My vacation to Arizona is finally over, but it was was definitely a great summer experience. This trip has really changed my perception on West Coast states and how different states on different sides of the country can be. There was plenty to do despite the long drives and three digit temperatures, so let me indulge y’all about good old Arizona - all in that weird day by day blogging style that some of you use and I don’t quite understand.

Day 1: Arrived to Phoenix Sky Harbor 3 hours back in time at 2pm. My family takes the rented Town & Country to our relatives here, who are apparently some form of distant cousin that nobody understands. Nothing much happens today as we’re tired from the plane, but the things I notice are the hot yet dry atmosphere, the trade-off of skyscrapers for huge city limits, and the great lack of trees and shrubs.

Instead, cacti were trees and shrubs. And grass.

Our relatives were terrific people and had such gracious manners. They also had a ton of animals including 4 dogs, 2 cats, 3 turtles, and a chicken.

I’m impressed with this state already.

Day 2: Our new GPS with the funny British accent guides us to the Grand Canyon via Sedona, which is the place where Arizona charges tourists to park at scenic views of the landscape, which is quite ridiculous as all the scenery is are rocks.

Giant, red, beaten up rocks = $$$

We also detour to a free historical site known as Montezuma’s Castle, which was essentially a fort built smack in a wall by Native Americans. Pretty nice.

Well, maybe not a fort

Then we continued driving non stop to make it just in time for a sunset tour of the one and only GRAND CANYON. Definitely worth the drive, the wonder was nothing but intense:

Hell yes.

Day 3: Didn’t actually do anything but drive the entire day. Apparently, instead of going to the Hoover Dam as in the original plan, we instead head for the Sequoia National Forest all the way in frikin’ California.

Nothing but this can tick a dude off.

Day 4: The forest itself! We lucked out visiting here as it was the one weekend of the year when the park was free. and on my parents’ anniversary too. It’s almost as if we had planned this all along.

It’s way up in the mountains, so for once I actually feel kind of cold, and the drive took a ton of random curves that made the trek seem longer than it should have been. At first it looked like a normal preserve with random trees and streams that were nothing but eye candy.

But when they say that the trees were gigantic, they meant they were balls of the walls, piercing the heavens type gigantic.

Can you say “tall”?

Day 5: Drove all the way back to the relatives in Phoenix. We went a different and apparently faster route according to the GPS (we figured out his name was Daniel). Pretty sweet as there was much more stuff to see. California isn’t as barren as I thought it was.

Evidently, this part of CA is populated by windmills.

Also, the Mojave Desert ladies and gentlemen:

Yeah for sunsets!

Day 6: We go in the opposite direction and head south for Old Tuscon, which is the place where the old Westerns like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was filmed. Lots of random things to do, though it was more like a run down theme park than a film studio at this point.

Sepia tone kinda helps

And finally, on Day 7 we just hang out at our relatives’ house until our plane ride. We didn’t want to do anything cause we got kind of tired of the state. It’s weird how that feeling of awe for a place can just fade so fast, but that just showed that the vacation was at its end. Though interestingly enough, something happened that never happens that day. It rained. Which is pretty rare an actually awesome in a desert like Arizona

Here be the clouds that brought forth a downpour…

Well, that was fun. Holla for comments and questions cause I must now prepare for college. As they saw in Arizona,…um…see ya.

Non-Sequitur Bonus: Having no razor on the week long trip has granted me a rather crazy muzzle. Should I get a mustache, goatee, or just shave it off?