Palm tree cell towers and Kachina doll electric towers

Taking a rest day today.  The heat seems to have gotten to me.  I'm not quite up to par; too much sun or heat, not enough water.  So, we are laying around today.

We enjoyed a great visit and another wonderful meal with my folks yesterday.  It's amazing how much we have to talk about.

Here's a sight that I was able to capture on the way over to their house.  It's something that is very clever, but maybe it wouldn't work in fir tree country.  At first glance, it's just a couple of palm trees and there are a lot of those.  But, when you look closer...

Unlike the "giants" in Iceland, these structures are actually built and working as cell towers.  [I fell for the photos online of Iceland's high tension electric towers built to look like giants, which figure into the Icelandic sagas.  However, Snopes tells me that these giants are only architectural drawings, basically photoshopped.  The architect says that the project may go into construction in Iceland in 2017, though, so they may be reality soon.  I hope so.  I just love this idea of tradition and function combined. ]

http://www.snopes.com/land-of-giants-iceland/

Now that I think of it, the high tension towers in Arizona look like the Navajo and Hopi kachina dolls.  I'm sure they didn't plan it that way, but don't they?

Free image from Pixabay [https://pixabay.com]

Phoenix Art Museum

The Phoenix Art Museum - Steve and I met my brother, Mark, at the Phoenix Art Museum in downtown for the Wednesday free admission day.  It was amazing, frightening, and beautiful.  [The frightening part was the You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies by Yayoi Kusama.  The moment I stepped into that pitch dark room with only the tiny disembodied lights I felt like I was going to fall, so I backed out slowly and left.  Apparently some of us have issues and I seem to be such a one.  Kusama, I understand, has a mental illness that causes her to see patterns everywhere, particularly polka dots.  This is her way of sharing her world.  There is a polka dotted pumpkin sculpture elsewhere in the museum that she created, as well.]

There were old masters' drawings and paintings, though.  Since photographs were allowed without flash, I can share the ones I liked best.

Not sure why, but this was directly in front of the museum.

Monet's Flowering Arches at Giverny

Close up, you can see the pointillism, the pixelation of its day. 

I like this one best of all - Girl Playing Guitar.  The light is so beautiful.

Steve noticed that the next two paintings have tiny holes punched around the gilt halos.  It must have been part of the gilding process.

This tree was fascinating the more you looked at it.  It was set in a huge room with three white walls. It appeared to be covered in black velvet and had delicate, blue glass birds sitting on the branches and snow-like material at the base.  After a while, you realize that there are faint shadows cast on the floor surrounding the tree and they are just as beautiful as the tree itself.  It really grew on you, pardon the pun.

As you know, there had to be horse art and I liked it.

The piece below made me laugh.  It's made by an American artist and is called Shuttlecock Concert.

The fresh flowers are Ikebana that are replaced regularly.

After Mark and I looked unsuccessfully for Steve, we said goodbye and my brother left for home A short while later, I found Steve at the restaurant's outside seating ensconced at a shady table.  The temperature was a balmy 103 degrees, but what a gorgeous courtyard.

Odd sculpture saying goodbye on the way back to the parking lot.

Tomorrow, it's laundry, cleaning of our quarters, and family dinner with Mom and Dad.  We may even throw in some apartment hunting to plan for our return from Europe.

Friday may be church exploration day.  I understand that St. Francis Xavier (Ignatius) has a lovely cathedral and St. Mary's Basilica is a beautiful example of adobe construction.  I think we need to see them.

Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix (oh, my!)

Desert Botanical Gardens - We finally forked over the $$ to go to the Phoenix botanical gardens.  They are located inside Papago Park (the Phoenix city park, one of the largest urban parks in the world), along with the Phoenix Zoo and some interesting hiking and picnicking options.  The stated entrance fee for the Gardens was $25 each, so we waited until we thought our stamina in this heat and my broken toe were ready for the necessary walking in order to get our money's worth.  Thanks to dear AAA travel club, we got a whopping $10 discount and spent a fascinating, if uncomfortable, 3 hours at the Gardens.  (This, of course, was interrupted about half-way through by a stint in the air-conditioned Gertrude's Restaurant on the premises, for drinks and a nibble, because our endurance was not quite as good as we thought.  The waiter entertained us with information about how to recognize someone who is about to suffer heat exhaustion - red in the face/splotchy, looking disoriented - and how to help them - under no circumstances give that person ice water; they will go directly into shock and real heat exhaustion.  Cool their skin with tepid water, help them drink tepid water for a few minutes, then as they cool down follow with ice water.  Steve and I may be ready for the desert soon.)

The desert plants are a cultivated taste, but they can be beautiful.  Judge for yourself:

Creeping Devil cactus; something just isn't right.

I think of this as a Medusa Tree; creepy.

The ranger thinks this is a form of marigold.  What do you think?

Prickly Pear

Tomorrow we visit St. Mary's Basilica in Phoenix and then the Phoenix Art Museum with my brother, Mark.

Old Town Scottsdale, AZ

Scottsdale again, even though I swear I don't like to shop... really.  This time, we visited the outside of an aquarium, stopped at a couple jewelers, walked around photographing fascinating sculptures, visited the Scottsdale Public Library, and ate some tasty barbecue.

I know I criticized Scottsdale for it's ubiquitous shopping, but it does have some other attractions.  Steve wanted to look at the Butterfly Wonderland and OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale.  This does not appear to be a non-profit like Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, but a full-on for-profit park.  We discovered upon arrival that to get into both attractions the Senior pass would cost us $100, just for the two of us for the day.  Needless to say, we were much too frugal to buy tickets, but we wandered around the central complex for a few minutes musing about how it came to this - so much so that we forgot to take a single photograph.  It was a two story central area with chain shops, food, outside tables, and signs like you would see at an amusement park.

Old Scottsdale, though, didn't disappoint.  We walked around Old Town and found so many hidden treasures.

Yes, the same horses as before in the plaza, but Better.

Bischoff's at the Park gallery, which was unfortunately closed.

But, the outside of Bischoff's was fantastic.

Outside a store across from the gallery.

 However, I did bring a few pieces of jewelry that were in need of repair, a pair of silver and malachite earrings that were actually purchased in Scottsdale about 3 decades ago and an inlaid bracelet that was a gift from my folks.  One of the hammered "fins" on the earrings had broken off of the dangley bits of the earrings again, so I took it back to the place I purchased it several decades ago to see what they could do.  As you can see in the photo, the jeweler cut off the paddles and made very nice little rounded-flattened ends on each dangle.  I can wear them again!!  I love the color of malachite, that deep dark green.  Unfortunately, my inlaid Zuni bracelet will take a little longer, so we'll go back in a couple days to get that.

The dangles each had a long flat paddle and they kept breaking off.  Problem solved!

Last, we visited the Scottsdale Public Library - partly to cool off (the humidity was hard to deal with after all that walking, even at 95 degrees) and partly because I like to see libraries wherever I go.  This one was special, I thought.  They had a coffee shop (carry your drink and food anywhere but the computers),  a separate Youth room, and a play area for the kiddies.

There was a huge quill pen outside the front door.  Of course, we didn't come in that way.

The library has a large collection and some beautiful artistic touches.

These support columns ingeniously include air conditioning vents.

In the basement parking garage, the palms grow up through the roof! There must have been 10 of them.

Yes, and we topped it all off with a delicious meal at Bootleggers Modern American Smokehouse, a great barbecue restaurant and bar.  The food was great - Steve had chopped brisket sandwich and I had the pulled pork.  It was pretty darn dark in the place, though, at 5pm.  I literally had to turn on my keychain flashlight to read the menu.  If they hadn't had such great reviews, I might have thought they were trying to hide something.

Unrelated to the restaurant, we really want to know what kind of bush this is.  They are EVERYWHERE!

Tomorrow, our itinerary is unknown.  Apache Junction, Flagstaff, Tortilla Flat, and Tombstone have been bandied about.  We'll see...