Love affair right here in Carefree and Cave Creek

LOVE AFFAIR RIGHT HERE IN CAREFREE AND CAVE CREEK.

WHERE THE ROUGH WILD WEST AND THE REFINED LUXURIOUS USA FIND EACH OTHER.

Sometimes I don’t know why in the world I am still living in the middle of the Sonoran desert close to the small towns Carefree and Cave Creek.

Maybe the reason these areas intrigue me so much is that Carefree and Cave Creek have an exceptional mix of the old wild west and the luxury modern USA both seemingly living very well together.

Curiously enough the desert is also what you could call the American golfers dream. Here you find The Boulders golf resort with the El Pedregal center, The Tonto golf course and resort, Carefree Resort and their golf course and the largest of the surrounding subdivisions “Desert Mountain”. The last is an enclosed luxury area of eight thousand acres with large individual million dollar homes. On top of that five different golf courses and ten restaurants plus a tennis club with 3 hard courts 5 great clay courts and two beautiful grass courts that at any time can measure up to the grass tennis courts at Wimbledon.
The nature is kept beautifully. The restrictions around the homes are holding up the “natural” standards and thus also keeping the natural animal life intact. Coyotes and Bobcats are not unusual and the smaller animals are like taken out of a Walt Disney script – or I guess it is the other way around!
The signature golf courses with lots of grass are all designed differently by the famous golfer Jack Niclaus. The courses are with variating difficulty and the six clubhouses have all the facilities you can imagine.
When you are tired from getting in and out of the golf cart you have a large choice of restaurants: Everything from regular American food, Southwestern Cooking, Mexican spicy to Italian delicacy.
Everything you buy, eat and drink is added to your monthly account as all the facilities only are available to the people who life at Desert Mountain plus their guests.
This is only one of the many places here where you, undisturbed by the outside, can enjoy life fully.

Carefree is a close by very small town with a small beautiful park and a famous Sundial in the center. The park is surrounded by small local stores, restaurants, coffee shops and wine bars and the charming Spanish Village with an outside top roof bar and eating area. Of course I am not forgetting the new fire station and the even newer very charming electrical “gas lamps”. And the people of Carefree and Cave Cree are serviced well by “Basha” the closest supermarket in Carefree.

Cave Creek is like taken out of an old film script – at least to me-
Very old bars and roadhouses make you feel like you are right in the middle of an old cowboy film just waiting for Clint Eastwood to ride in.
In the morning I can have my latte at the aged Coffee Company and in the evening I can enjoy the rustic band at Harolds roadhouse and watch the cowboy hats jump up and down on the dancing floor, no conversation necessary or possible. Or I can go to some of the better restaurants in the area mostly influenced by the southwestern cooking and also more like the restaurants you find a lot of places in the USA except for Tonto’s Restaurant.

My only problem is that I like Mediterranean gourmet food and only one place makes authentic southern European food and that is the French restaurant Le Sans Souci where you can eat as if you were right on the French Riviera.

Another factor that to me make these small towns nice to live in is that wherever you go you always meet people you know. You can always enjoy a chat about anything and nothing. Having the larger town, in this case Phoenix, close by with a 45 min drive and theater, ballet, music, museums, large sports events etc. is only a plus.

Pia