Congrats to Roger Naylor on the release of his new and expanded book Arizona Boots and Burgers: A Guide for Hungry Hikers, which pairs 70 hikes with 70 restaurants worth experiencing.
This is my love letter to Arizona, disguised as a hiking and dining guide.
This is a book I’ve been preparing for my whole life. Hiking and eating burgers across Arizona-that’s my idea of paradise. Now you can come along on some of my very best days.
I watched artisans pour molten bronze to make some of those famous Cosanti bells today, while we toured Paulo Solari’s…uhhh…experimental “sustainable urban design” studio/foundry (a companion to his “arcology” installation, Arcosanti) for our Phoenix Culture Pass quest.
I finally brought Jen over to Arizona Falls today. Situated at a natural 20-foot drop along the Arizona Canal, the site is home to Phoenix first hydroelectric power station, built back in 1902. Today it powers ~150 homes in the area while serving as a neighborhood attraction and recreation spot.
These are just looped Live Photos, but couldn’t figure out how to post them correctly so I just imported them as quick videos.
And a few more photos, including some interpretative info.
We stopped by the Parada del Sol Rodeo Museum at Noriega Livery Stable, dedicated to Scottsdale’s long running annual rodeo, for Jen’s museum quest. We had a nice chat with Mike, who runs the place and grew up in the neighborhood; I especially enjoyed his photos of early Scottsdale from the 1950s.
We stopped by the Adobe Mountain Desert Railroad Park for Jen’s Museums of Phoenix quest. The park is a large undeveloped lot at the edge of Adobe Mountain Park that houses a number of train-related endeavors: the Sahuaro Central Railroad Museum, the Arizona Model Railroading Society/Arizona Garden Railway Society, the Arizona Model Railroading Society, and the Maricopa Live Steamers.
The park also contains some World War II-era Internment Camp Houses that were originally intended as temporary housing at the Leupp Isolation Center for Japanese-Americans during WWII.
We were there for the museum, but may have to return to see the internment camp houses, which I only discovered after looking up the official park name for this post.
We have a strong connection to the internment camp saga, having completed a quest to visit all ten of the Japanese internment camps in 2019 after accidentally running across the remains of Gila River/Butte Camp about a dozen miles south of our house (that episode probably deserves its own blog post). We’ve also visited a number of related “bonus” sites, including a visit to the very Leupp isolation site on the Navajo Reservation that these camp houses came from.
Anyway, the railroad museum contained all sorts of train-related paraphernalia, from models to old posters and memorabilia, to artifacts and such. There were several small trains you could ride, as well as a model train display. It was a quick visit for us, but if you love trains I bet this place is great for conversing with fellow aficionados.
We visited the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation Cultural Center & Museum today for Jen’s Phoenix Museums quest. It’s much more cultural center than museum, but we enjoyed a 90+ minute conversation with the museum director about the tribe’s history, culture, and its future.
A visit to PHX's George Washington Carver Museum
Jen’s Museums of Phoenix quest brought us to the George Washington Carver Museum & Cultural Center1 just south of downtown yesterday. It was my second visit, though the site has been vastly improved since my first time here. In fact, I’d now consider it a local historical gem (side note: discovering stuff like this is exactly the reason we have so many quests).
The museum, set in the first segregated high school in the state, features a slew of interpretative panels detailing the civil rights struggle here in Phoenix, with some additional exhibit and event rooms.
There’s also an interior courtyard featuring the sculpture That Which Might Have Been, Birmingham 1963, dedicated to the four black girls killed in the famous church bombing (side note: we’ve visited that site, too).
I learned quite a bit here, especially about the local struggle against segregation (including a successful challenge to the system a year before Brown v Board), the centrality of Eastlake Park to the movement, and about a now largely defunct neighborhood known as the Harlem of Phoenix, among other random factoids and episodes.
Check their website for visitor information; apparently, tours must be prescheduled and no walk-ins are allowed, though the museum’s Executive Director was quick to let us in anyway.
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The historic school had no direct association with George Washington Carver, but was instead renamed after him soon after his death. We’ve been to a number of Carver-related sites, including his birthplace and childhood home (the very first National Park unit dedicated to an Afrcian American), the Tuskegee Institute and its George Washington Carver Museum, and his nearby gravesite. ↩︎
OTD in 2017, I ran across a tag for my old college-era backpack, an absolute beast that I had absolutely no business using. I knew I had perhaps over-purchased when I saw someone donning the pack during an IMAX film about serious mountaineering. 😂
Do not exit
Wickenburg apparently has a rattlesnake problem.
We made our way to the wrong side of the tracks to grab a pint at Vulture Peak Brewing Company in Wickenburg, one of the few breweries in the state we hadn’t yet visited since covid. The beer was decidedly not good, and the old timers live music was far from lively. Oh well, glad we marked it off.
Before the rise of specialty license plate styles in the 1990s, this classic Arizona design was one of the best in the country, imo.
(The one that replaced it was pretty good too).
Made some big improvements to our Travel Map over at AdventuresAroundthe.World. Used Claude to add some additional functionality, including new pin colors for Countries We Haven’t Posted About Yet, as well as Upcoming Trips. Damn it’s fun to indirectly produce code that does fun stuff.
This painting is titled Lone Saguaro…
…but there’s clearly a second saguaro visible near the left edge. 🧐🤨
I haven’t celebrated Valentine’s Day since high school, when I struggled to find an appropriate gift for my then-girlfriend and was eventually guilted into overspending on a necklace, overpriced roses, and a crowded dinner out. Since then, I’ve simply opted-out of it entirely—and it’s been great.
In true Scott-and-Jen fashion, we dealt with the cancellation of our Central America trip yesterday exactly as you’d expect from us—we booked another trip! We reserved campsites in the Canadian Rockies later this summer, a trip we had to cancel last summer for other health issues. Get ready, Banff!
Welp, we officially pulled the plug on tomorrow’s Central America trip. Seems likely that we’ll kick that to Jan or Feb 2027 instead. I think a breather this coming week is in order, ahead of two other trips later this month.
If you’re trying to visit every National Park unit (or every US county) and still need to visit Kalaupapa, you’re in luck! They’ve opened some limited tours in Feb & April. The site (and entire county) has been otherwise closed since 2020. Future public access remains unclear, so jump on this!
(Photos from our Dec 2016 visit)
I’ve been pretty quiet since my brain mri, unfortunately for a serious reason. The scan showed a rare but serious and disconcerting condition. My primary care doc didn’t know what to do or even who to send me to, but told me to cancel our travel this weekend. Surgery was required and seemed imminent. I’ve been a bit of a wreck since. I spent all day yesterday working with the referrals department to cold call various specialists around the area in hopes of securing an immediate appointment, and eventually managed to line one up for today.
Well, it turns out that it was just a false alarm of sorts. I don’t have the rare condition, and what led to the diagnosis is actually a nonissue. In short, I’m fine. Whew! Not sure if we’ll still do the overseas trip this weekend at this point; I’ve sorta lost any excitement for it.