On Saturday, June 7, 2025, I made the long drive up to the Cave Creek, AZ area to go hiking on the Go John Trail at Cave Creek Regional Park.
Like previous hiking trips, I took A LOT of photos!!!
I also had an encounter with wildlife on my hike.
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| Park Map of Cave Creek Regional Park |
After hiking two times at White Tanks Preservation Park near Surprise, AZ, I started thinking about other areas of Maricopa County that I haven't visited.
After recently watching a locally produced TV show called "Trail Mix'd" on the Phoenix, AZ PBS affiliate about the Tom's Thumb Trail, I thought that I would make the long drive from to Scottsdale, AZ from Sun City-Peoria, AZ to visit the trailhead.
This will be a post about my visit to the trailhead for Tom's Thumb Trail in the McDowell-Sonora Wilderness Preserve in Scottsdale, AZ.
After visiting the Tom's Thumb trailhead, I also visited Cave Creek, AZ.
As always, more to follow.
For two Saturdays in May 2025, I went hiking at White Tanks Preservation Park near Surprise, AZ.
I made two attempts at hiking the Mesquite Trail.
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| Park Map of White Tank Mountain Regional Park |
My original intent for this post was to be about attending the Opening Day of the 2024 Cactus League season at the Peoria Sports Complex in Peoria, AZ. The game was played between the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday, February 22, 2024.
I will have to spend some time on planning out this and all subsequent posts about the Cactus League games that I attended.
Meanwhile, you can read my previous post about the Cactus League at the following link. Think of that post as more of an introduction about the Cactus League.
In my previous post about the Cactus League, I created a map depicting the locations of the various Cactus League stadiums to be found throughout Maricopa County, AZ. Actually, I'm quite proud of how both the map and table I created for that particular post turned out. Since I currently live in the Sun City-Peoria, AZ area, the closest Cactus League stadium to me is the Peoria Sports Complex.
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| Map of the Peoria Sports Complex |
In no particular order, here is an info dump about the Peoria Sports Complex. (Note: I have wracked my brain over the past several weeks trying to come up with a way to structure and organize all of this information. I can't seem to figure out a way to do either. For now, it is what it is.)
As I mentioned in my previous post about the Cactus League in Arizona, the San Diego Padres of the National League and the Seattle Mariners of the American League are the two main joint tenants of the Peoria Sports Complex. Based upon my research, both teams have an agreement with the City of Peoria, AZ to use the Peoria Sports Complex for Spring Training games until the year 2034. As a result, if you a fan of either team or you live in the Sun City/Peoria/Glendale, AZ area, you can relax.
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| San Diego Padres Team Logo |
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| Seattle Mariners Team Logo |
The Peoria Sports Complex is the main venue for Spring Training games for Major League Baseball in Peoria, AZ. While the Padres and the Mariners share the use of the stadium for games, including playing each other, each team has their own separate administrative offices, training facilities, practice fields, and clubhouses at the Peoria Sports Complex. In fact, they even have their own separate parking lots for the public to use.
In addition to the Padres and the Mariners, there are other tenants of the Peoria Sports Complex. They include the Peoria Javelinas of the Arizona Fall League. Previous tenants have included the Peoria Saguaros (Note: The Peoria Saguaros are now known as the Surprise Saguaros.), the Sun City Solar Fox (Note: The Sun City Solar Fox are now known as the Mesa Solar Fox), and professional soccer team Phoenix Rising FC in the USL Championship. When the Phoenix Rising were playing at the Peoria Sports Complex, they were known as Arizona United SC.
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| Peoria Javelinas Team Logo |
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| Surprise Saguaros Team Logo |
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| Arizona United SC Team Logo |
Curiously, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters of Japanese Professional Baseball used the Peoria Sports Complex for Spring Training during the 2016 and 2017 seasons, while Shohei Ohtani was still with the team.
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| Nippon-Ham Fighters Team Logo |
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| Nippon-Ham Fighters participating in a practice game at Peoria Sports Complex. |
With Cactus League baseball games typically ending in late March, the City of Peoria does hold other events throughout the year at the Peoria Sports Complex in addition to sporting events. For additional information, I would recommend visiting the website for the Peoria Sports Complex itself.
Architecture firm Populous Holdings, Inc. designed the Peoria Sports Complex. The facility was formally opened on February 26, 1994. The complex cost a total of $32 million to build. The construction cost of the stadium itself was $7.7 million. The stadium at the Peoria Sports Complex seats a total of 11,333 spectators.
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| Map of the Baseball Stadium at the Peoria Sports Complex. |
The Peoria Sports Complex seats a total 12,518 spectators. I am not too sure if that number refers to the total number of seats available as spectators are allowed to sit on the grass along the outfield fence. According to the Peoria Sports Complex website, sitting on the grass is considered its own seating area separate from the main seating area. Just be aware of this distinction should you decide to order tickets for a game online at either the website for the Peoria Sports Complex or the website for Major League Baseball. Once you order your ticket(s) online, you will have to download the MLS app onto your cellphone to access your ticket(s) on game day.
Here is a further breakdown for seating at the Peoria Sports Complex:
The Peoria Sports Complex is located at 16101 N 83rd Ave, Peoria, AZ 85382. The stadium is close to boundary line Peoria shares with nearby Glendale, AZ. The Peoria Sports Complex is located in what is known as P83, which stands for Peoria and 83rd Ave. P83 is designed to be an entertainment area. P83 consists of numerous national chain restaurants, a 14-screen movie theatre, and several mid-budget hotels. The P83 area bleeds over to the Arrowhead Towne Center shopping area in Glendale. The boundaries for Peoria and Glendale in the P83 are definitely murky. It really is one of those situations where you could be standing in, say, Glendale, cross the street, and then you would be in Peoria without even realizing it.
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| Map of the Peoria Sports Complex Area and the P83 Entertainment District. |
For parking your car at the stadium, the main parking lot is right along North 83rd Ave. The parking lot is located south of the intersection between Bell Road and North 83rd Ave. The alternate lot for parking is located east of the stadium along West Paradise Lane. It's located just east of the intersection for North 83rd Ave and West Paradise Lane. The alternate parking lot is located right next to the practice fields used by the San Diego Padres.
For food and drink during Cactus League baseball games, the Peoria Sports Complex mostly serves your typical American baseball food. That is, you can get hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn, ice cream, and various kinds of candy. However, the food isn't all bland. The Padres Dog is what is known locally as a Sonoran Hot Dog. The Mariner Dog isn't exact chopped liver either. I have eaten both hot dogs. Of the two, I prefer the Padres Dog. Hands down. If you aren't in a hot dog mood, the City of Peoria also invites in local food vendors to sell a variety of food not sold at the three big concession stands. These food vendors are located near the third base area, the left field area, and the right field area. If that wasn't enough, there is even a sit-down restaurant along the third base side with a nice view of the field.
For beer connoisseurs like me, the City of Peoria has obviously put in a lot of thought and effort to appeal to you. There is a Samuel Adams beer garden located on the upper deck along the third base side. The beer garden primarily serves the Samuel Adams Cold Snap beer that is sold during the spring. Then, there are two additional beer gardens in the left and right field areas in the outfield. During the Cactus League games for 2025, there was a small beer garden for Pizza Port Brewing from San Diego, CA. The beer selection consists of a mixture of the large, national breweries and beer brewed here in Arizona. The beer selection is actually pretty good.
Haven't heard of the architecture firm Populous? Until I started writing this post, neither have I. It turns out that Populous have designed quite a few famous buildings in their corporate history. The architecture firm seems to have made a specialty of designing sports stadiums and concert arenas. As a former Baltimore area resident for six years, I did not know that Populous designed BOTH Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M and T Bank Stadium for the Baltimore Ravens. Due to the critical acclaim received from designing Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Populous also designed the new Yankee Stadium in New York City, Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.,, PETCO Park in San Diego, CA, and Oracle Park in San Francisco, CA, among various other completed sports stadiums. Recent projects of note designed by Populous include the ultra-modern Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London and the iconic Sphere performance venue in Las Vegas, NV.
Incidentally, Populous has designed other Cactus League stadiums in Maricopa County.
UPDATE #1: For whatever reason, I seem to have hit a bad case of writer's block for this post. I will have to re-read and decide on how to repair this post.
UPDATE #2: I am not happy with how this post is turning out. Too much stream-of-thought and not enough planning. There should be a bulleted list in the post. The section about the Populous architecture firm should include a table. Oh, well. It's back to the drawing board.
UPDATE #3: This morning, I sat down at my desk and brainstormed some ideas on how to redesign and restructure this post. I think I have found a way forward. Let's see how I can save this post.
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| Brainstorming on how to rewrite this post. |
I have been so busy with other things that I completely forgot to make any new posts to my blog for the month of March 2025.
Making new posts here on my blog is always at the back of my mind.
Plus, blogging is something that I really enjoy doing.
As I have discovered as I restarted blogging in the past year or so, to do the kind of in-depth blogging that I want to do here at Blogger, it would require an enormous amount of time and dedication.
Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in a day.
Like I wrote earlier, I am quite busy. Probably too busy.
Here is a partial list of what I have been up to:
Also, during the month of March, I submitted an application to Google Ad-Sense to have advertisements placed throughout posts on my blog in order to generate an income stream. Unfortunately, after waiting for a couple of weeks, I received a notice that my application for Google Ad-Sense had been declined. The reason? Apparently, my blog doesn't meet the content requirements as set by Google Ad-Sense. I guess I have too many photos on my blog and not enough written content. Something like that. Oh, well. It was worth a shot. However, I do see a time when I leave Blogger for a different blogging platform. I am not too sure when it will happen, but it eventually will. For now, I am writing for myself and whomever else may be interested in what I write about.
Then there is the issue of how my collection of photos over at Google Photos is a complete mess. I really do need to sit down and spend some time getting my collection of photos organized into collections and adding key words to each photo. I should also inspect each photo and see if I need to make any enhancements. It can be a lengthy process.
In my Bullet Journal, I have a collection of future blog posts that always seems to get longer and longer.
For example, my post about the Cactus Baseball League in Arizona just kept getting longer and longer. As a result, I have decided to just go ahead and break that post into several shorter posts. I have A LOT of photos that I took last year and this year.
Before I tackle any new topics, I am also trying to finish several incomplete posts here on my blog, such as hiking the Shaw Butte Trail at North Mountain Preserve a second time as well as some posts about my bike rack and almost being the victim of a pig butchering scam.
Plus, I am rewatching the third movie I saw at the Cine Core movie theatre in Seoul on DVD. I am currently planning to write a lengthy post about that movie and how it relates to the Korean War. It's going to take A LOT of work. However, I know that I can do it.
Then, there is that list of blogging topics in my Bullet Journal that I constantly keep adding to.
Lastly, I should go over the HTML reference over at W3 Schools and see if there are additional ways that I can make my blog more sexy. I have learned quite a bit about how to use HTML, but there always seems to be more that I could learn about.
It will take some time, but I will get there.
It has been a while since I have written a post about studying for Cisco's CCNA IT certification.
To be honest, progress has been slow.
However, there are reasons for that.
Back in late December 2024, I had just completed the reading the following chapters in the CCNA 200-301 Official Cert Guide, Volume 1, Second Edition by Wendell Odom, CCIE No. 1624.
I also completed the exercises for Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 in Pearson Vue's CCNA Network Simulator training program. Furthermore, I even completed all of the exercises for Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 on Wendell Odom's CCNA Skills Blog. Do you need to use Pearson Vue's CCNA Network Simulator while studying for the CCNA IT certification? No, you don't. However, the CCNA Network Simulator does come with A LOT of guided practice exercises to get you experience using Cisco's IOS command-line interface for configuring switches and routers. In other words, using Pearson Vue's CCNA Network Simulator is completely optional. However, I believe that the money spent on Pearson Vue's CCNA Network Simulator is money well spent.
For CCNA study, Wendell Odom's CCNA Skills Blog is also entirely optional. The CCNA Skills Blog contains a lot of good resources for studying CCNA. Moreover, the CCNA Cert Skills Blog also features Wendell Odom's own CCNA practice exercises. While Pearson Vue's Network Simulator is a simulation, Wendell Odom's networking exercises require you to use Cisco's Packet Tracer program. Unlike the Network Simulator, Wendell Odom's networking exercises are entirely free. Plus, Cisco offers Packet Tracer as a free download from its website. You do have to create an account with Cisco to download Packet Tracer, however. It's irritating, but Packet Tracer is an invaluable program to have in your CCNA study.
Despite reading the first seven chapters in the textbook and completing all of the exercises, what was the problem?
Since I had recently earned four training badges from Cisco Networking Academy (see previous post here), I was probably feeling a little too high and mighty when it came to basic networking. Thus, when it came to reading Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 in the CCNA 200-301 Official Cert Guide, I just read through the chapters without taking any notes. I was about to start Chapter 8: Implementing Ethernet Virtual LANs, when I realized that I probably committed a mistake by not taking any notes while reading those four chapters.
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| Chapter 4 from the CCNA Official Cert Guide |
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| Chapter 5 from the CCNA Official Cert Guide |
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| Chapter 6 from the CCNA Official Cert Guide |
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| Chapter 7 from the CCNA Official Cert Guide |
Thus, I made the decision to RE-READ all four chapters and TAKE COPIOUS NOTES. After re-reading each individual chapter, I went back to the Pearson Vue Network Simulator and completed the exercises for each chapter. To be sure, it was A LOT of work and required a lot of extra time. However, it was a necessary review to complete.
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| Chapter 8 from the CCNA Official Cert Guide |
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| Pearson Vue Network Simulator Chapter 8 Exercises |
Now that I have completed reading and taking notes on Chapter 8 in the CCNA 200-301 Official Cert Guide, I have been slowly completing all of the Network Simulator exercises for Chapter 8. The Network Simulator contains three types of exercises for Chapter 8.
On Saturday, February 22, 2025, I drove my mom to downtown Phoenix, AZ, so she could attend QuiltCon 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center. Right off the bat, I will tell you that I don't spend nearly enough time in downtown Phoenix. In a region of never-ending suburbs, retirement communities, mushrooming towns and cities, and various tourist-oriented cities, downtown Phoenix just doesn't seem to get a whole lot of respect or love. To many people where I currently live in Maricopa County, downtown Phoenix might as well be a foreign place to visit. It might as well be terra incognita.
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| Poster for QuiltCon 2025 |
The easiest way for us to get to downtown Phoenix from the Sun City-Peoria, AZ area is to take Grand Avenue/Highway 60 right into downtown. Grand Avenue/Highway 60 runs right into Van Buren Avenue, one of the major east-west streets in downtown Phoenix. After driving a couple of miles east on Van Buren Avenue, I made a right turn and headed south on 2nd Street. Fortunately, there was a rather large parking garage near the Phoenix Convention Center. After parking the car and taking the elevator down to the ground floor, my mom and I exited the parking garage and started walking toward the Phoenix Convention Center along Monroe Street. As we walked, we passed by Huss Brewing Downtown Brewpub + TOGO tucked inside the Phoenix Convention Center. We saw people eating lunch outside on the patio and noticed that all of the doors were open. It made perfect sense as the weather was unusually warm for Phoenix in mid-February. The sky was blue without a single cloud. I made a mental note and continued walking.
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| View of 1st Street from parking garage. |
It turns out that the Phoenix Convention Center is actually a grouping of three buildings. QuiltCon 2025 was located on the third floor of the North Building on 3rd Street and Monroe Street. We didn't actually know which specific building to go to for the convention. Instead, we just followed all of the people that were walking to the North Building. After taking the elevator to the third floor of the North Building, we had our tickets scanned at the entrance and then walked into QuiltCon 2025.
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| Walking toward the Phoenix Convention Center. |
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| Skyway connecting the West and North Buildings. |
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| Exterior of the North Building. |
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| Facade of the North Building. |
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| Exterior of the West Building. |
My mom loves to quilt, so she was very much in her element by attending QuiltCon 2025. A couple of years ago, QuiltCon was supposed to be held at the Phoenix Convention Center. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, QuiltCon in Phoenix ended up getting canceled. Thus, my mom was especially eager to attend QuiltCon.
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| Inside the North Building of the Phoenix Convention Center |
I don't quilt, but there were some amazing quilts on display for QuiltCon 2025. While viewing all of the exhibits, it occurred to me that quilting is very similar to painting. Instead of using canvas and paint, you use various kinds of fabric in various colors. Plus, quilts don't have to square or rectangular. Plus, I was also shocked at all of the vendors present at QuiltCon 2025. There's some serious money to be made in various sewing machines, types of fabric, various patterns, and in-person instruction.
After spending most of the afternoon at QuiltCon 2025, I had exceeded my minimum step count for the day. As a result, I was starting to get hungry and thirsty. My mom and I had considered going back down to the ground floor of the North Building and getting something to eat from the food court. Instead, my mom and I decided to have a late lunch/early dinner at the Huss Brewing Downtown Brewpub. After taking the elevator back down to the ground floor, we then walked across 3rd Street and briefly walked through the lobby of the West Building of the Phoenix Convention Center. Since we couldn't find a direct route to Huss Brewing Downtown Brewpub through the West Building, we walked north on 2nd Street and then made a right on Monroe Street. We were right back where we had started, at the north side of the West Building.
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| Huss Brewing Company Brewpub at the Phoenix Convention Center. |
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| Huss Brewing Company Brewpub from across the street. |
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| Scottsdale Blonde. |
Kölsch is a pale, top-fermented, and filtered ale beer style originating from Cologne, Germany, known for its delicate balance of malt sweetness and hop bitterness, and a crisp, slightly dry finish.
The idea of Kölsch beer is that it is a light and refreshing beer that you would drink on a warm summer day in Cologne as you watch boats sail by on the Rhine River. However, if you like, you can drink Kölsch year-round. For more information about Kölsch beer, check out this article from CraftBeer.com.
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| Scottsdale Blonde from Huss Brewing. |
Slowly braised beef, sweet peppers, Italian spices with melted sharp provolone, and giardiniera on a crusty roll. Served with au jus dipping sauce.
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| "The Bear" Italian Beef Sandwich |
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| Copper State IPA from Huss Brewing. |
