As I said on Twitter, I'm not going to write much about Arizona. I'll post some photos with comments, and that'll be enough for you.
The capital of Arizona is Phoenix, where we stayed with some friends. This is, by and large, a typical house. It looks pretty nice, in my opinion.
Mutant cactus
There are a lot of cacti in Arizona, for every taste
We stayed in a retirement community (senior community), where it's forbidden for people under 55 to settle (Now that's some descrimination). The roads there are exceptionally wide for some reason. Probably so the slowpoke seniors don't smash into anyone.
They prop up the cacti, just like we do with apple and pear tree branches.
Watering such less succulent plants requires a lot of water. It's expensive in Arizona, so not many people dare to maintain such beauty.
I took this one without even using a tripod. A tip for cheapskates without tripods: you put the camera on a pole, shove something under it for the right angle, and choose the timer shooting mode.
Finally, a few facts. The temperature in Phoenix was high, around 28 degrees during the day and 18 at night. A bit too hot for me – I'll try to visit warm places less often from now on.
They fed us some homemade vegetable stew. Don't know why, but I wasn't really feeling it. They served fruit with it for some reason. Must be a tradition.
There isn't the classic American grass around the houses. Usually, it's a must-have, otherwise the other homeowners around you will dislike you, or even slap you with a fine through the association. This is needed so that the houses look civilized and the property values in the area don't drop. If the houses are "untidy" – all sorts of black people and other criminal elements will flock in. But in Arizona, a lawn next to the house costs so monstrously much that only golf clubs can afford it, and even their grass is a bit yellowish.
The blinds in Arizona are thick and solid, not segmented. You pull them down by hand, not by a string. Clocks often synchronize via a radio signal – no need to set them. But if the time zone is set wrong, they'll run fast or slow – which we observed many times in hotels and in this house, too.
Also, the retirement community has a community center where various events are held. We were mainly interested in the pool. It, of course, is open, unlike ours in Carolina (since it's warm out), welcoming guests until as late as 9 PM, even though it starts getting dark at half past five. The pool is of perfectly normal length and depth for swimming back and forth. There's a warning for the seniors hanging on the fence: "If you aren't sure of your ability to keep your bowel contents inside, wear a rubberized diaper." Separately, there's a little hot tub – meaning a small pool with warm water – to warm up old bones. Later we saw two more pools in hotels – same thing. But here the water in the pool was warm anyway, so I didn't get into the hot tub – especially since the heat was making me feel sick.
Overall, the community seemed very cute to me, the cacti and little houses gladden the heart. Consider it a free trip to a botanical garden – there's so much stuff to see.