Arizona Food

It wouldn't be a complete telling of a trip without mention of some of the excellent food we had.  Yes, this was one of our food trips (although the scenery was pretty great, too!).

I will just talk about two of our favorite places to eat, one in Phoenix, one in Sedona.  I think we may have liked Rice Paper the most since we went there twice.  This sweet little place was conceived of as a sushi bar, but then the owner changed her mind and made it into a Vietnamese spring roll bar.  I tried both the Spider Spring Roll (similar to the sushi by that name with tempura crab inside) and the Vegetable Tempura Spring Roll (with asparagus, mango and avocado).  I do like my tempura.... We also shared a bowl of Vegetarian Pho (the picture shows how large one half of a bowl is) both times we went.  The first time we were too full for dessert, so that's why we went back the second time.  We just had to try the ginger creme brûlée.  It was definitely worth the return trip for that.

Our favorite place in Sedona was recommended to us - the Elote Cafe.  This hopping place does not take reservations, and we arrived at what we thought was opening time - 5:00.  There was already a line and a 45-minute wait for a table.  We chose to shorten the wait and sit at the bar which ended up being part of the fun experience.  We enjoyed chatting up the bartender as she made prickly pear margaritas as fast as she could.  This place is pretty pricy, so we decided to try three appetizers for our dinner, and that was a pretty good call.

The signature appetizer is the elote (Mexican name for corn on the cob).  After roasting the ear of corn, it is seasoned with whatever they use to make it completely delicious.  This version takes the corn off of the cob and you eat it with a spoon, or dip it with the chips provided.  I suppose I could buy the cookbook to try it at home, but I am sure that it would come up short in my kitchen.  We also had the seafood tacos (nothing like fish tacos in Ensenada) which were just the right kind of spicy and delicious, as well as the roasted beet salad (with pumpkin seed-encrusted goat cheese balls).

Soldier's Pass - Hiking in Sedona

When looking for a good hike in Sedona, I was overwhelmed with choices, and I think that not many of them are bad.  So, I looked for one that was about 5 miles with not too much elevation gain.  I chose Soldier's Pass because it fit that criteria as well as touting a large sinkhole (the Devil's Kitchen), some arches, and seven sacred pools.

We found the sinkhole and pools (the pools are nowhere as impressive as the seven sacred pools on Maui, but they are still nice to see on the hike), but the guide said that the side hike to the arches was via an unmarked trail on the right, and we passed a number of such possibilities that we didn't want to try them, just in case the arches were not at the end of them.  So, no arches.  But we did see lots and lots of beautiful scenery, including red rocks galore.  

We also ran into some Carleton alums along the way.  They noticed my shirt and started a conversation which gave us not only a pleasant interaction, but a nice 20-minute rest.  They live in northern Minnesota but spend every March in Sedona and April in Palm Springs.

 This is the Devil's Kitchen.

 One of the sacred pools (or puddles).

 Not exactly arches, but some caves in the distance that were pretty enough to photograph.

 From near the top of Soldier's Pass, this is our view with Sedona in the background.  We had about an 800 ft. elevation gain.

 This is a rock formation that I particularly liked.  It looked like a group of people.

Museums and Gardens

Among our many fun activities in Phoenix, visits to two museums made the list.  I blogged about the Musical Instruments Museum at my music blog which you can read about here.

While planning our Arizona trip, I ran across something that made me think there might be an art installation by James Turrell somewhere.  We are enamored of the Turrell at Pomona College called Dividing the Light.  A  little internet searching.... and I found that he is actually working on something in a crater near Flagstaff, but that is not quite ready for prime time yet.

When I found out that the Phoenix Art Museum had a work by Turrell, I put it on our agenda and when we arrived at the place, we were surprised.  First, it doesn't use natural light from the sun.  Second, it is pretty small in scope compared to other works of his.  You can sit there on the floor in front of it and watch the colors change ever so subtly and slowly, or do as we did and watch it for a few minutes, then tour the rest of the museum and return to the Turrell to see how it had changed.

The rest of the museum had some pretty interesting art, so that made our end-of-the-day trip there worthwhile.  Besides, Wednesday afternoons are free or donation at this museum.

A museum of the outdoor sort with lots and lots of natural light - the Desert Botanical Garden - came highly recommended to us by a variety of sources and with good reason.  We happily wandered the various cacti and desert wildflowers for several hours, and we recommend visiting in the morning when the sun is not quite so direct and hot, even though there are many shady places throughout the garden.

More pictures from our whole trip here.

At the entrance to the Garden - these plants are made of glass

Ancient Ruins

I'm not exactly sure why, but I really like to tromp through ruins.  We've enjoyed seeing Mesa Verde, Mayan ruins in Belize and Tikal in Guatemala among others.  I like wandering cemeteries, learning about history (in fact my master's degree is in music history), dabbling in my family genealogy, etc.  The last time we were in Arizona in 2006, we drove down to Casa Grande to see those ruins.  

This trip we saw four sites of the Sinagua Indians - the prehistoric Desert People of the Southwest.  Sinagua is the Spanish word derived for these people which means "without water."  I found that very interesting since, not only does central Arizona have plenty of rivers and creeks (yes, I know it's the desert, too), but the Sinagua in the Phoenix area dug extensive canals and waterways for agriculture.  

The first place we visited was the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Site.  This is a Hohokam village right next to the Sky Harbor Airport.

Pueblo Grande 

On our way up to Sedona, we stopped at Montezuma's Castle as well as Montezuma's Well.  Both are part of the same National Monument, though separated by a little distance.  Though much smaller in scale by quite a bit than Mesa Verde, this cliff dwelling is still picturesque and worth a visit.  The well, which is a large sinkhole, cannot sustain fish since the water is too concentrated with carbon dioxide.

Montezuma's Castle - just for looking at

Montezuma's Well - notice the little dwelling in the upper left-hand corner

Closer to Jerome is yet another site called Tuzigoot National Monument which is a mostly rebuilt hilltop pueblo.

Camelback Ranch

View from Center Field

The main reason for our Arizona Spring Break trip was to catch a few spring training games.  The Dodgers and the White Sox share the stadium called Camelback Ranch in Glendale.  We saw the Dodgers play the Rockies one day and then the Sox play the Angels the next.  Our seats were up the 3rd base line in the first row of the second section of seats (as seen from the photos below).

We really enjoyed seeing games in the smaller venue which holds just over 13,000 spectators.  While we had a great time, it would have been advantageous to have more shade in the park as well as better concessions.  The second day we ate before we made it to the field and brought in our own water.

One great thing about spring training games which don't count, the crowd is pretty laid back, and I didn't hear anyone getting out of hand or swearing.

Dodgers warming up 

Matt Kemp coming in

Albert Pujols in a new red jersey.  He has lots of new fans.

Arizona Spring Break

We have just returned home from a week in Arizona, and I'm sure I have hundreds of pictures to go through for the next blog installments.

In a nutshell we saw:

4 ancient ruins
2 baseball games
2 museums
1 ghost town
1 chapel
1 botanical garden
1 great hike
great restaurants and some not-go-great restaurants