Hampton Inn Phoenix-Airport North

... NuU Medspa: NuU Medspa, an active volunteer in many charities such as; American Cancer Society's Discovery Ball, 2008 WALK NOW FOR AUTISM and The March of Dimes® 39th Annual March For Babies(tm), has donated thousands of dollars to aid in Northwestern Memorial Hospital Auxiliary Board annual event. Summer Lovin' is a collaborative effort of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center ...

I'm getting ready for this trip that will happen in about a month. I got a new canon camera which is a RebelT1i degital 15 pix with two lenes. They sure put me back a good many dollors.
I just hope I'm able to take great pictures. I'm making two dresses to ware and will take very
few clothes. I ...

... at each other, "Where in the world are we?"

The show was rollicking and the food, great, but you know what was the very best? During the before show entertainment we noticed this Down Syndrome girl sitting under the window writing in her workbook, grinning at nobody, singing along to herself...

Well, the singer introduced her to us. Her name is Melissa and she's the singer's sister. She had written a song and been to Nashville to record it about this ...

... Canyon Lake and 80 miles from Phoenix, Roosevelt Lake and Dam, built in 1911 to control flooding.

The whole Salt River to Roosevelt Lake area lies within the Tonto National Forest and every parking lot requires you display your $6 Recreational Pass. We probably saw 200 signs, "Did You Buy Your Pass?", "Cars Without Passes Will Be Ticketed," "Cars MUST Display Tonto National Forest Recreation Pass," with the closest place to purchase such pass being BACK IN PHOENIX. I'm sure ...

... a poor salmon swimming upstream – an extremely bulky salmon who couldn't see too well because of the piled high trolly – trying to collect a few other goodies, but just amazing how quickly the specials were stripped off the shelf. Spent ages in a line to the checkout, so didn't actually get to leave Walmart to the sun was rising at 6.30! After a couple more shops we staggered home at about 8am.

Hopefully today we'll get a Nana-nap in!

... it'... after following some yellow footprints through two big sheds out the back with some weird ,
quirky, interesting and just plain odd exhibits (like life-sized carved wooden people in a torture chamber...) we finally found it...an old mummy/skeleton (not sure if genuine, ewww) in a glass box.
Still, right up our alley and glad we stopped.

Once nearing Tuscan we ...

... rear rack, which also had the panniers attached, and although the guy that repaired it said it could have been running over anything, I decided to wear my pack rather than tie it down. That made it incredibly more difficult to bike, leaving me out of breath much easier than with it tied on, so I ended up just getting a bus to Flagstaff, a plan I was very grateful for after seeing the distance and incline of the road north. So it goes.

... miss our flight. There's no time to go back; we have to press onward. "If you get a chance to safely drive a little faster," I tell her, "you might want to do it."   The scenery continues to be beautiful, but my growing anxiety about time is eating into my enjoyment. Julie is driving faster, sometimes a little faster than I'd like. "You told me to," she says when I screech at one particularly hair-raising turn. We go up, we go down, we go around and around. The minutes click ...

... helpful in offering info about the best time for a return visit and some insight into the techniques used by some of their featured artists. We got back on the road about one and were very conscious of the clouds to the west and south. This section of the trip is the one that everyone fears somewhat. The highway is good but you are either driving across high plateaus or decending through mountain passes and snow storms can come up very quickly. Roadside ...

So far, we've spent the most time in Arizona. Starting with a long drive from Albuquerque through Tony Hillerman country (check out his mystery novels) to Flagstaff with a stop in the Painted Desert/ Petrified Forest National Park along the way. We skipped Chaco Canyon National Historical Park leaving Albuquerque on the advice of some locals, again because of the weather (there is only a dirt road into Chaco). Petrified ...