During the week we spend a lot of time in the park visiting our neighbors, playing pickle-ball, cards and enjoying the free entertainment but on the weekends I like to get out of the park and see some of the desert landscape. When we are in town, Mesa feels just like our home in San Jose, Costco is 2 miles away, there are 3 grocery stores within 2 miles, Walmart is everywhere, along with Starbucks and any number of fast food joints. But when you leave our park and drive only 3 miles away from town you end up here!
Saturday’s I get itchy feet to get out and get away from the everyday and this week we ended up near Red Mountain. The mountain is really red and juts out of the desert floor where the Salt River runs through. We found a nice place to stop and take a short hike, only about 1 mile round trip but we found a spectacular place to sit and watch the desert – next time we are bringing a blanket so we can sit and watch the sunset!
There are so many cacti in the desert around Mesa and they are so interesting to look at.
Sunday we took a drive with our neighbors, Joan & Stephen out to Scottsdale to Greasewood Flats. Definitely not the typical establishment for Scottsdale but such a fun place to go. The sign on the entrance says “Sorry we are Open!” It is very popular with the Sunday Biker crowd along with the Limo driven crowds! Great music, good food and there is no indoors – it is all picnic style on a dirt patio!
Fountain Hills is a very upscale town with lots of golf courses and mansion type homes in the foothills near Scottsdale where they are known for the fountain in the middle of town. We stopped on our way to Greasewood to see the fountain spray.
On our way to Greasewood we stopped at Reata Pass Steakhouse, another fine dining joint in Scottsdale and had a beer while inspecting all the dollar bills stuck to the ceiling and avoiding the pet rattlesnake in the glass case in the sitting room! – oh and we found a chair just Paul’s size!
