Arizona

So I spent this last weekend out in Arizona where a mutual friend of Amy and I was getting married to another mutual friend. I had never been to Arizona before, and my general impression was that there are a lot more cacti than I would have suspected. They are all over the place. I even managed to pick up a few spines when I was taking photos of some landscaping at the Mesa temple. I'll get the pictures I took up in a day or so and link to them. We stayed with a couple that I knew from the singles ward years ago, and Amy knew the wife from before her mission. They had started dating about the same time Amy and I did years ago, but they got married, had a kid, and moved to Arizona.

I went dancing while I was out there, and the dance scene is very different from here. For one, it's a much younger crowd, dominated by high school and young college age kids. Since the scene here started more than a decade ago, most of the better dancers are similar in age to myself, although I still sit on the old end. Plus, I suspect there are a lot more older, single people here than in a Mormon heavy area such as Mesa/Tempe.

It was sort of disappointing to see so little "flavor" to the Arizona area. The towns look very much like Utah, bland and uninspired, although the freeways are very nice. The development is spreading into farm land, so there are large tracts of homes with small yards going up everywhere. I personally like street style neighborhoods like what Yakima has rather than square mile community developments where all the homes look the same. The good part, is that most of the yards are hardscaped, rather than trying to keep a lawn alive in an arid, desert climate. Architecturally the homes are bland and uninspiring and aside from the ruddy earth tones and clay tile roofs, could be anywhere in the country. I was hoping to see much from thickwalled, flat roofed homes with more adobe style to them. If you're going to build in the desert, your home should look like it belongs in the desert.

I also think there must be some sort of squatter allowance in county areas. Since the desert is flat and largely unvegetated there are a lot of dirt track roads that criss-cross through it, and several campers/trailers that will just be parked down one a little way off the freeway. It seems like it must be permissible to just park anywhere and set up camp.

So that was largely it.

There are some pictures at: http://s77.photobucket.com/albums/j47/werath/Arizona/?start=40
They are largely out of order, but you'll get the idea.