My trip up north...

On Saturday morning, I woke up early as always, took my Husky on his morning run, and took a shower to get ready to head over to my friend Cosmo's place. I got what I would have needed for the day and left my house. Stopping by a lovely little French patisserie(sp.?) called P.Croissant, I got three croissants and a large coffee for the road. Let me just go ahead and punt this place for a second because on quality of food alone, they deserve business. This place is on the northwest corner of Rural Road and Elliot, and they bake croissants daily. But these are not just any old croissants, no no, they are amazing baked goods that take you to another planet. I honestly think that all those people who liked Krispy Kremes, this would be a good substitute or a new habit. I am a huge fan of their Almond and their Strawberry Croissants. To die for, if you ask me. And lastly, as I know we are kinda of on a tangent here, but their coffee is actually extremely good. I thoroughly enjoy their hazelnut Hawaiian coffee...stellar.

With that done and out of the way, I now feel as though I can continue on with my adventure. I got to my friend Cosmo's house around 7:30am and waited for our friends Jordan to wake up and get ready and Cosmo had some last minute packing to take care of. We left his place around 8am and stopped for some oil and a bathroom break. We shortly headed out of Phoenix after that. It takes forever to actually get out of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area to speak honestly about the subject, and the further towards the outskirts you get, the more random these crazy towns like Anthem just pop up out of no where. Seriously, you'll be driving and thinking to your self, "damn, finally out of Phoenix", and then bam, here is Deer Valley, and Anthem and, well... you get the idea.

We first stopped in Cottonwood, AZ to meet up with an extremely good friends of mine, Parley Jack Stock. I met Parley when I first started working for Starbucks around the end of my Freshman years of college. So me and Jack go way back, and even though he lives up north these days, we always end up getting together and catching up like nothing ever happened and he still kicked it with me on the daily. So we went to Parley's new business' building. Technically, it is located just outside the city boundaries, so he is on county land. The building is covered in red rock(kind of the theme of places up north ), and has an old almost Southwest wooden furniture theme. Very homey feeling in my opinion, and all the furniture was picked out by his mom. The building houses his office, another room with two offices, and a gigantic living room area, equipped with a message chair, two other leather comfy chairs, a oversizes comfortable couch and an enormous 5"x12" wooden coffee table that I desperately wanted. We spent some time at Jack's new business building, until we decided to head even further north to Flagstaff, AZ and get some breakfast/lunch at Jordan's Dad's Girlfriend's diner. I believe it was called Morning Glory Cafe, but the girlfriend's name was Maria, and that made me think of my sister even more than I already was.

Coming into Flagstaff, and looking over to the right, you see a big white dome which is the football field for NAU, and immediately Maria, my sister came to mind. Maria is like a mini mom to me, and both are my best-friends, so Flagstaff will always make me smile because my thoughts immediate go to my family just because Maria spent some time in school here. Either way, my friends and I had some food made by vegetarians and it was good... but Jordan's wanted to take us out to a piece of property he was working on.

Once again, the crew was off, now, there was Cosmo, Jordan, Parley, Dave(Jordan's dad), and my self, and we took the 30 min trip out the the Cinders just north east of Flagstaff. The Cinders gets its name from the black volcanic rock that has covered the landscaped. We drove to the kinda place where there isn't a soul around for miles and the only sounds you heard were the wind over the sparse vegetation. Really cool actually. We fired off bow and arrows, pellet guns, old black powder pistols, etc. and by the time we left, we stocked the bed of Cosmo's truck with over $400 worth of Terra-cotta pots. Yea, sweet, I know.

After that, we made the long trek back into Flagstaff to drop of Dave, then we headed back to Cottonwood to get Parley's Caddy and eventually headed back to Parley's place before deciding where to go for dinner. We got to Parley's chateau in the Verde Valley and every one of the other guys was amazed at the property in the area. Huge acreage of land, lots of overgrown trees and shade, and lush green pastures, just beautiful. Then we decided to hit up Johnny Rockets in the Indian Casino just down the highway a ways. I wont go into the details, but will punt their shakes as they were absolutely fantastic.

After Johnny Rockets, we headed home to Parley' s and the competition began. That's right, FOOZEBALL! We take this shit serious and I will give it Jack, he is the best player I have ever played against. We played some fooze for about two hours and by that time, it was about 9:15pm and the boys and I were fading fast. We said our good byes, and thank yous, and we headed home to conclude an excellent adventure up north on a Saturday afternoon.