Trip to Phoenix

We got a phone call from Yvonne Cav this morning saying that her Gerry was feeling better and was up to company.  We finished breakfast and headed up to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale to visit with them.  Gerry Cav has been having a rough go of it and has been in the hospital for about a week receiving some needed treatment.  I won't go into details about his problem out of respect for his privacy.

We got there around 130pm and visited until 4pm and then headed back to Tucson.  We got caught in Phoenix rush hour but didn't have any real problems with it.  We managed to get in the 2+ HOV lane and cruised down the 101 at a pretty good clip.  It was surprising to see all those cars with only one person in them occupying the other 3 lanes and being backed up for miles.  

We took some back roads and made really good time once we got off the 101 and were surprised to see how quickly we were in the country.  The secondary roads were good and we made great time getting back home.  

The sun was setting over Picacho Peak as we drove by it and Gerry managed to get this great sunset photo.  I think she has taken over 50 sunset photos in the past 10 years, or is that 5000 sunset photos.

A stop at the Texas Roadhouse was on tap and when we pulled into the parking lot we were amazed to see how full it was.  I guess with the Rodeo being in town and lot of visitors they all headed out for steaks.  There must have been 50 people or more waiting to be seated and we didn't want to wait over an hour for our meal so we left.  There was a Chinese buffet dinner next door and we went there for an unremarkable meal.  Too bad, since we usually enjoy Chinese.  Live and learn.

The roundtrip was 302 miles and we made great time due to the 75 mph speed limits most of the way up there and back.  We managed to get 29.3 mpg on the Saturn driving at those speeds, so I guess it likes to run fast.

Oh, BTW, we managed to find an interesting cache on the way back.  It was interesting in that it explained how the ground has settled 15ft in places since they began to extract ground water to irrigate crops.  The well used to be around 60 ft deep and now they have to go down over 140 ft further to get to the water.  The valley in that area has over 2300 ft of fill from the surrounding mountains.  That is a lot of dirt.