Flying To Phoenix, Driving To Scottsdale

Judy went to a conference in Scottsdale, AZ so I tagged along to familiarize myself with the area and blog about my findings.

I recently changed to an Alaska Air Visa card that has the Washington State University logo (I went to college there way back when.) As part of their welcome package, they sent me a $50 companion fare coupon as well as two boardroom passes. We put those to use getting to Phoenix. With the companion fare coupon we saved about $250. We also availed ourselves of the Alaska Airlines boardroom passes, which worked out very nicely since our flight was delayed about an hour.

The flight itself was good. It takes about 3 hours to get from Seattle to Phoenix. Not much to report there.

Upon arrival, since we had only carry-ons, we headed directly to the rental car shuttle. That took us to a huge rental car area. There were several rental car companies represented there. We rented a car from Enterprise through our website and paid just a little more than if we would have used the shuttle from the resort ($30 per person each way). There isn't much within walking distance of the resort (in the summer heat especially) so with a rental car, we were able to enjoy more of what the area has to offer.

The metropolitan area is quite expansive and, for the first couple of days we managed to put about a hundred miles a day on the car just sight seeing, shopping, and dining. The driving was not too bad, though. Most of the time we were on the freeways and most of the places we went to were on arterials that ran about 45mph. The traffic has been fairly light (compared to Seattle) for the most part, but we have avoided rush hour.

There is public transportation (buses and light rail) in the metropolitan area, but our resort is outside the area served by it, so we weren't able to give it a try this trip.