Slumptember Staycation

I've said this before: September sucks in the desert. While the rest of the country is pulling out boots and cute fall fashions, we are still scorching in above 100 degree weather that started this year with the first 100 degree day on APRIL 2nd!!! Enough is enough already! We're tired of this crap. We've been on our summer vacations. Our kids have gone back to school. Public pools have all closed. The local waterparks have closed or are only open on the weekends (when some of us work.) So now what?

Well . . . I looked into swimming at our local YMCA. Since we don't have a membership, the daily rate would be $30 for my family of four, with the open swimming time sandwiched between their water aerobics classes. Then I started thinking . . . where else can we go to cool off? I thought of our Phoenix and Scottsdale resort meccas. The last time I tried a summer staycation here, it was a midweek summer day, and the resort was still packed with party-goers and little kids running everywhere peeing in the pools. The lazy river was like a slalom river dodging drunk drivers.

However, this being September, I thought I'd try it again. I found a $79 room, midweek at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs, the week after Labor Day. It included a private bedroom with King bed and a separate living room with sofa sleeper. It was perfect for my family of four. The resort has 8 different pools with the "Falls Water Village Pool" having a 138-foot waterslide. Here are the falls:

Our favorite pool was "Hidden Valley Pool" which was way up at the top of a cliff carved into the hillside with views of the Phoenix sunset in front of you as you swim. We had this pool entirely to ourselves the whole night. The whole resort was deserted. We brought dinner with us to eat off paper plates so it wouldn't take any time away from our pool time. We also brought breakfast the next morning in ultimate cheapskate fashion, and we made coffee and tea with their equipment in the room. So really . . . it was $79 + the tax . . . no additional costs like waterpark food.

 

To continue with the "free" theme, we went 20 minutes down the road to Cerreta Candy Company the next day for a FREE tour including FREE samples. Awesome family-owned place! Later, we went just a bit further down the road to Cabela's to tour their FREE "Canyon Country Wildlife Museum" and learn about some animals. Here, I learn the difference between horns and antlers:

It was the perfect fantastic finish to my Slumptember, as I had no idea the difference between horns and antlers (and prior to my September, I felt no need to know this fact.) (And it's only taken me the entire month to finish this post!) Thank God, October is around the corner :)