We moved to the East side of Phoenix, suburb called Apache Junction. I had always heard of people living in Mesa, Scotsdale, Surprise, and Tempe but never realized it is basically all the same area and apart of Phoenix. We did lots of motorcycle riding and touring of the area. 3 huge lakes outside of town, in the middle of nowhere. Canyon, Apache, and Roosevelt Lakes. We drove up to Apache Lake and took the paddle boat tour of the lake. Huge lake and lots of things to see. Herd of mountain goats (100+) on the rim just watching us float by.
We drove onto Tortilla Flats - the only town on the road before you get to a gravel continuation to Roosevelt Lake. We didn't want to drive the gravel/dirt road on the motorcycle. Tortilla flats was an old mining town and all tourist now. A neat place to see but wouldn't want to live there. 4 buildings and an old mine closed off. Beautiful area thou.
Back towards town is Goldfield Ghost Town. It used to be a real town, bigger than Apache Junction or Phoenix for the miners families, but now is just a tourist place. Great small gauge railroad tour and unique original buildings to tour and hear the history. We got to tour the old mine shaft Gold and Copper are great in the area. 
Mesa has a great Flea Market with tons of stuff to shop through, but luckily living in an RV restricts alot of shopping so looking works great. It also gives us ideas on things to make ourselves or brainstorm on. We moved on to Sun City, another suburb on the North West side of Phoenix. A great RV resort - Paradise RV Resort. A ton of ammenities and activities to do. The pool was great and every afternoon the geezers had a volleyball game. It wasn't pretty but they had a great time and a hoot to watch. We enjoyed the sun and swimming. Drove to White Tank Mountain and walked a few trails. Cactus are starting to bloom and saw a local waterfall - well more like a drippy faucet, but the small pool at the bottom had water in it. Petroglyphs and scenic walk so well worth it. We also got to Phoenix 
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just in time to see a Nascar race at the Phoenix International Raceway. It was their 50th anniversary so they had 50 planes from Luke Air Force base do the fly over before the race. Awesome! Beautiful sunny day and great race, although Jr didn't win, came close. Waiting in the parking lot 45 minutes in the same spot before the traffic started moving. Not fun when you are on a motorcycle and sitting with your helmet on in 70 degree weather. Even worse when you have to be on a conference call for your university at the time you are still waiting in line. I learned to tuck the phone inside the helmet, mute button, and take notes on the back of the printed map to the raceway - and from a borrowed pen from the guy in line behind us. An adventure!
The best activity at the RV park was the scheduled motorcycle rides every Thursday. We would all meet at 9:00am and head out. Usually 8-10 motorcycles with a few wives on the back. We would drive about 3 hours and eat at a local cafe and then head back a different route. Great planning and route taking by the leader. We went places and route we would have never thought of or gone. Great experience. We ended up in Bagdad a copper mine town. They had the neatest silver bullet type cafe - good food, horrible service. They were not happy 11 of us "non-local" people just showed up. And didn't mine talking about us behind the counter. Awkward! Tables they had "reserved" that we couldn't sit at and the people showed up an hour later (locals). It took 45 minutes to get our food (hamburgers & fries). But a great ride. We also went through the mountains (saw snow) and into Payson, another unique town. Great lunch at a diner and awesome service. Prescott was the neatest town. They were finishing up a history carving in the concrete in the square. High School students were there on a field trip with a quiz on history and had to find the answers in the concrete. Great lunch and great unique stores. On the way back we were able to catch the hourly Fountain Hills fountain. It goes off for 15 minutes every hour, and shoots up to a heighth of 330 feet. Used to be the tallest but now in the top 5. Cool accidental sighting.
The fountain park was filled with cactus and many in full bloom. Unbelieveable how a desert and ouchy cactus can be so pretty. We have some great neighbors in the RV park - Don and Elaine Jones from Oroville, California. We went to the RV park church service and out to lunch every Sunday. Many other outings or adventures. We went to the Desert Botanical Gardens. Kind of a zoo / garden area. Javelina were our big find as we had not seen any yet. They are to pig looking animal that lives in the desert. Chihuly exhibit was also going on. He is a world famous glass blower and the garden was full of his designs. They had a movie of his technique and things that he has done. I had never heard of him but it really made the garden a unique place to visit. That and the beautiful flowering cactus.
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The Luke Air Force base in Phoenix had na air show. They usually do it every 2 years but they couldn't have it last year, so it was lucky for us, this year. Thunderbirds were preforming and trick biplanes. Plus a flyover of the old and new air force plans. I don't know that much about planes but it was an exciting show. We waited in line for an hour to get into the AFB and move a 1/2 block. So plan B we found a hill in the industrial park next to the route and pulled the motorcycle off and set up our chairs with a few others to watch it from 1 mile away. They flew right over our heads so we though it was a great spot. I finally had time to finish our bed quilt I had been working on for the last year. Looks great but not quite as big as it needed to be for our King size bed. Bad planning and no more material. Well gives me a chance to plan another one. Hopefully won't take me as long to make. Took some quilting classes at the RV park, great experience. 
Randy tried to take up tree hugging. Doesn't work with a cactus.
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