This 'n' That

Today we lazed around all morning, went for a nice walk and visited with neighbors.  Then this afternoon we headed out to the Arizona wing CAF museum which is right on the airport grounds.

Don knows a lot about this kind of stuff so he knew what our own personal tour guide was talking about.  About all I could contribute was, wow that's big, or shiny or cool.  Our guide was a volunteer who was an army veteran.  All of their mechanics and staff are volunteers and it is a huge facility.

Don went inside this B17, I climbed up the ladder and decided I would pass.  It is a huge plane but when you actually get in it is very cramped with very little space for manoeuvring about.  It was manned by a crew of 10.  Some of the spots they had to fit into to drop the bombs or shoot the machine guns looked like they needed Houdini powers to get into. You can go for a ride in this for 425.00 or 850.00 to sit in the nose.  Not a chance would I be getting into that plane, my family talked me into that float plane ride last summer, and I learned my lesson.

 The outfit on the left was for a woman nurse in WW2 army officer.

 these were some kind of planes   . . .  (LOL)

This was the cutest little pedal plane, just as we were leaving an adorable little boy was sitting in it and he was delighted.

Such a pretty sunset tonight!

After supper we went to the Mesa  - LDS (Mormon) Temple Garden Christmas Lights display. It was absolutely amazing and just seemed surreal as I equate Christmas Lights with snow - not palm trees and orange trees.

You can see the oranges (or maybe grapefruits) hanging on this tree along with the lights.

 Look at the palm trees in the background.

This is the temple reflected in the pond.

And not only that -

We both stopped, looked at this sign and burst out laughing.

Some rainy days, Gilbert and Phoenix
The previous 2 days were very wet!  They kept warning of the winter storm that was approaching, it was all over the news and everyone was mentioning how much it was supposed to rain.  Other than being wet and quite windy I wouldn't have called it much of a storm.  There were a lot of dried, dead palm fronds and oranges on the road from the wind but thats about it.  Up north in Arizona they did have a lot of snow in the mountains.  They were happy for the ski hills I suppose but it was a lot of snow in just a few days.  Can't see any snow in the mountains in this area - day time highs are about 60F or 15 C.  Lows have been around 45F or 7C.  A little chilly in the morning and I have trouble wanting to get out of the warm blankets!

Yesterday we went to a farmers market in Gilbert. It was a very unique farmers market and although it did have some local produce and what not it had a lot of items you probably could not buy anywhere else.  One lady made home made oatmeal mixes, there were nice cement blocks with sayings carved in them.  One that I was really interested in was the home made horseradish.  He had several kinds, which of course I tasted!  There was lemon, beet and cranberry.  They had the heat of horseradish and the beautiful flavor of the other items.  They looked pretty and tasted amazing.  They recommended keeping them in the fridge and as I have a small fridge I will wait until we are closer to heading home to purchase some.
In the town, which we drove around in quite a bit as we sort of missed our turn we saw this:

This was basically on the end of a street with other homes that actually had humans living in them instead of cats.  There are boarded up homes in most of the cities we have driven around in.  Really seems weird to me.  Whats up with the cats here anyway?

Queen Creek and Scottsdale

The last 2 days we did a little exploring.  Queen Creek is about 20 minutes south east of Mesa and Scottsdale is about 20 minutes north west of Mesa.
At Queen Creek we stopped in at the olive mill and just walked around the farm and processing area.  There is a store and restaurant as well.  We picked up some balsamic reduction and passed on the olives and olive oil as we still have a lot from the valley in B.C.  Right close by is a cute farm called
Schnepf farm.  They have tours and a market and wonderful bakery.  I picked up a jar of some awesome looking peach salsa.  They had a store with really cute unique items like this one:

This sign just cracks me up!  If I was a farmer I would hang it on my door.





We were able to walk around the farm and check out the produce they were growing.  There was cabbage, radish, chard, zucchini, artichoke, beets and this okra

 We stopped at an amazing mall which I plan on spending a good day shopping in with Kylie when she comes.  They had the most beautiful carousel that I have ever seen.

Queen Creek has a population of about 26,000 and we managed to drive through a lot of it as the GPS was having trouble getting us to our destination.  Today on the way to Scottsdale, population 217,000 GPS worked excellent.  Scottsdale really does a good job of making their city a great tourist attraction and they really promote their downtown. It is divided into sections and we decided we would see the Historic Old Town Scottsdale.  They had an awesome little cart manned by volunteers to give out information about the city and answer questions.  We did a self guided walking tour and it was really enjoyable.  Of course the first question I asked was what kind of tree this was:

This was an absolutely huge tree with beautiful thick leathery leaves.  It is hard to tell from the picture but the trunk is thick and the tree is really tall.  It is an Indian Banyon tree.   We were provided with a map and descriptions of all 15 areas of interest (although it was all just such an interesting spot) with so many little fun things to look at. The walking tour basically shows the original Scottsdale townsite although many of the buildings have different shops in them.  This tour starts at the Little Red Schoolhouse which is now an Historical Museum.  It was built in 1909 and had a lot of fun stuff in it like a Barbie with clothes that looked pretty familiar to me as well as a beautiful stained glass window and amazing chandelier that was in a store owned by Barry Goldwater.
Another interesting shop was the Mexican Import Shop which used to be a pool hall that was built in 1923

This next shop was originally constructed in 1950 as a general store and is now called the Sugar Bowl and is the cutest restaurant and ice cream shop ever!  All the booths are pink and the decor is really unique.

There was also a church built in 1933 out of 14,000 adobe blocks that weighed 50 pounds each.  It also had its original stained glass windows.

The blacksmith shop was built around 1910 and then replaced by this adobe structure in 1920  The same family still own and operate it, they make a lot of ornamental wrought iron items.  You could barely walk in this shop!

There were also several old olive trees on one street. They were planted in 1896 to enclose an orange grove. In the drought of the late 1890's the orange trees died but the olives survived.  When they constructed a new emergency room at the hospital nearby they carefully placed the ambulance entrance between two of the original olive trees.
We had lunch at Grimaldi's pizza.  It is New York style pizza and hand thrown.  We watched them make the pizzas. They have really thin crust, you order the traditional pizza sauce, garlic and olive oil or pesto and then each topping separately.

There was a really unique shop that had all ladies dresses, jewellery and hats that are new, vintage items from 1920 to 1980.  My sister Jen would have loved this place so much.

All along the streets were amusing sculptures!

 In the front is a palo verde tree which is my favorite.  They are everywhere!  The tree is the same green from the ground up.  The leaves are very small and airy.  The metal sculptures are also everywhere and it is a good thing I don't have space or a yard to put them in because i know I would not be able to resist them.

 This was just such a funny group of items.

 These horses and flowers were really beautiful.

Every corner had these bird cages hanging from the light poles.

flower, bell,old boot,old boot










We will definitely be going back to Scottsdale as there is lots more to see there!
The rest of the pictures just show the countryside and sky as we drove home.  This was the first cloudy day and they kept on promising a lot of rain and thunder storms.  It just started raining about a half an hour ago and it is coming down pretty good and I am hearing some rumblings out there too.

 Between Scottsdale and Mesa was an Indian reserve and there were a lot of abandoned boarded up buildings.

Sky was looking a little ominous and the wind was getting stronger by the time we got back. We decided we would rather watch the rain from our spot than drive in it!

Mesa

Following are some pictures from the last couple of lazy days!  We walked around on Main Street in Mesa which is very much like Broadway Ave. in Saskatoon but with a lot more empty store fronts. 
There are antique shops, second hand shops and fun looking restaurants and coffee shops.  It is a very "artsy fartsy" community and there are tons of art shops and painting shops and what not as well.  It was Sunday so not much was open but it was interesting all the same.  We have also met and visited with quite a few of our neighbors, of whom about 50% are Canadian.

These are 4 of the approximately 50 large sculptures that are on these few blocks of the downtown.

I thought this was the coolest building ever!

 these are real girls, they were silver and white and they moved through the crowd like they were floating - really neat!

This was an art fair type of place where there were tons of vendors selling their crafts such as jewellery, ceramics etc.

This is right in our RV park. Hey, Karen, you should fix up your push mower like this - how awesome would that be?  This is even funnier here as there really is no grass. During the day there is so much to see as everyone really decorates their winter homes.  When we walk at night it is so fun to look at the Xmas decorations, some people really go all out!  Our neighbor fell in his cactus when he was putting up his lights - yikes!

This is when we were getting gas yesterday, I took this picture purposely like this, Don was pumping gas right where we were parked here.  I could open my window and pick a snack.  Really weird to see so much set up right outside!
Today we bought Don a fancy new bike! No excuse not to go riding now!