Phoenix, Day Three: Science and Scottsdale

PHOENIX — After spending time in some of the outlying and neighboring suburbs, we decided to make today a bit of a more traditional touristy day, and head into the downtown core for this morning’s surprise.

We are members of the Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, and with that membership we get either discounted or free admission to other museums and science centers across the country. Utilizing that membership perk, we decided to head to the Arizona Science Center, located in the Heritage Cultural District.

It felt like a modern science center, with a multi-level layout, with the current special exhibit being a feature on Vincent Van Gogh. We did not visit the Van Gogh interactive experience. What we did decide to partake of was a show in the planetarium. The show we saw (before we left for the day after about three hours there) took us on a trip through the solar system, visiting the seven other planets, the moon, and Pluto. It featured chairs that had interactive armrests, where they would ask a question and you could use your keypad to select an answer to the question. It ended with a ride on a “space” roller coaster, which was like a funky trip around a mobius strip set to music.

The kidlet’s favorite thing was what he called the “swimming balls,” which were ball-pit plastic balls that you used different water features to move the balls around between stations. There was also one water station that used water pressure to activate drums, cymbals and chimes.

After the museum, it was time for food, and today’s lunchtime excursion led us to try some Native American Frybread at the Frybreadhouse in Downtown Phoenix. I had a frybread taco, which was probably the most delicious and filling thing I ate on the trip. It is not often that I can say with conviction that one taco filled me up, but that was definitely the case with this delicacy.

Oh, and everyone shared in a dessert frybread covered in chocolate and butter. Yes, that’s right: chocolate and butter.

It is a good thing we don’t believe in the old wives tale about waiting an hour after you eat to go swimming, because about 20 minutes after filling our tummies, we found ourselves hanging out at the swimming pool, partaking of the absolutely gorgeous weather today.

We decided to close the trip with a cruise by the Arizona Biltmore, and a visit to Old Town Scottsdale. Since it was vacation, sometimes you can break the rules by having dessert first, which was the case at the Sugar Bowl, a retro ice cream parlor immortalized in “The Family Circus” comic strip by Bil Keane, who was from Scottsdale.

A walk around Old Town led us over towards the Scottsdale Mall, which is not a mall in the shopping sense, but a mall in the sense of a shady place to walk. However, it was time to find some food as it quickly started to get dark, and we found ourselves searching for some Mexican food, since we had been in Phoenix for three days and had yet to have any. We wound up beating a path to Los Olivos, where our smallest dining companion munched on french fries while I had a shrimp chimichanga and his mother had cheese stuffed chicken.  The creamy cheese filling was advertised as “seasoned,” but we think they may have undersold it, as we were not expecting the amount of heat we received after encountering the filling. It was a bit much for us and our tired bodies as we both called it a night after only getting about halfway through our entrees.

The french fries were delicious, though.

All in all it was a lovely trip to a city that, while only about four and a half hours away, it had taken us nearly six years to visit. We only managed to barely scratch the surface of a series of cities that have a lot to offer culturally and historically, but that is what happens when you visit someplace you’ve never been before; you have to leave some things behind so that you can come back and visit again.