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Though we were there for baseball, I found a few other sights to be a little more picturesque. Sorry, Ichiro.
I forget that some places take several visits to "get" them. I beat myself up for not being able to find the soul and pulse within the first half-hour there. In the case of Phoenix, I think I beat myself up most of the trip, except for a few stretches of desert-driven bliss. I know people like the place for reasons other than climate, retirement, and baseball. But I couldn't help but wonder: when she made her famed quip about the lack of "there" in Oakland, had Gertrude Stein had ever been to Phoenix?
The day I returned home from this trip, I visited azcentral.com to get some insight on things I saw in the area. I found this website, with the headline: "Have you been accused of drunk driving in Phoenix Arizona? Then you must be looking for Phoenix Arizona DUI Attorney for drunk driving defense." We saw a significant amount of billboard real estate dedicated to the deterrence of drinking and driving. The lack of good signs directing us to downtown Chandler — and its world-famous Ostrich Festival — were enough to cause me to want to stop and drink. Fortunately, if you do happen to drink a little more than you'd intended, taxis are standing by.
I'm tired of guidebooks that tout an area's great shops and restaurants, only to find the same parade of chains that exist in every major city in the world. Phoenix seemed to be the epitome of this, but "seemed" is the operative word. I know there's got to be something else to it, and an "old town" whose "galleries" sell turquoise bolo ties isn't what I'm talking about.
We go to Phoenix as Seattle Mariner's fans, and Peoria is their Spring training ground. This isn't to say that, outside of the baseball games we saw, we were bored in the Valley of the Sun. The opposite is true. We visited some memorable sights and got a good taste of what used to be there.
Phoenix South Mountain Park is a great place to get your bearings. There are several vistas, hikes, horseback and mountain bike trails leading to petroglyphs and rock formations. We drove about five miles up a winding road to Dobbins Lookout. Apparently Big Ramada is an even better place to get a sweeping view of Phoenix. As we drove up the road, we passed a field with a fleet of Walmart trucks driving some sort of rally among what appeared to be equipment trucks for a filming. The ranger at the SMP gate confirmed our suspicions; they were shooting a commercial up there. It was somehow fitting to see this in Phoenix.
The Desert Botanical Garden was stunning for those of us used to the Pacific Northwest's fluffy green foliage. The garden is housed in Papago Park, which also contains the city Zoo, hiking trails, and a golf course.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West was a great last sight to visit before leaving town. Both Taliesin structures, the original in Spring Green, Wisconsin and this one in Scottsdale, are the "shining brows" that overlook the scenery below them. Each houses the Fellowship and School of Architecture where apprentices study architecture based on the influence of the surroundings.
There IS a pulse here, and sense of place that can be reached by escaping the humongous grid that blisters in the sun. You just have to drive miles to find it, past the garbage strewn on the highways, past the boob jobs, past the infectious urban sprawl. There.
©1999-2010 R. Pelikan unless otherwise noted.