Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 29, 1993 TAG: 9308290307
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE LEPOSKY
DATELINE: PHOENIX, ARIZ. LENGTH: Long
The mercury has dipped overnight all the way to 80 degrees, so they are taking advantage of the early morning "chill." Most parks and many of the valley's 117 golf courses open at 6 a.m., the zoo and botanical garden at 7.
The 2 million residents of the Valley of the Sun (which includes Phoenix, Scottsdale and 21 other communities) play early for a good reason. By midmorning the unrelenting desert sun triggers triple-digit temperatures. An afternoon high of 115 is not uncommon, but by then just about everyone has retreated indoors to air conditioning.
The heat makes summer a definite off-season for Phoenix tourism - and, paradoxically, an attraction for visitors seeking bargains. As the thermometer climbs, lodging prices plummet. At The Phoenecian, an opulent resort built by convicted savings-and-loan pirate Charles Keating, a double-occupancy room that costs $290 and up in winter goes for just $125 in summer. Summer shoppers also find seasonal discounts in Scottsdale's posh malls, art galleries and Western arts-and-crafts stores.
People who live year-round in Phoenix rationalize: ". . . But it's a dry heat!" True. At 115 with 8 percent to 10 percent humidity, you feel the heat less than in the East or Midwest with 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity - as long as you drink lots of water and keep your head covered. A summer vacation in Phoenix is a good time to acquire a sombrero.
"A bandana around your neck also helps to beat the heat," advised desert Jeep-tour guide Lenny Dee of Trail Blazers, a Scottsdale-based tour service. "When you perspire, it soaks up the moisture, which then evaporates and cools the back of your neck."
A Wyoming native who married an Apache, Dee was inducted into the Apache Nation in 1984. He's allowed to take visitors onto tribal lands adjoining Phoenix's suburban fringe for an introduction to the Sonora Desert. "The Sonora is the youngest and greenest of the world's deserts," he explained. "It has been under the sea several times, and the soil is very alkaline."
Dee shows visitors the jojoba, palo verde and other Sonora plants that Indian desert-dwellers use for food - including the tree-like saguaro cactus that blooms in late spring and early summer. "White flowers form high on its trunk and limbs," he said. "They open at night, last for 13 hours, and are pollinated by migratory bats from Mexico."
The Indians use long ribs from dead saguaros to harvest the fruit, which can be eaten fresh, or simmered and strained to separate its seeds and juice. Saguaro juice makes a delicious jam; the seeds - whole or ground - can be added to cereals and breads.
At 7 a.m. on summer Wednesdays and Saturdays, docents at the 145-acre Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix's Papago Park lead tours that include a saguaro-harvesting experience. Afterward, participants can taste saguaro punch, prickly-pear jam and other cactus food products.
Also in Papago Park is the Phoenix Zoo, built around ponds dug years ago for a state fish hatchery. At 8 each summer morning the zoo presents an educational program followed by a stroll through Arizona Trail, an outstanding exhibit of native wildlife such as mountain lions, bald eagles and coyotes. Other notable exhibits include the "Tropical Flights" aviaries that display birds in a dense rain-forest setting, an African savanna and a herd of bighorn sheep cavorting on a desert mountainside.
The zoo lacks wild horses, but you may see them grazing near the banks of the Salt River if you go on an early morning river-rafting expedition. "Rafters often see herons and other water birds, bald eagles and several kinds of hawks," said Glenn Fanjoy, a guide with Cimarron River Co. in Scottsdale.
A typical morning raft trip traverses about three miles of the Salt River's last free-flowing section in the Phoenix area. Elsewhere the river's bed is dry, or submerged behind four dams built by the Salt River Project to generate hydroelectric power and irrigate the valley. An elaborate canal system provides abundant water for agriculture, green lawns, fountains and golf-course water hazards.
The Salt River Project's engineers built some of their canals atop an earlier canal system that prehistoric Hohokam Indians dug to water their crops. This industrious tribe also built villages with large platform mounds. One such site, Pueblo Grande, is now a city park where archaeologists have partially excavated a massive mound. Interpretive signs along a gently sloping path to the top of the mound explains the arrangement of its rock walls and interior spaces.
An adjoining museum describes Hohokam culture and other aspects of archaeology and Indian life in the Southwest.
In striking contrast to the Hohokam mounds that rose above and dominated their surroundings, modern architect Frank Lloyd Wright sought to blend his Arizona headquarters, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, into its surroundings. "Building on the brow of a hill makes it more a part of the hill instead of obliterating the hill," explained tour guide Samantha Riggs.
Constructed by Wright's apprentices between 1937 and 1957, Taliesin West still functions as a school and architectural practice in keeping with Wright's philosophy of "organic" architecture. Although most of its faculty and students spend summers at the eastern Taliesin in Wisconsin, daily summer tours of Taliesin West begin on the hour from 8 to 11 a.m. You'll be offered a colorful umbrella to ward off the sun.
When the heat drives you indoors, the Phoenix area has three outstanding art museums worthy of afternoon exploration:
The Heard Museum, a repository of Indian arts and cultures. Its permanent exhibition, "Native Peoples of the Southwest," interprets the history of human habitation in the region and the relationship of Indians to the land. A kachina-doll gallery features the collections of former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater and restaurant magnate Fred Harvey. Another intriguing exhibit illustrates the significance of rain in Indian cultures. An interactive gallery, "Old Ways, New Ways," invites visitors to play along with a Kiowa drum group, build a teepee, and design a Navajo rug with the aid of a computer. Also on display are contemporary paintings by Indian American artists.
The Fleischer Museum, devoted to the California School of American Impressionism. Lovers of French Impressionist art will be amazed to find dozens of magnificent paintings in a similar style, many with American themes, by relatively obscure American artists. "These artists painted from the 1880s to the 1940s. They all lived and worked at one time in California. Some were largely self-taught, but others went to study in France," explained Annabelle Markstein, assistant to museum director Donna H. Fleischer.
The Phoenix Art Museum, the largest visual-arts institution between Denver and Los Angeles. It has strong collections of Asian and 20th century art, a large gallery of 19th and 20th century paintings depicting the American West, and 12 Thorne Miniature rooms which represent historical European and American interiors (including three in the Art Deco style of the mid-1920s).
A different kind of museum, the Hall of Flame, displays more than 130 wheeled pieces of firefighting equipment dating from 1725 to 1961. Included are elaborately-decorated hand pumpers, horse-drawn steam engines, and vintage fire trucks. Children enjoy climbing on one of the trucks, a 1915 American LaFrance pumper. Insurance insignias, fire trumpets, arm patches, helmets and other firefighting artifacts also are on display.
As befits a Western city, the Phoenix area offers its share of Western-oriented entertainment opportunities for summer evenings.
At Rawhide, an authentic replica of a 19th century mining town on 160 desert acres in north Scottsdale, cowboy entertainers shoot up Main Street, and stunt performers re-enact tales of the Old West. The attraction includes a museum with more than 5,000 items of historical interest, a covered-wagon circle, a petting zoo for children and a restaurant featuring mesquite-broiled steaks.
In nearby Tempe, Red River Opry presents country-western music in a 1,000-seat theater modeled after the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Red River Opry's resident revue company performs October through May; in summer, the hall hosts a succession of celebrity guest stars.
\ For more information about summer activities in the Phoenix area, contact the Phoenix and Valley of the Sun Convention and Visitors Bureau, One Arizona Center, 400 E. Van Buren St., Suite 600, Phoenix, Ariz. 85004-2290, phone 602-252-5588, fax 602-253-4415. Ampersand Communications
\ George Leposky is a travel writer who lives in Miami. He teaches college writing classes.
by CNB