Here's my
song of the week for this week!
Trixie was with me all week, so the primary objective was to compress everything that I have seen in the last three months into a ten-day visit!
We started off with the obligatory "happy couple" shot in my hotel room:
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| Yay! |
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| Horses of the week |
And this ancient old ruin that dates as far back as 1936:
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| Prehistoric artefact |
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| 82 years old. Wow. |
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| Amazing view of the city |
Most of the animal life in the desert is pretty unfriendly. As are the plants. Everything is out to hurt you! But we did find this little bird high up in the mountain that seemed friendly enough:
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| A little bird. With a little bill. |
This is a view of Phoenix from the top of South Mountain:
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| View from above |
The mountain range is actually quite spectacular, but oddly, all of the benches on top of the mountain face out over the city - I guess that most visitors would rather look at miles and miles of prefabricated houses laid out in a grid pattern rather than the park area covering 16,000 acres.
This area was not actually that nice as there is a road to the top of the mountain and the car park was full when we arrived. There were several groups of local youths parked in their cars smoking away with music blaring. Classy. By walking about 100 metres from the car park, we did manage to find a bit of serenity.
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| View of Phoenix. Not interested. |
What else to do on a Sunday but visit the Food Truck Fest! Woo hoo! Twenty different trucks serving all sorts of different food. It seemed like the locals' favourite was a lobster truck, but I have absolutely no idea where you find fresh lobster in Arizona!
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| Patiently waiting to attack a kebab |
On Monday, we went west to the
White Tank Mountains for another walk. This is completely different to South Mountain Park; firstly, there's a charge to get in and secondly, you have to walk everywhere once inside the park.
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| Off we go! |
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| A spot of hide and seek on the way |
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| The point of no return |
The Black Rock Short Loop measures a whopping 0.5 miles, so we opted to test our fitness on the more gruelling 1.3 mile Long Loop, followed by an additional 0.5 miles to get all the way to the waterfall.
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| The water-not-fall trail |
After what felt like days and days of hiking, we finally made it to the waterfall.
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| Waterfall without water falling |
The water from the waterfall pools into granite pools, also known as "white tanks" from where the mountain range gets its name.
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| Trixie looking at me on the other side of a white tank |
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| Me looking at Trixie on the other side of the same white tank where not so long ago, she was seen looking at me |
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| Another white tank which is actually more of a greeny-grey tank in real life |
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| Merrily strolling along |
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| Fatigue setting in |
It's hard to believe that 10 miles away is a city with a population of 1.65 million people and for most of the time, we were the only ones around. I guess that until they build a drive-through Starbucks up here, it's going to remain that way too.
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| No road = no locals |
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| Howdy! |
We ordered a delicious plate of vegetarian fayre:
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| A light snack |
On Friday, we set off on a road trip to Las Vegas in the 4Runner:
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| Road trip! |
This is a video of one of my favourite views of Las Vegas. It always reminds me of driving back to Albacete at night on the A-31 from Alicante and cresting over the hill at Chinchilla:
We checked in to the hotel and headed straight out to explore The Strip:
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| Bright lights! |
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| The Bellagio |
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| The Venetian |
On Saturday, we went to watch
Zumanity by Cirque du Soleil (thank you Mum and Dad!) which was incredible. Not least because it cost £15 for two glasses of Coke and a bag of M&Ms! This is the third Cirque du Soleil show that Trixie and I have seen together now and once again it was magnificent, if a little risque.
We actually had a fairly tame weekend by normal Las Vegas standards, unlike this guy who we found in our hotel on Sunday morning:
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| Party on Wayne |
On Sunday, we checked out in the morning and slowly made our way back towards Phoenix via
Lake Mead and the
Hoover Dam.
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| Lake Mead National Recreation Area |
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| Boats |
We drove over the Hoover Dam and crossed back into Arizona by car. I think that this is the first time I've crossed the dam in a car as the last couple of times, I have cycled out and crossed on my bike!
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| Hoover Dam |
This is the
Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge which opened in 2010 to save traffic from driving over the Hoover Dam when crossing between Arizona and Nevada. It is the World's highest concrete arch bridge and the widest concrete arch bridge in the western hemisphere. Amazing.
The route between Phoenix and Las Vegas runs through the
Joshua Forest Parkway on Route 93. There are lots of Joshua Trees for miles around:
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| Joshua tree |
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| The shadow of the three-legged beast |
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| The long and not-so-winding road home! |
We made it back to Phoenix on Sunday night and like that, the week was over!
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