Arizona

For the first time ever I left Minnesota during the winter. I felt like I traveled through a time warp as I stepped out of the airport in Arizona without a jacket. The strange feeling of having fast-forwarded to June was compounded by the fact that I was there for a graduation. A week and a half ago, I was standing in the 70 degree sunshine while graduates in their maroon robes milled about, taking family photos. Today I was pouring washer fluid into the van's resevoir in the freezing rain. How strange!



One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Phoenix zoo, where all of the animals are outdoors - it never gets too cold for them! Another highlight was a twisting drive along cliffs through the Superstition mountains in the Sonoran desert.



Desert Scene in the Superstition Mountains





Here I am next to a Saguaro cactus that is probably about two hundred years old. Check out all of it's arms! The saguaro grows about an inch a year, so this one has been sprouting arms for quite a long time.







In the Superstition mountains, I visited a tourist-trap stagecoach stop called Tortilla Flat. I scarfed a bowl of prickly pear cactus ice cream at the sweet shop there. For the rest of the trip, whenever I saw the fat pads of a prickly pear cactus, I was thinking, "Yum! Ice cream!" (Although the ice cream is actually not made from the cactus pad, it is made from the pink flower that blooms on the top of the pad, you get my drift. Cactus ice cream is just a special treat.)



Here I am at Tortilla Flat - the little building in the background is the one-room schoolhouse:





Maybe sometime I'll take another trip through the time warp to visit summer during the winter. The alien landscape of the Sonoran desert is strangely beautiful.