Arizona Trip

(Left) West Sacramento, CA. Interstate-80 crosses the Sacramento River just right of center, meets Highway 50, then heads west across the Yolo Bypass over the Yolo Causeway (upper right). The curve of the Sacramento Ship Canal is visible just under the wing of the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737.

Departed Saturday evening, April 8th and returned Tuesday night, April 11th. Nice memorial service for Aunt Helen, and a family reunion on my mother's side.

Sunset behind Mt. San Antonio, San Gabriel Mountains, north of Ontario, CA. The mist-filled Cajon Canyon is in the foreground. Pretty views just outside the window!



New Car Rental Terminal Building, located near Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, AZ. I was surprised to see this facility, where all the local car rental agencies are now headquartered. The terminal opened three months ago and it's just as large, or larger, than an airport terminal. Apparently this is the largest such terminal in the U.S., and the cutting edge nationwide for such terminals. Soon, car rental agencies across the country will no longer be located in cheesy lots behind the airport, surrounded by chain-link fences and barking guard dogs, but in nice, gleaming, centralized facilities.

They give you good directions to leave the facility, but not how to return, so I had a frantic, guess-filled hour on Tuesday evening, trying to determine: if I were a gigantic car rental terminal, just where I would be located?

Flowering Palo Verde trees, Ahwatukee, South Phoenix, AZ. There are three species of this tree, which may be the state tree (if the wrongly-categorized saguaro cactus doesn't already fill that space). I was surprised that the single, large rainfall they had recently was big enough to allow flowering to proceed after the huge battering they got from the drought. But then, these particular trees may get watered, so who knows?

What I like is the single night a year, when zillions of harmless, roach-sized palo verde beetles come out to mate. One time, I saw an Arby's Restaurant, on Speedway Blvd. in Tucson, just plastered with palo verde beetles. Yum!