TPThursday: A Sonoran Spring

The temperature hovers at 100-degrees, the sky is a cloudless blue.  We’ve been in Arizona for just a bit more than two weeks; we now understand its most apt nickname of “Arid Zona”.

A highlight of our time here  has been discovering the beauty of a Sonoran Spring:
 

The local newspaper, The Arizona Republic,  has a daily column that features a historical highpoint of the date, a chuckle for the day and also a prayer.  Today’s prayer couldn’t have been more appropriate for this post: “Lord, We thank you for the beauty that surrounds us. Amen.”



This barrel cactus is one of our favorites.



These delicate blooms adorned for several days the thorniest of cacti outside our unit at the Four Seasons Scottsdale.



It doesn’t require any strenuous hikes into the desert to find these beauties, most of the photos were taken either along roadsides outside Scottsdale or near parking lots.



Next week’s posts will include a garden tour with the Landscape Supervisor for the Four Seasons Scottsdale and some road trips in north central “Arid Zona”.  Today is TPThursday so head over to Budget Travelers Sandbox for other shots from around the world.

High Plains Drifters, Mad Dogs and Englishmen

June 2012 arrived Friday in Phoenix/Scottsdale with a sizzle:  113-degrees was the prediction ~ it felt hotter. Like a sucker-punch-to-the-stomach-hot.

We like hot, dry climates. And that is good, because that’s what we’ve had since arriving in the Valley of the Sun.

Fellow travel blogger, Dick Jordan, (whose Tales Told From the Road is worth a visit) reminded us that there’s a reason for the saying, “Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen travel to ‘Arid Zona’ between baseball’s spring training camps and Thanksgiving” and that reason is the weather.

We arrived during a ‘cold spell’ by locals’ standards. It was 89-degrees. The heat kept rising until Friday and is now back to a more comfortable ‘hovering at 100 or so degrees’.

Don’t be put off by the weather report though, because mornings and late afternoons are great for poolside lazing.

We are loving “Arid Zona” and if you haven’t yet planned a summer getaway give some thought to heading to America’s Southwest. Hotels are offering some great deals (and rooms are air conditioned). Those resorts, like the Four Seasons Scottsdale where we are this week, are offering some great deals in their spas – also air-conditioned paradises. (That’s a photo of the Four Seasons pool with Pinnacle Peak in the background.)

If that isn’t enough to bring you here, then let me tell you there is no better reason to sip a margarita than to cool yourself after a day in the sun.  We’ve been on a quest for the perfect one since arriving in the state – we’ll tell you where to find ‘em in a future post.

(These tasty treats were consumed in Prescott, AZ right after we hit town.)

Right now, I’m headin’ off to quench my thirst. . .again!

TPThursday: Mascota Mexico Magic

While we are traveling through Arizona this week, we are taking you back for a final look at Mascota, Mexico's magic with some of the photos we took earlier this month in this small town in the Sierra Madres.



The church towers over the town’s square, its bells call out the time and bring the faithful to prayer.  Off to one side of the church  there is the shrine shown below of Father Jose Maria Robles Hurtado, a Catholic priest who was executed on June 25, 1927 as part of the conflict between the church and the Mexican government. He was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2000 by Pope John Paul.  He is considered a son of this small town.



The Robles family runs one of our favorite hangouts in town, the Napoles Bakery and Café, a few blocks from the church. Fr. Jose was a member of this family and his photo, articles about him and tributes have been on display in the bakery since the first time we visited 10 years ago.



We made repeated trips to this sweet treat only a couple blocks from our hotel. . .afternoon coffee, dinner that night and breakfast before we left.  There is a warmth about their hospitality that we’ve found irresistible.  (Not to mention good food and drink!)



We watched afternoon turn into evening from a park bench in the zocalo, the town square.  Actually we watched the man high in that church’s tower pulling the ropes to ring the bells and announce the start of the evening’s service. . .these days the Catholic Church is alive and well here.



Just a few blocks from the square are the remains of the Templo de la Preciosa Sangre (Church of the Holy Blood).  This 19th Century church would have been enormous – it simply was never finished.



That's it for Mascota. If you make it to Puerto Vallarta give yourself a couple of extra days and head to the hills.  For now it is Travel Photo Thursday and time to check out the photos on display at Budget Travelers Sandbox.







pT

High Plains Drifters and Sherman our Tank

There is something about us and rental cars in Arizona. . .

Remember Ol’ Orange from last spring? We felt as if we were in a Sunkist citrus commercial as we buzzed through the Valley of the Sun in a burnt navel orange.
 
Then there was that little tin tuna can we drove for a week last fall – the one that cost us $600 because we missed the small print about a one-way drop charge.

So, it should be no surprise when I introduce you to Sherman, (short for Sherman the Tank) our wheels for this spring’s Arizona road trip:




Sherman, a Mercury Marquis, is a big ol’ boy. So big that I sit on towels that I take from the room so that I can see out the front. . .that’s one big ol’ stretch of hood you might notice.  Joel, who operates this tank, has compared some maneuvers to how it might be steering a cruise ship.

We got a great rate on a small compact car for our 16 days here. Advantage price: $385. But they didn’t have a compact for us and after we turned down their offers to pay a bit more for a bigger car, they simply told us they were upgrading us at no charge. End result? Sherman.

The travel tip with this story is: sometimes bigger isn’t better even if it is free.

On the flip side: if for some reason we needed a place to sleep, we could certainly stretch out in our car. 

Sherman's gotten us to some mighty nice places this last week and I’ll be telling you more about them later on.  Right now I have to figure out what that little red light on the dashboard that came on this morning might mean. . .

Bucerias, Mexico: Back to our Future

There was a time when Bucerias, Mexico, a small fishing village north of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s west coast was our future. Now, it's a sizeable segment of our past. Earlier this month we revisited that past.

Seven years ago we sold our last property there, The Dolce Vitas, and filed Mexico away in our history book.

(Unlike our Casa de la Playa below, the DV’s still stand – next to them these days is a restaurant offering live music and dancing.) 

Back to our Future


In 1991 the laid-back fishing village we selected as the site of our second home --our heads filled with all the giddy future plans that go with such investments – there were maybe six restaurants.  Accommodations included a couple of Mexican-owned and operated low-end  hotels, a condo building or two, and a few privately-owned homes, such as ours, that served as vacation rentals.

The town’s landmark were the stalls of oyster vendors that lined the two-lane Highway 200 that bisected it.

From our U.S. home we brought supplies – sheets, towels, kitchen supplies –to the south-of-the-border house (in oversized suitcases; thankfully, before baggage fees came to be).

Today:  Tourism and Touts; Big Boxes and Banks

 Bucerias  is now a part of the tourist-zoned, Riviera Nayarit.  And tourism has come to town! (Along with the multitudes of over-zealous trinket touts and timeshare sales people that seem to come with Mexican tourism.) 

The gauntlet of trinket touts lines every street leading into town from the old footbridge over the dry, dusty arroyo. The constant calls:  “Hey Lady, come look!” “Hey, how long you here?” “Good prices, almost free!”  made us want to shout: “Enough already!”



Oyster vendors? We saw one  lone table  stacked with oysters to the side of  a ‘lateral’.

The laterals, those local access roads to the side of the highway, have been enlarged to two lanes each direction as has the highway itself, making the road through town an eight-lane super structure with a palm-tree lined median strip.









Accommodations abound. This hotel sits across from the fish restaurants that still line the beach in the town’s el centro.
High rise condo buildings with unit price tags starting at $300,000US, are sprouting like beach grass all over town. The rental site, Vacation Rental By Owner, lists 129 accommodations – unlike the half dozen listed when we owned there.

Household supplies are readily available from Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Home Depot, in Puerto Vallarta, and the Mexican chain, Mega in Bucerias.  Each store is stocked with ATM’s.  Bucerias  has banks now as well.

Bucerias isn’t the town it once was, but we aren’t the same either. As we all know sometimes change isn’t always bad.  Have you revisited your future lately?  If so, what changes have you found?

TPThursday: Reality Travel–in Mexico

Our favorite trips are those to places that are off the tourist map; places like Mascota, Mexico.   They are places that fascinate just by their very being. Join us on a walk through this town up in the Sierra Madre Occidentals, the mountains that are a backdrop to Puerto Vallarta.



Mascota, is a municipal seat and has regular bus service from Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. Many of them are old but colorful.  The road from Puerto Vallarta is a paved, two-lane highway.



It’s a town in the heart of agricultural lands, where cowboys ride their horses into town for real. I decided it felt way too touristy to photograph them as they approached so I took the coward's way and waited until they passed.



It was as normal here to see a load of hay stacked high in the back of a pick-up truck, as it was to see the truck’s bed loaded with children and adult family members coming into town from the ranch.




It’s the kind of place that tourists would likely criticize for having ‘nothing to see’ but travelers wouldn’t be able to resist its charms.



These photos are reminders that every town we visit has a story.  I’ll show you some of the treasures we found here next week.


For now w it is Travel Photo Thursday so drop by Nancie’s Budget Travelers Sandbox for photos of other interesting places in this big old world of our.

High Plains Drifters on the Road Again

The High Plains Drifters, our other nom de blog, will soon be living for a couple of weeks in our hot, dry timeshare world -  Arizona’s desert. 

We’ve got plans to see a number of long time friends from the Northwest (who have also migrated south seeking sun) as well as some local folks we’ve met in the blogosphere: Jackie Dishner author of the guidebook, Backroads and Byways of Arizona, and publisher of the blog, Bike with Jackie (I love that title!) and David and Carol Porter, known  as The Roaming Boomers.  (Take a minute and check out those blogs by clicking the blue links.)

Before we settle in to our Scottsdale ‘home-away-from- home’ life, we’ll be traveling some of the back roads and byways,with stops in Prescott and Jerome in the north central part of the state.
 
We’ll also be taking a four-hour tour aboard the vintage train, the Verde Canyon Railroad, travelin’ 12 miles an hour through the Verde Canyon, once the home of the Sinagua Indians.

Have any recommendations for us in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area? Or north central Arizona?  How about recommendations for books set in Arizona? 

Global Entry and Pre Check: Ready, Set, Go!

Remember me? I’m the one on whom ‘explosives [were] detected’ during a random check at SeaTac Airport in January.

It was my hand lotion’s glycerin, we think. I now fly high, but dry!

And remember us being held in that ‘secure area’ of Iceland’s Airport after I passed with flying colors the the ‘random security check’ for which, by lucky draw, I’d been selected?

We weren’t alone; nearly three dozen other bewildered passengers bound for the U.S. were not ‘allowed to mingle’ until the plane boarded.

With both those experiences fresh in mind, I was a bit hesitant to apply for the U. S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry Program, for international traveler; the one that, in turn, qualifies participants for the T.S.A.’s PreCheck, domestic trusted travelers program.

 ‘Trusted Traveler’  programs

Global Entry is a program that requires completion of an extensive on-line application and payment of $100 application fee. If, following a background check, conditional approval is given, then an in-person interview at a local CBP office is conducted. Fingerprints are taken and processed and photos taken during that interview.

If approved, you use a kiosk when re-entering the United States, rather than waiting in those long lines to get the passport stamped and go through Customs inspection.

PreCheck allows approved passengers, whose backgrounds have been checked, or those in Global Entry, to use check-in security lanes that no longer require removing shoes, belts or jackets and allows leaving laptops and liquids in the bags. Instead of the controversial x-ray machine, travelers walk through a metal detector (like the early days of security).

Pre-Check is being introduced by a select number of airlines, including Alaska Air, the one we regularly fly. A select number of airports are participating in this early stages of the program and many more are slated to participate.

Our story

We completed the application form in early March, paid our fee and waited. By the end of March we’d  received notice of ‘conditional approval’ and set up in-person interviews with CBP officials. In our case, the closest office was at SeaTac Airport. 

In early April we were interviewed; each asked a series of questions, were finger-printed and had photos taken that would appear on an identification card we’d be issued if approved.

The finger prints were apparently ‘run’ while we were there as approval was given to each of us before the meeting was over. We were taught how to use the kiosk. Our ID cards arrived two weeks later.

Does it work?

We used the Global Entry kiosk at San Francisco’s airport when we returned from Mexico. It was a snap – no lines, no wait time. In and done.

We’ll experience PreCheck at SeaTac next week when we head to Phoenix.  For the first time in many years I am looking forward to  check-in.

A Note to Naysayers

There’s been a  lot of critical comments added at the end of on-line media articles about this program. Critics call it a program for the ‘elite’ who can pay for a speedy security experience.  The cost, was $100, good for five years. That’s $20 a year. If you can afford to buy the ticket and other trip costs you likely can shell out an additional $20 a year for ease of check-in.
Some claimed the streamlined check in security isn’t thorough enough.  I can tell you that based on the questionnaire and interviews, our government knows far more about Joel and me now than they did when simply examining our bare feet in the airport x-ray machine. 

The program guidelines also make it clear:  random security checks will be done in this new speedy program just as is done in all check in lines. 

Sigh. We know my luck in being drawn for those random selections. . .

Note:  I’ve included links above that take you to the Global Entry and TSA PreCheck sites if you want to know more about either of these programs.  Are you already participating? Leave a comment and let us know how it is working.