Adult Under Construction: Wedding and Wanderings

Although I was returning to the country of my birth, once I boarded the plane at Auckland airport, every place I saw in the next three weeks was new to me. My flights went through Sydney and Los Angeles on the way to Phoenix, where my brother was getting married. Although flying does not give a person a great sense of a place – part of the reason I prefer to avoid it whenever possible – I was surrounded by new opportunities for exploration despite the fact that I was “going home.” As far as the flights are concerned, I'll avoid the details and say it was a long but smooth journey, largely thanks to the fantastic in-flight entertainment offered by Qantas airlines. It also didn't hurt that I had an empty seat next to me for the 15-hour odyssey between Sydney and Los Angeles.

My individual travels have taken me around Western Europe, Scandinavia, and now New Zealand. As a child, my family travelled by car around large parts of North America, but the southwestern United States have always eluded me. As I flew into Phoenix, enjoying a brief flight after surviving the long haul from Sydney, I looked out the window to see a mountainous desert. The desert I had expected – the mountains were a surprise. Just as I might have on a family trip in days gone by, I asked my dad about Arizona's bumpy landscape. He replied that there are mountains everywhere in the West, and that it's almost unfair how much scenic beauty there is in this part of the country as compared to the East. (Dad's from Ohio, where bends in the road are a shock.)

I obviously wanted to spend time with my family while in Arizona, and fortunately they shared my interest in exploring this unique part of the country. After a successful wedding without major breakdowns and with plenty of happiness, my parents and I made the trip out of the sauna-hot Sonoran Desert up to the Grand Canyon. Along the way, the elevation increased by almost 6000 feet (1800 meters), taking me higher than the top of Avalanche Peak in Arthur's Pass. Needless to say, the landscape changed dramatically as we climbed.

Leaving Phoenix seemed to take longer than it should. My family is from the more densely settled eastern part of North America. From what I've heard about Los Angeles, Phoenix is not the most extreme example of urban sprawl – but from what I saw there, it can't be far off. We are also accustomed to cold winters, and only hear of Arizona as a place where people go to avoid them. So watching miles of hot, scrubby, saguaro-covered desert pass by the car windows was a tiring process. We had begun to wonder about the merits of scenic routes when the climb began in earnest. Route 89 climbs 2500 feet in four miles up Yarnell Hill. In my home state of Massachusetts, that's two-thirds of the elevation of the state's highest mountain. In Arizona, it's a bump. Our doubts about scenic routes had evaporated.

Once safely out of the heat, we took a lunch break in Prescott. While still very dry and dusty, Prescott has more trees and thus, more shade. We had already done more than half of the climb up to the elevation of the Grand Canyon, and although shorts and t-shirts were still comfortable in the sun, the wind could make things very chilly.

When we left Prescott, we climbed through the mountains to Jerome, a small mining town built onto a cliffside. In many ways, it reminded me of Cazorla,Spain – the streets were steep and always ended in hairpin turns. Indeed, the sign announcing Jerome Town Limits was on a hairpin itself, making it appear as though the town was somewhere in midair. We could only stay for long enough to take a few photos, as we had a dinner date with my aunt and uncle, who had gone up to Sedona after the wedding.

Almost every one of my family members who came to Arizona for the wedding took advantage of being there to do some extra travelling, which made for a lot of talk about places to visit. Even though we had talked about Sedona, I somehow failed to realize that it was home to Red Rock State Park. The drive into Sedona was one of the biggest surprises of the trip for me – I had been falling asleep in the front seat when I started noticing giant sandstone formations, which held my attention for as long as we were there. Although the town itself has built its economy on tourism, I can't blame them. I like going “off the beaten track” when it comes to travelling, but the Red Rocks are one very good reason why the beaten track goes where it does.

The variety of the natural landscape and climate had already impressed me more than I had imagined it would, and we hadn't even reached the Grand Canyon yet.