Arizona: Check

I’ve visited the US probably more than 30 times since my first trip at 17, when my cousin asked me to be her escort to her Senior Ball.  It was held at the Ballroom of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco’s Union Square, and was my very first formal tuxedo event, which explains why I can never forget it.  My succeeding trips were made possible by my airline and hotel affiliations, which would sometimes bring me here in the US as often as three times a year, for business meetings, some of which were in the dead of winter! 

On each visit, I make it a point to do a side-trip to a city or town that I haven’t been to, to learn as much of the country as I can.  Yet, in spite of the many times I’ve been here, there are still many places I haven’t crossed out of my Bucket List.  But this year’s itinerary got me very excited as it gave me the opportunity to finally check Arizona off my Bucket List.

As part of our university’s required On-The-Job Training Program for graduating students, we deployed this year 350 of them, at various resorts, hotels and restaurants all over the US mainland.  A good number are at some establishments in the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona.  Part of my job is to check on these students’ workplace, their housing, relationship with colleagues, and get feedback from their Department Heads, thus my visit.

Arizona is best known for its sunny weather almost the entire year, and its claim-to-fame is its being home to the Grand Canyon and the Meteor Crater.  It is also where one finds an abundance of saguaros, those tall and sturdy cacti that we see in Western movies.  Phoenix, the capital, is also the biggest city.  Just like most other cities in the US, it has its share of skyscrapers and is bustling with activity during the day. 

But, there is one big difference at night—by 9PM, the city’s streets are deserted.  In fact, while driving to my hotel following my evening arrival, I was completely surprised that there were no other cars on the streets.  My two nephews, residents of Phoenix, who picked me up from the airport, affirmed my observation.  They told me that people are usually home by 9PM.  Restaurants, bars and entertainment venues close early as they don’t get any business after that time, except on weekends.  Goodness gracious, I don’t think I’ll survive in a city that starts to sleep at a time when I am still wide awake and raring to go!

But that didn’t really bother me because the purpose of my visit is to see how my students in the Grand Canyon are doing, a task scheduled for the day after my arrival. After dinner with my nephews and a restful overnight sleep in my cozy hotel suite, I was off to the Grand Canyon, a four-hour drive from the capital.

The Grand Canyon National Park is one of the first National Parks in the US, thanks to the efforts of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who liked visiting the area to enjoy the scenery and to hunt for mountain lions.  This very colorful gorge, carved by the Colorado River cutting a channel through it for millions of years, is 450 kilometers long, 1.6 kilometers deep and its width varies from six to 29 kilometers. The beautiful scenery exposes millions of years of the earth’s history, as can be vividly seen in the colorful layers of sediment on the rocks framing the canyon.

My students are at the Xanterra Resort in the South Rim of the Canyon.  This establishment is the only one allowed by the US National Park Service to provide “in-the-park lodging” at this tourist attraction.  It is also known to have set the standards for ecologically sound resorts that complement the environment.  Its name is derived from the combination of “Xanadu,” which Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his masterpiece, Kublai Khan, depicts as an idyllic paradise, and “terra,” Latin for earth. Thus, the name means a “beautiful place on earth.”

In between accomplishing my task of checking on my students and meeting with their job supervisors, I made sure I had the time to marvel at the breathtaking spectacle that the Grand Canyon is. It was easy to do because the resort runs along the South Rim of this massive “wonder,” so I found myself hopping from one vantage point to another, awed by the poetry of colors as far as my eyes can see, painted by nature over the millions of years it took to form this breathtaking spectacle.  I couldn’t have enough of the Grand Canyon.  I just wanted to sit there and watch the vast expanse of pastel hues that change in intensity throughout the day.  It was magical and truly mesmerizing!

Between checking on my students and gawking at the Grand Canyon, I no longer had the time to visit the other geological phenomenon that Arizona has—the Meteor Crater, especially because it is about 3 hours from where Xanterra is.  This tourist attraction is also known as the Barringer Crater, after Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer and businessman, who first proved that this giant-sized concavity on the earth’s surface was caused by a meteor’s impact.  It is 1930 kilometers in diameter and 209 kilometers deep.

I would have wanted to see more of Arizona’s geological “wonders” but Time was against me.  Nevertheless, I’m glad this trip gave me the chance to visit the most popular of them all.  I can now check it off my Bucket List and move on to discover other horizons I haven’t been to.  With 50 states comprising this country, you can bet there are many more interesting sights to marvel at.

YOUR MONDAY CHUCKLE 😀

A man in Hell asked the Devil:  “May I make a call to my Wife?”  He was allowed to call his Wife on earth.  Realizing the distance traversed by the call, after talking to his Wife, he asked the Devil how much he had to pay for the call. The Devil answered, “Nothing. Hell to “hell” is FREE.

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