Exploring Phoenix

A couple weeks ago, Scott and I finally planned a day to get out and explore "the valley". We are on the east side of the valley so we went downtown and to the west side. To get from the farthest side of the valley to the other side takes anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes. I was amazed at how long it took us to drive all around. "The Valley" is HUGE! We started with downtown and uptown. There are actually 2 districts of Phoenix. You have downtown which is the business and sports district and you have uptown that's the arts district.   

In the middle of downtown is this old Victorian home. It's the only home of it's kind still in existence in Phoenix. We didn't take a tour. It was expensive and lasted an hour. I'm not sure what you'd see in this house during a full hour. But the outside is beautiful and I'm sure one day we'll do the tour just to say we did.

After exploring downtown and uptown, we headed to the west side which is Glendale and Peoria. We stopped by the University of Phoenix Stadium where the Arizona Cardinals play. We will attend a game while living here. Probably a Monday night football game next year. It just wasn't in the budget this year.

After that we drove 30 minutes north, to the north end of Phoenix to see where the Phoenix Temple is being built. I was surprised at how small it was but it's still going to be an amazing structure, and blessing to those members in that area, so they don't have to travel 90 minutes to the Mesa Temple.

 As we were headed back to the freeway we stopped in this nice neighborhood in Glendale. Another gorgeous neighborhood. But I much prefer the southeastern portion of the valley.

We pulled over to take some pictures and the goose and ducks hurried to us, anticipating a treat. I want a duck.

 At the end of our day we went to the local outdoor mall, which was great. They even advertised that they have snow every night at 7pm the weeks before Christmas, so I'm excited to go in my shorts and short sleeve shirt to witness that. ;) 

Finally we finished our night with going to Bass Pro Shop. I was pretty tired and I can only take so much of outdoor stores so we put a time limit on how long we'd spend in there. Luckily for Scott will live about a mile away from it so he can go and hang out whenever he wants... while I do other things and without his wallet. :)

 And of course we had to see the fish.

There is still so much to explore here and we are loving the opportunities and variety of activities we can do.