Christmas in the Desert

Mister Man and I headed South for the holidays. You see, his folks winter in Arizona and we decided we'd join them for the festivities. We landed in Phoenix on Christmas Eve, rented a car, and headed for Yuma.

Neither of us had really been to the desert before, so we weren't prepared for the gorgeous wide open skies and vistas that could melt even the hardest heart. It was an amazing drive.

En route to Yuma, we pulled into a place called "Dateland" in which they - well, yes, they grow dates. When we got out to stretch our little legs, we noticed this sign:

Sure enough, there was a stand of date trees out back (a gaggle of date trees?)

I don't know about you, but the minute a sign features the phrase "world famous", my curiosity is peaked..... Date shakes?

It seemed like if we didn't try one, we MIGHT be missing out on something.

And that proved to be an astute judgement and an auspicious start for our holiday. They were DELICIOUS. Who'd a thunk that tossing a handful of ground up dates into a milkshake would be as tasty? (despite the rather mysterious "hot" warning on the lid...!)

Now rejuvenated with the sugary goodness of the date milkshake, we drove into the sunset. Literally.

And before we knew it, we'd met up with Bob 'n Mer and we were whisked off to their wee community of snowbirds (AKA Canadians who fly south for the winter).

As sunset descended, we shared a lovely dinner with Mister Man's folks before embarking on our Christmas eve adventure (in which we went in search of a spectacular show of festive lights.) There was no doubt about it: our holiday was off to a rip roarin' start.