No Butterflies

Jeane and I had planned to go to the Desert Botanical Garden today and see the butterfly exhibit--millions of colorful butterflies fluttering around you in a garden. I had checked out the website for the Garden and gotten the directions. When we arrived, the traffic seemed heavy and there was a Garden employee directing the cars--each car in front of me was directed to the exit?? When I got to the head of the line I was asked if I had a reservation or was I a Garden member and when I answered neither, I was also directed to the exit, the Garden was full!!?? There is an ongoing Chihuly glass exhibit at the Botanical Garden for which a reservation is required but the website said nothing about reservations for the butterfly exhibit. When I got home, I got back on the website, dug and surfed and finally found a very poorly worded, obscure reference to the fact that reservations were required for any Garden admission due to the popularity of the Chihuly glass exhibit. I am bummed--today was Jeane's last day here and she really wanted to see that exhibit.

So, to help our disappointment, we decided to stimulate the economy and go shopping--first we tried the 5th Avenue area of downtown Old Town Scottsdale. It was a total disappointment, every store was either a turquoise jewelry shop or a souvenir shop. Many of the shops were empty and many of the other shops had going out of business signs--it was depressing! So, it was on to the mall where lunch at the Nordstrom Cafe really helped our mood. Stops at Talbots and J.Jill helped us do our part to stimulate the economy. Shopping is exhausting and we decided to head toward home after one last stop at See's Candy.

Michael and Steve went out to Cave Creek to visit Steve's friend and spent some time driving around looking at the beautiful homes for sale there. They enjoyed a great lunch at Harold's in Cave Creek.

We have decided to leave Scottsdale Sunday as scheduled and head to Yuma or rather Brenda, AZ and Black Rock RV Resort. I am going to have some dental work done in Algodones, Mexico and we will spend about 2 weeks down there, not exactly the best timing for being in far south Arizona, it could get hot!

We are sorry to see Jeane and Steve leave to head back to the cold north country but we certainly enjoyed our visit.