Back at Our Old Haunts in Phoenix, AZ
When our friends Aimee & Zac lived in Phoenix, we first visited (or attempted to visit) in the middle of a haboob. We didn’t know what a haboob was, though the name made us giggle like two schoolgirls. A haboob is a massive dust storm that brings with it LOADS of rain and lightening. Yes, it does in fact rain in the desert.
I say attempted to visit because we couldn’t actually land the plane. We hung out in the sky above Flagstaff, AZ for 2 hours before the pilot determined that we needed to refuel, making us unable to wait out the haboob any longer (at this point I’m just enjoying saying haboob as many times as I can). Our flight ended up landing in Las Vegas 2.5 hours after we were supposed to land in Phoenix. We stayed overnight at the airport (& ate Jersey Mike’s at 2am because we were 5 years younger back then) and took an early morning flight to Phoenix the next day.
In spite of our WiLd and CrAzY flight there, we LOVED Phoenix! The first time I saw a saguaro cactus, I was hooked. They are the coolest things I have ever seen and all of the cartoons I watched as a kid did nothing to show just how magical saguaro cacti really are. They are MASSIVE.
Anyway, my entire point of this story is that we love Phoenix. In the 5 years since that first trip, we have now visited 9 times. Many of these trips have been for multiple weeks, so we are well acquainted with the Valley (as the locals say). We had a long list of places to visit while we were in town.
We ate our favorite Cornish pasties at Cornish Pasty (it’s almost like they thought the restaurant name through), had the most delicious prickly pear vanilla soft-serve ice cream at Topo, and sipped on Vanilla Mint nitro cold brew at Moxie Coffee Co. We even met up with our friend Aimee who was in town for a wedding (I promise we didn’t plan this in advance!) for tacos and margaritas at Diego Pops.
When we were finished with our meal at Diego Pops, we noticed that a woman was handing out free Modelo beers to each table. As it turns out, while we were shoveling guacamole and queso down our throats, an entire Modelo pop-up had set up in the parking lot just behind our table. We quickly jumped in line to get screen printed Modelo shirts where a local artist then spray-painted custom designs onto each shirt.
Aimee & I air dried our t-shirts by waving them furiously throughout downtown Scottsdale as we walked along the riverwalk. The Modelo pop-up accomplished its goal because tons of people asked us about the shirts & we pointed them in the direction of Diego Pops. Scottsdale may be the number one home for D-List celebrities, golfers, and ex-Bachelor participants, but we were the true celebrities that night. Thanks Modelo!