Snow Day

Saori and I both had two studio professors who were going to conferences, so we decided to take friday off and go on a road trip up to Payson. We left around ten, getting to the Dairy Queen in Payson around lunchtime. I got a chili dog and a blizzard, and Saori ordered a salad. At first, I thought this was a strange decision, considering how rarely people would probably order salads from Dairy Queen, especially out in Payson. It took them a while to bring it out, but they actually brought out the best fast food salad I've ever seen. Reflecting on this, I realized I'd complelely had the whole thing wrong. Instead of a place like McDonalds which probably does a much more brisk trade in salads, Dairy Queen probably sells very little, so it doesnt make sense for them to have prepackaged salads ready to go like McDonalds does. Since it is ordered so rarely, they have to make it complelely fresh at Dairy Queen. At least, this is what they did at the DQ we visited.

Anyway, we continued on though on our way to Strawberry, but we passed a sign for the Tonto Natural Arch park, so we decided to take a detour. It was actually really cool and I'm glad we did because we were able to actually hike down into and through the arch which was a bouldering expedition over freezing pools of water, stalagtites, and geological formations. All the while, we were dripped on from the water seeping though the rock vault high above us. We spent about two hours at the arch before continuing on. We drove up past Strawberry, up on top of the rim, looking for the side roads to find an overlook, but they were all closed due to the heavy snow on the ground. We finally gave up, pulled over by one of the chained park entrances, and had a snowball fight in the two feet deep snow.

We got back into town around 8 PM and then Saori went to her friends house for do it yourself sushi, and I met Aldo for a beer at Four Peaks, which was really good since I've not really had a chance to catch up with him for awhile.

Today is a working day. We have a lot of sketches to do for monday and I have a lot of work for my studio presentation next friday.



Tonto National Bridge