I had the opportunity to spend the past weekend exploring the greater Phoenix area with Jake, one of my oldest friends. We were fortunate to be able to spend one last weekend acting crazy prior to him running off and getting married on me this summer.

We stayed pretty busy this weekend driving 200+ miles visiting most of the major cities in the greater Phoenix area.

What follows is a quick recap of the weekend.

Thursday

Jake’s plane arrived around 11:00 p.m. Thursday evening. After a slight confusion about which terminal he was actually at we were cruising down the 202 with the top down. Coming from Spokane where the current temp is 28º with a chance of snow the 65º Phoenix night must have felt like summer.

After a quick stop at Four Peaks to have some of my favorite local beer and admire the Tempe architecture we headed home as I had to work in the morning.

Friday

I spent Friday morning at the office attending various meetings and making sure things were still on track. Many thanks to my wonderful co-workers who were hacking on client-work until well-past 5:00 p.m. while I was out enjoying the afternoon.

Once home again we headed out to Oregenos, one of my local favorites, for a great lunch. We were lucky to find a couple seats at the bar in a surprisingly crowded restaurant. With the wait time at 45 minutes for a table I was left wondering why more people weren’t at work…

After lunch we hopped in the car and headed over to Squaw Peak for a hike. I’ve been here for almost a year now and this was the first time that I’ve really explored the many hiking trails that are within 30 minutes of my house.

As you can see from the photo below Jake is on his way down while I’m still trying to drag my out-of-shape butt up the hill.

After fighting traffic for an hour we made it home where I proceeded to crash while Jake caught up on The Office. I was rudely awoken around 10:00 p.m. with questions of food and something about I-didnt-fly-two-thousand-miles-to-listen-to-you-snore.

With a quick burger from the Yard House in our systems we proceeded to check out the local Scottsdale bar scene. We first checked out E4 which is one of my favorite clubs and usually packed late on a Friday night. Tonight however everyone appeared to be down in Tempe this evening and things were pretty dead. Afterwards we headed over to Mickeys for a bit then headed home.

Saturday

We had a bit of a late start Saturday due to the previous nights festivities. After rolling out of bed around noon, and lounging around for a bit, we decided to head into Tempe to check out the Tempe Music Festival.

While I expected things to be busy, I didn’t realize that there was also an Art Festival going on which closed down half the streets around Mill Avenue causing traffic and parking to be a disaster. Once we finally found a garage, and paid the stupid $10, we roamed around the Art Festival a bit then grabbed lunch and people watched.

After a long lunch we made our way over to the Tempe Beach Park where the music festival was going on. Through a few random occurrences, and some smooth talking, we managed to score VIP press pass which enabled us to watch the festival from a private area directly to the left of the stage which included unlimited pizza, drinks and one of the best seats in the house.

All of the bands we saw were great. While we arrived mid-way through we did manage to see Everclear, Yellowcard, Authority Zero, O.A.R., Lit and The Fray.

Unforunetly my camera doesn’t do so well late at night, so hardly any of my pictures turned out, but here are a few shots from the afternoon.

After the concert ended around midnight we made our way back to Scottsdale, grabbed some late night mexican, and just hung out at the apartment.

Sunday

Have you ever seen that episode of Friends where they get the two recliners and decide that nothing is worth getting up for? Well that is how our Sunday was spent… I have these amazing leather recliners from Lazy Boy which just wrap you up and let you feel like there is nothing worth leaving them for. We thus spent the first half of the day lounging around catching up on The Office until we had to leave for the airport around noon.

Overall we had a great weekend! While I’m sad that Jake is leaving bachlorhood, I wish him and Stephanie the best of luck and look forward to their wedding this summer.