Friday, December 4. Phoenix

 Happy 40th Birthday, Casey Rossman!!

Mike and I slept in last night. I had stayed up late watching a movie.

After a nice big breakfast, I took some time and attended an hour and a half of training for work that was kind of required. Suicide prevention. Necessary stuff, unfortunately.

Then I mapped out our travels for the afternoon. I packed a nice lunch and off we went. 

We saw the " working foundry, gallery, shop and Educational Monument" of Paolo Soleri, Italian architect. 1919-2013. Pretty cool. We didnt take a tour, but wandered around a bit. I really enjoyed it. Mike was "Meh". It was hard for me to not ring every single one of those bronze bells. So unique and artsy and special.

Next we went to the 4 peaks Mining store to see some pretties.  Amethyst, particularly. Stores like that are like museums and we like to look through them .

Next stop: Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home in Scottsdale, Taliesin.  Unfortunately, tickets were sold out, but I wandered a portion of the grounds that were accessible and looked thru the gift shop. That's definitely going on to my bucket list. I want to tour a FLW home. Falling Water would be my first choice, but if I'm ever back in Phoenix, this may be the one. 

Back to our place for a quick nap, then leftover smoked barbeque for dinner. And more Christmas Movies, of course. Got to get them out of my system since I dont have cable at home. Ha

Hard to believe we have been gone nearly a week. It's been great. Relaxing. Good food.  Sleeping in. Next week it's back to the cold and the real world. 

Photos of Cosanti and rocks and FLW scenes.

Cosanti  . Soleri created architecture with free form concrete. He cast ceramic and bronze bells.

And SOME prickly pear cacti are PINK.

This is just a mold on the ceiling. It looks like a post should have been placed there.

Strange pillars in the gift shop.

Outsid, hanging bells/chimes.  They had such clear and sweet tones.

This was a big one (above) hanging from ceiling/open archway.

Above. Check out unfinished ceramic tiles with nature imprints.

Above. Men working shovels in sand. We dont know what they were doing exactly, but it was kind of interesting. They were doing the moving in sync with each other: tapping, pounding, raking, patting, sweeping, turning the sand. Very weird. It was about 3 inches of sand on a concrete pad. Or maybe brick.

Big rocks/minerals at a mall where the rock shop was. And trees with smooth green bark.

Those spines are really hard and pointy.

Some photos of the ground at the home I did not tour. 

There is a lot of cool concrete and rock formations, some petroglyphs, weird shaped windows and walls, funny and sharp angles, thick walls and roofs, ... interesting stuff.   Someday.

Image below from Cosanti website