gratuitous vacation post

The Magical White Guy and I had a fabulous vacation. I don't have time to make scrapbooks right now, so this blog post is serving that role, therefore, it is very long. Consider yourself warned.

We randomly decided on Scottsdale, AZ and I'm so glad we did! It may sound strange that we picked a place that is hotter than Austin, but it isn't like the heat was a shock to us. Neither of us had ever been there and the pools looked nice. So, we packed up, headed out,
And arrived to this:
(Pictures never really do justice to vacation, do they?)
Day 1:
The first evening, we hung around the resort, walked around,
and found the delicious cucumber/jalepeno infused tequila margarita. YUM. (also pictured is a $7 miller lite.)

Day 2:
Rental cars are about $100/day in Scottsdale. Unless you are budget conscious and keep looking until you find one for $36/day. Even if it means you have to walk 4.5 miles to go get it. When it is 100+ degrees outside. (That, my friends, is what a magical white guy does.) The rental car was the car pictured in the previous post that we lovingly referred to as the "gold nugget." That thing gets over 32 miles a gallon!
Anyway, Tuesday morning consisted of Larry going to get the car and me going to the gym. Once we had the car, we went to Safeway to buy food and beer for the room since our tab for dinner and 2 drinks a piece the previous night was about $100. We rode white-trash style the rest of the week and brought our own beer everywhere. Once the errands were finished, we decided to spend the afternoon at the pool. Larry spent time under the misters:
Watching sports in the Grotto Bar:
And setting up some nice Alley-Oop shots for some young fellas we met.
I laid out and read, snuck into the cabanas,
and took more pictures of the view.
That evening, we went and ate at AZ88, which is a very trendy place that was bearable since it had good food and good drinks. (I had a Rose Martini- another good choice.) The place was decorated with a wrecked taxi hanging from the ceiling and names and ID numbers of taxi cab drivers on the wall:
And the patio was done in all white. It was so pretty.
Another trip to the lobby bar for a cucumber/jalenpeno margarita, and then we called it a day. We had to wake up early for our day trip to Sedona.

Day 3:
Sedona is about 2 hours from Scottsdale, but it is a beautiful drive. We had reserved spots on the "pink jeep" tour, which is a 4x4 jeep ride that takes you up/down into the mountains. Kind of expensive, but totally worth it. And lest you think we were getting too fancy and big for our britches, here is a picture of the PB&J sandwich that I had before the tour and the roast beef sandwich Larry ate;

I *could* post about 50 pictures of the scenery in Sedona, but I'll just leave it with these:
The above photo is taken at "Chicken point, which was given that name when the jeep tour used to go down a really dangerous area - they would try to see if the driver or the passengers would chicken out first. They had to stop that part of the tour when their insurance company found out.

Our jeep driver, Paul, knew all the best places to take pictures. He even posed us for a few.
The last leg of the tour is something called "Death Road" or something like that. They take you down it at about a 90 degree angle.
I thought I would be scared to death but it was actually really fun. When we got back to the hotel, there were cop cars outside, a lady handcuffed and crying, and a man bleeding profusely. The housekeeping staff was in their hazmat gear cleaning up blood.
Larry thought he saw a drop of blood and made me take a picture. I was too scared to take anymore because there were cops and EMTs everywhere. (We found out the next day that they had a crack pipe or something like that exploded and they cut themselves with the glass. Nice.)

I tried a new drink at the lobby bar this night - a Strawberry Basil margarita. I lovingly refer to it as "that drink that looked like vomit and tasted like I was drinking a pizza." I don't recommend. Tip for the bartender: maybe you could muddle the basil instead of putting it into a blender.
That night, a man got up onto the stage and started playing the piano. His name was Bill. Turns out, he ws in a Journey cover band back in the day and was very entertaining. Larry requested the "Peanuts" theme song - which Bill played, as Larry danced along. None of the pictures turned out and the video is too big, but trust me - it was hilarious.

Day 4 started with a meal at the Breakfast Club:
If you're ever in the area, you need to try it. Then we walked around Fashion Square mall and both found our mecca:
Larry at E-Trade and Me at Sprinkles.
We also went to Trader Joe's so that I could find some dark chocolate covered Joe-Joes. I did. Along with many other delicious items.

Oh! I forgot to mention that we had to take the rental car back, so we rode the bus back to the hotel! The number 72. We spent more time at the pool, met our Scottsdale hook-up Alison for some pizza and went on the gondola ride:
We met our new piano man friend Bill for a drink in the lobby bar and he took one last photo of us before volunteering to drive us to the airport the next day. Thanks Bill!
It was so restful, so fun, so hard to leave...