As plans fell through in 2005 to visit Jennifer for her birthday, Kelly and I made plans to come visit Jennifer in Phoenix for her 29th birthday. The trip there was quite an adventure in it of itself. I sealed my own fate when I declared in an email to Kelly earlier in the day, “the plane shouldn’t be crowded, who flies to Phoenix on a Friday night”. Plenty. Not only was my plane entirely full, but, there were people traveling to any number of destinations, crowding the airport. As if that wasn’t enough, a huge rainstorm hit the Bay Area causing long delays for everyone. So, instead of arriving in Phoenix at 9:40pm, I ended up arriving at 11:15 pm. Thankfully for me, though not so much for her, the one break I did get was Kelly's flight was also delayed an hour (for what reason, who knows, it certainly wasn’t rain), so, she didn’t have to wait long. After taking a shuttle to Guam to get to the airport car rental terminal and a trip down the “budget elevator”, Kelly and I hit the freeway to Jennifer’s house. When we arrived, our first impression of Avondale was Marysville in the desert. After being misdirected to a closed Burger King, with our stomach’s growling, we picked up Jennifer and headed out in search of the Waffle House for something to eat. Unfortunately, the Avondale Waffle House is more of a Waffle Shack, so, we settled for IHOP.

Day two didn’t officially begin until almost noon when we finally left the house. We headed out for what was, in effect, lunch at Black Angus. In between catching up and eating our meal, we planned our day. Since Jennifer, who has lived there for two years, has never really been much beyond a ten mile radius of her home in Avondale, we were pretty much open to anything. With our trusty Budget map, we spotted a large park just east of downtown and decided that sounded fun (and cheap).

We pulled into Papago Park and immediately noticed the ant mound looking hills that jetted out from the valley floor. One of those hills had this interesting hole through it that you could climb up to. We later found out it was unironically called Hole in the Mountain. The desert foliage that dotted the park was beautiful and, after taking a walk through the Desert Botanical Garden (the very manicured entrance anyway), we headed out on a couple of the park’s main trails.

The trail took us to a small lake, lined with palm trees, next to which was a hill with some white pyramid looking structure. We decided to climb to the top of the hill and the structure turned out to be a tomb of one of the founding fathers of Phoenix. As if that wasn’t interesting enough, from this hill, we were treated with panoramic views of the city and valley, with the Phoenix zoo to the south and the sillouette of downtown Phoenix to the west.

Another late morning started day two and we were blessed with Jennifer’s brother and sister in law cooking us an amazing breakfast with which we each got our fill and then some. In fact, Jennifer’s family fed us very well that day because, after a day at the movies and shopping, we were treated to a wonderful dinner by Jennifer’s sister that night.

Kelly and I headed to airport the next morning and our extended weekend ended. It was a wonderful trip, not only to be able to spend time with two of my best friends in the entire world, but, to find that we could so easily fall into a groove after not being together for so long. Even Jennifer’s sister in law commented on how it was like we had never been apart and that’s how it felt. We never felt rushed and just enjoyed each other's company. We plan to do this again soon.