Day 18 - Flagstaff, Arizona: "the Grand Canyon" (hrmm...)

Good evening!

No pictures today - I left the camera in the car and I didn't take any spectacular photos so no big loss. What, no spectacular photos from the Grand Canyon? I hear you say. Well, we'll get to that in a minute.

First I just have to say: I LOVE Arizona. At least I do now. We've been suffering with extreme temperatures for the last couple of weeks, and we thought Arizona was going to be the worst of the worst when it comes to heat. In part, that's true. When we drove through Phoenix today, we set a new heat record of 45C/112F and once again praised the lord for A/C.

Now, our road maps don't show differences in elevation above the sea level - in short, we don't know where the mountains are until we see them. Just after we left Phoenix, the road began climbing higher and higher. We saw trucks struggling along in the right hand lane, hazard lights on to warn others of their snail-like progress. We've seen mountains before, especially around the El Paso area, but then the road usually went through a pass and came out on the other side pretty quick. Here, we just kept climbing and climbing... We saw 2000, 3000, 4000 - all the way up to 7000 ft above sea level! That's over 2000 meters - the height of Kebnekajse for all you Swedes.

At that height, the ground leveled out onto a plateau of sorts, and the most amazing thing happened. All day we'd been driving through desert and mountainsides lined with dried up bushes, but now, a pine forest suddenly sprung out of the ground. There were fields of fresh, green grass! There were leafy trees here and there! But above all, the pine forest. Ah, the sweet smell of pine trees drifted in to soothe our heat blistered brains.

Here we are now in Flagstaff, 2000 meters above the sea and the night air is COOL. The surroundings are lush and green and overlooking the town is the highest peak in Arizona: Humphreys Peak at 3850 meters (12600 ft) which is snow clad in winter!

While we of course enjoy this temporary change to the climate immensely, the most amazing thing is the contrasts here in Arizona. From baking hot desert to cool pine forests in just a couple of hours is truly wondrous.

So, what about the Grand Canyon? Unfortunately, we had a taste of a crack that definitely deserves the name "Grand Canyon" tonight at the restaurant. Call it what you will - builders bum, bum cleavage, bad-baggy-pants-day... You know what I'm talking about. Our table had a front row seat for the worst case of ass-crack display we have ever seen in our combined lives. Between the sagging shorts and the shirt that had snagged on the chair, there was a full 10-15cm of crack on display. The poor guy was even sitting right at the end of a long corridor of tables, so that everyone in that part of the restaurant could see straight down the "ravine". It was bad enough for us to not break down into giggles, but I truly admire the serving staff who managed to pull off his entire meal without flinching. Admittedly, every single person who worked this evening found some excuse to go into our section, take one horrified look and hurry back into the kitchens. Our waiter even apologized for the less than pleasant sneak preview of the "Grand Canyon" :)

Enough poking fun at innocent people! Tomorrow we head off to see the real thing, hopefully at least twice as big!

Sayonara!

Day 17 - New Mexico, Arizona.

Greetings from Tucson, Arizona!

We seem to bring the weather with us wherever we go - we've probably seen more days with thunder than without. But here it's welcome; Arizona has been suffering from drought this summer. These thunderstorms seem to hit in the evenings here, rather than in the afternoon like in Florida.

We went to the cinema here in Tucson tonight to see Ice Age 3 (very funny - I enjoyed it more than the first one at least!) and when we came out, thunder was crackling all over the skies. Thunder in Sweden pales in comparison to what I've seen here. For one, the landscape is very flat and you can see the sky for miles and miles. Lightning usually forks off and lights up everything in that direction. I'm both scared and thrilled at the same time when the storms hit. It's the essence of nature: beautiful, powerful and frightening.

When we're in the car and I can't hold Mattias's hand, I hold on to a handle on the car door. It's like my comfort blanket :P

It's impossible to get good pictures of lightning, but we did see something pretty amazing earlier in the day...

Between Texas and Arizona lies New Mexico, and we decided to take a little detour to watch the White Sands National Monument. Some of you might be familiar with the White Sands Missile Range, where rocket and missile testing and launching goes on - it's a big stretch of desert, and in the middle of that lies the White Sands. I can't remember the exact story behind the geology, but this is basically an area rich in gypsum (gips). Whereas gypsum is normally watered down and carried out to sea with the rain, the White Sands lie in an enclosed basin with no outlets. When the rain water evaporates here, it leaves behind gypsum sand which forms itself into dunes with the wind.

It's a truly awesome place to visit, with miles of white sand dunes all around:


Here's Mattias looking like he's out in the Sahara somewhere:

A storm is brewing across the basin over the mountains:

So that was obviously the highlight of the day! Arizona has treated us to some new exciting cactus species, including the classical, stereotypical cactus - you know, the one with a couple of arms sticking out the sides :) No pictures of that yet though. Tomorrow we head up to Flagstaff, our base camp for Grand Canyon. I don't think we'll be able to see any of it tomorrow, but pictures should be up by the end of the weekend.

Until then!