BarkellWH -> Rambling Around Arizona (Oct. 13 2013 23:18:45)
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Marta and I escaped from the political deadlock and miasma of Washington to spend nearly three weeks in Arizona. Both of us have lived in Arizona (I was born and grew up here, and Marta left Brazil to study here on a scholarship), and we return from time to time. We began in Tucson, where we stayed in an area just north of the city named Oro Valley. A beautiful desert area with the Santa Catalina mountains as a backdrop. The whole area of Southern Arizona into Northern Mexico is known as the Sonoran Desert. It is the only maritime desert in the world, as it encompasses the Sea of Cortez, both on the mainland Mexico side and on the Baja side. The area around Tucson has interesting flora and fauna, and, of course, great Mexican food! And the Sonoran Desert in Mexico surrounding the Sea of Cortez has a stark, severe beauty, with the desert meeting the sea. We are now in flagstaff, in Northern Arizona at an elevation of 7,000 Ft. Today we visited one of the most interesting sites, the Meteor Crater, which is about 38 miles east of Flagstaff. The Meteor Crater in Arizona is the world's most perfectly defined impact crater, formed 50,000 years ago by the impact and explosion of a meteorite. This is the place where Apollo astronauts were trained from 1963 to 1970, as the crater bears a striking resemblance to craters found on the moon. It is also one of two Holy Grails for conspiracy theorists, as there are those who deny that the US ever landed men on the moon, claiming that it was all staged at the Meteor Crater training site itself in Arizona. (Note: the other Holy Grail is Area 51 in Nevada, where instead of testing highly secret aircraft like the U-2 and SR-71, conspiracy theorists believe the US Air Force is withholding information on UFOs and keeping the remains of captured estraterrestrial aliens in giant vats of formaldihyde. Four more days in Flagstaff exploring environs, and then on to spend a few days in the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Tempe area for more good Mexican food at my favorite restaurant--Rositas in Tempe--to which I keep returning after first discovering its delights 45 years ago. Cheers, Bill
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