Ah, Arizona! The last contiguous state to be admitted into the Union (in 1912), birthplace of mavericks (Goldwater, McCain), and the self-proclaimed bastion of freedom on the western frontier. The libertarian streak mixes with an undercurrent of racism (cf. Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer) -- it is small wonder that the first structure we came upon as we exited the airport was the immigration office. The wide open spaces of the desert land has thrown up milquetoast environmentalists such as Bruce Babbitt, and the Udall brothers (Mo and Stewart), some hard-to-classify Supreme Court justices (Rehnquist, O'Connor), and the occassional oddball politician (Napolitano).

We arrived eager with anticipation. To see the arid deserts? Of course. To sample the scientific ambience (Lowell, NAU)? Unquestionably. To bask in the natural beauty created by the tectonic and volcanic activity of hundreds of millions of years? Indubitably. The only question -- could we drink this all in and do justice to the bookends of the alphabet?

We arrived in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Sunday, December 21^st. As we drove away from the airport, we saw the immigration offices.

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is the pièce de résistance of Arizona. How it formed is still a mystery -- the simplistic DUDE theory claims that the canyon began with Deposition of sediments atop a sea that separated the North American continent. (Plenty of sea shells to be found in those top layers, they say.) Later, tectonic forces caused the entire Colorado Plateau to Uplift high above sea level in one uniform chunk. (This development is rare, puzzling, and as yet unexplained.) Then five million years ago the Colorado River, because of its high elevation, succeeded in Downcutting a mile-deep gorge through the layers of rock. Time passed, and slowly wind and water Erosion slowly withered the rock away on either side of the river.

A simple view of the layers of the plateau are shown in the figure on the right (note that this is from a creation science website. Make of that what you will.)

On Monday, we took a guided tour of the Grand Canyon.

Sedona and Lowell Observatory

On Tuesday, we went to Sedona, which is (apparently)

"... widely considered one of the major power centers on earth, and is listed right up there along with the pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge, and Easter Island. The major features there include Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, Boynton Canyon, and Secret Canyon. Bell rock is notable for the belief that it is a portal to other dimensions, and anomalous electrical readings have indeed been scientifically recorded there. The fact that there are four purported vortexes all in close vicinity to each other likely magnifies the entire paranormal phenomena and experience."

A collection of the energy vortexes (apparently they are not vortices) is shown here on the right.

Sedona seems to be a major center for New Age types. In 2012, a lawyer named Peter Gersten planned to jump off Bell Rock into a higher-dimensional portal which would open up at 11:11 on 21^st December, 2012 (see his website for all the details). Anyway, apparently at the last minute he decided that the world had gotten corrupted and the portal would not open.

In the evening, we went to Lowell Observatory [note]. The observatory was founded by Percival Lowell, in equal parts a far-sighted mathematician/astronomer and a nutjob who spent most of his life trying to prove that Martians existed. The observatory is, of course, famous for the discovery of Pluto. This turned out to be a fluke, because the calculations on which the discovery was made turned out to be wrong. Nevertheless, the observatory is terrific and has done a lot of good work.

As an additional factoid (and to outdo the volume of writing on the College Tour page as ordered by her ), it should be noted that Percival Lowell belonged to the Lowell family of Boston, which along with the Cabots constituted the Boston Brahmins. The memorable quatrain immortalizes the two families,

"And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God."

The Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest took up all of Wednesday. First was around the Rainbow Forest Visitor center, where we saw a huge number of petrified rocks all over the place.

At this point we should mention that we stopped by the Harvey store and picked up a bunch of tchotchkes. This included a petrified rock, some agate (and petrified rock) coasters, etc. What we did not know until later is the origin of the store and the entrepreneur ( Fred Harvey) who started it. He is more famous for the pioneering chain of Harvey House restaurants which had waitresses called Harvey Girls.

For some reason this was a big enough deal that a novel was written about these waitresses, and furthermore this was later made into the 1946 MGM musical starring Judy Garland (and Angela Lansbury) which won an Oscar for best song ("On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, if you must know).

As yetanudder space-filler plus trivia -- Johnny Mercer also won Oscars for "Moon River" (Breakfast at Tiffany's) and "Days of Wine and Roses", both with Henry Mancini.

Next stop was the Blue Mesa area.

We then went to the petroglyph area. Drawings by the Hopi Indians around 1000 A.D. Not very impressive (some experts have called them "smiley faces").

Finally, the Painted Desert.

Bell Rock & Amitabha Stupa

Back to Sedona on Thursday (Christmas).

And then on to Amitabha Stupa.

Musical Instruments Museum

Finally, the MIM in Phoenix.

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