T and I took a trip out to Arizona a little while ago and in one word (or less??) it was: "Paradisiacal". I started pretty innocently enough. Both of us had a 4 day weekend coming up and we knew we wanted to get away from the area (family stress, house stress, apartment stress, work stress etc) and go someplace where we'd never been and wouldn't know anyone.
Early rising (good morning at 4am!!), rush to the airport (hello Logan.), plane flight (horrible movie, "waitress" or some other nonsense. Ugh.)
When we arrived at Phoenix airport we were absolutely starving. We were ready for a burger, some fries, onion rings, a side order of pizza anything we could get our hands on really. However, we completely forgot about the timezone change. Our bodies were saying that it was lunch time but everyone was still serving breakfast. Hungry, we left the terminal and vowed to get lunch ASAP on the way to our hotel.
The commute was uneventful. We were completely awestruck by the landscape and I couldn't believe we seemed so far away from home. We were already starting to relax and forget all the crap we left at home. Except for the cats of course. I set up a web-cam before we left to upload pictures of the cats at intervals to the ftp server we have. The cats must have known about the camera because we were only able to spot
Shiva on the next to last day of our trip.
Back to the trip. We arrived at the Carefree Resort around noon-time and our first impression was that the name fit this place very well. We checked in, went to our villa and spent the rest of the day getting familiar with the surrounding area (and the couch).
On the second day we visited the Out of Africa zoo and got to see some really amazing animals up close. There was a great spotted leopard there that even though it only had three legs it could still completely ravage anyone of the visitors. That leopard was a complete bad-ass. It lost it's leg when it was a cub because it tried to smack a lion (yeah, a lion) that was in a cage next to it and the lion mangled it's limb so bad that it had to be removed.
We also saw a demonstration called "Tiger Splash" which was one of the most amazing things I've seen. Zoo personnel running around with Bengal tigers trying to get the tigers to chase them around. The human performers would pretend to be wounded animals (walking on all fours, dragging a leg) and when the tigers would chase them they would run and jump into a 4 foot deep pool that was located in the center of the ring. It was spectacular!
On our third day we hiked up Pinnacle peak (about 2400 ft up) and took in the view. Another excellent day. The hike wasn't strenuous at all and we got to see some really amazing scenery along the way. It felt more like a park than a hiking trail, there were people jogging up the peak as well as entire families just hanging out at the rest areas.
I am completely in love with the state of Arizona and everyone has asked me when we are moving out there. I don't know about living there but we are already planning our next visit. Check out a few of the pictures from the trip
here.
