Buh-bye Buckeye!

This year's Arizona Adventure is coming to a close, tomorrow will leave the shadow of the White Tank Mountains and begin the trek back to Minnesota.  Although the cold, ice, wind and winter weather are waiting - so is our family, it will be good to get home. I've also been watching all the pictures of snowy owls, the Lake Superior ice caves and now the aurora!  Maybe I can get to experience one or two of those when we get back too.  I know that winter will not be over.

These past weeks have been a good combination of soaking up the sunshine and visiting some new places.

We visited friends in Casa Grande - I have no pictures!! We must have been too busy chatting - and eating and drinking!  We also spent a night in Yuma with our good friends Pete and Ed - they were our hosts in Alaska a couple of years ago.  We left Yuma with some new quilting ideas, a few treasures from the Arizona Market (the Yuma Flea Market) and a cooler full of salmon!!

We spent a Saturday traveling to The Desert Bar and Parker Dam, on the Colorado River, just across the border from California.  The bar is one of the most unique I've been too.  Each year new features are added, there's always live music and good food! It's at the end of 5 miles of desert dirt road.  The new addition this year was a bigger kitchen with the "hugest, gamoungous" platter of nachos I've ever seen.  Seriously, I think it would be a meal for 4!

The Desert Bar - Parker

The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is hosting an exhibition of Chihuly glass.  Dale Chihuly is from Tacoma and has been doing these beautiful sculptures and displaying them in this kind of setting for several years.  He actually has a team doing the actual glass blowing now and he coordinates the sculptures.  The garden show here in Phoenix is beautiful - day or night!
Dale Chihuly - Artist - Home

I've split the slideshow into two sections, one  specifically for the Chihuly Exhibit.

If you are on a mobile devise, click on the picture and you will be taken to the Picasa Album on the web.

Buckeye Part 2

Buckeye Part 2

 

Chihuly in the Garden - I've labeled those sculputres that I can remember... I expected to find all the names in the field guide, so looked, but didn't take notes as we walked through the gardens.  Then when we got home, realized the titles were not specified!

Chihuly in the Garden

We'll head north in the morning, hopefully have a few adventures on the way home.  We are not looking forward to all the snow, but getting home always feels good!