Wow, driving a Mercedes sure is nice. Not sure how I am going to feel going back to the caribou. Left early Sunday (6:40 AM) and arrived at our hotel around 2:30 PM. Made lots of restroom stops along the way. The most interesting stop was by the summit where there was a General Patton tank museum. Took lots of photos of tanks and then continued on. Traffic was a breeze and had very little on the whole trip. The new thing I noticed are camera enforcement zones, which are basically cameras on the highway that will snap your photo and send you a ticket via email. They use to only have those on the 101/202 loop out here, but now they are on the 10 coming into Phoenix. Somebody told me Arizona wants to put them all the way to the border!

After arriving, we all (Dad, Tammy, and I) went to Rawhide for some old west bbq food. Was damn good. Also tried their pale ale that they brew there and that had a nice taste to it. Inside of the restaurant there was a country band playing some shit kicking music that all of a sudden went to Simon and Garfunkel songs, go figure. Unfortunatley it was around 9 PM, so we did not see any gunfights, oh well…maybe next time.

On Monday, Dad and I explored. Went to a military airplane museum out in Mesa, AZ. Was pretty cool. The museum is ran by mostly volunteers and is an actual working musuem where they restore old war plane. They had everything there from bombers to jets and the volunteers were awesome. They knew tons about the planes and had a passion. Most were in the air force themselves. After that, we visited Fountain Hills to see their Veteran’s Memorial and then headed over to Fort. McDowell Casino. The memorial was beautiful right on the lake. The casino sucked…smokey and money went way too fast. Later in the afternoon I went to Ikea to by some more forks (only have 2 at home, kind of getting annoying) and then took Dad to Rock Bottoms for a burger and I had their pale ale…very nice.

Later that night I met up with one of of my vendors that use to work at Insight and is now at MicroAge. We went to Dos Gringos, was great. Outside patio bar and they have a great happy hour for $2 Pacificos. Thanks Shawn for the beers!

Tomorrow, Dad and I will be visiting another casino (Lone Butte) and then visiting my friend Tammy at the Phoenix Art Museum for lunch. Then the spring training ball game tomorrow night (Padres vs Brewers), woo hoo!