A sunny, warm evening with a welcome breeze at our departure time. For a few in our friendly group, this was a first-time-adventure to ride on the new Phoenix light rail system. To start the evening off, all of us met at the Montebello Station to board the 6:00 pm train for the 30-minute ride into downtown Phoenix. Our destination, Sam’s Café, located at the Arizona Center. For the ride downtown, there were a few other passengers sharing the cool comfort of our air-conditioned train car.
Instead of riding the train all the way to Chase Field at 3rd and Washington, we modified our plan and got off at Van Buren and 1st Ave. The walk to Sam’s Café was about the same distance from either train station. This routing change put us a little ahead of schedule resulting with our arrival at Sam’s Café earlier than originally planned.
All was well with the restaurant folks; the hostess greeted our early arrival favorably, our table was ready. She proceeded immediately to seat us.
When everyone was seated, salsa and chips along with menus were delivered promptly to our table. The chips served are a bit different from the usual corn chips offered at many other restaurants. At Sam’s, fresh chips of several different flavors, colors and textures are provided. The salsa is delicious too with just a bit of spice added to give it a proper Tex-Mex flavor.
Soon, drinks were delivered, our struggle with the menu choices were made and our dinner orders turned in. With that bit of business taken care of, out came all the vacation pictures from recent trips taken by Sandy and Dewey (trip to Alaska), Margaret and Keith (trip to New York City) and Gert and Jim (trip to Costa Rica). It wasn’t long and everyone was pouring over the many photos.
Just about the time everyone was really getting interested in looking at all the pictures and hearing all about the different trip experiences………our food was ready and dinner was served, it was time to eat.
After everyone had finished his or her meal, Stewart provided us with a brief synopsis of his engineering work background with Garrett (now Honeywell). Stewart traveled to a number of worldwide destinations fact finding and working to solve engine control system problems in support of customer needs. It was quite interesting to learn of a few of Stewart’s career experiences.
With dinner completed and upon leaving the restaurant, we paused outside briefly for a group picture. Pictured below is our dining group: left to right - Christopher, Dewey, Sandy, Tanna, Dorothy, Dave, Stewart, Margaret, Gert and Keith. Jim's picture is in the inset as he was the one taking the picture.
Once outside, we enjoyed wandering around the courtyard area in the Arizona Center followed by a leisurely stroll back to the train station. It wasn’t long until the next train came along. Contrary to our earlier experience however, the northbound train was nearly full. We managed though, to find space for our ride back to the Montebello Station.
At the end of our ride and as we parted company, we said our “good nights” to each other and so ended another “fun” outing, our rail and dinner excursion to downtown Phoenix had come to an end.
Be sure to join us on future ABSF events, new events are being planned now. An updated schedule of events will soon be posted on the web site. Click on “Coming Events” for a listing of planned activities.
Below is a selection of pictures taken during this evening eventClick on the thumbnail for a larger view
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