you watch the musicians play on video. The breadth of this museum was astounding. It’s impossible to pick just one favorite style of music.

^{Outside the museum, drums.}

Picking a favorite at The Perch Brewery, a restaurant in Chandler (another town in the greater metro area) was hard too. No, not my favorite dish, but my favorite bird. The restaurant is home to over 50 brightly colored parrots and parrot-like birds. The owners are dedicated to giving these once abandoned or abused birds a loving forever home. They don’t breed the rescue birds; they just care for them while providing a charming atmosphere for the diners who provide stimulating interactions for the birds. The restaurant has a lovely courtyard with trees, water features, windchimes and huge cages for the birds. The food is very tasty too. But for me, this was a special place to go because I’d been there often with my parents. They had been so excited to introduce me, and at different times, my siblings, to this “cool” place.

_{^{Wrigley, a Blue and Gold Macaw}}

^{Can’t say they didn’t warn you!}

Many people think that living in the desert must be boring, always the same, but the truth is much different. Seasons are definitely distinct, especially spring. There were predictions that 2023 might be a superbloom year. A superbloom occurs when an unusually high number of wildflowers blossom at roughly the same time in the spring. Factors that lead to these superbloom years are widespread rains that come early and are spaced out so there were no extended dry periods and temperatures that stay moderate with no huge swings to extremes. Unfortunately spring was coming a little late this year, as the leader of an Audubon birdwalk I went on explained, so we didn’t get to see as much blooming as I’d hoped but what we did see was beautiful, including the deep gold fields of desert poppies on our way to Saguaro Lake, as well as a few wild horses.

^{Barrel cactus in bloom}

^{Brittlebush. It has a long history of uses by indigenous and pioneers, such as making the resin into a glue, chewing it as gum and burning it as incense. The bark was used to treat toothache.}

^{Blooming hedgehog cactus.}

Despite all the amazing things we’ve seen and done, some of the most special times have been with family and friends. Our Scottsdale stay was no exception. John’s siblings and their spouses (Cheryl & Dick, Mike & Therese) came to stay with us. And while they were there our nephew Joey flew in from LA for a couple of days. It was so much fun sharing adventures with them (boat ride on Lake Saguaro, White Sox spring training game, lunch trip to Sedona, etc) as well as the quiet in-between times.

^{On the Desert Belle.}

^{Saguaro Lake, a reservoir on the Salt River formed by the Stewart Mountain Dam.}

^{The red rocks of Sedona are formed by a unique layer of red to orange-colored sandstone deposited over 200 million years ago and found only in the Sedona vicinity. The town is popular for its spiritual sites, pink jeep tours of the desert, and shopping.}

Even leaving Scottsdale to head to Santa Fe we were driving through familiar but changed territory: Sunflower, Payson, Heber, Snowflake, towns I’d visited for skiing, hiking, camping, years ago. Places as different from the metropolitan Phoenix valley as you can get. As was the area of our short stay in Ramah, NM, in a cabin seven miles down a dirt road off a highway in the middle of nothing. Fortunately this sweet place had everything we needed for two nights.

^{Rural living near AZ – NM border; the postman can’t get to all the scattered homes so the end of each road is its own post office.}

^{On the road to our cabin in Ramah. There were cliff dwellings in this formation that date back to 1200-1300 A.D.}

So far, the April house in Santa Fe seems amply supplied. But if it turns out we are missing something my two best friends, Goodwill and Dollar Store, aren’t far away. Will let you know all about it in the next installment.

A few random photos:

^{Hikers ascending one of the sandstone formations in Papago Park.}

^{Gambel’s Quails, a flock visited the yard every evening.}

^{Nope, that’s not a cactus on the right; it’s a piece from glass artist Dale Chihuly’s first major installation in the Desert Botanical Garden, called Desert Towers.}

^{The Old Adobe Mission originated as Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church and was built by hand by the Mexicans who settled in Scottsdale in the late 1910s.} 

^{There was a whole town of prairie dogs near our cabin in Ramah, NM. They were not as chunky as this little well-fed guy who lives a life of ease in the Phoenix zoo.}