An Elite Yelper in Phoenix

Bonus post! Here are some pics from the more memorable of our food experiences while on vacation in Phoenix.

Lunch at The Fry Bread House -- A must if you're interested in Native American culture in the Southwest. The Gastro Obscura article in which I learned about it explains that "fry bread" is either the product of forced assimilation with white culture and government food boxes, or an example of culinary genius when faced with limited resources. Either way, cheap, fast, and delicious. This is my Yelp! review. 

Dinner at Organ Stop Pizza -- Dear Husband heard about this unique eatery at an American Guild of Organists chapter meeting, when the presenter discussed famous theater organs. It's the oldest pizza parlor with the largest Wurlitzer theater organ. The food is just okay; you're really there for the atmosphere. Here's my Yelp! review.

If you go, be prepared for sensory overload.

Bottom left: trumpet stops at the back of the balcony.

Bottom right: disco ball overhead and a shot of the console with the lights on.

Dinner at Cochina Madrigal -- After hiking South Mountain, we were ready to treat ourselves at THE best restaurant in these United States of America, according to Yelp's 2022 100 Best Restaurants List. It was loud, and busy, and we enjoyed our Mexican dishes. I wish had had someone to go with us to share an order of their famous churros, because DH wasn't interested, they're not as good rewarmed, and I couldn't finish off a whole order by myself. Here's my Yelp! review.

Lunch at Pizzeria Bianco -- Alas, we did not get to visit this famous pizza parlor, because I didn't realize it was across the street from the baseball stadium where the World Baseball Classic was being held at the very same time. 2.25-hour wait? Not if we wanted to catch our flight!

Honorable mentions: lunch on the sidewalk at Farm & Craft in Scottsdale; take-out from Harumi Sushi& Sake with its famous purple rice; a relaxing meal at Palette at the Phoenix Art Museum; and dinner at Flower Child at Desert Ridge before a concert.

Didn't place: Ice cream from Shakes & Cones; Sonora Taco Shop; and the Wildflower at the airport.

Bicycling along the canal with Camelback Mountain in the background.

A Peaceful, Friendly Garden in Phoenix

For the last day of vacation, I was so pleased that our departing flight didn't leave until late afternoon that I had looked for an activity to do on Saturday morning, like a pottery-making class or a couples massage. I was thinking of our pre-pandemic trip to Portland, OR, when we participated in a free Kung Fu class at the Chinese Garden. So I was delighted to discover a class at the Phoenix Japanese Friendship Garden on ikebana (flower arranging). It seemed like the garden itself was small, so this would give us an excuse to spend more time there. Alas, about a month before our trip, I received an email that the instructor was no longer available, and did I want to enroll 2 weeks later or have a refund? I took the refund, but we still ended up spending over an hour at the garden, mostly sitting on a bench by the water, enjoying nature and people watching. Dear Husband mentioned it was the perfect way to hang onto that relaxing "vacation feeling." It turns out we needed those reserves, because I had unknowingly planned for us to eat "the best pizza in the country" at a restaurant next to Chase Field at the exact time that a World Baseball Classic game was scheduled. Traffic was terrible, and the wait at Pizzeria Bianco was 2.25 hours, so we opted for a taco and a burrito from Sonora Taco Shop, a hole-in-the-wall eatery closer to the airport, and then watched the game on the TV in the sandwich place where we got second lunch before going through security.

This is a kasuga doro, a 10-foot-tall stone lantern named for the Kasuga Shrine in Nara, which was the capital of Japan in the 9th century.

In 1976, Phoenix and Himeji became Sister Cities, and in 1987, Mayor Matsuji Totani proposed this joint project. Completed in 1996, the 3.5-acre site includes a tea house with garden, a stone garden, a courtyard garden, and the stroll garden we walked through.

Its name includes the Japanese words for heron (ro), the bird symbol of Himeji + phoenix (ho) + and garden (en). RoHoEn was designed as a miegakure or "hide-and-reveal" garden such that you can't see all of it from any angle.

The koi pond has over 300 fish in it. In the middle background is the 12-14-foot waterfall, and on the right is a yukimi doro or "snow-viewing lantern," whose roof is designed to catch snow. The stony peninsula behind is is supposed to look like the scaley back of a fish.

From the bench where we sat, we watched a hummingbird visited bushes, gardeners weeding, and other visitors taking photographs of each other. The city is very close, but the traffic noise wasn't bothersome compared to the burbling of the stream and the sounds of the waterfall.

Meet Shachi, a mythical creature with the face of a lion and the body of a fish. In Japanese folklore, he can make it rain. Shachi "gargoyles" were used to protect important buildings from, such as Himeji Castle.

On the left is a stone pagoda (tasoutou) designed to store Buddist relics. It should always have an odd number of tiers.

The four distinct landscapes represented in the garden are low-lying grasslands, woodlands, forested mountain, and stone beach, if you walk in a clockwise direction.

All of the stones, rocks, and boulders in RoHoEn come from Arizona--including the 25-ton behemoth next to the waterfall--except for the blue-grey cobblestones on the beach, which come from Mexico.

From above, the koi pond is suppose to have the shape of the kanji character "kokoro," which means "heart" or "spirit."

The other bit of Japanese culture I wanted to experience in Phoenix, given its proximity to the West Coast, was Japanese soda. You see, one of the comics I read regularly online featured a character who has a crush on another student, so she offered to buy and open a bottle of Ramuné for her (on Valentine's Day, no less). Only there were no words, so I had to look to the comment section to find out what was going on. sjordane explained,

Ramune is a Japanese carbonated soft drink. It was introduced in 1884 in Kobe by the British pharmacist Alexander Cameron Sim. Like Banta, an Indian lemon drink, ramune is available in a Codd-neck bottle, a heavy glass bottle whose mouth is sealed by a round marble thanks to the pressure of the carbonated contents.

I found a short video on YouTube of a family demonstrating how to do it and put it on my Phoenix bucket list. Sure enough, at the Japanese Friendship Garden, they offered several flavors. Dear Husband got the sweet lychee, and I chose the more mellow melon. As you can see, we managed to open our bottles and enjoy their contents.

Mystery Hike in Phoenix

On our last full day in Phoenix, Dear Husband and I went hiking on South Mountain. We had originally planned to do this in the late afternoon after my brother and his fiancé arrived from San Diego, but he was recovering from COVID and couldn't make it. So DH and I hiked in the morning, which turned out to be the right idea, because the weather had definitely warmed up later in the week, with a projected high of 80.

I had found us a 1-hour-out, 1-hour-back hike up to Dobbins Lookout, named for James C. Dobbins, who chaired the Phoenix Planning Commission that acquired the land for South Mountain Park. The head of the trail was not marked, but thankfully another hiker finished just as we were parking. It was somewhat busy, with lots of folks going in both directions. Apparently it's a popular place to catch the sunset, but then of course you would have to drive up and back.

This is the summit, 2,330 feet above downtown Phoenix, seen here to the north. To the left is a stone structure good for taking Instagrammable photos (while we were there an Indie musician arrived with her acoustic guitar to take promotional shots). To the right is the part of South Mountain we hiked. 

Immediately after we got down, we joined a 45-minute tour of Mystery Castle, the eccentric domicile constructed by father Boyce Gully ( -1945) after he relocated from the Pacific Northwest to Phoenix as "treatment" for pulmonary tuberculosis. He intended it for his daughter, Mary Lou, but he died before he could finish it or reunite with his family. His wife and daughter moved down from Seattle to Phoenix to take possession, and almost immediately it became an unofficial tourist site, and then quickly an official one, as Mary Lou invited the press, guests, and weddings into her home.

Gully scavenged stones from the desert, cast-off bricks, and other materials for building. He worked as a shoe salesman to earn money for food and concrete. Electricity and indoor plumbing weren't added until decades after Gully died, so they had to haul water every day from 1 mile away.

Apparently someone vandalized the house the exact time we were in Phoenix last year, but I hadn't been able to squeeze it into our itinerary, so I'm glad they were able to repair the estimated $100,000 in damages (according to Wikipedia) so we could appreciate this father-daughter duo of collectors and animal lovers.

The floor doesn't slope too much in Gully's bedroom on the main floor. May Lou's bedroom above the kitchen remains off limits despite her passing in 2010. (See the chain across the stairs below.) 

Above are photos of the kitchen and dining areas. Below is the main patio with a view toward the wishing well, the mother-in-law's quarters (accessed by a winding staircase without a handrail...), and the gift shop, which looked like a cheap yard sale. No photos were allowed, however.

"He who does not like cats was a rat in his former life."

This is the entrance to the guest suite, which was mostly complete when Gully died. It consists of two levels: a sitting area above and then down a staircase the trundle bed that stores in a niche under the upper level. Below left you can see the skeleton of the saguaro cactus that was on the site when Gully started building. It lived until he put the roof on. You're no longer allowed to kill cacti like this one, which must have been over 100 years old (given its height and presence of 2 arms).

On the right is some furniture from the underground parts of the castle. Under the trapdoor the alligator is standing on were important documents and money Gully had made from selling what little bit of ore who scraped from the dirt while building. (It's the excuse he gave to acquire the land for free under the homestead act as a "mining operation.")

"Woman who grinds corn grinds away her troubles."

Every castle needs a dungeon, right? I don't know why it needs whatever is going on in the corner below, which is what you see on the righthand side of the above view. Yes, that's a mannequin wearing a blue bandana and a star-spangled top hat. Reportedly they have parties / receptions here.

Above is the organ in the castle's chapel, where I was surprised to hear they were holding weddings already in the 1950s. Below is the "altar" area; they have the couple stand between the stone snakes on the floor. There is also a shelf with a collection of shoes donated by brides who have gotten married there.

With the jigsaw puzzle nearly complete, our vacation was almost over.