Arizona

I spent Monday through Friday of last week in Arizona, for a conference. Since the conference had pretty solid blocks of activity every day, I didn't really get a lot of sightseeing in, so I don't have as many pictures as I normally would on a vacation trip. I saw a lot of friends and colleagues, though, had a really good time, and brought back some good ideas.

Our trip started before dawn on Monday, when I dressed in a shirt that I got on clearance at Kroger:



It was on clearance because the score printed on it is wrong. I wore it all day, and even though several people commented on it and talked about the game, no one noticed that mistake.

Dawn came while we were on the plane:



but it wasn't the only thing. The flight attendant brought me a stroopwafel, a strangely sweet cookie that I'd never had before. After reading the ingredients, I gingerly tasted it, and then immediately devoured it.

I also spilled my ginger ale on the plane, and helplessly blurted to the (attractive) flight attendant, "I SPILLED!" as if I am a toddler. I'm sure he noted and was impressed by my highly articulate vocabulary. I'm still not sure how it happened, as I was reading, sipping, reaching for my cup, and then all of a sudden ginger ale and ice in the aisle.

They left the cubes there to melt.

Once the plane landed, we knew we were on limited time and pretty much only had Monday afternoon free, so we dropped our bags and took a car to historic Old Town Scottsdale:











That last one was inscribed on a bus stop, of all places. While in Old Town walking around we did some shopping, poking into a lot of touristy stores filled with touristy crap:



Nothing says "America" like a fringed leather bag made out of our flag. Even better, I saw the same bag in multiple stores.

We also got some food. I had some delicious chorizo and jalapeno corn cakes at the Daily Dose:



and I have to say that I ate more chorizo last week than I have at any other time in my life. If I was ordering anything and it had a chorizo option, by God, I got the chorizo. All of it was very good, as was the Golden Nugget that I got at the Sugar Bowl, a charmingly pink ice cream parlor that looked kind of like a soda fountain counter in Barbie's dream house:









I was less pleased with the Meat and Potatoes Martini that I got at Cowboy Ciao later in the week:



The deep fried bacon was delicious, but the cocktail itself had a strong, almost sour taste. The mac and cheese I had with it was wonderful, though.

Other than that one day of sightseeing, the only scenery I saw on the rest of the trip was when I went for walks:













but that's ok. I was there for work, not for sightseeing.

Arizona Part 2: "That's not really pronounced that way, is it?"

In the previous entry I mentioned that the conference ended earlier than we expected on Wednesday, which left us with an open afternoon and a rental car, so we decided to drive to Sedona. I only know of Sedona as the place where Miranda moved up a shoot after she killed the autumn jackets feature in "The Devil Wears Prada", but Tim stopped by the concierge desk and picked up a map, leaving us slightly better equipped.

On the way there Tim asked if we wanted to stop at Montezuma Castle, and since we had nowhere else to go and no agenda for the day, we readily agreed. I'm so glad that we did, because it was a really interesting little walkaround. Montezuma Castle is a national park in Arizona:



which houses an impressive pre-Columbian cliff dwelling:







I don't know if it looks particularly impressive in any of those photos (especially the middle one, where you can see why it's being restored and you can't actually go up into the structure) but there's such a sense of history in visiting something like this, and also a little bit of awe when you imagine early settlers crossing Arizona, coming around the corner, and seeing a house set into the cliffside. I haven't traveled outside the United States in over a decade, and inside them I rarely see any mostly-intact structure over a few hundred years old. There are artifacts, like the Moon-Eyed People's wall:



that I saw in Georgia that time, or serpent mounds and other earthworks, but people didn't live in those like they did in a cliff dwelling:



It's one thing to look at a pile that used to be a house or a foundation, but to see the house itself is to feel a sense of continuity with the past, and I don't know that our mostly consumerist, disposable culture (which I fully participate in; I'm not lecturing anyone) gets enough of that.

On our way back to the car, I also saw a huge beetle, which was the only native wildlife I saw in the entire trip besides birds:



My fears about scorpions, poisonous spiders, rattlesnakes, vultures, vampire bats, coyotes, and other desert critters proved somewhat unfounded.

Once we were back in the car, we headed for another impressive but significantly more modern building, The Chapel of the Holy Cross on the outskirts of Sedona:



Comissioned by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, the church is designed to blend in with the surrounding countryside, which it does admirably well:



It's a bit of a hike up a twisty path to actually get there:



but when you do the simplicity of the interior is moving even for non-religious people:







It's very quiet and peaceful inside, but that may be due to everyone trying to catch their breath after the climb. Either way, it was another good stop on our day of sightseeing, and we immediately left the church and parked at a Horrhouse:



Grandma Horr's, to be exact. And yes, it really is pronounced the way it sounds.

Also, Grandma Horr makes a delicious dark chocolate coconut haystack.

We didn't spend more than an hour or two in Sedona:



so I didn't really get to see a lot of the town, but it reminded me a lot of Gatlinburg, in that it is a small town in a beautiful setting filled with touristy crap:



and signs with poor grammar:



Not that I don't love touristy crap. When Tim asked if there was anywhere in town specifically that we felt like stopping at, I immediately blurted, "The place with the giant chicken!"



Because, well, giant chicken. If I have to explain why we had to stop there then you really don't know me well enough yet. The place with the giant chicken turned out to be a wonderful store filled with random stuff for everybody, like cat Buddha:



regular Buddha:



and a really bloody Jesus:



Seriously, why are there multiple streams of blood running out from under Jesus' loincloth? What's going on under there? And who looks at that and thinks, "Perfect for the living room!"

Possibly the same people who buy ceramic pumpkins:



or random suns:



but I did find the room of drying peppers somewhat interesting:





mostly because it smelled so good.

We were all starting to get a little sleepy and jet-laggy at that point, so the place with the giant chicken was our last stop in Sedona, but we did get back to Scottsdale in time for me to meet up with Rod for a late dinner where we both ended up ordering the same thing, I guzzled about a gallon of diet Coke, and we debated whether playing "Piano Man" in a jazz restaurant was cliche or de rigueur. We did not come to an agreement, but a lovely time was had by all.

Then in the morning I had a long layover in Chicago:



and was back home and crashing in my bed by the time it was dark.

Arizona Part 1: "A Whole New Nothing"

I spent most of this week in Arizona, which is beautiful but empty:



The emptiness probably contributes in large part to the beauty.

When I was in high school, college, and afterward my parents went to my Aunt Geri and Uncle Mike's house every Saturday night for pizza. Whichever of us kids were around would also go (technically I guess my cousins didn't "go", since it was always at their house and they already lived there) so I happened to be there one night when my aunt was complaining about wanting to get away from upstate New York.

"There's nothing here," Aunt Geri sighed over her pizza, her gestures punctuated with a cigarette. "I want to move."

"To where?" one of us asked. Aunt Geri seemed to think about it for a minute, and then apparently blurted the first state that popped into her head.

"Arizona."

I'm sure I smirked at this, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

"What's in Arizona?" my dad asked, and before Aunt Geri could answer Uncle Mike quipped, "A whole new nothing!"

That quote pops into my head every time I think about Arizona, probably because there are no competing musicals about that state (seriously, why has no one written "Arizona!" or "Tombstone on Ice" yet?) to squeeze it out, and I discovered this week that Arizona is a state full of nothing. Beautiful, desolate nothing:







I'm pretty sure I don't mean it in quite the same way as my uncle did.

We flew into Arizona, connected through Atlanta:



early on Sunday, and landed in Phoenix:



See how most of that picture is brown? Arizona is like that. If something's not irrigated, there's no grass, just some desert vegetation. It was weird to me for the first few days to see houses with lawns that were just bare gravel and cacti, but I guess if you live there you get used to it.

We landed at the oddly decorated Sky Harbor Airport:



and headed for our hotel, which immediately creeped me out. I don't know if you can tell from this picture:



and maybe it was just the western architecture in general, but all of the common spaces in the hotel made me think of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. This impression was only reinforced when I got to my very nice room:



and discovered that it was decorated with what seemed to be alternate cover art from The Gunslinger:



Then, as if I hadn't been horrified enough, I noticed that my balcony doors had a warning label, and should never, ever be opened:



I know that calling them "Desert Critters" is an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the local wildlife, but if you already have an overactive imagination then the first thing that pops into your head is a veritable flood of scorpions, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, vultures, and vampire bats pouring into your room at night.

After I saw that warning label, I never opened the balcony door again.

The hotel was actually really nice, though, with fancy showers:



and a quiet pool area:



where someone brought me a pitcher of ice water as soon as I sat down:



I never made it back out to the pool for the rest of the conference, but that one afternoon after being on planes all day was very nice.

Our dinner out in the desert was also nice.



I made friends:



ate in a barn:





while listening to a band:



and taught a coworker to make a s'more before we headed back to the hotel.

The conference was very informative, and also fun. I have pages of notes saved on my iPad, and also gave a presentation that was very well received. There was enough space between workshops and mealtimes to keep it from feeling like a grind, and the hotel food was great. I never managed to adjust to the time change and am paying for that now, but I had a really good time and got a lot out of it, so I'm glad I went.

And that it ended early enough on Wednesday for us to get in some sightseeing.