This year, I think fondly of Arizona as I reminisce about the first visit I made to the Grand Canyon State a few months while traveling to southern California, which all began ar 11:10 PM MDT as I entered Arizona near Lupton. It was a moment I marked by dashing off a quick e-mail to my aunt who lives in Tucson.
I included a short visit to Arizona on my way to California to get the chance to soak in the state at what is truly a national and natural treasure, the Grand Canyon. Notably, February 26 is the anniversary of the day the Grand Canyon was established as a national park.
Most of my time traveling onboard the Southwest Chief through Arizona was in nighttime hours. But I did get glimpses of two different cities, Winslow in the east and Kingman in the west.
The station at Winslow is located in a historic Harvey House Hotel, La Posada Inn, that was refurbished to serve guests. It's truly an example of Southwest architecture.
The one natural aspect that stands out about Arizona is its dry environment. For months in the summer and its flanks, that means intense dry heat in the central and southern portions of the state. The northern parts are cooler because of the higher elevations, including Flagstaff.
Based on the few hours I was out and about in Flagstaff itself, I could see that it is a bustling city and caters to its position as a gateway to the great stretches of nature in northern Arizona, with Coconino National Forest surrounding the city. Flagstaff has a great variety of wonderful local businesses, and a historic flair, too, in its downtown area by the Amtrak station. Its main railroad corridor is busy, with lots of freight trains rumbling along constantly. The railroad tracks parallel Historic US Route 66, which adds another delightful dimension to the city's vibrant sense of culture.
Recognizing the journey is as much a part of the experience as the destination, I enjoyed the ride with my tour group to the Grand Canyon along US Route 180. Our wonderful guide, Sheldon, had plenty of commentary about the landscape we passed through. He noted how the vegetation changed with elevation, as we passed through swaths of forest, and then changed elevation and entered treelessness with more shrub-like vegetation. We stopped at one point to view Humphrey's Peak, the highest point of elevation in Arizona, nestled in the San Francisco Peaks.
All of that scenic landscape got us primed for visiting the Grand Canyon. My reaction to beholding this vast wonder was truly felt inside of me. It's so indescribably awesome, it just is. That's why I feel words can't do it justice in attempting to describe a landscape that has so much in it, with varieties of rock and climate zones. It's incredible to think of the natural forces that shaped such a place. It has rightly been a heavily-visited site for years. But even before that, indigenous peoples called it home, and their presence is marked by a specially created space near the Mather Point Overlook.
Visiting the Grand Canyon was a chance to see the Colorado River at one of its famed spots, which makes me think back to when I visited it in another national park, Rocky Mountain, near its headwaters, where I had the chance to wade across its width. And I would see the Colorado River again in the dark of the midnight hour when I crossed in and out of that "golden gate" just south of Needles, CA.
Sheldon really knows the canyon well, and put his knowledge to good use so that we could take in so many different views and appreciate it at an in-depth level, with plenty of commentary as we made our way around.
His commentary even continued on the way back to Flagstaff, heading straight south on Arizona Route 64 to Williams and then east, speaking about the I-40 corridor and Historic US Route 66.
On my way back to Chicgoland days later, the train traveled through Arizona in mostly nighttime hours. But east of Winslow, I had the opportunity to watch the sunrise over the eastern Arizona desert. The train even traveled through part of Petrified Forest National Park, with its varied landscape of large rock formations and dry ground filled with scrub-like vegetation. That landscape kept rolling along as we entered New Mexico just east of Lupton.
The arid environment of Arizona has profound beauty that only a desert landscape can bring forth. Out in the wide open stretches of desert, there is so much to behold. I certainly had a lot to appreciate passing through Arizona and during my stay there, and I look forward to visiting more in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment