In Phoenix

 We've been at Luke and Monica's for two lovely days now.  Monica has been feeding us handsomely with tacos, pork shanks, fruit and sausage breakfast plates, chicken and more, while also plying us with white Sangria and prickly pear margaritas. We recommend it.  

Their Phoenix home is very Arizona indeed, with a walled courtyard, exotic plantings, colorful paintings and a cheery, cozy Southwestern vibe.  The house, we're told by the manual provided by the owners and a little Google searching, is one of Phoenix's many "Haverhomes." These are mid-century modern houses designed in the 1950s or thereabouts by architect Ralph Haver to be affordable starter homes, but now desirable for their simple, minimalist feel, generous glass walls and windows and blend between indoor and outdoor living. One wall of the kitchen has a mechanism like a garage door that can raise the windows on the back wall out of the way so that the kitchen opens directly onto the courtyard for outdoor dining.  (This shot is from Zillow.)

 

The house is part of a four-home community that shares a swimming pool, laundry facilities and covered parking -- but each house has its own separate courtyard, walled off with wrought iron gates, so that you feel private and secluded. It's different, fresh and peaceful.

But it's also hot. I mean, really hot.  REALLY REALLY hot. The highs each day are, like, 111, 109, 112.  And when it "cools off" at night, that means it drops into the 90s, or maybe the 80s if you're lucky.  It's pretty hard to stay outdoors for long.  

The area is full of endless outdoorsy things to do, hiking trails, mountains to climb, nature conservancies and city walking districts to explore. Most of them would be better explored in "winter," between October and May.  But that doesn't mean we've lacked for interesting adventures.  Yesterday we drove up to Prescott, a mountain town where we hoped the elevation -- around 5000 feet -- would keep things a little cooler.  

 As everywhere here, the drive from Phoenix to Prescott was insanely lovely, with mountains everywhere. By mountains, I don't mean the green, soft, rolling hills we're used to in the east. The mountains here are rocky, peaked, rugged, dry, pocked with scrubby trees, cacti and landslides. And they go on forever. There keep being more of them, one range after another, more and more fantastical ragged rugged peaks. It's spectacularly beautiful every way you look.  I try to imagine the early explorers, confronted with these endless forbidding rocky fortresses with no refuge from the heat. I don't know why they didn't just burst into tears and go home.  

 The weather is different, too.  Storms just spring up here and there without much warning, so you can be driving along in hot sunlight while scattered here and there around you, dark, piled-up clouds here and there interrupt the big blue sky and soak small patches of mountains with rain.

Anyway, we reached Prescott and parked downtown by the courthouse, where we saw a Centennial Tree planted in 2012 to commemorate Arizona's 100th birthday. Yes, the state is barely 110 years old, the last mainland state before Alaska and Hawaii.  

 We walked down Whiskey Row, explored a leafy little footpath running along a dry creek and had a good lunch at El Gato Azul: carnitas, ceviche, roasted goat cheese salad, beef and bleu tacos. And also margaritas. (Not my picture -- from the cafe website.)

And we visited Watson Lake, surrounded by strange rocky outcrops. We explored a trail along the edge of the lake, scrambling up and down over boulders, sandy slopes and rocky outcrops, picking our way carefully past spiny cacti, and pausing when we got the chance in the occasional shade from the strange and lovely desert trees.  A short scramble was enough in the 100-degree-plus heat and before too long, we stopped to sit on the sun-warmed rocks for a while, enjoying the sunlight, the water and the birds (cormorants, ducks and a hummingbird of unknown species, a Rock Wren, a Woodhouse Scrub Jay, another Roadrunner) and then scrambled gratefully back down to cool off on the ride home in the blessedly air-conditioned car. I would definitely have been a better hiker without the margarita.

The next day, we picked up Luke's car after repairs at an absurdly luxurious Audi dealership and then went gallery-hopping in Scottsdale's art district, a neighborhood crammed with dozens of art studios, galleries and shops. This was, in part, a way to go exploring in air conditioning, but was also surprisingly interesting and fun.  We saw all kinds of contemporary art and liked quite a lot of it.  

 Here's one I particularly liked, glass on metal by Houston Llew: 

Enlarge to read the poem by Rumi at the base of each panel.  There were lots of others, like this one: Alt

We came home sun-struck and tired for an evening of naps, cool drinks and another excellent dinner made by Monica.  Tomorrow morning, we plan to make a very early visit to the Botanical Garden to learn more about the fascinating range of cacti and strange trees that grow everywhere here and are unlike green things anywhere else, before it gets too hot to do things like that.  Luke got us tickets for 7:00 a.m., when it should be "only" 92 or 93 degrees.  More later!