random reflections on the trip
* I think this is the first time we've taken a major trip and actually met up with everyone who said they wanted to meet us, and had a good time to boot. It was pleasantly surprising, given some of the flakiness or drama we've experienced in past trips.
* There doesn't seem to be an accent in mainstream Arizona. Like Orlando, I wonder if this is because there's so much tourism and immigration that dialects get mixed. The one distinct accent I did hear was among the Navajo and other natives near the canyon, who had this way of kind of stretching out words in a raspy voice. It sounded very different than the native accents up here.
* There's a definite slowness and easygoingness about Arizonans. This was especially evident in stores, where the clerks seemed so slow ringing in everything and there was always a line.
* Hell is other tourists.
* I had always pictured the Grand Canyon as being desert, big abrupt drop, and more desert. In actuality, there were pine forests leading right up to the edge. And the walls of the canyon were more like inclines or steep slopes than sheer cliffs, at least in the part we visited.
* There are so many landscapes in Arizona. You get these sense that whatever one you are currently in goes on forever and infinitely. And yet a half hour drive north or south can reveal abrupt changes in topography and environment.
* In the north, everything in the state seems very isolated. A tiny house or gas station here or there, vast amounts of terrain, and another tiny house. I wonder what it must be like to live there, and have so little contact?
* I've been fascinated by cacti ever since doing a school project on them in grade 5. Seeing wild Saguaros has been a high point in my life. Walking in the desert was like seeing pictures from a biology schoolbook come true.
* I'm not a religious person. But I can understand how several of the worlds major religions had their origins in deserts. I felt a kind of a vastness and loneliness and feeling of insignificance when we walked on some of the desert trails. But it was beautiful.
* Dry air and heat is good for the lungs. All of my normal, somewhat unpredictable, sniffles and allergies and sinusey things were mostly absent down there.
* There doesn't seem to be an accent in mainstream Arizona. Like Orlando, I wonder if this is because there's so much tourism and immigration that dialects get mixed. The one distinct accent I did hear was among the Navajo and other natives near the canyon, who had this way of kind of stretching out words in a raspy voice. It sounded very different than the native accents up here.
* There's a definite slowness and easygoingness about Arizonans. This was especially evident in stores, where the clerks seemed so slow ringing in everything and there was always a line.
* Hell is other tourists.
* I had always pictured the Grand Canyon as being desert, big abrupt drop, and more desert. In actuality, there were pine forests leading right up to the edge. And the walls of the canyon were more like inclines or steep slopes than sheer cliffs, at least in the part we visited.
* There are so many landscapes in Arizona. You get these sense that whatever one you are currently in goes on forever and infinitely. And yet a half hour drive north or south can reveal abrupt changes in topography and environment.
* In the north, everything in the state seems very isolated. A tiny house or gas station here or there, vast amounts of terrain, and another tiny house. I wonder what it must be like to live there, and have so little contact?
* I've been fascinated by cacti ever since doing a school project on them in grade 5. Seeing wild Saguaros has been a high point in my life. Walking in the desert was like seeing pictures from a biology schoolbook come true.
* I'm not a religious person. But I can understand how several of the worlds major religions had their origins in deserts. I felt a kind of a vastness and loneliness and feeling of insignificance when we walked on some of the desert trails. But it was beautiful.
* Dry air and heat is good for the lungs. All of my normal, somewhat unpredictable, sniffles and allergies and sinusey things were mostly absent down there.