With temps still above 100 Labor Day Weekend didn't include too much house hold labor this year. Saturday, looking for pretty much any excuse to get out of the valley, we took a drive toward the Tonto National Forrest just beyond Scottsdale. We were looking forward to a slight drop in temperature, a few more trees, and plenty of space for Jackson to adventure about. Our hopes were quickly dashed when we came upon a road block alerting us that the road was closed due to recent flood damage. Dead end indeed.
Only momentarily deterred, Jonathan started looking for another, not too distant, day trip. We headed North East along 88 with the intent of enjoying a scenic drive that would include pull offs for Jackson walks, however, sans any actual pull off spots, it ended up becoming a drive to Payson. Never having been on this road, I was impressed with the amount of unexpected rolling green hills and valleys. Certainly more than one would think even existed a little over an hour from Phoenix. Before passing the the almost unnoticeable town of Rye we eyed the beauty of a billboard below. Somehow we managed to stay on track and avoid said establishment.
Just as we arrived in Payson it started to sprinkle. We turned down what was marked "Historic Main Street" only to drive by about 15 "Antique" stores, plenty of abandon store fronts and a slightly random totem pole. After shooing some Canadian honkers out of the road we pulled into the parking lot for one of the town's parks which just so happened to include a large pond. The rain quickly dissipated as we started our walk around the pond's path. Payson seems like a nice little area, perhaps a bit over-hyped by its banner seen below, but seeing that it was still pretty warm for Jackson we didn't want to wander too far. We hopped back in the car for the drive home, looking here and there for anything exciting before we left town. Not quite what we had planned but a nice little trip out of the valley. We finished the day with a pretty successful first attempt at grilling pizza, which we tried grilling on our tiny bucket grill and learned that with such a large amount of dough, we'll fire up the larger grill next time. The lightly smoked crust was a pleasant flavor addition as was the difficult to obtain when cooked in an oven, crunch to the crust. |
| Payson, the outdoor paradise! |
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| Looks more like something for San Diego if you ask me. |
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| hmmm |
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| Still in Arizona, believe it or not. |
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| Enjoying a brew while bottling |
As before, and as appreciated for sanitary reason, the animals kept their distance. We made pretty good time and ended up with about 45 or so bottles, which are now resting in our hall bath. They are supposed to hang out for another 7 days and we have our fingers crossed that they don't start blowing their tops before cracked with a bottle opener.
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| No, that's not the surface of the moon, its beer sludge. Yum |
Having an extra day to our weekend was quite a nice change of pace. Being itchy for some sort of home improvement we made our way to Ikea to pick up some large shade umbrellas for our yellow bells on our back patio. Poor little plants are fire roasted daily thanks to often clear skies and reverberating heat from a block wall. The plants may not have been the best choice, but they've been troopers so far and can only improve with their new shade. I could have sworn the patio already felt a bit cooler, but it could have been the illusion of a new purchase. Later that night I made waffle maker chocolate chip cookies, which despite being a little different in texture, were pretty tasty. The waffle maker cooking process is helpful when avoiding baking an entire batch of dough, and is an ideal solution discovered on the interwebs by Jonathan that meets our home made cookie needs without the added scorch of turning on the oven. Nature, beer, and cookies, not a bad holiday weekend in the least!
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