I describe Phoenix as being of blue sky and the brown ground. I like saying brown ground. It sounds a liitle like ground round, you know... beef. So our trip was nice. I liked Phoenix in general except for the fact that I feared for my life numerous times while driving. Arizona is not a good place for safe driving. No signaling, just mad crazy driving and merging and random braking on the highways!

Since we do travel a lot I would like to point out one glaring misnomer about Sky Harbor Intl airport. While it has one of the coolest names in airport names, it's trademarked slogan, "America's Friendlest Airport" is just plain wrong. I think I would have suggested "America's Snarkiest Airport" as an alternative title. We received snarky comments from the UA lady, the AA lady and I think the three times that we went through security trying to get on various flights only one TSA guy was remotely friendly. We watched with amusement as a Continental passenger broke in line at the security gate in front of about 15 people and acted totally nonchalant about it. I did not see one of the supposed friendly volunteers in purple sportscoats that were advertised all over the place. My other issue with the airport involved the buses that traveled between the terminals. None of them went to the right place or even suggested where they might be headed next. They all had the vague: Parking Lots & Terminals written on the side of them and required that we ask the driver every single time which direction they were heading. We almost got on the wrong bus a total of three times. That is a record for us. Heck, we traveled through the Japanese countryside on buses and it was easier than Sky Harbor!

A highlight of our trip was dinner with some friends at the fantastic Trader Vic's in Scottsdale. The restaurant is part of the amazing complex for the Hotel Valley Ho. Check it out and you will see what I love! We had these tremendous appetizers called Beef Cho-Cho that consisted of (directly from the menu description) "Folded Beef Skewers Finished on a Flaming Hibachi." They were little bites of heaven! I also drink three tumblers of a mixed drink called Menehune Juice that came with a little plastic menehune guy/girl. The pic is of the menehune with salt shakers at Trader Vic's. I did not take that picture... it came from this lovely website.



We also did some non-tiki related stuff, like a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West. We haven't yet checked out Taliesin in Wisconsin, but I think we might have to now! The building and tour were quite cool. For those of you out there that like to touch stuff in museums and then get yelled at, the tour of Taliesin West is for you. You can touch everything! They even encourage it by letting you sit in original chairs and touch the walls and the artwork. It is a rarity these days to get to touch something so fabulous and not get in trouble for it. The building themselves are remarkable and fit the landscape perfectly, as should be expected. We were the youngest people on the tour but I hope that isn't always the case.

The other cool thing we did was get a tour of the Pinal Air Park just north of Tucson. It is an airplane "boneyard" of sorts and it is really something to drive down I-10 and see a few score tails of big airplanes sticking up on the horizon. They had 747s and all the big guys represented, but my favorites were tucked into a corner near the hangar. The Chalk's seaplanes were all in a row and looking for someone to love them. They would be a great idea for a flying/floating recreational vehicle if you can get it fixed up.