Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Arizona Rocks!






Yesterday, we said goodbye to New Mexico and started heading west again. It’s hard to believe we only have about two weeks left of our trip and that this time next week we’ll be in Disneyland.

When we were in Tombstone last week, we shared a table at Big Nose Kate’s with a friendly retired couple from Canada (there’s lots of retired Canadians around here as you can imagine). They told us that we had to check out Chiricahua National Monument, just south of Wilcox.

Since we were in the area yesterday, we took a detour to see what they were talking about. Chiricahua (pronounced something like “cheery-cow-wa”) is full of rock formations that were deposited by volcanoes and then shaped by glaciers and wind over millions of years.

We’ve seen a lot of rock formations on our trip, but none like these. The park is full of giant, majestic towers of rocky towers that look like crude totem poles. Giant boulders rest precariously atop other boulders and look like they could teeter over at any moment (we tried, they don’t budge). On our hike, we kept pausing to drop our jaws in awe at the scene in front of us: hundreds of rocky spires reaching up to the blue sky with the bright sun melting the white snowy patches (yes, we went towards snow again…sigh…).

After our hike, we camped at the base of the park in a pristine campground with old trees and a running creek. It was a great ending to a great day.

It’s been really interesting traveling during the Olympics. Everywhere we go, including on our hike yesterday, we get stopped by people congratulating us on the Olympics, and especially on the hockey game. The sense of goodwill and respect is really heartwarming. We’ve witnessed how the Games have really raised Canada’s international profile in way that can’t really be described in dollars and cents. And I think the Olympics have united Canadians in reaffirming that yes, we have a pretty awesome country—and that we can kick some serious butt.

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