After leaving Sedona we spent a few nights in Scottsdale right outside Phoenix.  It seems like Phoenix might be a somewhat interesting place to visit, that is if it weren’t almost 110 degrees outside.  None of us are accustomed to or fans of this kind of extreme heat, so all we wanted to do was sit in the AC in our room or in the pool.  Our dog Ubu can’t be left in the car for even a brief time anywhere regardless of shade, and even though she’s pretty good left in a hotel room on her own, we’re not supposed to leave her like that and try not to leave her for a really long time.  We definitely haven’t spent enough time doing stuff in the city to judge very well, but it feels a lot like Florida but with dry heat, which I prefer to stifling humidity.  Kim has a cousin living in the area, so it was nice to visit her for one dinner one evening.  If she hadn’t been in the area to visit we probably would have moved on after one night.  We also had to get a rabies shot and letter from a vet to prep Ubu for her border crossing.

However, leaving Phoenix doesn’t look like it means we’ll be escaping the heat any time soon.  We’ll basically be crossing the Sonoran Desert, the hottest desert in Mexico, for the next few days to get down the western Mexican coast.  Camping in 100+ degree weather is pretty much out of the question, so hopefully finding hotels good for dogs and kids will be easy.  We had considered heading over to Baja California and driving down through there since it seems a lot more interesting, but it would have complicated things with a ferry crossing that didn’t sound very comfortable for dogs and added a lot more time to our trip before we get somewhere that we can be more settled.  I think we’re all starting to look forward to settling somewhere for more than a few days even though our road trip has been going very well so far.

One of the only things we really did in Scottsdale worth noting was eat.  There seemed to be a lot of good vegetarian restaurants nearby, something I wouldn’t have expected.  Something I’ve seen a few places in Arizona that server fairly health food that could almost be called fast food.  In Sedona I loved Wildflower Bread Company, both because it had great, healthy food that came out fast, but also because it had a wonderful view of the rock formations and really fast internet.  It’s a chain and we passed a few while driving around the Phoenix area that we didn’t stop for, but I’m thinking it’s a chain would definitely visit again and wouldn’t mind seeing in more places, something I’d rarely say about any chain.  In Scottsdale we really liked D’Lish, a tiny little restaurant serving veggie burgers, breakfast sandwiches and burritos, coffee and more through a drive through.  We also had some good donuts at Bosa Donuts that easily compete with Voodoo Donuts in Portland for taste, kicks Voodoo’s butt on price, but doesn’t have quite the same unique atmosphere that probably accounts for a large part of Voodoo’s fame.  Finally we had some adventurous vegetarian Indian food at Udupi where even the “kids” meal ended up with spicy dipping sauces.

Other than that we mostly rested and hung out at the pool.  There were a lot of kids at the pool for Geneveve to play with on Sunday, but all the talk amongst parents was about school starting the next day, and sure enough there were no kids at the pool Monday morning.  Geneveve is a little confused about school since it seems to be such a big topic for kids her age everywhere we go lately.  She’s very much looking forward to school, so we’ve been telling her we’ll be finding her a school in Mexico once we settle down.  We hadn’t wanted to say anything until recently because we honestly weren’t sure we’d make it to Mexico and stay.  It’s looking like more of a reality now, but we’re still somewhat vague on exactly where we’ll be staying and for how long in Mexico.

Tonight we’re staying right at the border at a hotel in Nogales so we can cross early tomorrow.  So we’re just hanging out in the hotel figuring out Mexican car insurance, and where to get a phone SIM card and Internet for Mexico.  It’ll probably be a relatively long driving day since we’re shooting to get to Hermosillo, and then figure out how to break up the rest of the 10 hours of driving before we get to Mazatlan where the coastal climate we’re looking for starts to appear.  We might try to do a long day where Kim and Xena take a bus and Geneveve and I drive since we’re not sure how well Xena would do in the car past 3ish hours, and we don’t want to be driving through this desert for long.