Phoenix

I mentioned yesterday that at one point on the road Saguaro cacti appeared; it was pretty cool, the hillsides were just covered with them.



Thursday night, when we reached town, we all got dressed up and went out to a Steakhouse to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary. It saved having to cook, and was very relaxing. It was actually the day before our anniversary, but we were going to be busy on Friday (see the next post).

I didn't take pictures of people or buildings in my mom & dad's neighborhood; I was too intrigued by the flowering cactus. This is a prickly pear.



This is an ocotillo bush. The flowers are a lovely orange color.



I'm not up on cactus nomenclature, but I think this is a type of barrel cactus. The flowers are just lovely! (But don't touch.)



This is a saguaro cactus ready to start blooming. The buds all come out in sort of a crown arrangement at the top of each branch/arm.




On Friday we drove down-town Phoenix and caught sight of this new public sculpture. For being in a desert town, it looks remarkably like a fishing net, but it represents a cactus flower. I think it would take quite a bit of work to get a lovely picture of it.



These are mosaics on the outside of one of the sports stadiums in town. There are a lot of them! I think this is a baseball stadium (if the pictures are any indication) but we also saw the football and ice hockey (!) stadiums as well. Plus, every time you turn around there are baseball spring training centers for 1/2 of the teams too.



We were on our way to the Botanic Gardens, but there were too many pictures, so I split the posts.