January should be a great time to travel to Arizona. You go for the sun, warmer weather than where you came from, and the desert life AKA cacti everywhere. However, I am now one for three, in regards to weather, with my trips to Arizona. First trip I made was the coldest week they had had in years.. Second time was summer, so it was basically 120 degrees and we lived in the pool.. This past time it rained most of weekend, but luckily we were still able to do some fun activities around the desert! Here is what we did over the long weekend, while meeting up with friends.
Friday
1:00(ish)pm - Left Vegas to make the drive to Arizona
5:45pm - We have arrived at our Airbnb. This Airbnb I highly recommend, the owners were fabulous with communication and checking in to see if we needed anything. We also had a conversation with them once over the weekend and he explained to us the history of the house. This house was originally a trailer that the previous owner lived in with an outhouse in the back, but the house was built around the trailer. You are able to see the side of the trailer from the living room and you can also see the axel of the trailer in the floor of the kitchen. It had a wonderful history and made the stay that much better, very unique!
8:00pm - Went out to eat in Churchill located in downtown Phoenix. This is a place that has bars and restaurants inside of shipping containers with a seating area in the middle. Music is playing and the environment was great! We ate at the Mexican restaurant, Provecho. I would most definitely eat there again!
10:00pm - Arrived at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company for a drink and a bite with friends. Environment was so great with wonderful people watching! Highly recommend 🙂
Saturday
9:30am - Uptown Farmers Market. Personally, I love farmer's markets! I also have been blessed to grow up in Minnesota where farmer's markets are abundant and I worked at the largest farmers market in the state. It was multiple blocks and just purely amazing! I was kind of nervous to go there and see what Phoenix had for farmers markets, but I was pleasantly surprised! This was huge and had so many fun tables, so whatever you want, you will find here.
11:00am - Hike time. Friends brought us to McDowell Sonoran Preserve to hike the Gateway Loop Trail. I am an avid hiker in the Las Vegas area, so this hike was fairly easy. There was one or two areas that did make my heart beat a little faster, but overall it was a nice hike that was easy to make your way around! You also get some good views in a couple spots on the trail.
4:30pm - After an afternoon of relaxing and enjoying our Airbnb, we traveled over to Snakes and Lattes in Tempe, Arizona. This place was such a blast! It is a restaurant that you can get coffee in the morning or drinks at night (whatever you are in the mood for) and play board games. It is a $5 charge to your bill to play the board games, if you want, but so worth it! You can try any game you would like, there is a board on the wall that helps you pick games based on your typical favorites, and they also have a 'game master' that will just walk around giving recommendations and teaching you how to play a new game. We spent about 5 1/2 hours here just playing games and have some pretty great drinks & food. Highly recommend and have definitely looked now for some board game cafes in Las Vegas 🙂
Sunday
10:30am - Brunch with other friends before we left from our weekend. We went to Ocotillo and had, yet again, a great experience! The environment was great and they had a gorgeous patio space. Their cinnamon rolls is giant and delicious, but their Iron Skillet Pancake is gigantic! If you like banana bread, this is a great option. However, be prepared to have it for like 2-3 meals or share it with another person... It is the size of an iron skillet literally!
12:00pm - Hike at Camelback Mountain. This was about half hike/half rock scramble, it definitely got the heart rate going but still doable! We didn't have to make any stops going up or down, but we also are pretty avid hikers so know that when thinking about difficulty. We were fortunate enough to not have too many people trying to hike this mountain in the rain, so it was pretty easy for us to get up and down without waiting for others to go over the trickier parts, however I have heard that it is extremely busy on nice days, so beware of maybe waiting and being in close proximity to others! The view of Phoenix from the top was great as well!
2:00pm - Walk around Downtown Scottsdale before heading home. This was fun and it had great shops for souvenirs! It isn't too large so easy to walk around and just a relaxing little place to people watch and enjoy the weather with a pretty view of the river that runs through.
3:00pm - Drive from Phoenix, Arizona back to Las Vegas, Nevada.
7:30(ish)pm - Made it back to good ol' Las Vegas!
Overall, we had a wonderful time with some great friends and seeing the sights! It was a great little getaway from Vegas and will definitely need to go back in the next coming months before moving farther away 🙂
-Natalie-
Travel.Therapy.Love.Repeat. 