As Alyssa is a huge baseball fan it’s her’s and my goal to visit all the stadiums. Since we missed Phoenix’s stadium on our adventurous road trip last year we made it a goal this summer to visit the Diamondbacks, even though the best time to go to Arizona is for Spring training when all the West side teams are there and it’s not hotter than Hades. We took off on Tuesday around 11 AM and drove straight there from California. It was about a 6 hour drive so not too bad and our Prius held up really well (good thing we fix our A/C before the summer began). We first went to the hotel and dropped off some things and headed back out the door and went to Zupas in Glendale where we met up with long time skateboarding friend Marshall Klein and his fun family. It was great eating Zupas and catching up with him and his family. They definitely got their hands tied with their two little ones. After dinner we just went back to the hotel and started to plan what we were going to do the following day besides going to the Diamondback’s/ Dodger game.
Fight Fire with the River
One-hundred and five degrees was the cold temperature for the time we spent in Arizona so it was important to get in the water and cool down. We decided to get up early and head to Walmart where we could buy a cooler and a float for when we go floating down the Salt River. This tubing company along the river, let’s you rent tubes, and then shuttles you up the river about for couple miles and lets you off to float on down. We had our snacks and our water and were on the way down. It was really nice and relaxing and the water was just the right temperature to keep you sane. The river was quick in a few spots but for the most part pretty relaxing and slow. There were tons of others that floated down the river which mostly consisted of college students getting ready to go back to school. The was a little dirty but it was fun and relaxing even though we put on many layers of sunscreen and still got a little burned. Better than what it could have been if we didn’t have any sunscreen at all.
Mexican Food with Good Company
After spending around 4 hours on the river we rushed back to the hotel and got ready to meet up with my good mission pal Bryant Da Silva. It was quite funny because we were kind of late getting back to the hotel to shower and change. We thought that my friend was waiting across the downtown area but after looking up the address of the restaurant we were only two block away. So we quickly walked over and had dinner with Bryant. We had some delicious tacos and Mexican food. Bryant, coming from a Brazilian family, was hoping that we would be able to meet him in Mesa where his family makes Brazilian food all the time. We will definitely need to go back sometime to enjoy some authentic Brazilian food with him and his family. It was great to catch up on time and also remember things we did on our mission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After saying goodbye to Bryant we had to run to the baseball game that was across downtown Phoenix.
Dodgers vs the D-bags (oops, I mean Diamondbacks)
Dodgers vs the Diamondbacks, my 21st stadium and Alyssa’s 24th stadium. We both have been to more than 2/3’s of the MLB Stadiums. We had great seats being so close to the dugout where the Dodgers were sitting. Everything was going great until our guests next to us were acting really drunk and a little too friendly. For most of the game the Diamondbacks were ahead and the guy sitting next to me was getting really rowdy. All I know is that it was quite irritating. Fortunately there were other Dodger fans around and in the eighth inning the Dodgers got ahead and ended up with the win. We were all smiles after that, except for the wife of the guy who was sitting next to me.
Craving the Ice Cream
The game ended around 9:30 and the heat was crazy walking back to the hotel. I was really craving some ice cream of any kind. Alyssa and I ran around downtown looking for a place to get some nice cold ice cream but most places had closed before we could get to them. We went to the Mexican restaurant and they referred us to another local restaurant but by the time we got there they stopped serving dessert. The waitress told us to go to Novel Ice Cream but the hours said they were closed but I decided to call anyways and the owner said he’d still love to have come get some ice cream. We went there and tried out most all the flavors. We left with a muffin tin with five different scoops and a topping. We rushed back to the hotel so that we could eat it before it melted. It definitely satisfied my appetite.
The next day we were on our way back to cooler California. It really did not get cooler than 105 until we got to the Corona area, so glad we don’t live in that heat. I am sure it is really nice all the other seasons but the summer heat is truly death. Well this was the last vacation that happened before Alyssa had to go back teaching.