For our Christmas present this past year, Alex gave us two plane tickets to Arizona. He also bought us tickets to two Spring Training Major League Baseball games down there. What a good and generous little son!
We flew Allegiant Air out of Ogden.
It was fun to see Antelope Island as we flew over it.
And I liked seeing Lake Powell from the air.
We arrived just in time to drive over to our first game - Rockies vs. Mariners - at Salt River Field. Alex and three of his friends have taken a Road Trip to Arizona for the last three or four years. They met us at the game.
The next day we ate an early lunch at an unbelievably good Korean restaurant, recommended to us by Alex, our Korean food expert.
Then it was off to "root root root for the Padres" at Camelback Ranch, a really pretty ballpark.
It was another sold out game. At each of the games we attended there were over 25,000 in attendance.
The Padres played the Dodgers and we Padre fans were very few in number. I stood out like a sore thumb in my San Diego gear. There were Dodger fans as far as the eye could see. But we still cheered for the Pad's while munching on our peanuts. You can see it was perfect weather. Ahhh.
Two of the other wonderful places we ate on this trip were a Cornish Pasty pub and a Thai restaurant.
After church on Sunday we drove over to the Mesa Temple. They had this really awesome cactus garden there.
We visited later that afternoon with Erika and Porter and cute little Von. They live in a home that is on the Historic Registry in Phoenix.
We explored Papago Park in Phoenix.
Another favorite place we ate was called "Dolce Vita" in Mesa. We had the best homemade ravioli I have ever eaten. And for dessert we had the creamiest gelato as well.
Our last morning we drove over to the Gilbert temple. I am thinking it looks a lot like our Ogden temple will look when it is finished. Minus the palm trees, of course.
Whenever we see bougainvillea on a trip I make Dave take a picture of me by it. I LOVE this plant. It reminds me of our courtyard when we lived in San Diego.
We had a little extra time before our flight and so we walked around this mall in Gilbert.
We flew over the Grand Canyon on the way home.
As we de-planed on the tarmac in Ogden we were both underdressed and froze our hinies off as the wind and sleet whipped into us. We both ran across to the terminal building as fast as we could. Brrrr.
Thank you, dear Alejandro, for this wonderful escape to Arizona. We had a great time!
