~sixteen days~: Day 1 in Arizona

Yes! We have escaped winter this year and it is awesome being in the great state of Arizona with our cousins. My two sisters and I have been talking about taking a vacation for so long. Finally, we booked a flight and decided to head south and follow the great migration that birds and senior citizens take every year to get away from the snow and cold. The timing couldn't be more perfect, we flew out on Christmas day from Michigan with clear blue skies and frigid frosty air. Perfect weather for flying and we had no trouble getting to our destination on time. The very next day, a massive storm blankets the East Coast and the entire Mid-west grounding 1,400 flights and making it horrible for ground transportation to get anywhere in the white-out blizzard conditions.

One thing I learned from all those years living in the Midwest is that the weather suffers from a bad case of Bipolar as it teeters from one extreme (blizzards and snowstorms) to another (massive heatwaves and tornadoes). An occasional rare moment of perfect weather is very much appreciated. I hope all of you stay safe and warm back home, inshallah.

Arizona is beautiful and the weather is amazing, so we have been enjoying the change in both weather and scenery. We went to this state park/nature reserve called South Mountain in Phoenix and it looked like those movies from the Wild West back in the old days. There were cactus everywhere. This massive park happens to have the honor of being the largest urban park in the United States because it is over 16,000 acres in size and it attracts outdoorsy visitors from all over the country (and possibly the world); who walk, hike and bike the trails. We didn't get far into the park because we snapped pictures of everything we saw and there was a lot to see at the entrance of the park. The vegetation was so different from the common plants we see in Michigan we might as well have been on the surface of an alien planet.

Here's more of what the park has to offer