We decided to take a three-week "snow-bird" trip down to Arizona to get out of the rain. We were able to visit friends and relatives who live in the Phoenix area. We rented a condo in this Racquet Club condo complex through a company called VRBO. We were very happy with the accommodations.
In the center of the complex was a clubhouse with an overlook tower. This gives you a good idea of what the area looks like. All the houses are the same color and have the same color roof. The landscaping depends very heavily on palm trees.
We went out for a hike at Papago Park. It is close to the zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden. The hike was very popular!
This is the view from the top toward downtown Phoenix and one of the many golf courses in the area.
If you look the other way, you can see the Saguaro cacti marching up the hills.
Near by was the "Hall of Flame" museum. It had some very old and some very new fire-fighting equipment. Some of the older pieces were real works of art!
You don't see a lot of fire engines in white paint!
We visited the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). They were having a concert for young artists (middle school and high school students).
This is the "3 Amigas Trio." All told, there were ten performers in the concert. They were all extremely accomplished! Alonda was jealous.
The museum had an excellent collection of extremely varied instruments (old and new) from all over the world. Each exhibit had a sound component which would pop up in your headphones when you got close enough. The rock and roll collection was the most interesting to us.
Downtown Scottsdale is the home of the Museum of the West. It was mostly western artwork, but had a lot of western gear and memorabilia.
This is Jim with an extremely dusty old American Buffalo.
A surprising museum was the Penske Museum featuring a lot of the Penske racing team cars. Not so surprising was that the museum was in the middle of very expensive car dealerships. If you are in Phoenix and want a Jaguar, Maserati, Ferrari, etc., then this is the place!
The Heard Museum is one of the most famous of the "western / Native Peoples" museums. Very impressively laid out and well done, but hard to photograph the exhibits. They were almost all in glass cases.
Old Town Scottsdale was all decked out for tourists and Christmas. Good place for souvenirs and gifts. You could ride the stagecoach, but we didn't.
We had dinner and a visit with Jim's older brother Cris and his wife Victoria. They live in the western part of Phoenix. They both work as nurses.
We went to Sedona with Sandee, Alonda's U of I roommate. Sedona is famous for its red rocks. This is the view from the National Parks Tourist Information Center. They gave us good advice on visiting around for the day and going into town.
Snoopy was there, too.
Here is the "Snoopy Rock."
We went to Tempe and visited Barb Weaver. We knew her when she lived next to us at our condo in Bremerton. She moved down to Mesa about ten years ago. This is Josephine, one of the jack rabbits who inhabit Tempe. They are part of a series of twelve, life-size bronze statues who make up a Public Art Scavenger Hunt. We found six of the twelve before we decided we were too tired to keep looking. 
This is Barb with one of the non-life-sized bronze jack rabbit statues in Tempe. "Jeremy" should have been near this gigantic rabbit, but we couldn't find him. Maybe next trip ...
Here are Barb and Jim next to Lake Tempe. It is a completely artificial lake in the middle of the desert.
In Queens Creek, Arizona, there is a large olive farm. The tour tells you a LOT about how olives are grown and processed into oil.
This is the modern way of planting olives.
This is the old-fashioned way of planting olives. The new method more than doubles the number of olives per acre.
The gift shop was where you could taste all of the kinds of olives and olive oils they produce. There was also a coffee roaster and a very good restaurant. They had ice cream, too, but it was winter.
The Desert Botanical Garden is in Phoenix. This is the state tree of Arizona: the palo verde. It has leaves, but the trunk of the tree also has chlorophyll.
This is the "teddy-bear" cactus. It is called that because it is so friendly. If you touch it, the spines will never let go and an entire branch of the cactus will break off and go with you!
Here is a blooming prickly pear cactus. You will see prickly pear jelly and candy for sale all over Arizona.
The Botanical Garden had a section devoted to butterflies. This Monarch is the best known butterfly in America.
They had not only a butterfly section, but a section devoted to plants and flowers that attract hummingbirds.
We also visited the Butterfly Wonderland in Scottsdale. It was a beautiful exhibit. It was a large, enclosed conservatory with butterflies everywhere. You had to be careful entering and leaving so you didn't let them out!
This is a Blue Morpho. When the angle of the light changes, so does the color of this butterfly.
The butterflies got on everything and everyone!
Next to the Butterfly Wonderland was the OdySea Aquarium. This is a giant Skate in a touch tank at the aquarium. You can touch them as they go by since their stingers have been removed. 
The best exhibit was a rotating auditorium that showed you four different large tanks. You stayed in the same seat and the entire thing rotated.
We had a very nice trip to Arizona and it only rained a couple of times at night!
We got back to Seattle just in time to see the winter sunset.
