Roberta - Canyon Bound

It's been two days and we still haven't reached our intentional destination, the face of Arizona, the famed Grand Canyon. However, we are finally on the road as I type, headed in that direction.

I am not at all dismissing the past couple of days we've spent in Arizona; I've actually quite enjoyed them. When we first reached Phoenix, we spent the afternoon with the Gullens in Scottsdale, who fixed us a wonderful lunch and let us rest our feet a while. As we moved on, we ended up in Wickenburg for the night. Once known as the dude ranch capital of the West, Wickenburg has a few neat old building dating back to the 1800's and a decent Best Western. Anita's Cocina is not a bad place for breakfast either.

From there, we drove up to Prescott this morning, reached it by noon, and ordered the first burgers of the day at Kendall's Famous Burgers and Ice Cream (a cute little old fashioned diner place). Then we went to check out the Southwest Indian Arts Festival and hunted for turquoise jewelry (the one goal my mother has for this trip is to find a size 9 ring with a small turquoise stone ~ unfortunately none of the 10 jewelers at the festival had such a thing). Thirty minutes later we drove about 5 miles north out to the Granite Dells, a place Nathan would describe as playground heaven. It's a large area filled with massive granite boulders embedded in the ground and stacked upon each other making for a fantastic climbing, running, and jumping experience. There is a lovely lake encircled by these rocks and we played around with my dad's snazzy new camera and took some great pictures.

Now, we're out on the road. There is desert out in every direction until it suddenly juts up into phenomenal, sharp-peaked mountains. Amazingly, waaay out in the distance, there are a couple mountains visible with snow-capped peaks. It's quite a stark contrast.

For a Georgia girl, the scenery here is quite an attraction. Its dryness and shadelessness is drastically different from the humidity and greeness of the South. Every time I see a Saguero cactus, I feel giddy inside because I've only seen them in pictures before and they are so much more bizarre in real life. Right now, I can see maybe 40 or 50 miles out in front of me because the land is so flat and the road is so straight in comparison to the winding city streets of Atlanta. It's so open here that I don't feel confined by anything but the car, and we're only about 50 miles from the Grand Canyon, so I'll be free of that soon enough. As with the Saguero, I've only seen the Canyon in pictures and movies before, and I'm sure, as with the Saguero, that those representations won't come close in comparison with the overwhelming grandeur of the real thing.