Japanese Friendship Garden - Phoenix

Today we visited the Japanese Friendship Garden in downtown Phoenix. It's quite small, but is also very serene and peaceful. 

Desert Botanical Gardens - Phoenix

Since I have family in town visiting, I get to play tourist in my own city. Today we visited the Desert Botanical Gardens.

Poppies at Bartlett Lake

We drove out to Bartlett Lake today to see the poppies and other desert wildflowers.

Caribbean Cruise w/ Panama Canal (January 3-16, 2026)

We decided to start the new year with a partial Panama Canal Cruise that includes several Caribbean islands and Latin American ports. This map shows our itinerary (except visiting Curacao instead of Bonaire).

All of these locations are new destinations for me, except Limon Costa Rica, and I was there way back in 1988, so I'm sure it has changed!

Days 0-1: Fly to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Days 2-3: At Sea

Day 4: Aruba

Day 5: Curacao

Day 6: At Sea

Day 7: Cartagena, Colombia

Day 8: Panama Canal  / Panama City

Day 9: Limon, Costa Rica

Day 10: At Sea

Day 11: Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Day 12: At Sea

Day 13: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida/home

Days 0-1: Fort Lauderdale

Day 0: Travel to Fort Lauderdale

Today was primarily a travel day, so I counted it as Day 0, which allowed all the other days to synch with the cruise itinerary days.

Our flight arrived in Fort Lauderdale around 4 pm, giving us time to see a bit of the beach and Hollywood broadwalk.

We booked one night at the Tiana Beach Inn, which is only one block from Hollywood beach broadwalk.

After wandering up and down the beach, we saw the moon rise over the ocean.

Then we enjoyed some tuna nachos at Oceans 13 before heading back to our room for the night.

Day 1: Begin cruise

We spent a bit of time at the beach/walking the broadwalk this morning before we checked out of our room.

After checking out of our hotel, we caught a Lyft to Port Everglades.

There were a bunch of ships in port,  so traffic was bad and it was a bit chaotic, but we weren't in line very long, given how busy it was. Once we were on board, we relaxed with a drink and had lunch.

A balcony room was a bit pricier than we wanted to spend on this trip, so we booked an aft room with a porthole.

The location was great (next to the aft pool, bars, buffet for early morning coffee). This room felt really really small though, but there was ample storage.

There was a bit of a delay leaving the port, then we said goodbye to Fort Lauderdale and headed out to sea.

Fall in Flagstaff

We drove to Flagstaff to see the fall leaves today. There were also two breweries/taprooms in Flagstaff on our Pubpass that were hadn't used yet. Both were dog friendly, so our dog got to come with us. Our first stop was Grand Canyon Brewing for a drink and lunch. The prickly pear beer was quite tasty.

After lunch, we drove the road to Arizona Snowball, 

and admired the aspens along the drive.

We parked in the lot for the Aspen Nature Loop trail. Parking is much easier on a Tuesday than a weekend!

This is a 1.8 mile, fairly flat, easy to walk trail, which is more of a lollipop than true loop. The only thing that makes it slightly challenging is the high elevation (9271 ft / 2825 m).

You start by walking towards the aspens near the base of the ski lifts, with the San Francisco peaks in view.

Once we reached the loop, we decided to go counter clockwise, and soon saw Sasquatch.

As we continued down the trail, we entered the aspen grove. A lot of these trees had already dropped their leaves.

After exiting that grove, we entered a prairie zone. The big white cloud in the top right section of the picture is smoke from a wild fire southwest of Flagstaff.

This gave us a great view of the valley below.

We then headed to another aspen grove.

Many of the trees here still had their leaves.

From here, it was a short walk back to the stick of the lollipop and back to the parking lot.

On the drive back down to town, we saw three elk (no pictures), then headed to Hops on Birch to use our other PubPass (the tart cherry cider was delicious).

Apache Trail drive to Tortilla Flats AZ

We took advantage of a break in the rain to drive the Apache Trail to Tortilla Flats this afternoon. 

We drove through a few giant puddles,

 saw Canyon Lake 

and even saw a few waterfalls! 

The road was closed after Tortilla Flats due to flooding 

(so was the saloon/restaurant). 

So we had an ice cream 

and turned back towards home.