Just Deserts

STATE VISITED: Arizona

Phoenix depresses me. Oh, I'm sure it's a great place to live and all that, but the prospect of so many people living in the middle of a desert, dependent on sucking water and hydroelectric power from a river hundreds of miles away, seems awfully greedy to me.

Because it is a desert, make no mistake about that. And that's why we spent the morning at the Desert Botanical Garden, so that the kids could get a handle on this alien ecosystem (well, alien to them at least). You look out the window of a speeding car and you think it's all sagebrush and cactus and sand, but it isn't, not by a long shot. At the garden, we learned the names of about 50 different types of cactus and desert trees, as well as seeing lizards and birds and chipmunks scampering around.

What surprised us the most was the number of wildflowers that grow in a desert. Spring is supposed to be the best time to see these, but there were plenty of beautiful flowers around even in July.

Trouble is, the botanical garden is out in Papago Park, right next to the Phoenix Zoo. The zoo. I thought maybe our kids were old enough, or jaded enough by all the world-class zoos they've seen, to skip the one in Phoenix. I was wrong. So once we'd rushed through the garden, we had to hit the zoo. We didn't have much time, so we skipped all the elephants and giraffes and things we've seen in the New York zoos and headed straight for the Arizona section, where we saw:

For the more zoologically challenged among you, these are (clockwise from the upper lefthand corner) a mountain lion, a coyote, an elf owl, and some prairie dogs.

It was blazing hot, but the Phoenix animals seemed like very good sports -- they emerged from their cool little caves and paced around their enclosures glaring at us through the fences, just like we hoped they would. In fact, this bobcat entertained us by rolling around on the ground just like our cat, Dudley, does.

Unfortunately, we had to race through the zoo and leave way too soon, because it was time for the baseball game. And on this trip, nothing is more important than the baseball. Thanks to an inexplicable closure of the highway we needed (poor Ms. Garmin was very distressed), we reached Chase Field just as the first inning was getting started.

This was the first time I've ever seen a baseball game played in a domed stadium. Considering how hot it was outside, we were extremely grateful for the closed dome and the air-conditioning. AC aside, it's a very nice ball field, with good sight lines and a nice floor plan. However, I have to say that the park lacked a little energy -- it was only about half-full, and there were many fewer entertaining distractions -- you know, the prancing mascots, the bubbly team girls in short shorts firing T-shirts into the crowd, that sort of thing.

This was the only time we saw the mascot at all. His name is Baxter (or "Backs-ter," I presume) and we guessed that he's a bobcat. Way more cuddly looking than the bobcat we saw that morning at the zoo.

I have to say, the giveaway merch at this game was the best of this trip -- really decent logo baseball caps (see Tom and Grace wearing theirs. Hugh didn't want to mess up his awesome curly hair). Plus I had to buy one of those big red-and-black plastic rattles that the D-Back fans like to shake at critical moments in the game. They make a great hissing noise, very unnerving. I've been craving one ever since I saw a D-Backs fan in Cincinnati using hers to great effect.

Almost immediately, the Diamondbacks' opponents, the Florida Marlins, scored three runs -- not a good omen for the home team. And as the game progressed, the Diamondbacks hardly looked like the same team we'd seen vanquish the Cincinnati Reds almost two weeks ago. The D-Backs pitcher, Doug Davis, had to be pulled after the fourth inning, while the Marlins' pitcher, Joshua Johnson (all those nice alliterative names), stayed in through the seventh, heading for a shut-out. The D-Backs got a fair number of hits, but somehow they kept leaving men stranded on base instead of chalking up any runs. In the end they managed to get one run on the scoreboard, but they lost 8-1. It was so boring I even fell asleep for a little while in the seventh.

The game ended around 4pm, so we had to leave the nice air-conditioned stadium and walk back through the heat to our hotel. Then we got in the car and drove around Phoenix and Scottsdale, trying to figure out this city in the short time we had left. We found the hockey stadium (Hugh wanted a Coyotes stick) but it was closed. We found Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West but it was closed. We had dinner at a sports bar in Scottsdale (decent food, actually) then got back to the hotel to watch TV and decompress before sleep.

This traveling stuff is exhausting.