Weekend Adventure

 In March I was feeling a little bit of an itch to get away for a weekend.  I looked ahead and saw a 3 day weekend in April and got with Grace and a trip to Phoenix was planned.  I am not much of a traveler, but if I do say so myself, I (with Grace's help) planned a pretty fun weekend adventure.  We took off early from work/school on Thursday and flew home on Sunday.  Now Phoenix wouldn't normally be a vacation destination for me with the heat, but I heard April was a great time to go.  The weather was actually beautiful.  I was nervous, but Gator wore a sweatshirt in the evenings and the days were warm and sunny, but not hot.  It even rained really hard on Friday night, which was actually scarey to drive in, but we made it.  We went to the Phoenix Temple, the Mesa Temple, a botanical garden, the zoo, and an aquarium.  The zoo was actually disappointing.  I am so glad we didn't end the trip on that.  The botanical garden was really cool.  There were some beautiful wild flowers, butterflys, and tons of huge cactuses.  I absolutly loved the Mesa Temple grounds.  The town of Mesa made us a little nervous, but the temple grounds were the prettiest I have seen I think.  But then I don't know, because temples all have beautiful grounds.  The aquarium was a little bit of an after thought, but I am so glad we went.  I actually wish we would've skipped the zoo, and hung out at the Arizona Boardwalk all day.  There was a ton of stuff to do there and we only had a couple hours to walk around there, but it was a great place to end our trip Saturday evening.  We ate way too much, slept way too little, and walked a ton.  We had so much fun on our little weekend adventure. 

 It was a tiny plane, but Gator just curled up and got all cozy.  

On Thursday we flew in, got our car, and went to the hotel.  We didn't have a ton of time, but I had found this "hike" that said it was a cool thing to do at sunset.  So we dropped our bags and went and found this place called Hole in the Rock.  It really wasn't a hike, more of a short walk up this rock, but it was really cool to watch the sun set up there.  We walked down and got a sandwich then went back to the hotel for bed.  

Friday morning we went to the Botanical Garden.  We could've walked around there for hours because it was huge, but we got tired, and Gator wanted to go lay by the pool before we went to the Phoenix Temple that evening.  The sun was very deceiving.  It wasn't hot at all, and it kept hiding behind clouds, but we got fried.  After the temple, and dinner, we went to Target to find some after sun lotion.  

The butterflies

So many pretty wildflowers

Some of the cactus blossoms

The Phoenix Temple

We had an early appointment at the Mesa Temple Saturday morning, so we woke up early to get there.  It was the perfect time to go though.  

The Phoenix Zoo.  I feel bad because I normally love the zoo, but this one was just not good.  We do love flamingos though, and the rhino was playing with a huge tire.  I've never seen a rhino play before, so it was still good.  

Last stop was the aquarium.  Where we got a yummy treat before going in.  

Thank you Phoenix, we had a blast!