From Tucson AZ, to Phoenix AZ.
By Simran Jayasinghe
We woke up in Tucson and it was a bright sunny day. Today we were heading to Phoenix, the last stop on our trip to Arizona. Our mom and dad had booked a suite at the Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix as our tenth birthday present. This Resort is arranged like a mini village with streets and crossroads. The whole Resort is 27 acres. When we checked in, the front desk gave us a map of the Resort to find our way! The resort has hotel rooms, suites, as well as Casitas, or small houses. In the middle of the resort is The River Ranch recreational area. The River Ranch has a pool with a waterfall, a recreational pool with a volleyball net and a basketball hoop, a lazy river, a waterslide, a tad pool (a tiny pool), mini-golf, tennis courts, and basketball courts. The Resort also has two restaurants, the Hole-In-The-Wall, and the Rico’s American Grill. In addition to these two restaurants there is also the Slim Pickens cafe, which sells finger foods like nachos and chicken strips, and the Cactus Rock Creamery which sells ice cream.
We checked in and went to our rooms. They were big! Each suite had a living room with a couch with a sofa bed, and a separate bedroom with two queen beds. Plenty of room for us to stretch out and enjoy the last five days of our trip. After we moved all of our bags from the van to the suite, and had relaxed a little, we felt like going for a swim. We had not been swimming during this whole trip, and we really missed swimming! We had heard that the Tocasierra Spa, Salon, and Fitness Center had a lap pool, and were very excited about swimming there. Unfortunately, the receptionist at the spa informed us that the lap pool was for adults only. We were so frustrated, it’s not like we were going to play around, we are USA swimmers after all! We eventually swam some laps in the recreational pool.
After the swim, we were hungry, hungry, hungry. For dinner, we decided to go to the Hole-In-The-Wall Restaurant. They had barbecue food. It was delicious but we thought the portions were a little small for the price. For desert, we got s’mores, and it came with a little pot with a fire in it so that you could toast your own marshmallows on the sticks and make our s’mores right at our table.