Friday, December 12, 2008

Vacation - Day 7 – Show Low, AZ

I woke up early enough to play some disc golf in Marana. Marana Rock park is basically a river flood basin, so at certain points when the river has water in it, the course is underwater. I think it’s a great course and I didn’t expect much with 9 baskets. You play the front nine and then you play a modified version in reverse order. Great use of elevation and trees. On the last hole, I threw the drive over the flood culvert towards the basket – brilliant shot if I do say so myself. I walked up to it and noticed the culvert was washed away where I needed to walk. Like, straight dangerous. So I hopped in my car and drove into the residential neighborhood and walked across the park to take my putt for birdie (I actually made it – go me).

I drove back and picked up Gerd and hit the road for Show Low. But on the way out of town, Gerd suggested we stop at Brundog’s Zy-De-Que, a Cajun barbeque place we kept driving past that looked closed, but wasn’t. Seriously, it looked closed and partially under construction. Amazing BBQ at this place. We’ll be back for sure. If you drive past it, stop in, even if it looks like it’s closed. Awesome ribs, pulled pork, and brisket. I got something called the Sandwich of the Future. I had to order it because it came with gravy – and 2008 is the year of gravy (only in my book)(next year’s is even better). Awesome pork loin sammich with a peppery gravy on it.

Up into the winding mountains we went. We saw a sign saying there were daytime delays in Globe where we would have gone through to continue on to Show Low. We kept driving and saw another one, even bigger. We took the detour and headed into mining country. Superior and Miami are beat up mining towns. Seriously beat-ass mining towns. But the hillsides were multi-colored from the processed materials they spit out. Copper, Silver, and Gold mining country. Neat to see, despite the 45-minute detour. And now, Gerd and I are thinking of making it a point to visit every city in the country named Superior. Might be fun.

Got to Show Low right at dark, called the family and arranged for the dinner hookup – Did I mention there were 4 inches of snow? We dropped by my aunt and uncle’s house and met my other cousin there – I haven’t seen him in like 15 years. We got caught up and made introduction of Gerd and also their dogs. We headed to one of like 4 restaurants in the town (there’s probably more than that, but Show Low is a pretty small town). It was a Mexican restaurant with scarily few Mexicans working the floor. Licano’s Mexican food and steakhouse. We got great service and actually the food was pretty good (much better than most places in Minneapolis). I had a chimichanga and Gerd had an enchilada and a taco. Everything was great. We sat around and told stories. Then when we shut the place down (they close early up in those parts), we headed back to the relatives’ house to tell even more stories.

We got to see my aunt spoil her dogs by warming up their food in the microwave and then giving them half a million treats. Gerd was loving it (and probably thinking “see, I’m don’t spoil my dog THAT bad”). We had to leave because I was rather tired from all the driving. We headed back to our hotel room and realized I had forgotten to give my aunt all of the bags of randomness my cousin had me bring up from Tucson. I called my aunt and told her we were headed back. Classic Chao forgetfulness.

Once we got back to the hotel we decided to hit the hot tub (did we mention there were like 6 other cars in the parking lot when we got back?). Really nice hot tub and not at all creepy. We were the only ones for miles. We took a quick dip and headed back to the room to crash with the TV on. Ha ha. We were seriously beat.

Top 5 things
1. Zy-De-Que
2. Got to see even more relatives around the holidays!
3. Hot tub wind-down
4. Licano’s Mexican food and steakhouse
5. Marana Rock Park disc golf course

Bottom 5 things
1. Detour through mining country
2. Windy cliff-face roads don’t get along with my extreme motion sickness, even when driving
3. Forgot the packages in my car and had to drive back
4. 4 inches of snow
5. It’s a pretty long drive to Show Low to begin with… from ANYWHERE

Marana Rock DGC
Brundog’s Zy-De-Que

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Winter storm watch right now for Show Low area! That whole area is supposed to get dumped with snow the next seven days.