Scottsdale AZ and Wiley Coyote cactus

Scottsdale has an interesting sense of style.  Sort of like if Orange County and Las Vegas had a baby and it really liked to golf.

The homes here tend to be single-level adobe ranch-style homes. The yards tend to not have any lawn, just the local granite-rock dirt and the occasional cactus or a small, pretty collection of succulents.  Simple. Beautiful. Lots of room for the circular driveway on which to park your multiple shiny cars.

And there's golf courses everywhere.  The lush, green lawns juxtapose sharply against the red rock and yellow earth of the natural landscape.

All the chain stores you know and love are here.  I rejoiced in finding an REI and a Total Wine where I spent a grand total of 4 hours shopping and bought a grand total of one dog life vest (to replace Chloe's that disappeared on garage sale day) and three bottles of liquor to replace our depleted favorites. Shopping requires a significantly different approach when every purchase must fit in a small space. I tried on everything at REI but didn't love anything enough to justify first evicting something I already owned from its closet space.

The pool area at our swanky RV resort in Fort McDowell

We are on the East side of Scottsdale in a little town called Fort McDowell at a super swanky RV resort that only had a few days availability for us. Everybody here are the resort looks at us with the same wide eyes and frightened expression and mutters comments like "the snowbirds are coming, the snowbirds are coming". I've never met one, but from the expressions on everyone's faces here in Arizona I imagine snowbirds must be like zombies or locusts, consuming everything and laying waste to all.  I expect we'll find out soon enough, we've been warned to start booking our January and February spots early. So we should probably put a real plan together soon, I suppose.

Saguaro Cactus at the RV resort

The area around here is straight out of a Wiley Coyote cartoon. The cactus closest to our park spot is easily 30' tall and the mountains seem to sort of repeat on a loop - jagged or pyramid shaped, flat and melted-looking, rounded and smooth with colorful rocks spilled around, repeat.  At night you can hear the coyotes storytelling to one another around the valley, little yips and songs from one part of the valley to the other, it's beautiful and a little haunting.  Stewie and Starfish are showing less than the usual amount of interest in exploring outside so they must have some survival instinct left despite their domesticity.

After work this morning we are moving on to New Mexico.