My Trip to Arizona
I recently took a weekend road trip to Scottsdale with my family, and I thought I’d share a small travel guide that includes where we stayed, restaurants we ate at, and activities we did. I will also include things we didn’t get to do on our trip just for extra guidance in case you’re feeling inspired to take to trip to Arizona yourself.
The main reason for the trip was to attend a San Francisco Giants Spring Training game, so everything else was scheduled around that. Overall, it was a quick turnaround; we arrived on Saturday and left on Monday. However, I took the liberty of creating an itinerary because I wanted to make it as jam-packed as possible. Here it is below.
Canva has my heart, btw.
Did we stick to the itinerary? We arrived in Arizona on the first day of Mercury Retrograde, so of course, we didn’t. There were a few hiccups, but we made it work.
We left Vegas at around 8:30 am and made it to the hotel at 2:30 pm, way later than expected, but that’s okay. We stayed in Tempe, which is where we’ve stayed before, so we decided to go there again. We enjoy the town; it’s where ASU is located, so it’s very college-esque, and there are great restaurants and shops to walk to.
Tip: It’s cheaper to stay in Tempe versus Scottsdale directly during Spring Training. If you’re from Vegas, you can compare the distance from Tempe, Scottsdale, and Phoenix to Summerlin, Vegas, and Henderson, they’re all somewhat connected. The hotels are very nice. I recommend the Omni and the Residence Inn.
From there, the plan was to immediately go to the mall, but my mom unfortunately had a frozen arm, so she had to take a quick detour to the emergency room to see what could be done for it. After a few hours, we headed to the mall, but we couldn’t do any sort of shopping at that point because we needed to eat dinner before everything closed. Instead of eating at the restaurant on my itinerary (since it was at a different location), we decided to eat at a restaurant called Moxies, located in the Fashion Square Mall (which again if you’re from Vegas or have been here, this mall was very comparable to the Fashion Show Mall, but about twice the size).
The food was great. I had the Mushroom Zen Bowl, which tasted like a teriyaki bowl. They had a little bit of everything, so if you’re in the area, I would recommend it for dinner.
The next day, Sunday, was the game. We left the hotel at about 8 am so we could get breakfast at a place called Jojo Coffeehouse in Old Town Scottsdale, about 4 minutes away from the Giants stadium. I had the strawberries and cream pancakes, and it came with a side of turkey bacon and eggs. The food was good, but there’s another place called the Breakfast Club also in the same area that I ate at last year that is also tasty. There are a lot of breakfast places in the area, so take your pick. The area can get pretty busy on the weekends, especially during Spring Training game days, so getting there as early as we did was a good call.
We had a few hours until game time, so we walked around the shops in Old Town Scottsdale. There are some really cute small businesses, so if you’re looking to get some souvenirs for yourself or as gifts, this is the place to go.
We then entered the ballpark and walked around the venue to all of the places where they were selling merchandise. It’s a pretty small park, comparable to a Triple-A stadium like the Las Vegas Ballpark, but there were 3 or 4 places where they were selling merchandise, one of which was the actual dugout store.
Another tip: The dugout store is inside the ballpark and is only available to ticket holders during game day. There is access to the store from outside the stadium, but those doors are only open on non-game days. Even then, I’m not entirely sure when the store is open. It might only be open during Spring Training season because we tried to go last May, and it was closed. I just had to put that out there because it’s a little confusing on Google.
Anyway, after we got our merch, we sat down and enjoyed the game. We sat on the first baseline.
The food options inside the park looked appetizing. Since we had breakfast beforehand, we didn’t eat anything, but there’s always room for a sweet treat. I had a vanilla soft serve in a mini baseball helmet. Expensive but yummy.
The Giants beat the A’s 7-3.
The plan afterward was to head straight to the Phoenix Premium Outlets about 30 minutes away and then go to dinner at a place called The Sicilian Butcher, which was close by. We didn’t do that. My mom’s arm was still in excruciating pain, so, understandably, we decided to rest at the hotel and have dinner close by.
TIP: Even though we didn’t end up going to 2 out of the 3 restaurants planned, I had made reservations for them in advance, so I would recommend that too. It just makes your trips a little easier.
We stumbled upon a restaurant called Snakes and Lattes in Tempe, so we decided to go in since it wasn’t crowded. It ended up being a cool spot, they call it a “Board Game Bar and Restaurant” where you can rent out board games while you’re eating and drinking. It also has a coffee shop feel, there were people in there working on their computers.
If you’re doing a big family or friend trip, this would be a great place to take everyone. The food was good; I had a grilled cheese with tomato soup, and I added bacon and tomato to the sandwich (don’t do that).
I did some googling and saw that there was an ice cream shop right around the corner, so obviously, I ran over there. The place was called Sparky’s, and when I tell you it was some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had, I’m not joking. I got a scoop of the cheesecake ice cream and a scoop of the salted caramel. It’s comparable to Cold Stone; it smells just like it when you walk inside, and they have all of the mix-ins but unique flavors.
For our final day, we had planned on going on a hike at Pinnacle Peak Trailhead in Scottsdale, but because of my mom’s arm, it wasn’t feasible. So we ended up back where we started, the mall.
Since we didn’t shop at all the first night, we decided to take it easy and browse around at the stores. I was excited because there were a lot of shops that I hadn’t seen in person before. I did some minor damage, nothing crazy. I bought a few tops at Garage and Hollister, and I can never go into Bath and Body Works without buying some hand sanitizer.
To end our trip, we headed to the food court and had a quick lunch before hitting the road. We left at about 3 pm and got home at 8 pm.
I love Arizona, those 3 days weren’t enough. If we had more time, I would have loved to have visited some museums, the Desert Botanical Garden, and the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center. I plan to go back and explore the rest of the state to do some hikes in places like Sedona and Flagstaff as well.
While we didn’t necessarily stick to our original plans, the little bumps in the road made for a fun excursion. Everything happens for a reason.
If you’re planning a trip to Arizona, I hope my itinerary was a little helpful. If not, I hope you at least enjoyed reading about my weekend. There will be some more travel content this summer here on my blog, so stay tuned!
