Last spring Jeff looked at me and told me to book a trip to go visit friends, he didn’t care who, and he didn’t care where, he informed me, rather he knew that I needed to be around friends that I’d known longer than six months, and it was time to make that happen. I cried even harder than I had been when he announced that it was time to visit friends. Ugly crying at it’s finest, I’m sure. I booked my ticket to Arizona the next day.
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Exploring Arizona
Long time friends from Portland had moved to Phoenix about six months after Jeff and I moved out here to Ohio, and it’d been far too long since Randall and I had had a chance to spend time together, and as such, Sugar (Randall’s husband) and I planned and plotted to surprise Randall with my visit. This may not seem like a big thing, but the fact that Sug and I managed to keep it a surprise for over a month was a feat of massive proportions. Randall ended up figuring it out anyhow, and we spent the entire week in and around their pool, leaving to re up on vodka, and then to get pedicures. It was perfect.
This year, as WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) drew closer and I was looking for airline tickets, I realized that it would be significantly cheaper to fly into Vegas on a one way ticket (where the conference is held each year), then to book a one way ticket home from Phoenix, a week later.
It took me about three seconds to call Randall and make sure that that worked on their end. It did, Jeff was on board, and tickets were booked.
Road Tripping Las Vegas to Phoenix
Things wrapped up a day earlier than I had planned in Vegas and I took full advantage of that found time. Pro tip :: when renting a car, stay away from the rental counters at airports. You’ll save huge amounts of money by renting from neighborhood locations, and that is never a bad thing.
I stopped just as I was about to get on the highway to load up on big ass bottles of Smart Water, blue Gatorade, and that stupid little adapter to charge your phone in the car. Every single time I travel I not only have to buy, but end up losing, that stupid, and yet so necessary little thing.
Even though I had all of my photography gear with me in the car, it was packed into the trunk, and well out of reach, a fact I was both frustrated by and grateful for. Pretty sure stopping at an abandoned structure in the middle of the desert while traveling solo to dig my camera gear out and explore is the start of every horror movie ever, and being cognizant of the fact that I was a woman driving alone along a fairly desolate stretch of highway, I chose to rather put the pedal down and get to Phoenix.
Amazingly gorgeous stretch of highway.
The first stretch, between Las Vegas and Kingman was beautiful, and looking at the stretch that was still to come, I made damn sure I stopped to fill up before heading down the road, as the open desert doesn’t play around.
The gas station I stopped at was at the top of a rise, and while the sun was out, and the temperature gauge on the car said it was well into the 60’s, the wind had other ideas. It was freakin’ cold!
The drive from Kingman to Phoenix pours you through canyons and along book cliffs that rival the best scenery I’ve ever driven through, and you can go for ages without seeing another car.
The stretch of road that is home to the Joshua Forest Scenic Route is so stark and raw in it’s beauty, that rather than try to describe it, I’ll borrow the following quote.
Running for 54 miles along US Route 93 northwest of Phoenix between the historic mining town of Wickenburg and the tiny town of Wikieup, the Joshua Forest Scenic Parkway crosses the blurred boundary between the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in western Arizona. Hardy creosote carpets the desert, while ocotillos thrust their straight barbed arms to the sky like a spring of thorns, frozen in midair. Saguaro cacti, the signature plant of the Sonoran Desert, thrive at the beginning and end of the drive, and great cliffs and canyons loom to the east and west. – arizonascenicroads.com
You turn at Wickenburg (pro tip :: they do patrol that stretch of road, and they’re pretty serious about enforcing the speed. Or so I’ve been told.) and the drive to into Phoenix as the sun was setting, ammmmmazing. It was peaceful, the sun dropping quickly, and the dusky peace of sunset washed over the barren landscape.
I damn near drove off the road when I realized I was driving in under a full moon. Of course I was. The veil is so thin down in the desert, seeing the full moon rise cemented for home that I was in the place I was meant to be when I was meant to be there.
The Melrose District M7 Street Fair & Phoenix Rising
The Saturday that I was in Phoenix was the Saturday that the 16th annual M7 Street Fair was happening, and it was so much fun to walk up and down the vendor booths, check out the food trucks (Phoenix Coqui & an amazing Belgium waffle truck, respectively), and listening to the music that pumped off of the patios of the bars that we popped in and out of to refresh our cocktails.
Let’s talk about Phoenix Coqui for a second.
Owners Juan Alberta Ayala and Alexis Carbajal brought their love of Puerto Rican flavors and food to Phoenix and launched their first food truck in the summer of 2017. They also offer catering, and are real good at what they do.
The Tripleta fries, HOLY CRAP. The flavors and textures together are bomb, and the chicken empanadilla, drooollllllll. Find out where they’re at, and go order both of those dishes. Your tastebuds will absolutely thank you.
Phoenix Rising Now
One of the shops that we stopped into that lined 7th Ave, Phoenix Rising Now, blew. my. mind. We stopped in to check them out, as Todd had told me he’d been meaning to check them out for a while, and well, we were there together, so why not. (Todd, mind you, is one of the most spiritual people I’ve ever met, and the chance to check out this shop together wasn’t something that we were going to pass on.)
The moment that we stepped through the door the calm energy of this shop (really, it’s proprietors) washed over me. We poked through the selection of crystals, making choices and selections and then making our way to the register.
Y’all, if you’re in Phoenix, or really anywhere in Arizona, you need to check them out, and you absolutely need to have your chakras read.
Desert Calling
The desert is the place where I am the most at ease. The colors, the climate, the cacti, the mountains, all of it combines in the perfect soul recharging way. (Which is one of the reasons that I’m down there every six months of so.) This time, we all decided that we needed to get out of the city, away from the crowds, and as the decision was left up to Sug and I, we picked a resort that was only 78 or so miles from thier house, remote, and according to google, some what near a natural hot springs, as well Goldfield Ghost town, so hell yes, we were in.
We figured that 78 miles each way would be a breeze. Jokes on us. Ever heard of the Apache Trail? We hadn’t either.
We spent two days out at Apache Lake Marina and Resort, soaking in the late winter desert, and recharging our souls (More on that later)
Once we got back to town, we spent the rest of the week poking in shops, exploring new neighborhoods, and eating some really good food.
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