My spring training trip down to the Phoenix area last year wasn’t just about baseball. Ok… so it was pretty much all about baseball. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find some other fun things to get up to over a week of dashing between ballparks in Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale and downtown Phoenix.
Immediately after arriving in the city and with a few hours to spare before I could check into the apartment I rented for the week, I popped into Walter Station Brewery and lucky for me there was some live music on their patio. After arriving from cold Saskatoon it was a treat to feel a warm breeze while listening to some country music.
Over the course of many trips I have fallen in love with the idea of the “trip within a trip”. A day trip plunked down in the middle of the longer voyage is something that almost always brings me awe and rejuvenation. Going back to the first time my wife and I traveled to Europe, an expedition to Bruges in the middle of a two city trip to Amsterdam and Belgium is something that got this concept planted firmly in most of the plans I make to this day.
So, a spring training trip to Arizona for a week needed a day trip in the middle of it and after looking at some maps and talking to some friends, I landed on getting out of the Phoenix area for some hiking, exploring and even some wine tasting (yes!) in the general vicinity of Sedona. As I was battling morning rush hour traffic through what seemed like an endless Phoenix urban landscape I briefly doubted the intelligence of my plans. But soon enough, the the number of traffic lanes got down to a reasonable number and the landscape opened up to wider vistas and I felt myself easing into the day.
My first stop was just outside of Oak Creek. I had a spectacularly beautiful day for a morning hike…. the kind of day that gives you shivers of excitement. If I was hoping to feel awe, I had definitely found the place and day for that.
As I get itchy for the start of the 2024 baseball season, I have been thinking back to the jump I got on this past 2023 baseball season by finally taking a long-desired trip to Arizona for a week of spring training baseball. As a lifelong baseball nerd (with a significant pause to recover from the loss of my Montreal Expos in the early 2000s) I had long thought about spending a week of lazy days under the spring sun in Florida or Arizona, going from park to park to get a close up view of the game I love. With my move to Saskatchewan eight years ago, Arizona became a more obvious choice for this trip and last year at long last I made it a reality.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, there was no way I wasn’t going to be head over heels for finally making it to Spring Training in Arizona. Thanks to the pandemic, my baseball nerd dreams of lounging in the Arizona sun watching baseball got shelved in 2020 and it took until last week to finally make that trip. It was a trip that, truthfully, I’ve wanted to take for a much longer time.
The hook for the trip was spring training baseball – small stadiums, lazy afternoons and getting a close up view of the game I love so much. This year, as scheduling luck would have it, the World Baseball Classic was happening with a round of games in downtown Phoenix at the Diamondbacks stadium. I got the schedules for all of those games, a map, and got to work planning out the kind of visit my baseball loving heart has always dreamed of.
While I was in Phoenix late in 2019, the Roosevelt Row area became a bit of a repeated destination for me. Initially, much of that had to do with my attraction to the amazing outdoor beer garden at Arizona Wilderness. On my walks to and from my downtown hotel to the bar, I took meandering routes as I discovered the neighbourhood was home to a plethora of vibrant murals. Here are some of my favourites from my time spent wandering around the Roosevelt Row area just to the north of Phoenix’s downtown.
On the side of Angels Trumpet Ale House (where I enjoyed a delicious outdoor pint one evening):
I was sitting on the tarmac in Saskatoon shortly after boarding when I started to hear a constant patter of freezing rain striking the body of my plane. Looking out the window into the dark of a November morning, hoping that we’d get loaded and de-iced before the weather got too bad to take off, my mind drifted to where I’d be landing later that day and my plans for my first night in Phoenix. As the freezing rain intensified, all I could think about was escaping winter and having a beer on a patio.
Leaving behind a few days of -15C weather and then a just in time escape from a freezing rain storm, I landed in Phoenix in 30C weather. It took remarkably little time for me to drop my bags at my hotel, change into shorts, and make my way to the Arizona Wilderness outdoor beer garden just on the north edge of downtown.
When I was planning my trip to Phoenix, I added an extra day to my itinerary for the sole purpose of getting outside the city to explore a bit of the desert. I wanted to see large cacti up close and I really wanted an experience different that the previous days spent exploring the urban environment of downtown Phoenix. Every local I met during my visit stressed to me that I had to visit the Desert Botanical Garden, located about 30 minutes outside the city. I’d get to see all the cacti I wanted in a well-planned garden that blended a rugged terrain with interpretive signs to help me learn more about the vegetation that is indigenous to Arizona.
With my next sports-related trip south of the border looking to be a very, very long time away in the future, I’m thinking back fondly on a couple of my last sports experiences during a visit to Phoenix late last fall. On account of attending a work-related conference, it gave me an opportunity for my first ever visit to the city, and the timing gave me a chance to take in a Phoenix Suns basketball game.
Just a couple of short blocks away from my downtown hotel, the Talking Stick Resort Arena, designed specifically for basketball, was cozy, with the seats all around the arena right on top of the court. While I didn’t pony up for lower level seats, I spent some time watching the pre-game warm-ups from down there.
Bluenose Traveler 