The last time I was in Arizona I drove from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon with a stop at the Petrified Forrest somewhere in there. I was no older than 10 or 11 and my mom thought we should see the Country. By the time we got to the Grand Canyon, I looked down at the vast hole in the ground, turned to my mom and said “look, another rock”. We ended the journey with arms black and blue from playing the most intense “punch buggy” match ever, to distract us from the never ending nothingness.
This time, as Terrence and I crossed into the state of Arizona, I looked at the wide spaces and huge skies with awe and wonderment. We are city folk and were awed by the vast world before us. By the time we reached Texas, this had changed. As we followed the road up to Red Rock National Park, where Sedona is beautifully set, we couldn’t help but feel like we was driving on the moon, 6000 miles above sea level, the high plains of northern Arizona feel other worldly.
As a side note to our Arizona leg of the journey, we found Arizona to be as close you could find to what the Wild West must have felt like. Granted most of the movies about the Wild West are filmed there, nonetheless, you can truly get a sense for how the cowboys must have felt riding the range. Adding to this sense are the names Arizona town, rivers and basins. In addition to being “western” they appeared to be thoroughly literal: Quartzsite, Horse Thief Basin, Bloody Basin and Goodyear.
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