Travels with Twinkles: Phoenix, Arizona

October 28, 2012:

We had an inspirational moment on Wednesday during a visit to the museum in old downtown Peoria, Arizona. Peoria was originally an early farm settlement, just a small town surrounded by farms and ranches. This museum preserves some of the early history of the town. The year 2012 also is the 100th anniversary of Arizona's statehood. As a part of the anniversary, this program was developed for young school children to teach them how school was in the early 1900's and give them some appreciation for the history of the area. School classes are held at the museum, which is the old Peoria school house, in the original old classroom. As we walked in the children were all singing loudly and enthusiasticly "The Battle hymn of the Republic". A museum volunteer "Mr, Pancho" who has lived in the area his whole life, walked around with us and explained some of the museum exhibits. During the children's lunch break , we talked to the teacher, who explained how the program worked.

Then we had an equally inspirational lunch stop at Carolina's mexican restaurant for more local flavor. It is basically a fast food kind of place but the food is like "great" and it was packed with all kinds of people. A man at a table across from us went to the counter to place an order and left his phone on the table. The latino guy at the next table, thinking he had walked out and left it, picked it up and was taking it up to the counter to turn it in. The two guys met half way and the phone was given back. On the way out of the restaurant, we just happened to leave with the guy with the phone and he made a point of telling us all about it and how the latino guys said grace before they ate their lunch.

You need these kinds of moments once in a while to restore your faith in humankind, especially around election time.

I went on a solo photo adventure on Friday to downtown Phoenix which usually has a vague destination, I like to just park, then wander around looking for anything interesting, sometimes for hours. I am also drawn to the desperate downtown fringes, for graffiti, derelict buildings, rotted wood, rusty metal, trash, smut, etc. Twinkles does her best to avoid these expeditions ?

We took my grand niece, Tatum, to the Phoenix Botanical Gardens on Saturday. It was pumpkin day, a fun event, hay wagon ride to a hay bale maze and then the pumpkin field, then decorating the pumpkin followed by temporary tattoos. We did see a few Cacti also.

We went to a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the dead) festival in downtown Phoenix today. It was actually a very joyous, colorful, musical, upbeat event. There will be more events throughout the week with the actual "Day of the Dead" on November 2nd.