Scenes from a wedding: the day after

    The morning after the wedding started off with a 9 am brunch at Dulce's house - yes, the same Dulce who worked like a dynamo the day before on the wedding!
    Alas, the mother of the bride needed to sleep in so I hung around the hotel but the report was that it was a really good brunch:  Fruit, bagels, spreads,

Miguel's mom made a posole, a soup made of pig's  feet and hominy. 

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And a special vegetable version for Claire, a vegetarian, with mushrooms instead of pig's feet

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Miguel stirring
the posole

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    Now, as Claire pointed out, she never would have thought that anybody would have wanted soup at 9 am in 90-degree heat, but she said that people were loving that soup!
    After brunch people began leaving, heading to the airport or to the road trips that some had planned while out here, or to home, wherever that might be.
    Tom, Tommy and I planned on spending the night in Phoenix since we'd be flying out early Monday morning.
    On the way out of Wickenburg, though, as we passed the Hassayampa River Preserve, Tom decided he'd like to hike around a little, so we drove up into the preserve and hiked for about an hour, breaking the cardinal rule in those parts that at this time of year you only hike early in the morning before the heat reaches the 90's - or in our case, as we didn't start out until 11:00 am and returned a little after noon - 100 degrees!   Needless to say, we were hot when we returned to the visitor's center and were exceedingly grateful for the refrigerator full of cold water they kept there for naive and over-heated city slickers like us!  The staff worker at visitor's center said this is the last weekend anyone will even be allowed to start a hike after 9:00 am.

Tom and Tommy hiking along the river bed, such as it is. This is the only spot where the Hassayampa River flows above ground, though it looks more like a mud puddle than a river.  The rest of the river flows beneath the desert.  (Sounds like a metaphore, doesn't it?  A river flowing beneath a desert?)
 Anyway, this place is considered an oasis in the desert because there's about an inch of water flowing above the ground and there are some trees and greenery.  To us, though, used to our lush midwestern flora and fauna, it all looked pretty sparse and scruffy.

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See that little bit of green water?  That's the river.

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As we climbed up the mountain away from the river the landscape reverted to  desert

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    After we finished our hike we continued on our way to Phoenix stopping along the way in the town of Surprise for lunch. At my suggestion we ate at Uncle Bear's Grille Paw Bar, where Theresa, Phill and I ate on the way in.  Tom and Tommy also agreed that it was a great little eatery (though I'm guessing it's a chain).
    When we arrived at our hotel, the Holiday Inn and Suites near the Phonix airport, and saw our room, which I'd booked online, I  had a sudden clench of fear that maybe I'd booked the wrong room at the wrong hotel:  the bill for the room I booked for the three of us came to $101 total.  This did not look like a $101 room in a $101 hotel:

The lobby

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The fountain outside the lobby.  Looks like a rock creature, doesn't it?

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Photos of the courtyard and the pool area:

    Our suite was pretty fancy, too, and the rooms were huge:

    Which made me worry that maybe instead of having ordered an $85 (before taxes and fees) suite I'd ordered a $285 (before taxes and fees) suite.
    But no, I double checked and $101 total it was.  It was just a darned nice $101 hotel suite.
    And surely the nicest hotel room any of us had every stayed in in all our lives.  ( I once was in a nicer hotel room - 'way nicer, in fact - but I wasn't staying there.  I was just visiting the person who was staying there.  In fact, it's just now occuring to me that the story of what I was doing in that uber-fancy hotel room is probably grist for a future blog).