Our ultimate destination was Wickenburg, Arizona for the Quinceañera* of Claire's husband Miguel's sister-in-law's younger sister.
Our plan was to meet up with Maria, Justin, and our grand daughters, who were flying in from Los Angeles, in Phoenix in an Airbnb that Maria had reserved for us, spend the night, then the following day drive to Wickenburg and meet up there with Claire and Miguel.
Which is, in fact, what came to pass.
For some reason Arizona has particularly pretty palm trees and lots of them.
However, it being 1:30 in the afternoon, 98 degrees, and the Phoenix sun beating down on us Ohio folk like a demon, we opted to seek refuge and air conditioning in a nearby Target until the owner got the door issue squared away.
Our trip to Target in fact turned out to be an auspicious one, as while wandering the toy department I discovered that LOL dolls, now so wildly popular that they are virtually unattainable in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, both cities where I’d recently sought them out (see post from 4/26/2018 ), have not yet found a following in Phoenix:
By the time we returned to our Airbnb the owner had apparently ironed out the kinks in the door’s keypad lock as Maria and family had already arrived,
And perhaps they would have, had it not taken over an hour for our orders to arrive, piecemeal and incomplete – the tired-looking, harried-looking waitress informed us that that our grand daughter’s egg had fallen onto the floor and advised us not to even attempt ordering another one. In exchange she wouldn’t charge us for the children’s meals, also in gratitude for the girls not having morphed into wild things during the wait for their food, such as it was by the time it arrived.
We made a mental note not to attempt to go out for breakfast around here.
All of which we did.