We intended to spend today in and around Phoenix - Arizona's largest and capital city. Upon researching stuff to see here however, we quickly realised there wasn't much. A bit like St Louis, its downtown area is a pretty quiet and almost deserted place.

We did however see the usual round of homeless folk attracting the attention of the police...

...and a statue of a naked man. Lovely.

Instead we left Phoenix and headed next door to the city of Scottsdale - one of the wealthier parts of the Phoenix metro area and with a little more going on and to see. High-end shopping destinations and one of the biggest malls in the country are some of the primary attractions of the city, but that aside the city also has a big art gallery scene along with countless bars, nightclubs, and chic eateries. In other words, it's a cool spot :)

There are also cactuses (or cacti) growing in the street hehe.

During our wandering we headed into the city's Old Town. A little cheesy and overloaded with gift shops, but worth a look.

And I rode a horse ;)

Scottsdale also seems to be full of people who can't drive. Aside from whatever happened here, we had a front-row seat to a double rear-end collision while driving to our hotel last night that happened literally next to my left ear in the adjacent lane. Had we happened to have been in that lane, we likely would have been involved which would have royally pissed me off! I parked up and wandered over to lend a hand and spoke to the driver who I believed caused the initial collision, but his story was that he was in fact hit from behind first and that driver had taken off. I didn't believe him, and examined the back of his car and found not a single scratch on it. Shortly afterwards, he just drove off hahaha! I managed to get a partial number plate and gave a description of him and the car to the cops who arrived later, and in fact one of the cops in the shot above was the one who turned up. I wanted to go ask if they had managed to find that driver from last night, but he looked a little busy (and over it).

Every Thursday evening between 7pm and 9pm the Gallery District of downtown Scottsdale partakes in a 40-year tradition known as the ArtWalk, in which those art galleries I mentioned above stay open until late and show off their work. The weekly event is accompanied by live music and food on the streets.

We wandered through a few galleries, and tried to keep our shock at the prices to ourselves.

We stopped short of taking an art class though :)

Today we arrived in our final destination of the trip under stormy skies, and checked out what will be our final national park of the trip - Saguaro National Park.

The park is divided into two sections, located either side of Tucson. We opted for the section with the paved loop road running through it as opposed to the section with the unpaved road - we've put the poor car through enough hehe.

The park gets its name from, and is famous for, the saguaro cactus here which is native to the region. These tree-like cactuses or cacti (both plural forms are apparently correct) have a long lifespan and grow very slowly over the course of many years, dependent on precipitation. This one here is probably around 50 years old.

The saguaro doesn't grow its first arm until around the age of 75 to 100 years (although some never grow arms at all).

The arms are grown to increase the plant's reproductive capacity (more arms lead to more flowers and fruit), so this is clearly one randy cactus, and old.

But eventually, they die, exposing the woody structure beneath the flesh.

This one is a lady cactus.

And these two are buddies.

Fun fact of the day: whenever it rains, saguaros soak up the rainwater and will visibly expand, holding in the water. The cactus conserves the water and slowly consumes it during the dry seasons.

I was hoping the sun would poke through the clouds to give us a good sunset, but no such luck.

We did get a good lightning show however :)

While in Tucson we're staying with a friend of Kristina's (with the obligatory Arizona cactus in the front yard) who is married to Olympic swimming medalist, Matt Grevers. We stole a couple of his medals from the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 games for the obligatory photos ;)

Anyway, after a quiet day, another awesome sunset, and another awesome thunderstorm, we're wrapping up the trip and bracing ourselves for a 12 hour drive through to Texas tomorrow.

After a 12-hour drive through to San Antonio today, the road trip is officially over! The total distance we covered during the trip was 16,741 miles (26,942km), and the engine was running for 447 hours (the equivalent of about 19 days) though that includes idiling at red lights and the like so it doesn't really say much. Right now Kristina and I are exhausted and going to bed for 36 hours.