Beating the heat, a summer in review

We left the valley yesterday afternoon, loading up the car with everything I could cram inside the car and topper. Our summer in the Sonoran Desert is over. One more day in the mountains before starting another long drive (see re: the trip down in June). In some respects I wish I had written more about our summer sojourn, but I'll do my best to sum up the experience.

In surviving the summer in Phoenix you hear a lot about 'beating the heat.' As well you should, the temperature soars and it never really lets up. Then it gets worse as you continue, with moisture building in the air June to July to August (see the monsoon). There were lots of adjustments to be made, like the fact you need to bring a cooler and ice if you want to grocery shopping. When the kids get restless you can't just send them outside, at least not for very long. It's the complete opposite of summers in Minnesota, where the kids can live out there if they want. That's what we, the parents, want most of the time.

In Arizona you need a plan. I can't imagine almost anyone with kids just intends to spend every day at your home, even if you have stuff to do there. And the number of options around is credit to that fact. Just as there are an unbelievable number of restaurants and retail at every major intersection, there's also an absurd number of indoor or other cooler activities available. There are bowling alley/arcades, indoor playgrounds, trampoline parks galore. There are different kinds attractions too, aquariums and animal exhibits, stuff like that. There's a bunch of extensive public pools that have kiddie areas and waterslides. Yes there are bigger water parks too. The problem with this is that all of these activities cost money, and are frequently quite expensive. Most offer some may of mitigating that, by buying a summer pass or a membership of some kind. But clearly, unless you want to bankrupt yourself, some picking and choosing needs to be done.

Fwiw, my sister informed us on something called the Get Out Pass. It's a year long pass that can quickly be worth its upfront cost and get you into all kinds of places around Arizona, maybe once a month, maybe once a year, etc. It makes a ton of sense for them as full time residents. Maybe it still would've been worth it for us but on a 2.5 month timeline I didn't get it.

We did our own thing. Most days in the valley I'd get the kids up as quick as I could and we'd go out to explore playgrounds. This, if you know me or our adventures last summer (see 100 parks), should come as no surprise. Our exploration mostly surrounded parks with splash pads, a free activity of which there are also quite a few options. There were favorites where we made multiple visits. A couple playgrounds that didn't have water were also returned to on the rare bearable morning. As for paid activities I did, after some consideration, make some selections.

Here's a list of the places we liked:

TopGolf Gilbert (Summer Fun Pass, ~$200 for daily play)

Kids Empire Gilbert - indoor playground (10 punch card, ~$170)

Main Event Gilbert - bowling alley (sign up for Kids Bowl Free, then $5/kid for shoes)

Elevate Gilbert - trampoline park (got in with sister's family's summer pass)

Brimhall Aquatic Complex - public pool with slides (<$20 for the family)

Golfland Sunsplash - huge waterpark (Nightsplash ~$200 for the family)

Gilbert Regional Park, Gilbert - best playground/splash pad combo

Mansel Park, Queen Creek - good playground/splash pad combo

Founder's Park, Queen Creek, good splash pad

Gilbert Water Tower Plaza, Gilbert - simple, covered splash pad

Frontier Family Park, Queen Creek - best playground, tiny splash pad

Pioneer Park, Mesa - cool playground, small splash pad, also lots of homeless

The mountain

Gilbert Regional was our most frequented place probably. I could sit under cover just outside the splash pad and read or look at my phone and keep an eye on the kids in either the water or the awesome mountain playground. We didn't make it to TopGolf quite as often as I thought we would but that's okay, it was still worth it. Overall I think we did well with how we spent our money and time exploring.

All this doesn't say how we handled afternoons and the hottest parts of the day. The kids certainly got to watch more TV than usual in the summer, but also they played a lot of games (King of Tokyo!). They learned croquet. The boys figured out how to ride bikes and did plenty of short spurts up and down the street, from one roundabout to another. They all had freezies nearly every day. I exclusively took showers at night, after getting sweaty and gross constantly.

We didn't, of course, only keep to ourselves, we got a lot of extended family time. My sister lives about 10 minutes from where we stayed and we saw them a lot. Most of all the kids demanded it, in a good way. Their three oldest are almost the same age as our three and the kids were inseparable. We did dinner at both houses, we did activities like TopGolf and Elevate, the oldest pair (eight years old) did a sports camp one week. I took more kids with some regularity and we got out and about. The whole group also got some time in the mountains at my parents big place up there, with a week of VBS, a parade for America's 250th and more. The most common activity here there and everywhere was Pokemon cards, looking, trading, playing. Our last hurrah was the one-time visit to Nightsplash waterpark, a fun but late night. My family will possibly never have so much time in such close proximity to my sister's and I embraced the chaos as much as I could. That aspect of leaving will be hard.

It's kind of crazy how quickly the second half of summer disappeared. In mid July my whole extended family did a week in Wisconsin, so yes almost everyone needed to fly up. Then my family did our annual trip to Alaska, this time living the RV life. We only had about two weeks in Arizona over the past month and it flew. At least at that point we knew what we wanted to do and took advantage. We fit in a weekend to Tucson. More family time. More In-N-Out. More of our favorite activities. Now that time is over and we're heading back.

In a way it's bittersweet. That's life. I'm more than ready to get back to what we know in Minnesota and stop living out of someone else's house, though I am a little worried about how this will affect our eldest, who really, really enjoys his cousin time. School and flag football and busyness should help. The biggest lesson of all may be that we can survive the Arizona heat, but I can't at all say we enjoyed it.