Fountain Hills' Fountain

I've been to Arizona many times. However, since I generally go to visit family, I never feel like I "get out" much.

One place I always get to, though, is Fountain Park, a pretty stretch of green grass and walking paths around a sizable lake with a fountain in the middle. Fountain Park is in the middle of Fountain Hills, a town northeast of Phoenix.

According to area tourism brochures, Fountain Hills is home to the tallest, year-round-operating fountain in the world.

This fountain shoots a 560-foot stream of water into the sky 12 times a day. It goes off every hour on the hour between 10 am and 9 pm.

At its peak, the spray of water is five times taller than the Washington Monument.

On St. Patrick's Day, they fill the fountain with green dye and it shoots an emerald spray into the air at noon. But I've never seen this. The one time I was here on St. Paddy's Day, it rained.

At any rate, the park is a nice place to take a dog for a walk, feed stale bread the hordes of ducks, play a game of frisbee golf or take young kids to play.

There's even a small row of shops on one end where you can find a couple of restaurants with outdoor seating, a coffee shop and wine bar with Friday and Saturday night entertainment. At all of these places, spots facing the fountain always fill up first.