Everyone has a purpose

While Clay was starting his album promotion by posting this:

I was off in Arizona doing this:

1842 miles, 3 states (barely), and 2 countries (if you count walking across the Mexican border for 2 minutes). Why can't I have a normal vacation? Eh, this is fun too. Not that I had a choice! We three sisters and my mom spend this week together every year, and usually it involves a lot of wear and tear on some poor rental car.

The word for the week was VAST. Lots of different kinds of vast, of course, but wow. Big vistas everywhere.

Grand Canyon

Sedona

oops, that was last year...

Ahem. Sorry Judith, Karen made me do it. Why don't you believe me?

So we all had our purpose. Karen sat in front and navigated while I drove, and Judith sat in the back to keep Mom out of trouble. I'm not sure that was such a good pairing, since they're both a bit on the wild side, but we kept throwing tootsie pops back there to keep them quiet. I made good use of the brakes for all the quick cactus photo stops, and I only hit one curb, people! Shesh, you'd think I made a habit of it, as often as they brought it up. I can't help it if I saw a roadrunner and got corroboration (blows raspberries at Judith ;-).

I enjoyed Bisbee and the Queen copper mine, and the short side trip to Naco, Mexico was interesting, at least. The border fence just looked weird to me, and we saw the border patrol bring a few young Mexicans back into Mexico.

Sign heading into Arizona

We drove over the Hoover Dam on our way to spend a night in Vegas. We drove a different way back and went about 3 miles out of our way to touch California. There's a freakin' cattleguard on the border!

One day we took in the Biosphere 2, which is more interesting in retropect than I thought that day. I'm amazed my brain actually retained anything since all I could think of at the time was how hot and muggy it was inside. The 8 people who stayed in for two years grew their own food and didn't intend to allow anything in or out except a huge amount of electricity (which surprised and disappointed me). They did need oxygen pumped in once though; the microbes weren't doing their job. I would like to have seen it in its prime. Right now it looks like it's more or less dying, unless there's a large infusion of cash and enthusiasm.

We hit all the hot spots we wanted except, well, Phoenix itself. Mom's "Passport to Your National Parks" book got a lot of new stamps. At the rate she's going, she just may get them all stamped!

No National Parks next year, though. We're going to cover lots more miles and I won't even have to drive - we'll leave that to the Captain of the "Freedom of the Seas"!

Related Tags: Clay Aiken
Arizona
Family vacation
Biosphere