This is past due, but such is life ... Better later than not at all, I guess.
Again, I live in a world of a fragmented mind, one which most days is not my own. It’s occupied by work, dark thoughts of having lost dad, endlessly trying to find him in everything; and even darker thoughts about mom and where she is in her life, will she ever be “mom” again ...
The world as it is seems to blow up with every breath ... We lose more rights, we lose more people to guns, to suicide, to hunger and thirst, to diseases, we lose whole countries to despots, we lose ourselves, we lose hope. Especially hope. Some days I feel like every headline is an April Fool’s joke! And I need to double and triple check every sentence. And then I sigh. It’s all true. All disappointingly, gut-wrenchingly true ... It’s the world as we see it now - shitty, abject, unfair, gaunt, non-common-sensical. It is no joke!
And among all these thoughts, among it all, a faint desire to live on, to travel, to seek beauty, to push through it because we never know which day is our last. And when that day will come - do we really want to say “I wish I did”? I know I don’t. So, drained of hope and energy, I push through, I bite down and make travel arrangements, buy plane tickets (now, we’re in the world of “where can we fly direct?” to save as much time as possible through not too many airports and to minimize the exposure to too many people for too many hours on end), rent cars and hotels, and charge my camera to prepare for our next destination.
So, in February-March we took a trip to Arizona. We booked a hotel in Tempe, then spent almost equal amounts of time between it, Phoenix, Scottsdale. One day, we spent most of the time in Saguaro (pronounced “sah-war-oh.”) National Park, less than 2 hours from Scottsdale, and the rest of the same day we took a brief tour of Tucson.
Our first stop in the desert was at Papago Park, between Tempe and Scottsdale
I read somewhere a short description of these cities like this: “Tempe is a college town. Scottsdale is touristy. They know tourism and do it well. Phoenix is just a big metropolis.” (did you know that Phoenix is the 5th most populous city in the US, even before Philadelphia and way before San Francisco?! Neither did I!). I could not have put it better myself.
These are the random thoughts and a couple of images from that journey ...
- If this trip won awards in any category it was for the amazing food everywhere. Not just good, but diverse - the variety and the many options for this vegan pescatarian were almost endless. Flavor galore, diversity - Phoenix has it all. One thing that stuck out was that most places serve three meals every day and “Benes” were on almost every menu. Translation: “benes” are eggs Benedict done 100 ways. I am still puzzled as to why in the middle of the American Southwest an egg dish is so popular?! Or breakfast for that matter?!
The Phoenix Saute at The Daily Jam in Tempe - a perfectly complete and completely vegan breakfast
- There was a huge bottle of lotion in the bathroom, anchored to the wall. This thing was like 1lb of lotion: a clear reminder that you’re in the desert now and your skin will crack. So, lather up!
- It was nice to see “letter mountains” again: is it a custom? A tradition? Don’t know, but in the American West where they post huge letters on some of the most prominent mountains in the middle or on the side of a city: there was a T for Tempe, an A for Arizona State University in Tempe and another one yet for University of Arizona in Tucson.
- A billboard showed ‘Straight into the mountain we head. Just like we like it!’. And I could not have agreed more ...
- So. Many. Cacti. I grew up with cactus plants in my house: they were small, maybe 8 inch pots. My grandma had about 10 green thumbs, not just one! She did so well with all the plants, but she did the best with cacti, I think. Growing up I heard about it from her that it is easy to grow cacti but that it is hard to make them bloom or make them grow - they grow slowly, they bloom once in a hundred years - is what grandma said although later on in my life I lived in the desert and I think they bloom more often than that. She had all these types of cactus plants - the ones that looked like flattened footballs (the prickly pears), the ones that looked like cucumbers, and these ones that looked like leafless twigs with millions of long, poky thorns on them. She made them all grow and bloom. It seemed like every year.
Well, now, in the desert during this trip, I saw all of these and then some, about 1000 or more times bigger than I could have ever imagined as a kid. My childhood cacti were mere molecules compared to these plants we saw in Arizona.
The saguaro cactus (the one that looks like a person with arms) is on every postcard and license plate in Arizona. You think you’ve seen them all till you’re standing next to one of them and then you’re asking yourself: what the heck is this creature?! They could be a power pole? A frozen human being? A tree? Definitely not a mere plant. They are enormous! The height of your house or bigger. And then you learn about their age - they don’t even get an arm till they are 100 or 150 years old. You drive down the road and you’re thinking: these cacti lining up the dusty roads have been here longer than any of the houses and maybe even longer than the whole state of Arizona.
- Tucson was clearly poor: barred windows, homeless people in empty deserted mall squares - in contrast to the new almost posh campus of ASU in Tempe and the hopping, happening Biltmore fashion mall in Phoenix.
- Tucson felt like the place where all ideas or dreams came to die. It was almost like a depressing, ghost town where humans have not been convinced yet that the town is truly over. It was at the exact opposite end of the liveliness of Tempe and Scottsdale.
- Scottsdale Old Town is a must-see - yes, a bit touristy but done well, with minimum kitsch. Clean, inviting, and the people are welcoming, knowledgeable, and bend over backwards to accommodate. Just inviting!
Some snaps of Old Town Scottsdale
- A reminder that you’re in the high-desert and in big-sky country: you must wear sunglasses even on cloudy days.
I have no idea how many hundreds of years this saguaro is for as many branches as it shows, but ... many ...
- Tempe - more than just a backdrop, a mountain in the middle of the city is just another bump in the skyline.
- Street names and people remind you you’re on borrowed land here and must walk carefully: Talking Stick Way; Indian Bend Road. A rich Native American and hispanic majority of people live here. Their influence in everything from architecture to menu items; we had avocado in some shape or form with every meal, just like I had olives with every meal in Turkey.
- We visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West compound (home and architecture school). There, where human ingenuity meets and gets lost in nature, we got the best advice: if you hear a rattle, don’t investigate! If you see something, don’t take a picture of it. Just walk away! - this could be the motto for just about every stop anywhere in Arizona.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West compound - Scottsdale, AZ
- While driving through Saguaro National Park, or hiking at the Javelina Rocks, or taking in the hundreds of cactus species at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Scottdale, or chasing quail and so many other birds making homes inside the saguaros, you can easily see that you are clearly back in the land of point-shoot-and-gorgeous. No special training or qualities required for amazing pictures. Every single picture is a winner!
The many aspects of Saguaro National Park outside Tucson, AZ
- More modern architecture than I expected - I would have expected this modern vibe somewhere like L.A. or something, but not in the middle of the desert. I also know now where all the ranch homes of America have settled: in the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Tempe area is where they all went! You are hard-pressed to find anything but a ranch anywhere. They must be easier to keep cool in the torrid summers.
One of the modern apartment buildings in Scottsdale, AZ
- You can say that this trip started with a beer. Several years back (2012), we went to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO. There, we tasted many beers but one in particular stood out for us and one of Aa’s friends: the Orange Blossom (a lager) of the Papago Brewery in Scottsdale, AZ. Ever since 2012, I have wanted to find a way to visit Scottsdale and get all the beer I wanted. Coming here, I was hoping that the beer is local enough and good enough (it won a medal in its category at the beer festival) that every restaurant would carry it on their menu. Not the case. We finally did find one of the two beer joints (Huss Brewing) that carry it on tap and it was every drop as good as I remembered it.
Orange blossom lager (right) at Hussing Brewing in Scottsdale, AZ
- Food and service won everywhere in Phoenix except the airport. If you want a piece of white bread (when you actually ordered a slice of sourdough) with a side of attitude at 7AM - go to the airport and order it first thing in the morning. Not a lie!
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