Night Encounter of the Best Kind (P*S*C* #16)

When our friends, the Youngmans, told us they had gone to see the Chihuly glassworks at the Desert Botanical Garden at night to see the glassworks all lit up, we knew we had to go back! Being the thrifty folks we are, we used our admission tickets to go to the DBG first thing when it opened, left when it got hot outside (plus we had to get back to work on our project), and then we came back for the last hour the gardens were open. One word: magical!

These pieces can be seen at the entrance to the gardens.

Doesn't this look like fireworks? This piece is the same size as a real tree!

But the one piece that all the garden-goers seemed to be flocking to at night was the Saffron Tower. This piece is about the height of a two-story building and is a wonder to behold in person...by picture you just can't get same scope.

The glow is coming from the tower...doesn't it have the feel like aliens are coming and the glow is from the spacecraft?

Thoughts went through my head as I gathered with the crowd around the tower: This looks like my high school bonfire! Is this what the burning bush in the Bible looked like? Has E.T phoned home and they're coming to get him? It was oddly, wonderfully weird. So much so that people were taking pictures with flash regularity for complete strangers. A community was being born of the folks surrounding the Chihuly Saffron Tower. World peace was possible.

This was our last night to be spent in Arizona. It was memorable. Certainly magical. And it really helped us to balance a difficult trip with a good experience following many challenges.