Phoenix, Arizona

We got up early to head to Phoenix and made some hot cocoa before we left. But first, we stopped for donuts.

On the road, we saw signs warning us of sandstorms. We were familiar with them due to our visit to Lone Rock Beach. That sandstorm made us aware of the dangers for sandstorms.

We were back in Arizona!

We got to our campground (Usery Mountain Regional Park) right outside Phoenix and started setting up. It would be our last campsite before we reached California. We highly recommend this campground for anyone wanting to stay near Phoenix.

The sites were big and clean. The bathrooms were awesome. They even had nature trails you can walk along to see all the cacti.

The next morning, we walked along one of the trails and had a blast. There were so many cacti and there were some pretty big ones.

Jared was so impressed with some of the cacti that he tried to hug one!

After our walk, we headed back to the trailer to get ready for our meet up with an old college friend of ours, Kevin. He had moved to Phoenix recently and we hadn’t seen him in awhile. We were excited to see him.

He works at the Talking Stick Resorts Arena and he was able to get us a backstage tour of everything!

After a tour, we headed to a Mexican restaurant with Kevin and we had fun catching up. Lunch was over and we decided to walk off all the food we ate and saw some great places for pictures.

We had to say our goodbyes after our short walk back to the arena. It was great seeing Kevin! We’ll have to do it again soon.

After an afternoon with Kevin, we went to Old Town Scottsdale for some shopping. We loved Scottsdale when we visited the year before. We didn’t stay too long but we did pick up some souvenirs. We found a restroom and decided to change in there so we could go straight to a hiking spot in town.

It was a little difficult to get to since we had to park pretty far from the trail head since there was a residential area surrounding the trail. The trail was marked “extremely difficult” and gave hikers a lot of warning before they started their hike.

It was early December so the weather wasn’t scorching but the uphill climb was what did us in.

I had to take a lot of breaks!

We hiked until we could see the city below us. It was really cool seeing things from a different vantage point.

We hadn’t even gone halfway when we decided to turn back.

It was a really pretty hike. I don’t think I would try it during summer but I applaud anyone who does.

It was an overall beautiful day to be in Phoenix. Arizona has always been a beautiful state we’d like to see more of. Even when we were boondocking it in Sedona with no AC. We made the best of our day since we would be driving back to California the next day.