The Pet Shop Boys Were Right! West End Towns = Dead End World

Being on the outskirts of Phoenix - basically in the suburbs - there was a lot to get use to when we got to Arizona:
1) Starbucks was not available on every corner
2) Not a lot of variety in restaurants
3) Not a lot of grass, even on the golf course
4) Strange looking characters at some of the eating places (you'll read about that tomorrow)

On Saturday, my husband and I drove from Phoenix to Tuscon to see the Cubs (who else) play the White Sox at their spring training facilities. Aside from watching the game, we got to see one of my best friends from college - him and his family moved out to Arizona, from Indiana, about four years ago. This really put a damper on my Indiana holiday visits because we would always spend one day of our Indiana holiday at their place - it was a nice reason to get away from town (if you get my meaning)...but I digress.

We went down to the coffee shop in the resort to try and grab some morning drinks and maybe a pastry. The coffee shop served an abbreviated Starbucks menu but didn't have nearly the amount of pastries that Starbucks offers - in fact, I think the Starbucks connection ended at the coffee drinks. I've never seen any of my local Starbucks offer an icing-filled cinnamon bun. So needless to say, we passed on the coffee shop and didn't have time for a sit-down buffet so we went with our usual back-up plan: we'll find something on the way.

What a joke!

If you know something about Arizona, it's that if you're not near a big city, you're not near much. We drove on the interstate for about 20 miles and saw a sizable city. The way I judged it to be a sizable city was that the sign said, "this town - next 4 exits." To me, that's a sizable town, and a sizable town means shopping center, which must have some food joints. I took the first exit of 'this town' and we saw lots of new communities. There must've been at least five new housing communities (already being lived in) and so we thought that a shopping center/supermarket/anything had to be close by. Well, we weren't that far off in that assessment - we saw a sign for Subway and McDonald's....coming soon. Apparently, not soon enough for us. We must've drove around 'this town' for about 10 minutes trying to go down roads that looked promising. Alas there was nothing that we could find and we went back to the interstate - that was my idea of a poorly planned community!

We continue east on the interstate for about 10 miles when we see those helpful blue signs that tell you when there's lodging, food, gas ahead. We took the first exit and proceeded to (not my first choice) Burger King. I dropped my husband off because I saw an enclosed shopping center that surely had to have a Panera or something. Wrong again. It was an enclosed professional center - for eye sight, hearing and insurance. So with my head down, I went back to Burger King and got a really unhealthy breakfast sandwich. And we got there with great timing because when we went into Burger King, nothing much going on outside...10 minutes later, leaving Burger King, there was a big accident right outside the Burger King drive that might have prevented us from getting to Burger King had we come any later.

Back onto the interstate and wouldn't you know, in less than 5 miles, at exit 200, is a whole world of shopping centers and food stuff - like Target, Mimi's Cafe AND Starbucks!!! Double damn! I told my husband to remember 200 cause we're stopping by on our way back.

Driving farther east, it reminded me a lot of my drives from Indiana to New Jersey (through Ohio and the longest way you'll ever want to go through Pennsylvania) - just a whole lot of nothing much. But I sure did like the 75 mph speed limit!

When we finally met up with my friend in Tuscon, I had asked him if he knew of a good place to get gas. He said there was a place on the way to the ballpark so I followed him back onto the interstate, down a couple of exits and to a shopping center that was at least 10 miles away from his house. The gas prices were great but I had to ask him later if that was their grocery store. He said yes. I couldn't believe it because his development - although very sparse - has been around since early 2000s - and to not have a shopping center or even a kwik-e-mart nearby? Ridiculous!

So lessons learned here:
On Star might not be such a bad thing to have if you live in Arizona.
A map of Starbucks locations may not be such a bad thing to carry.
AND always follow the blue signs - they'll never steer you wrong!