For my next adventure, I made my way over to Arizona. I’ve been to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon before, but I went straight northwest afterwards and didn’t get a chance to visit the southern cities, so I decided to take another trip to Arizona to explore the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

Today’s adventure was in Scottsdale. I had a bit of a late start to my day, so in the very late afternoon, I hopped in a Waymo self-driving, autonomous vehicle and took a ride to Old Town.

Unfortunately, right as I arrived, it started raining. I considered taking shelter for a bit, but eventually decided I wouldn’t let some suboptimal weather put a stop to my tourism, so I went back out into the precipitation and walked around the Scottsdale Waterfront.

I made my way over to the Soleri Bridge and crossed over the Arizona Canal, continuing south deeper into Old Town.

I continued southbound on Drinkwater Boulevard to check out the Scottsdale Civic Center. By this point, the sun had already set and it was getting pretty dark.

After continuing west on Civic Center Park Path, I popped right out on Brown Avenue in front of Main Street. I still had a bit of time left before my dinner appointment, so I did a few loops around to explore the shops alongside Main Street, 1st Avenue, and Scottsdale Road, and Marshall Way.

When it came time for dinner, I met up with a couple friends at the Frybread Lounge on Main Street. We picked this location because this is apparently the only Native-owned restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale and I was interested in trying Indigenous cuisine.

As our appetizer, we started with their Frybread Flight, three miniature frybread with side dipping sauces of powdered sugar, honey, Ramona Farms O’odham tepary bean hummus, and Lakota wojapi berry sauce.

This was my first time ever trying frybread. When it came out and I saw it for the first time, I wondered if I would dislike it because it basically looked like regular flatbread that was deep fried (and I usually am not the biggest fan of fried foods), but it ended up being pretty good. It wasn’t excessively oily or greasy; the fried flavor was strong enough that it was distinctly different than flatbread, but not so fried that it was heavy.

For my entrée, upon recommendation by our waitress, I ordered a bison burger containing two quarter-pound bison patties topped with chipotle aioli, romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced red onion, and a slice of cheddar cheese, all nestled inside frybread.

The best way for me to describe this is that it was pretty much normal burger, but inside frybread. The frybread gave it a very unique texture that added an interesting and distinct identity to the dish, and that flavor profile is something that I had not tried before. However, ultimately, it was basically just a regular bison burger with the bun swapped out for thick, fried flatbread.

For my beverage (not pictured) to go along with my burger, I ordered a cup of coffee that was roasted on the Salt River Maricopa Indian Community Nation. I’m not at all a coffee enthusiast and I don’t have a well-refined palate when it comes to identifying different kinds of coffee, so I couldn’t really tell a difference between this coffee and mass-produced American coffee, but with a little bit of half-and-half and sweetener, it made for a nice drink to accompany my meal.

And with that, that is one tourist activity down out of many more to come during my several-day stay in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

One of my favorite parts of my two-year road trip across the United States and Canada a few years ago was watching snowstorms in Cottonwood Heights, Salt Lake County, Utah through floor-to-ceiling windows from the warmth of my corner hotel room. This was one of the contributing factors of why I agreed to go on a trip to Denver, Colorado with my friend—I was hoping to be able to touch some snow and enjoy the sights of a white-covered landscape.

Although there were unfortunately no snowstorms during my stay, I was still able to do some tourist activities to get me into the holiday spirit. One of those activities was attending the Denver Christkindlmarket, a holiday market produced by the Colorado Chapter of the German American Chamber of Commerce. The market is set up at Civic Center Park next to the Colorado State Capitol and hosts a bunch of different local vendors who sell food, crafts, and other holiday-themed goods.

Here are some photographs I captured during my visit:

For one of my tourist activities while in Denver, Colorado, I decided to check out the Forney Museum of Transportation in the River North Art District.

It seems like I had pretty lucky timing, because in addition to the regular vintage automobiles and locomotives that they usually have on display, they also had an exhibit of vehicles specially decorated for the holidays. On top of that, it looked like a group of people had rented out a portion of the museum for a private event, which worked out in my favor because they had a lot of holiday lights on in their area, which cast a nice sparkle on the sheen of the cars and made for a visually pleasing sight.

Here are some photographs from my visit:

Because I stayed in downtown for a good chunk of my Denver trip, I was in convenient walking distance to many tourist attractions, one of which was the Colorado State Capitol. I’ve come to enjoy looking at restored historical architecture, and I like seeing the different ways that different cities and states run their governments, so I squeezed in a quick visit to the Capitol shortly before they closed. I was too late for a guided tour, but I was able to wander around on my own for a self-guided tour, and it seems like the only thing I missed out on was access to the dome (apart from the docent’s commentary, obviously).

Here are some photographs I took in and around the building:

I considered slotting in a visit to the Denver Art Museum while I was in town, but because of timing constraints, I opted to go to the smaller Clyfford Still Museum next door instead. As you probably already concluded from the name, the Clyfford Still Museum is dedicated to showcasing the works of artist Clyfford Still.

I’ve been to a decent number of art museums before, and I imagine that my impressions might be derived from the fact that I don’t particularly have a creative or artistic eye, but I always found abstract art to be a bit funny, in that I’m never really able to distinguish what was drawn by a famous artist and what was drawn by a kindergartner.

What I found amusing about this artist was that he seemed to have the same opinions. According to some of the plaques describing his art, Still also challenged where the line is between art and a canvas merely being dunked in paint, i.e., at what point art becomes art. What I found especially interesting was the fact that Still seemed to have started with drawing distinguishable art, but as he grew older, his art got more and more abstract to the point where some of his latest works are just a single solid color.

Here are some photographs of the exhibits:

The museum also had some displays that gave background on Clyfford Still. Because the entire building was dedicated to showcasting Still’s work, I think these informative, text-heavy sections actually served a good purpose tying everything together and telling a cohesive story of his life.

Although I wasn’t able to see it directly, I snapped a picture through some glass of a storage area where they keep Still’s work that is not in the current public rotation.

Conforming to the theme of challenging what makes art art, there was a small section on the upper floor where museum guests could create their own art using any of the tools and materials provided. I liked this because this encouraged people to have a more hands-on exploratory experience and immediately apply into practice what they observed on the exhibition floor.

Some people left behind their creations to share with future museum attendees. My favorite was this kid’s poem: A very fat chicken that has ate to much corn. necklace

The museum had two outdoor sections that, if I remember correctly, were designed by the architect of the actual building. The gardens on display were a bit dead, which is reasonable, considering that it is winter in Denver.

Here is a view of the outside of the museum. There were some nice lights strewn across the trees as holiday decorations.

I enjoyed my time visiting this museum. It felt small enough that it was easily digestible by someone who might not be an art enthusiast. I usually leave art museums feeling like I just looked at a ton of different paintings and sculptures of all different kinds, but I left the Clyfford Still Museum feeling like I got told a complete and thorough story about an artist.

I’ve had a good time checking out aviation museums in the past, so when I found out that there was one in Denver, Colorado called the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, I figured I would visit it while I was in town. I’m still not too knowledgeable about aircraft, but it was nice reading the plaques in front of each display—some were new to me, while others I recognized seeing variants of at other aviation museums.

Wings Over the Rockies was a good mixture between displaying aircraft and having sections that resembled traditional museums. It also had a wider breadth of material covered, which makes sense considering that it is called the Air and Space Museum—there was a lot of information about space travel and the future of space exploration, in addition to information about historical aircraft like you’d expect at a museum.

I arrived only a couple hours before closing time because I saw that the museum was contained in what appeared to be a single hangar, but I underestimated just how large the hangar actually was. I didn’t have to leave immediately at closing time because there seemed to be a private event taking place at the museum after regular business hours, so I got to stick around for a bit of extra time to finish checking out all the exhibits, but I still definitely should’ve arrived sooner.

General admission was US$19.95, which I thought was a good deal considering how much stuff there was to see. Enthusiasts who patiently go through to read everything and try out all the interactive experiences in the space section of the museum could easily spend 4+ hours here.

Here are some photographs I took during my visit: