travel – Page 8 – Globitrotter

Travel magazines

Every time I travel I buy travelmagazines. Often I fall for the glossy ones with luxurious sparesorts on the front page. It looks so wonderful I can not help but buying one or two and dream away for a little while. But because they only write about resortswhere it would cost a small fortune to spend only a weekend I end uprather depressed instead of anxious to go on my next holiday. Every time. I knowthat the length of my holidays does not go together with these hotelsand when I think about it normally not what I like to do on myholidays either.

Recently, during a long lay over atLAX, it was time for a new purchase. This time I think I foundsomething better. A not so glossy front page with a rick shaw bikedriver from Cuba caught my eye. This magazine, Afar, focused more on activitieslike surfing and rock climbing rather than spa and picture perfectbeach resorts. I felt much better. All of a sudden I had an urge to find that little island in the Caribbean that was so hard to getto or go climbing in Cuba. It was refreshing that they focused more on what to do and experience than where to sleep, shop or drink exclusive drinks. These things usually fall into place anyway once you know where you want to go and what to do. I am more looking for inspiration and not a list of hotels and shops when I read about travel and this suited me just perfectly.

The vision that became reality

This winter the Phoenix Art Museum has an exhibition about Frank Lloyd Wright, the well known architect who lived and worked partly in Phoenix. He was active in the beginning of the century and made some very famous buildings and homes, the most famous probably Falling Water and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The most fascinating thing about this exhibition was that I understood more about Phoenix and where the inspiration for the city structure had come from. A lot of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work has an art deco style which I am very fond of. It is somehow both old and futuristic. I can not help thinking about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis when I see art deco architecture. But the interesting thing I learned at this exhibition was that Lloyd Wright also created a plan for the perfect city, Broadacre City. It was the beginning of the century,cars were not very common but there was a dream of wealth and technically advanced future. Naturally his plan evolved around cars and the idea that everyone should have an acre of land. To make this work the city became very spread out and in order to get around quickly a network of roads were a central part of the planning. Looking at his sketches makes you realize that this is exactly what Phoenix looks like today. This futuristic city that has become reality is as functional and lifeless as the drawings show.

East Phoenix Metro Area from Superstition Ridge

The thought of giving everyone a fair piece of property close to everything they need is of course very nice. But therefore it also lacks the atmosphere that so many other cities do have and make them worth visiting. There is no city center where people spontaneously meet and where you can go shopping, catch a movie, a theater, visit markets, have coffee or dinner with friends and stroll around and do some people watching, all in the same place. Honestly, I have a very hard time to say why anyone should visit Phoenix as a tourist. It is a comfortable city to live in but does not offer a lot to the visitor. Unless the city structure itself makes you want to come and see it with your own eyes. The thing many people visit Phoenix for is the weather, to play golf or other sports when it is too cold in other places. Many baseball teams for example has their spring training in Phoenix which attracts a lot of tourists. Fair enough, the winters here are very comfortable and also my favorite thing about Phoenix.

Coming from a place where public transport is the best way of getting around and having a car is actually more of a hassle than useful, it is difficult to get used to Phoenix. People who grew up here seem to love it though. Many would just get nervous in a city where I feel very comfortable. I guess this is a good thing though, everyone is not the same and there is a place for everybody.

Phoenix downtown escape

A couple of months ago now we decided to givePhoenix Downtown another chance and treat ourselves to a stay at anice hotel. I could already see it in front of me; after strollingaround town we would come back to the hotel in the afternoon withtired feet and legs. The champagne would be already chilled and Andywould run a hot bath were we would enjoy the bubbles. I spent some time looking for a hoteland finally chose the Westin on Van Buren and 1^st Street.

View from the Westin pool area.

The location was perfect since it is just a couple of blocks from ourfavourite restaurant, Sens. It is a quite small Japanese tapas stylerestaurant and definately worth a visit. The reason I picked theWestin was that they have a small suite with a bathroom in the cornerof the building with floor to ceiling windows where you can look outover the city while having a bath. The fact that they had a bar wherewe felt just at home was a bonus. It was quite empty but stillboosted some interesting people watching.

Just what I needed. 🙂

Downtown Phoenix is really not too bad except for the fact that there are no people there. To be a multi million city it feels deserted. If you look closely there are some nice cafés, bars and restaurants but the atmosphere is missing. Sadly.

Nice café behind the Phoenix Art Museum. But where are the guests?

But we did have a good time and got what we expected.

Visiting parents

In September my parents came over from Sweden to visit us in Arizona. The first few days we showed them around the area, looked at the views from Dobbins Lookout on South Mountain, did some shopping at the Chandler Mall, had drinks at the Hyatt in downtown Phoenix and drove the Apache Trail.

Apache Trail

Goldfield Ghost town along the Apache Trail

As usual the weather was sunny and a bit warmer than we had expected at this time of year. It has been around 40 degrees Celsius in Phoenix during this time. My parents had not ever experienced that kind of heat which required some getting used to.

After the sight seeing in the Phoenix area we did a 5 day tour featuring Prescott / Sedona, Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam and Lake Havasu. It was a fair way to go and we had to spend quite a lot of time in the car. But it was a nice trip with a good mix of things to do. We did some hiking, shopping and sight seeing.

Grand Canyon

At the Narrows in Zion National park

My parents at Luxor

The Elvis fan

When we got back to Phoenix we had a rest day where we slept in and just went shopping in Scottsdale. In the evening we had a barbecue at the pool.

Tombstone down town

The last outing was a day trip down to Tombstone where we walked around the historic little down town, ate at one of the old saloons and watched the Shoot out show at OK Corral, featuring Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday.

At Crystal Palace where we had lunch

Thanks for visiting. We had a great time!

Monument Valley

The first stop on our month long holiday was Monument Valley. It took us the whole day to pack up everything and drive up there. We got in late afternoon just in time to take some photos and get settled at the campground with a great view of the valley.

This was the view from the campground at sunrise.

The next day we drove a loop in the valley where you can have a close look at the buttes. The Monument Valley is on Indian land so at the view points they sold indian souvenirs and food. We tried some indian fry bread and stopped endless times to take photos.

The Marlboro man

Day hike in Grand Canyon

When visiting Grand Canyon we thought that we can not leave until we have made a proper hike into the canyon itself. Unfortunately we had only one day so we looked around for a suitable hike. Close to the Grand Canyon Village there are three trail heads from where you can hike down into the canyon. There is also a trail along the rim which is about 20 km long, but this was not an option this time. Way to little elevation change, we wanted a good workout.

We chose between one hike along a ridge that looked very cool and a longer hike down to Plateau Point. We decided on the longer hike which we thought was suitable because the weather was still cold. I imagine it being a pain when it is 40 degrees Celsius. The description said it would take 8-12 hours and since we are fairly fit we thought we would make it 8 or even less.

So the day before we stacked up on some Swedish crisp bread, ham, cheese and some snacks. Luckily I had looked at the weather forecast before we left and knew it was going to be cold so we were prepared with hats and gloves and warm jackets. When we got up in the morning the car was frosty and the sun had just began to warm everything up. It was however still around 0 degrees Celsius as we started hiking. The first part of the trail was a little bit icy but we managed to stay on our feet.

At the center of the image you can see Plateau Point which is our goal.

We left the car just before 8 o’clock in the morning which we thought was early enough but there were already lots of people on the trail. A lot of people had spent the night camping in canyon and were hiking up to the rim in the morning. That is now the plan for our next visit.

It was a little bit odd to walk down first, usually we hike up mountains and once you reached the top you know that it will not take longer to walk back. Here it is more difficult to plan the time since you are not sure of how long it will take you to hike up again.

We thought we kept a fairly good pace down, faster than most people and it turned out to be right. We made it there in 2 h 20 min not 3-4 hours that the description said. At Plateau Point you have a marvelous view of the Colorado river and the canyon. We spent almost 1.5 hours at the lookout, having lunch and enjoying the view. The temperature was now about 15 degrees and very pleasant.

Our lunch spot

The view from Plateau Point

Before noon we thought that it was time to start heading back. We were going to drive back to Phoenix in the evening so we did not want to get back too late. We were able to keep the same pace up as down so we made it back up to the rim in 2 h and 10 min. This was supposed to take 5-8 hours. The fitness program we have been doing the past month seem to have had an effect… We came back up much sooner than we thought so we had time to enjoy the view and the sun some more at the rim before we got into the car and drove back home.