Fountain Hills, Arizona

Here are the rest of the pictures, plus some, that I promised to everyone who participated in my latest "What In The World Is It?" game.

My daughter and I spent the day together down in Scottsdale while she was getting her braces off and afterward we spent some time at the fountain in Fountain Hills. When we come up over the mountains from Payson to Phoenix, my favorite site is the fountain. You can see it for miles when it runs for 15 minutes each hour. Every once in a while I like to take the drive into the town of Fountain Hills to see the fountain up close.

Marie (my daughter) and I got to Fountain Hills Park late in the day and it was pretty hot. It was well over 100 degrees but I really wanted to get shots of the fountain.

I don't know the area real well so we drove around the park until we got to a parking lot that was fairly close to the water so we didn't have to walk too far away from the vehicle. Figures, we picked probably the only spot in the park that had only one tree for shade. Oh well, plenty of shade for the two of us.

We still had about 30 minutes or so to wait before the fountain would go off again, so we spent our time looking around at all the cool buildings and the birds.

These guys must be really hot, I know I was.

There were all kinds of ducks and birds that I'm going to have to look up in my bird book later.

We had one duck walk pretty close to us. He would clean himself a little then walk a little closer, then stop to clean himself, then walk a little closer. He never would come real close though.

These birds weren't too happy that we were taking up their shady spot but I wasn't about to give it up. There are a lot more shade trees on the other side of the park for them.

These birds found a little bit of shade under this pole thing. The one bird seems to be looking at it saying "What in the world is it?". Ha! My thoughts exactly. Gives me an idea!!!

Marie and I were enjoying all the sights and sounds of the park when we looked to our left and saw a huge puff of smoke blow up. Oh wow! There were some people that were on cell phones to the fire department and they went running over so we didn't automatically jump up. We just kind of kept an eye out in case we were needed. I knew what was over there and I knew that it was brush that had caught fire but the area was pretty cleaned up so it wasn't going to burn very much. Kind of weird though. We come down from the forest to the city and we see a forest fire! Ha! The smoke died down so we continued to watch for the fountain to start up.

About 5 minutes later the fountain started up. It started slowly then pretty soon it was way up there in the sky. So cool! This is what we can see for miles around!

Oh yeah, after the fountain had run for it's 15 minutes, the fire department finally showed up to put out the forest fire! Wow, that was quick! LOL.