Getting out of Vegas turned out to be a lot more difficult than I was anticipating. It seems like there are a hundred little things that you have to do before its done. Everything from cleaning the house and packing to filling the car with gas and grabbing snacks take an unnerving amount of time. Needless to say, things were not going as planned. I had hoped to leave Tuesday night to get to Phoenix by morning but that got pushed back due to my house walk through with Teresa (old land lord). The nice part is we had a great going away party Tuesday night at the new house. Then I was hoping to leave immediately after the walk through Wednesday morning so i could get to Phoenix by mid day and grab the last tour at Taliesin West. That was pushed back because I drank too much wine and beer and passed out after the party and had to finished packing and cleaning after the walk through. The nice part was since i wasn’t going to make it to Phoenix before dark I could take my time and leisurely stop at Hoover dam.
Hoover Dam is one of biggest man made things I think I’ve seen. You really don’t get the sense of how big the thing is when you approach from the Nevada side, but when you walk across it you realize just how massive it is. I got the sensation of vertigo just peering over the edge. One of the interesting things you also notice is how far the water level had dropped. The water line is a good 40-50 feet lower than “natural”.
Its way higher than it looks!
Drought What Drought?
The City of Surprise did offer up a surprise. First off the City of Surprise is a retirement community out side of Phoenix. I actually don’t know that to be true but, I’m thinking that its a retirement community because, really old people are the only people who would give a name like that to the place where they live. And really old people are the only people who think its cool to live in the desert with only other old people around them. Anyway, while driving through the city of surprise I saw a full rainbow. I took that as a “good” omen and kept going.
Scottsdale is an unusual town. Before arriving, I had this vision of a Frank Lloyd Wright master planned community with a strong core, pedestrian friendly streets and rolling golf courses off in the distance. When I rolled in to Phoenix it was one mega strip mall after the next. And when I say mega strip mall, these corporate retail complexes dwarf anything I’d seen in Las Vegas or Los Angeles. I pulled into one right off of Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd and I literally got lost between the Wall-Mart, Bed Bath and Beyond, Target and the T-mobile store.
Taliesin West it the crown jewel of Phoenix. This unpolished campus served as Frank Lloyd Wrights winter home where he took refuge from the harsh Wisconsin winters. The more work I see by FLW the more I think the guy was a genius. Taliesin West only reinforced that thought. The guy realized that he could enslaved unsuspecting Architecture students in his “Architecture School”. He essentially got his students to pay him to build his home and execute his “experiments”…
free labor = pure genius.
Google Texting is the greatest invention since sliced bread. Kimi, taught me this handy trick. You text to 46645 (google). In the message body you type in what place you want and hit send. Typically, you get a response back in less than 30 seconds with the address and phone number. For instance, I typed in motel 6, Scottsdale, AZ. 20 seconds later I got and address and a phone number!
You know you are staying in a classy motel when
- You try to check in and the door is locked with a sign pointing to the security window.
- You take a shower, the waters up past your ankle in less than a minute
- You wake up in the morning to notice a large cigarette burn in the sheets.
I love the motel 6
