Ray & Becky move to Phoenix

In mid-July, my friends Ray and Becky Canatella made the move from hot-and-humid Louisianna to hot-and-dry Phoenix, Arizona. Ray asked for my help in the move and I obliged. He would drive one vehicle pulling a U-Haul and I would follow behind driving their car. It was a two-day drive and about 20 hours altogether, but it wasn’t too bad of a drive. I kind of enjoyed it. We stayed overnight in El Paso, TX and headed into the desert the next morning.

Personally, I like the desert. I especially liked driving through those ‘dust devils’. Some were huge… tornado sized! One in particular was right by the highway and just standing in one position as it spun dust up into the sky. Take a look at this video of a Dust Devil that swept through the Burning Man festival… complete with crazy hippies riding their bikes through it at 3:00:

We arrived to a HOT Phoenix and started unpacking. Lots of stuff! Ray hired two guys to off-load most of it. I was glad he hired them, because if it had been just the 3 of us (Ray, Becky, and I) we’d probably still be there unpacking right now.

On the first day we got to experience a Haboob – otherwise known as a dust storm. These type of storms only happen in the Sahara, Middle East, and Arizona, and the word ‘haboob’ is borrowed from the Arabic language simply means ‘wind’. Ray says multiple dust storms are ‘haboobies‘. It was kind of cool watching everything go dark in the middle of the day. It didn’t last very long, but just enough to say, “I’ve seen a haboob up close.” Check out this video on a huge haboob that ate Phoenix: USA Today – What is a Haboob?. Also check out these massive haboobies on the Weather Channel: Really Big Haboobs.

We took a break from moving and unpacking and enjoyed a restaurant, movie (Pacific Rim), and a visit to the Arizona Museum of Natural History. Then Thursday I hopped on a plane and jetted back to Houston where the temperature was actually cooler. Imagine that; going to Houston from Phoenix to get a break from the heat!