A New Year Adventure

For New Years Daniel and I decided to do something different, something adventurous, something spontaneous. All we needed was someone to watch our kids. My sister was just crazy enough to say yes, even though she would also be watching my brothers four kids in addition to her own five. So at my sisters house for three days were 2 adults (my sis and her husband),  3 teenagers (ages; 17, 15, 13) and then eleven kids under the age of twelve(ages; 11,9,9,8,7,6,6,5,3,2,<1). I mention this only to illustrate that my sister is the real Super Woman. I shall also mention, that Ella cut two molars while staying with my sister....and she doesn't cut teeth gracefully.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I headed down to Greatfalls to catch a 10am flight on Dec 30th to Phoenix. When we arrived we were informed that our flight was canceled because the pilot had called in sick and was not rescheduled until 3:45pm on the following day. This was not going to work for us, as we were planning on going to the Coyotes VS Oilers hockey game on New Years Eve and coming back home on the afternoon of New Years Day. Lucky for us, there was a flight out of Missoula that night. All we needed to do was rent a car and drive across Montana two and a half hours to catch that flight. So instead of spending the afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona we spent an entire day in Montana.

Beautiful as it is, I have spent most of my life enjoying adventures in this part of the country and would have really rather been enjoying an adventure in a place I had never yet been. We did arrive in Phoenix late that night, on our way to the hotel, we took a detour and drove past the Mesa, Arizona Temple. I was looking forward to visiting it the following day.



When we arrived at our hotel and tried to check in, they had no record of us, even though we had made the reservations and prepaid for everything through Allegiant. At closer look then did have us for one night, but not until the next night, and then only for one night instead of two. Daniel was on the ball and had a copy of our itinerary from Allegiant that clearly showed that we had a reservation for two nights starting on the 30th and that it had been paid for it in full. So the guy at the desk got us in a room, but instead of it being a room with a king bed, it was a room with two queen beds(we were momentarily tempted to push the two beds together).  It was all good. we had made it and were looking forward to the adventures to be had the next day.

Our first order of business was to attend the temple. A heavenly experience. And easily the highlight of our trip.

After spending 4 hours in a very busy yet peaceful temple, we headed out to a place called Tortilla Flat, an old ghost town that was an hours drive on very winding roads through the Tonto National Forest. Not the kind of forest that I am accustom to. This forest consisted of a lot of shrubbery that were not any taller than my shoulders at best, and very tall cacti.

 

Tortilla Flat was just a little place full of character. We enjoyed an ice cream cone(prickly pear flavoured)  while we sat in an out door cafe and enjoyed some live entertainment with the sun warm on our backs. An afternoon well spent enjoying the amazing scenery.
That evening we went to the hockey game as planned. It was incredible how many Oilers fans were in attendance. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that nearly half of the fans belonged to the Oilers. The game was exciting, and the Oilers were set to win...until the dying seconds of the came when the Coyotes were able to tie it up and take it to overtime, where once again in the dying seconds the Coyotes scored to win the game. Kudos to the home team, a great way to end the year. After the game we decided to just stick around the arena as there were plenty of restaurants to eat at and midnight was quickly coming upon us. The atmosphere was electric. We enjoyed some delicious nachos on the patio of a place called the Yardhouse. They gave us some fancy hats, beads and noise makers. When our burgers came out, we were sadly disappointed after the AMAZING burgers we had had the night before at a pub called Cheeseburgers and Beer.

When it was time to catch our flight home the next day we were surprised informed that our flight was delayed because not all the crew had arrived yet. At least I was able to sit in the warm Arizona sun for an extra hour or so as we waited for all of our crew to show up.
It was a quick trip, full of unexpected adventures, but it was an adventure, in a place I had never been, but will likely visit again. I hear that my sister also had quite the adventure at home...