Summer in Arizona

We moved to Phoenix at the hottest time of the year. Yes, it is a dry heat, but it's still unbelievable. Just our luck, our very first full month here was tied for the hottest month on record in Phoenix with an average temperature of 98.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The hottest August day on record for Phoenix was on August 26 with a high of 117 degrees! I don't think I had ever felt that kind of heat before.

As I walked across the parking lot to my car each afternoon, I could just feel the sun beating down on me and searing my flesh. It's not uncommon for people to use umbrellas for shade. Pretty much everyone out here has their car windows tinted. I'm hoping to get mine done before this summer. It makes a huge difference in how hot it is in your car by the time you get in to go home after work! Typically, when I walked out to my car and the temperature was above 105, I'd have to turn on my air conditioning and wait a couple minutes before getting into my car. And that's with the shiny sun shades in my front windshield!

Like I mentioned before, it's a "dry" heat. This does make a difference in how tolerable it is. When it's 90 here, it's much more comfortable than 90 in NC. The reason is, without so much humidity, your sweat actually evaporates, so you stay a little cooler and less damp. You sweat more than you even realize, and I've found that I need to drink a LOT more water out here.

Because the heat is so brutal, it's not ideal to do anything outdoors in Phoenix during the summer. Luckily, there are some cooler cities that are perfect for a day trip to escape the heat.

One weekend in September, we drove to Prescott, which is about an hour and a half away.
Prescott is maybe 10 degrees cooler than Phoenix and has trees! So we hiked a trail around Thumb Butte.

What a butte!

Justin decided he was curious about the contents of these cactus "fruits" so he found one on the ground and opened it up.

 And he found out that cactus fruits have tiny spines that get embedded painfully in your skin. Ouch.

But the scenery was very nice.

View from the top

Prescott was a pretty neat little town and I'm sure we'll be going back before long to do some more hiking.

Haboob

In case you're unaware, Phoenix occasionally has dust storms called "haboobs." Apparently they were unusually common last summer. Before we moved, we heard about a very large haboob that happened in Phoenix. "Very unusual," they said. Within a couple weeks after we arrived in Phoenix, we got to experience our first haboob. It's unlike any weather phenomena I ever experienced in North Carolina. 

We saw the dust cloud as it approached, and I grabbed my camera and ran outside.

Here you can see the front of the dust cloud:

As it got closer to us, Justin suggested maybe we should go back inside...so we went in the breezeway of our building to watch from there. 

The dust was not as thick as it seemed from far away. I learned to keep my mouth shut after I got sand in my teeth.

The dust turned the landscape into an eerie, post-apocalyptic-looking scene. 

Mountain view and highway view were both obscured.

As the sun set, it started to look like another planet. But those mountains look familiar...

Later, we learned that you should definitely not be outside during one of these. Apparently you can catch something called Valley Fever, which comes from some fungus in the soil. Otherwise, they seem pretty harmless. Definitely preferable to hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes!

The Journey - Part 2

I'm a poor excuse for a blogger...just going to pretend it hasn't been months since my last post and pick up where I left off.

My last entry ended in Texas. I forgot to mention the incident we had at our hotel in OK...
At one point, Beeboo escaped from our hotel room and ran out into the hall. I ran after her, while Justin shut the door so no other cats would escape. I chased her up the hall and down the hall, and realized she was looking for the open door to return to the safety of our room. I shouted at Justin "Open the door!" and he opened it. Beeb made a beeline(or should that be "Beebline"?) for the door, and has not tried such a daring escape since.

On to New Mexico! This is where the drive started to get really scenic. The terrain gradually became more and more brown. And rocky.
In New Mexico, we hit a pretty bad storm...

We stayed a night in Albuquerque, where we enjoyed eating at a New Mexican restaurant.

Not sure exactly on the order for the rest of the photos since my camera and phone were not synced to the same time...but here are a few highlights from the rest of the trip through New Mexico and Arizona.

Red Rocks

Flagstaff

This was our first time in Flagstaff, and we immediately fell in love with it just from passing through. The weather was a perfect 70 degrees or so, and the mountains were very impressive.

The 2 hour drive from Flagstaff down to Phoenix flew by (for us, maybe not the cats). We watched as the landscape became more dry, and then we started to see Saguaros.

We finally arrived in Phoenix, and settled in for a week at an extended stay hotel until our belongings were delivered to our new apartment. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we have a great view from our balcony, looking north at some mountains. I'm going to strategically not mention that the mountain view comes with a highway view as well...wouldn't want you to be less jealous of us.

Our Mountain View

The Journey - part 1

Last Monday, an 18-wheeler pulled up in front of our house. A group of 6 or 7 movers came in and packed up all of our things.

Another guy came to build crates for our TV and a glass tabletop.
Movers have a weird method for packing everything.  One newbie on the moving crew packed a lamp in 3 separate boxes. 1 lamp, 3 boxes. I also saw him put a guitar, a drum, and ramen noodles in one box.

Castle in the kitchen...okay, that makes sense...

Boxes everywhere.

The movers put in about 11 hours that day to get all of our things packed in boxes and loaded on the truck.
We stayed the night at my parents' house, cleaned up our house a little the next day, and then headed out. Also, a guy came to put Justin's car on a trailer bound for Phx.

The first day, we drove to Nashville, TN. A lot of the photos I'm posting are tagged with their specific locations in Picasa. And the coolest thing is, you can see a map showing all the photos I took with my phone on the trip in the locations where I took them! https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/albumMap?uname=JamieCRichardson&aid=5595127228671512161#map

The mountains of NC and TN were very pretty.

The cats did not appreciate the scenery as much. Beeb was meowing woefully. Spooky was lounging contentedly the whole time. Callie spent some time lounging and some time meowing.

A Smart car passed us on the highway. Justin was surprised "Is that a Smart car on the highway?"

I responded "Yes, and she's passing you." The speed limit was 75 for much of our drive!

After 6 hours of driving, we were very happy to see Nashville, where we planned to stay the night.

We left the cats in the hotel room and ate dinner at McNamara's Irish Pub.

The next day, we left Nashville and drove for over 10 hours to stay the night in Yukon, OK.
The Tennessee River was really pretty.

We saw an interesting silver pyramid in Memphis.

We crossed the Mississippi River! Justin had never seen it before.

These pictures are blurry because they were taken by a phone through the filthy window of a moving car, FYI.
I didn't take many in Arkansas....frankly it's not the most exciting state to drive through.

Oklahoma was a little better.
I enjoyed seeing many huge wind turbines.

In Texas you could see for miles.

There were also cattle, which is what you expect to see when you're in Texas.

I have a lot of great photos to sort through from the rest of the drive, so I'll be posting more later :-)

Finding A Home

Thursday evening, I flew out to Phoenix for the purpose of finding an apartment for Justin, myself, and the cats. Alex picked me up from the airport, despite the fact that she was in a car accident the previous day. She took me to a restaurant called Postino for dinner. The ambiance was very relaxed and fun. The doors were open to the patio, where mist was spraying from above. Reggae music was playing. We sat on the patio and it was really a perfect temperature. We each got a cup of soup and shared a delicious and intriguing bruschetta plate.

Bruschetta at Postino

In case you're interested, the flavors from left to right are: warm artichoke spread, brie & apples with fig spread, roasted peppers with goat cheese, and smoked salmon with pesto. All amazing. And they randomly gave us 3 olives on the side...we couldn't figure out the reasoning behind giving 2 people 3 olives.

I may talk about food a lot in this entry, because I'm really excited by the wide variety of wonderful restaurants in Phoenix.

Friday morning, we got up early and went to work out at Alex's gym, and then we went to eat breakfast at a little place called Tryst Cafe. No pictures from that, since we were very hungry and just dug right in. The food there is all organic and delicious. After breakfast, the apartment search began.

We visited 5 different apartment complexes. Overall, I was disappointed to find that most of them were more expensive than their websites led me to believe. They just happened to be all out of the cheaper apartments, apparently. At one apartment complex, the woman who worked there, when I complained about the high pet rent taking the total beyond my budget, said "do you have to bring the cats?" Are you kidding me?!? Maybe some people treat their pets like objects but we treat them like part of the family. How presumptuous, to assume we want to live in their complex so badly that we'd give up our sweeties. Grrr. Another place had beautiful landscaping and ponds, but really mediocre bland interiors.

I actually picked out one apartment complex while I was there, but after coming home and talking to Justin, we decided we could afford to spend a little more, and live slightly out of the way in order to live in a safer, classier neighborhood. The apartment complex we decided on is actually very nice and new. It has a nice fitness room, some free group exercise classes, a rooftop solarium at the clubhouse with 2 gas grills, 2 saltwater swimming pools, hot tubs, balcony, walk-in closets, and covered parking. It's a little far north, at the very edge of Phoenix, but still just 10 minutes from my job and around 10 minutes from a movie theater and some stores and restaurants.

Here are some photos I took at our apartment of choice; click to view larger:

Rooftop Solarium at the Clubhouse

Dining Room and Kitchen

One of the pools

Living Room and Patio

Bathroom

Sometimes the way they stage these apartments is kind of strange and funny. In one bedroom, there was fake Chinese takeout on a tray on the bed! It was a little gross, I think.

After we looked at all the apartments I was interested in, we got to do fun things for the rest of the weekend. We ate at various restaurants, went in the pool, and walked around various malls.

Me near Scottsdale Fashion Square

Alex and I in front of some big...thingies.

He says "oh"

Why do you live in Phx?

Decor at Macayo's

I picked out this shirt for Justin...

And that about sums it up.
We are moving in 6 weeks! It's hard to believe. 

Plans!

We have officially set our moving date with the movers. It's the last week of July. Movers will come one day and pack all of our possessions into boxes, and then come the following day and load those boxes into a truck and drive away with them. We'll probably sleep on an air mattress that night and then head out the following morning. For our 3-day drive. With 3 cats.

Haha...they will be in the back seat, meowing their little hearts out from the safety of their carriers. The above picture does represent my road rage fairly accurately, however. I have even been known to hiss at bad drivers.

We are planning to stop in Memphis, TN, and Amarillo, TX. In preparation for our 3-day journey, I would like to acquire some entertainment to...entertain us in the car. Maybe audio books, or some stand-up comedy, podcasts, or awesome sing-along music. Please suggest such things in the comments!

We're thinking of staying in La Quinta hotels along the way since they are all pet-friendly, but this is another area where we are taking suggestions. Might as well stay somewhere nice since it's covered by the relocation pacakage. ;-)

That's all for now!

More From Our "Fam" Trip

In my last post, I mentioned our familiarization trip to Phoenix and some things I learned about Phoenix while we were there. Now I will share more details and photos from that trip.

I took quite a few of these photos from a moving bus, so please forgive the blur.

The hotel we stayed at had many palm trees and orange trees.

Many yards in Phoenix have orange trees, lemon trees, and grapefruit trees. With the group, we toured one rental house with fruit trees in the backyard, and all of the women on the tour were carrying as much fruit as they could back on the bus! People were shaking branches to get the precious oranges and grapefruits.

Justin contemplated taking an orange he found on a bench at the hotel, but decided against it.

Like I mentioned before, everywhere you go you can see mountains. This was on the drive north to Anthem.

There are also many cacti! I'm strangely fascinated by them. They grow very slowly, and if you damage one, it's a $5000 fine!

Here are pictures of what some typical neighborhoods look like:

Very different from NC!