Saturday morning: rain out of buckets and cool when we left Prescott after a quick stop at our favorite supermarket, Sprout's (pic). Wish our supermarkets - especially the veggie/fruit department - would look like that with about 10 different variety of onions, even more of potatoes, chiles, tomatoes,,,!
The day before it was crisp in the morning, but it warmed up from about 40 deg. to 65 deg. later. Not so today. We drove on Scenic Hwy. 81 through the mountains, narrow curves and probably spectacular views, if the clouds wouldn’t have hung on the pavement. Didn't see anything. At least we stopped at a Memorial for the Granite Mountain Hotshots, 19 young firefighters who lost their lives in 2013 when they fought against a fire threatening a nearby community.
Wickenburg, a western town on the way, was fully worth the stop for one main reason: the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. There was not only an interesting art exhibit of artist Ed Mell (pics below)
,,, but also a reconstruction of the historic town in the basement (pics) and lots of information about the history of this town, which was founded by Prussian prospector Henry Wickenburg (pic above, right), who discovered the Vulture gold mine.
Also, we didn’t know that the bola (or bolo) tie was invented in Wickenburg by a silversmith named Victor Cedarstaff. We spent about an hour in the museum and checked out the Western town itself on a quick driving tour - it was still raining hard.
Arrived to our North Dakota friends’ apartment in Phoenix on Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a warm welcome, good conversation, a superb art show, a neighborhood tour (with a private mansion surrounded by a fantastic cactus garden, see pics) and a great Mexican dinner.
On Sunday morning we departed for PHX Airport at about 8:30 am. It only took us about half an hour to get to the car return. We have driven 512 mi (800+ km) in only six days (in Hawaii we had 670 mi/1070 km in 12 days). A shuttle bus brought us to the Terminal and check-in and security check were quick and easy. Plane was on time, too, and we had no hurry in Houston to get our connection to MUC, which was equally smooth and on time. The plane was, same as on the way over, at least 2/3 empty in Economy Class, enough place to spread out (if we only could sleep on planes,,,). Food,,, as usual,,,: "chicken or pasta". Portions are shrinking and quality is bad. Not worth the amounts of plastic wraps.
Pics taken from the plane at start in Houston and this morning somewhere over Europe:
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