Desert Botanical Gardens

I love cactus - if I ever had a 2nd home in the southwest, the landscaping would be cactus!!

 

The shuttle dropped us off at the gardens after we had a delicious breakfast at the Hilton, and this time I lathered up with sunscreen!!  The day was gorgeous - bright and sunny!!

 

The first thing we saw was this glass cactus, made by Chihuly - I would have loved to have that in my backyard but at $750,000 for the 3 of them, I don't think so.............

 

The gardens were divided into different sections and most of the cactus were marked - I couldn't stop snapping pictures as they were all so intriguing!!

Also along the different paths were sculptures - quite unique - quite different - pretty exotic looking for our taste!!!  Here's Amy and Marilyn with me!

I love this picture with the mountain in the backdrop which I'm assuming is Camelback!

And once again Blogger has mixed up the pictures so the one below is a neat sculpture that we saw as we got off the light rail on our way to eat that evening.

Back to the gardens, this is a sundial - love it!!!

And here are the tall tall cactus that are so fun to look at!!

We had an enjoyable lunch at the gardens and after walking around for about 3 hours or more, I believe we saw it all!!

Back at the hotel, we kept seeing lots and lots of parents with older children so I checked out the sign where they all were - it was auditions for the youngster Hispanic version of The Voice!!!  It sure would have been fun to sit in on them!

After relaxing in the hot tub for awhile, we all headed to the light rail to find this fantastic place to eat that was recommended - it was a cute place called 4 Peaks Brewery and we did get to sit outside which was a plus but the food wasn't great and the music was loud - more for the college crowd I guess!!  So we hopped back on the light rail and headed to Mill Street where I decided I was in the mood for cheesecake - but do you think I could find ANY PLACE that served it - NOT!!!  2nd best was a brownie sundae at none other than the Mellow Mushroom Pizza place!!  It was excellent and a perfect dessert for a perfect day!!