Springhill Suites By Marriott Phoenix Chandler

... try and dress like the local people. It will be warm there. I'm glad for that as here in Arizona in the desert no less we have had a lot of rain today and a lot of snow in the North. It is just hard to beleive the weather here. Every so often a siginal comes on the TV with a notice of the weather.

... people built irrigation systems a thousand years ago that are the basis for today's southwest agriculture. The Gila river drains all of southern Arizona and they had such an extensive system of canals from it they could bring water from high in the mountains so it could flow down towards their fields planted on mesas above the village. You realize what a feat this must have been when you see how FLAT this country is and how far away the mountains are.

Casa Grande Ruins, Arizona, United States bobnkaren

... story of how Melissa and her boyfriend were named Homecoming King and Queen of their high school here in Mesa.

Melissa stood up and did her Miss America wave to everyone with this great Daisy smile--
I mean... think Daisy with a red cowboy hat and jeans and you have this girl.

Made me tear up, dang it.

Oh, and when we walked in they gave us each a little gift--me a bright blue boa and Bob a western tie. Oh yea, we were cute. You don't ...

... 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 ...

... line that went all the way along the building, down the footpath and around the parking lot – so we gave up on that and went to Walmart instead and got some of the things that were at Toys R Us at the same prices by showing checkout girl the brochure price for Toys R Us!!

By the time we got back to Janine's place it was 3am, and decided to stay awake and then hi Walmart/Target & Toys R Us simultaneously – Janine had to go to Target ...

... shopping – didn’t find stuff I wanted, BUT—got a pair of knee length pants in SIZE 8! Cannot remember when I was a size 8 last-I love it! Got an inexpensive phone from WalMart – this park has a phone system for residents – just dial 1 and the site number of anyone in the park. Then I realized I had just gotten rid of the phone line I had in Alabama cause I couldn’t think of any reason I would ever need it!! Isn’t that the way it goes! So ...

... the DMV and went for a ride around the city. Someone had previously told me it was basically a circle around the DMV. Was it bollocks! Driving around America is a lot different to the UK. I haven't seen a roundabout since I got here but I do know they have some somewhere. You have to actually STOP at stop signs as it's illegal not too, even if there's no other traffic. And the roads everywhere are like 3-6 wide. Makes it rather ...

... In the lst 15 years or so, they've become very popular in the U.S. for RV and marine use. They can be vented or non-vented (ours is the non-vented type, and we didn't especially want to change to vented, since it would require cutting a hole in the side of the motorhome)...and the non-vented have been generally known for taking hours to "dry" anything, and even then, it came out slightly damp. I didn't have a problem with this, as we installed a spring-loaded ...

... in the car. In desperation, I finally called Lawrence's cell phone and when he showed up at door looking like he walked straight out of the movie, Dawn of the Dead, I knew that he'd been debating dropping his cell phone in the toilet rather than answering it. Needless to say, neither of us looked any too fresh at 6:30 AM for breakfast (especially after the demands of the prior day's ride). Over breakfast, we revised our ...

While I was in Tucson, there were the largest protest marches there and in Phoenix (among many other places in the US) seen in years about the Immigration bill currently before the Senate. In fact, it interfered with our plans to visit the Sonoran Desert as we would have to have gone right in the way of the march. We went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens instead. This is an amazing collection. It was formerly a private home and is now a private non-profit organization dupported ...