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,



the posole
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.

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.


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:


Photos of the courtyard and the pool area:
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).