St. Patrick’s Day in Gilbert

Day seven of my road trip, we were all still in Gilbert, Arizona. My brother Travis came up with a great idea to meet in a local park called Water Tower Plaza. There would be a live band and food trucks at the park, so we could have lunch with music there. We could sit on blankets on the grass and visit. He and my nephew would come, plus me and Tanner and his family.

We read ahead of time about Gilbert and learned that the town is very proud of its water tower, built in 1927 but now no longer in service. And the 10,000 pound granite Kugel ball that you can actually move.

We all arrived at exactly the same time and found parking easily. Travis had brought blankets and we were settled in on a nice patch of grass quickly. The band was great! In my opinion, much better than the band at Rustler’s Rooste the night before.

We were all hungry, and did not spot any food trucks. We couldn’t figure out why none came, as it was a perfect location, perfect weather, lunchtime, and tons of people. We waited.

Laurie and I volunteered to walk to a nearby restaurant and buy lunch and bring it back to everyone on the blankets. Bruce and Brandon came along with us. Sadly, the restaurant we chose took FOR EV VAR to make our burgers, and by the time we got back, the band was done playing and Travis and his son were packing up to go. He had another thing to get to and didn’t realize there would be a food truck shortage. We handed them their to-go containers and waved goodbye. Bummer. Tanner handed out cheap green St. Patrick’s Day beads to everyone, that had apparently been passed around while we were gone.

Then we walked over to the main street of Gilbert to explore a little of the town. It’s very cute and more interesting than most of the Phoenix metro area, with all its perfectly perfect Edward Scissorhands neighborhoods.

We found a place to have some refreshment and just hang out for a while. I left for the restroom and Tanner grabbed my camera and made a selfie.

We were full of food and sufficiently hydrated, and made our way back to the Airbnb house. There was another cool thing happening that evening: mini family reunion. Tanner and I had invited our cousin Dave from Tucson (2 hours drive south of us) to come say hi, and Thursday night was the night he could come. Then Dave told cousin Keith. Keith messaged me from Surprise, Arizona (1 hour west of us). I didn’t know he lived there! So we invited him. “Oh yes,” Tanner says, “Our other cousin Keith lives in Surprise also.” What?! I messaged the other Keith right away. “I thought you were in Colorado!” He explained that they had moved, and also that he had a prior plan and would not be able to come on short notice.

But we ended up with cousins Dave and Keith, and Keith’s wife. We were all meeting Keith for the first time. He has actively been trying to connect to our part of the family in the past few years and his move to Arizona, only months before our road trip, finally allowed it.

It was late when we said goodbye to everyone, but we all sort of began packing. It was our last night of a comfortable home base. We put in a last load of laundry, packed the dishwasher with every dish we could find, and started a load. Made a few rounds around the property, looking for items that belonged to us. It was going to be sad. But that was in the morning. For now, we were tired and we all went to bed.