I'm in Phoenix! My brother Robert was lonely all the way out here by himself, so my mom and I decided to pack some bags and drive to see him for the weekend! It was a long drive, about 9 hours or so, but it wasn't so bad - I didn't even sleep! We stopped for McDonald's breakfasts and a Palm Springs snack. The weather is not too bad - not even cracking over 100 degrees yet, but it's definitely a desert. Nobody has grass in their front yards, the landscaping is all cactus and scraggly desert plants. The area Robert lives in has everything though - any store, restaurant or convenience you could want is a short drive away! It's a suburb of a larger city, but every restaurant we drove by considering stopping at on Friday night had 30 people waiting outside! Robert said everything is always busy because there are so many people in the surrounding communities. His apartment is very nice and very reasonable (compared to Santa Barbara? Anything is reasonable) and he will finish up school next month and come home.
So far we've enjoyed restaurants we don't have near us and went to Phoenix's World Wildlife Zoo and paid $18 a person to go see their very small collection of animals (Grutas Parkas in LT had a similar collection, with the exception of a few large cats & giraffes) - it was full of children in strollers as most zoos are, but I got to feed a giraffe and we saw several white tigers. Their way of displaying the animals was odd, as the fences were not very impressive and seemed like the waterbuck or warthogs could get out if they really wanted to - we could pet them! I'll post pictures so you can see...but the feeding of the giraffe was fun - it stuck its tongue out and you just piled the food on it! We did not go see the reptiles, as Robert is apparently not a fan of snakes, and when I asked why he said "because they can move, and move fast, without legs and that's weird."
We leave tomorrow morning, for a 9 hour drive home and probably the same stops. More on that and photos later...
