Terminals seem to be metasticising here. One lovely link after another. The newspaper during my visit proudly announced that a Sky Train would soon start service from downtown Phoenix to the airport. Cool.
I watched a television monitor in one of the gate areas as it scrolled local news. Egad. Because of Spring, "Rattlesnakes coming out of hibernation. Snake bite numbers increasing." I wasn't so eager to rush down to baggage. But when I did, retrieval was speedy.
The American flights brought me into a concourse that offered a steep escalator to baggage. The surrounding walls in that escalator passage were sandstone with striations like the desert outside. Suspended above the moving stairs was a vintage prop plane. Its cables came from a divine Crafstman, stylized skylight - assumedly referencing Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin that is one of Phoenix's attractions.
As for those snakes. Never saw any. No snakes on the plane. No snakes in the airport. I later asked a local who drove a shuttle about that scrolling news. He just laughed and told me that it wasn't like the snakes were waking up and coming after people. Fine. I settled back and enjoyed the rare sajuaro cactii in the airport's xeriscaping, still glad it was all outside in the heat while I was inside a sealed car.