Driving Miss Daisy To Mesa's Riverview Park For Zip Line Fishing Rope Climbs

Every day, the always wanting to please Miss Daisy asks, multiple times a day, if there is anything you would like to see or do here that you have not yet seen or done?

Usually every time Miss Daisy asks such I answer no.

Miss Daisy has been multiple times asking Big Ed her favorite question. I had warned him this would happen. Big Ed has several answers he repeats in rotation.

Such as I would like to ride the Metro light rail. And that open beer hall in Gilbert looks fun. And Saturday night in downtown Scottsdale.

Miss Daisy rejects Big Ed's suggestions, which then has me asking Miss Daisy why she keeps asking Big Ed if there is anything he wants to see or do if you are gonna say no to everything he wants to see or do?

So, today I told Big Ed to say he has long wanted to see Riverview Park, in Mesa, located by the Chicago Cubs Cactus League version of Wrigley Field on Dobson Road, and then drive the Rio Salado into Tempe.

Today Miss Daisy went along with that which Big Ed asked. Which soon had Big Ed rolling Miss Daisy on her new wheels.

Riverview Park is the most elaborate, over the top kid's playground type park I have ever seen. Zip lines, climbing rope contraptions on steroids, a big water plaza with fountains to get the kids wet, slides built into the side of hills. And other stuff I have forgotten and should have photo documented.

Oh, and a big fishing lake, which is what Big Ed is rolling Miss Daisy across at the top.

The above contraption looked fun. And a bit difficult. I was not able to look long enough to figure it, due to the fact that Miss Daisy insists on needing to keep moving.

Rolling towards the above climbing rope playground attraction I did not see how this could be safe. A closer look showed a thickly padded landing zone should one fall. Still, looks scary.

I want to be in the Phoenix zone when David, Theo and Ruby are here so I can go play at this park with them. Spencer Jack may be getting a bit too old and sophisticated for this type playing.

Leaving Riverview Park we drove Rio Salado til a wreck detoured us, eventually through the heart of downtown Tempe, back to Rio Salado where a left turn onto that road showed a giant Octoberfest in full swing. And so I was not able to park where I wanted to park so as to have Big Ed roll Miss Daisy across the long, impressive pedestrian bridge which crosses Tempe Town Lake.

I see all this incredibly cool development along a manmade waterway and wonder if seeing this type thing is what inspired some Fort Worth lamebrains to deludedly think they could work a similar miracle with the polluted Trinity River and the eyesore industrial wasteland through which that river flows.

Leaving the downtown Tempe zone we ended up in Papago Park with me unable to find the Hole in the Rock parking lot. I did find the Hole in the Rock though.

As we were driving, Spencer Jack and Hank Frank's Grandpa Jake texted me that a batch of pickled asparagus was waiting for me if I wanted to drive by. I texted we were in the neighborhood, and so with some slight directional difficulty we arrived at that destination.

Miss Daisy refused to get out of the car.

Have I mentioned before that Miss Daisy can be a bit difficult? And exhausting....

Driving Miss Daisy To The Top Of The Rock Before Leaving Arizona

I have been in recovery mode since my midnight return to Texas on Saturday, leaving the humid heat of Arizona's Valley of the Sun for the dry heat of the Texas Red River Valley.

Does the Red River actually have a valley? And is Wichita Falls in that valley?

I have no idea.

All I know for sure is the Red River, and Oklahoma, are about 20 miles north of my current location.

That and that dry HEAT of Arizona turned muggy from monsoon rain during my two week stay. whilst rain-free North Texas seems to have developed dry HEAT, hotter than Arizona.

In other words, when I exited the Wichita Falls Airport on Saturday, rather than being slapped in the face by a wet blanket of cotton, such as was the case a couple months prior, this time the Texas HOT air felt good.

Refreshing.

And not all that HOT.

My vehicle's temperature monitor indicated the outer world was 115 degrees HOT when I ventured to Walmart in the late afternoon of Sunday.

Anyway, back to Arizona.

In the photo above you are looking at Sister Jackie being Miss Daisy's driver. With me in the back seat enjoying the scenery without having to follow Miss Daisy's driving directions..

Miss Daisy was directing a pre flying out of Texas lunch excursion, with one of the highlights being the restaurant location known as the Top of the Rock, where we did not have Wagyu Short Ribs, Alaskan Halibut, Arctic Char, Roasted Duck, Buttes Mac & Cheese or Herb Gnudi, but instead opted for Sweet and Sour Cashew Chicken.

Prior to the Top of the Rock, since we were in Tempe, which is close to my final Arizona destination of Sky Harbor Airport, I asked if Miss Daisy could possibly direct her driver to drive me by all the new corporate headquarters which have popped up in Tempe in recent years.

My favorite nephew, Jeremy, had told me all these new buildings were quite an impressive thing to see. And they were.

But first we checked in on Tempe Lake. I think that is the name. Sort of a 'town lake' made by damming, I think it's the Gila River. I have never seen water running in the Gila River, and yet somehow it provides a lake. And on the non-lake side of the dam the river is bone dry.

Above you are looking at one of the "signature" bridges which cross Lake Tempe.

I see things like this and it freshly reminds me of how pitiful Fort Worth, Texas is.

What with imaginary islands with imaginary signature bridges, stuck in engineering failure mode for years, bridges built over dry land, one day hoping to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, crossing over a manmade cement lined ditch filled with polluted water in which the starved for entertainment locals regularly have River Rockin' Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats sponsored by an agency known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, more commonly known as America's Biggest Boondoggle.

With that Boondoggle currently sporting big wooden bridge supports which look like Paul Bunyan's abandoned teeter totters, which some locals have taken to calling the Yeehaw Seesaws.

Above is one of those new corporate headquarter's which moved to Tempe. I do not know which one this one is, but there were several buildings which looked like this and my woefully inadequate photography skills do no justice.

I think the above is an apartment type complex. There are multiple such things in the area of Tempe's new corporate headquarters.

I do not know if Fort Worth tried to lure any of these Tempe corporate headquarters when those corporations were in re-locate mode. Fort Worth regularly makes such attempts, offering multiple perks in hapless efforts to attract a corporation to town.

I have more than once wondered if those who try to lure a corporation to Fort Worth have visited those towns which win out over Fort Worth to try and figure out why no one wants to come to Fort Worth.

Fort Worth's pitiful attempt to attract Amazon's HQ2 was the most recent Fort Worth failure of which I am aware.

If Fort Worth sent a task force to Tempe, or Chandler, or Scottsdale, or any other Phoenix area town to which corporations have re-located their headquarters. they would find towns with good roads providing easy transportation. Parks with no outhouses. Streets with sidewalks. Paved trails all over town. Aesthetically pleasing landscaping in abundance. And just an overall location any corporation would be proud to call home.

In Chandler, Arizona one finds a HUGE Intel complex on Dobson Road. I do not know how many thousands Intel employs there. Every time we drive by this location Miss Daisy tells me when they moved to the Chandler zone all which is now Intel, and other high tech operations, was agricultural fields.

Fort Worth made a pitiful attempt to lure the Intel development which is in operation in Chandler. This occurred early in my Texas exile, when I lived in Haslet, in far north Fort Worth. Across the street from my then abode what were then acres of open land were slated for Intel. A new overpass was built over I-35 to access the land. Perks were offered. Fort Worth thought they had a done deal. But the deal fell through. Someone from Intel must have visited Fort Worth and decided no way are we building anything in that town.

How much money has the city of Fort Worth wasted over the years in futile attempts to get some company to re-locate to the town? Perhaps the time has come where maybe Fort Worth should spend some research money to identify all the town's elements which leave such a bad impression.

Slow motion pseudo public works projects, such as that which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle, that being the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, currently a badly engineered mess of slow motion, or stalled, construction, do not leave a good impression, or lead someone to think the town can get anything done within any reasonable time frame.

Oh, and above is that Top of the Rock restaurant in Tempe I mentioned multiple paragraphs ago before I slipped into my patented regularly scheduled verbalization of being appalled by the Texas town named after a fort, which was a camp, of tents, and which, unlike other Texas frontier forts, nothing remains of the Fort Worth frontier fort, except for a penchant for embarrassing hyperbole...

Big Tempe Surf With Sister Jackie & Brother Jake

With the Valley of the Sun  outer world heated to well over 100 degrees it seemed like a good time to do some desert surfing.

So, Sister Jackie drove me to Tempe to meet up with Brother Jake where we were able to do some of that desert surfing at the Big Surf Waterpark.

It was hard leaving Miss Daisy behind in Sun Lakes.

We arrived at Big Surf soon after the ocean opened for the day.

I soon found myself in a simulated tropical paradise, luxuriating in a big ocean I almost seemed to have to myself.

While waiting for the surf to rise, Brother Jake, Sister Jackie and my feet lounged in the water, enjoying the almost empty of people pseudo ocean.

And then surfers began to arrive. Many with flotation devices of the air mattress sort.

A cacophony of screams blocked out the rock and roll background music when a Big Kahuna wave suddenly appeared.

I had not surfed since sometime in the last century, in the Pacific Ocean in California, at San Clemente Beach, if my memory is serving me correctly. Negotiating a big wave quickly came back to me, like riding a bike. After an hour, or so, I asked Sister Jackie if there was anyway I could get her to try and photo document me in surf boy mode. Above is the best of Sister Jackie's surfing photo documentation.

Scroll to the end for up close video documentation of me getting tossed by the wild waves of Big Surf.

After an hour or two of surfing it was time for a break under shade. But still in a pool. That would be Brother Jake looking at you, with Sister Jackie looking away. Soon after taking this photo I left my camera behind to take a ride on one of the waterslides. I did not realize I would slide at such a high speed. This excess speed had me shoot out of the tube underwater, wreaking havoc with my sunglasses.

That is not Sister Jackie, above, pretending to be a lifeguard. That is a real lifeguard, who guarded my life by telling me I was too close to the wall you see here with rope fenced posts sticking out of the wall. After getting scolded I waded over to the lifeguard to take the photo you see above.

Soon after I got in trouble with the lifeguard we decided to leave Big Surf to head west to Scottsdale to the Fiesta Burrito Mexican Restaurant.

Above is a lunch look of my chili relleno enchilada in the foreground. Brother Jake's mixed enchilada is viewed to the upper left. Sister Jackie had the same chile relleno enchilada I had, so you do not need to see photo documentation of that.

Whilst we were surfing Sister Jackie mentioned something new in Tempe. A car vending machine. That's right, a car vending machine.

CARVANA. You build your car online, then make your way to the CARVANA tower in Tempe, and somehow, apparently, your new car is rotated to ground level, where you can drive away, with a freeway conveniently nearby.

A redlight stopped us right before entering that aforementioned freeway, rendering easy photo taking of CARVANA.

It's gonna be an adjustment leaving modern America and going back to Texas on Saturday.

And below is a short video of surfing today at Big Surf Waterpark...

Saturday In Arizona Hiking Desert Botanical Gardens With Papago Park Holes In Rocks Declining To Hunt For Turkey Legs

Pedestrian Bridge Over Lake Tempe Dam

I have had me a day, so far, this Saturday, and it is only 3 in the afternoon, with a lot of hours left in the day. I'd take myself a nap if I were nap enabled, which I am not.

My sister took me away from my mom and dad's Sun Lakes abode about 7 this morning. Our destination was the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. More on the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden in a subsequent blogging.

After visiting the Desert Botanical Gardens we headed for another location in Papago Park, that being the hole in the rock. More on the hike to the hole in the rock in a subsequent blogging.

After hiking to the hole in the rock we left Papago Park to go visit my brother and sister-in-law's new location in Scottsdale. I rather liked it. Basically they live in Melrose Place, except in Scottsdale, not Los Angeles.

We left my brother's hungry, after not getting the pancakes that had been promised the night before.

So we headed to another of those cool restaurants called McDonald's. I had something called a Southern Spicy Chicken Sandwich and a Double Cheeseburger. I think I have the names right.

As my sister and I waited for our gourmet food we watched a very skinny lady blocking the drink bar whilst she squeezed the fat out of a couple dozen McNuggets. My sister grew impatient with the lack of access to the beverages and asked the skinny fat squeezer to move.

The skinny fat squeezer then told us her doctor told her she had a coronary condition and should try and squeeze all the fat she could out of her food. We watched as she cut the McNuggets into pieces with a knife and ate the pieces very furtively and bird-like.

It has been my observation that McDonald's attracts interesting customers.

The sequence of events that followed McDonald's I may have a bit confused. At some point after McDonald's we went to my youngest nephew's apartment and his big brother's house. The apartment was in Tempe, with the house being in Scottsdale, which leads me to think we may have gone to the house first.

In Tempe we walked across the new pedestrian bridge you see above. This bridge is above the new dam that replaced the failed dam that made Lake Tempe next to Arizona State University. You may remember that dam failing during bad flooding in Phoenix a year or two or three ago.

At some point, after walking across the bridge, I think we were in Mesa, where we dropped in on my favorite brother-in-law's sleeping mother. I've always found my favorite brother-in-law's sleeping mother to be very nice. But, she did not remember me.

Leaving Mesa we headed south, back to Chandler, where we drove by the Pacific Seafood Buffet. I've not been to a seafood buffet in a long while. Let alone a Pacific seafood buffet.

Eventually we were at the core of downtown Chandler, where my sister drove us around the Chandler town square. It was being festive due to St. Patrick's Day. This location sort of reminded me of Taos. Which makes sense, sort of, with New Mexico being the next state to the east.

Finally I was re-delivered to my mom and dad's in Chandler. My sister left and soon my mom was asking me if I wanted to ride with them to Maricopa to get a bougainvillea and turkey legs. I declined the offer.

I was too tired to go turkey leg hunting.