Valley of the Sun and Spring Training

Greetings from sunny AZ, Valley of the Sun!  We have been here in Mesa for two months now.  This is officially the longest we have been in one place...well technically two places, because we moved from the resort we are working at to a smaller park down the street on March 1st and we will be here until 4/15 when we start moving again.  We are definitely getting hitch itch and are craving a campfire in the worst way! We will move to a Maricopa county park to meet up with friends and you can bet we will try for a fire every night, even if it is 90 degrees!!!  
We have been enjoying our time here in the greater Phoenix area. The park that we have moved to has been a wonderful reprieve from the hustle and bustle of being on the main drag at the entrance of Val Vista.  The folks here have been soo nice and welcoming and the pool has been pretty much all ours whenever we went. There is even really nice little putting greens by the pool as well.  Sunsets also have not disappointed!

We were fortunate to be able to go see the Milwaukee Bucks with complimentary tickets from an organization called Vet Tix.  Organizations donate tickets for various event to Vettix for past and present military members to use.  This is an awesome program and I urge anyone who has ever served to sign up for the program.  It is free and works well for full time RV'ers as you can continue to change your locations you are interested in seeing offers for.  Sign up here.

One of our main reasons for coming to AZ this time of year was to see our beloved Milwaukee Brewers at spring training!  We were able to see three games, with one being an away game at the Oakland A's stadium, just up the road from us.  Tickets for one of the Maryvale games was compliments of Rick's old boss Frank at State Fair Park who we just happened to see as we drove by the stadium.  What a pleasant surprise!!!  He was down in Phoenix helping out with the concessions.  Thanks Frank!!!  Good to see you again!
We had a great time at the games and we really liked the intimate feel of these spring training parks.  You really are up close and personal with the players and they get to show off a bit of their personality too.

With Rick picking up more shifts at our workamper bar and grill assignment, we have had to carefully try to plan when we can get out and see the sights.  The weather has also been very erratic this winter in AZ going from very cold days, to rain, to hot and then a rinse and repeat!  We have really been wanting to get out and go for a hike in the desert, but where to start??  You see we are not avid hikers, scaling mountains and traversing cliffs.  We needed to start out with something a bit simpler to test out how the old body with bionic parts would handle the uneven terrain and varied surfaces since standing all day on concrete was taking its toll on the hip.  Well I stumbled across an amazing app that can help find just the right trail, AllTrails.  If you don't have it, you need to get it!  It identifies trails wherever you want to go, supplies maps, you can sort by easy, moderate and hard, and then you can even record your hike and it will summarize your hike with things like elevation change, time moving, calories burned, etc.  

We chose Hawes trail in the Tonto Forest area near Red Mountain, which was a perfect starter trail.  It gave us gradual elevation changes and nonstop scenery.  It was a perfect day for it as well being mostly sunny and 70 degrees.  The desert was very lush and green with the unusually high amount of rain of the last couple months and many plants were in bloom and many more about ready to bloom.  

Rick and the 60ft saguaro cactus

Cute cactus face

Rick also got to check off something he has been wanting to do for some time and that is getting his stetson shaped to cavalry standards.  Every year we try to get together with his old Army buddies he served with in Germany, either at a 11th ACR Blackhorse reunion or just camping somewhere and the stetsons and stories always make an appearance.  Well this year he will be able to sport a finely shaped stetson compliments of the Boot Barn in Phoenix.

We are winding down our time here in the Sun Valley and this week will be our last big push at work before the sunseekers head to their colder climate homes in US and Canada.  The resort where we are working is expecting around 300 lots to vacate around April 1st.  That should look like organized chaos and we are seriously thinking of taking our chairs to go sit and watch that day!  It should then get a bit quieter at work since Happy Hours have been crazy busy with a couple hundred people each afternoon, drinking libations and dancing up a storm...if it is not raining.  The weather is also supposed to heat up to hit 90 with full sun.  We will see if it really is a dry heat!

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