Mature Life Features

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Technology

has advanced exponentially over the centuries.

Just think,

it took only one byte out of the Apple

in Eden to change their world.

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Phoenix Embraces Desert Sprawl

Unlike its legendary-bird namesake, this sprawling metropolis ranked among the fastest-growing areas in the nation did not re-energize itself by rising out of its own ashes in the burning desert. More like that pink rabbit in the battery commercial, metropolitan Phoenix just grows and grows and keeps on growing, stretching its shopping centers and sub-divisions over and around every cactus and crevice in the Valley of the Sun.

To get our arms around this urbanized sprawl that has positioned attractions and accommodations as much as two hours apart, we traveled by car, bicycle, horse, light-rail and balloon. We launched our local exploration by visiting the Arizona Challenger Space Center. Visitors flow seamlessly through scenarios that include space missions complete with emergencies. Still in up-in-the-air mode, we headed to Deer Valley Airport on the northeastern edge of town for a mile-high 90-minute balloon ride to enhance our perspective of the local growth.

If such a diversion doesn’t sound appealing, you can take a quick drive to South Mountain Park where several viewpoints offer panoramic views of this vibrant valley. The best time to head there is the first two weeks of April when rain-fed blooms carpet the mountainside. For a closer look at those, we took advantage of a mountain-bike tour – others took a more leisurely hike – of Usery Park east of the city. That’s where we were told that one reason the giant saguaro cactus, which grows only in the Sonoran Desert that stretches from Arizona into Mexico, develops “arms” not to denote its age but to balance itself against the relentless wind.

To pick up more easy knowledge, about an hour away is a hands-on complex designed to keep anyone from 8 to 80 entertained for hours on end. While the Challenger facility transports you into learning mode without you realizing it, the Arizona Science Center in downtown Phoenix caters to the touch-and-feel gene in all of us.

There’s much more to this town than desert, of course, and prominent among the valley’s notable resorts is the Phoenician, which is tucked into a fold of local icon Saddleback Mountain with its eye-candy nighttime vistas of the twinkling town lights to the south. About an hour south in the Gila River Indian Community is the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort on the grounds of a casino – the largest of the more than half-dozen casinos in this metro area — built by the Pima and Maricopa tribes of Native Americans. A small parasol-protected riverboat putt-putts gamblers on a man-made creek between the hotel lobby and casino lobby. You can tour the facilities via horse-drawn wagon or range farther by heading out from the horseback riding stables.