(Somewhere near Flagstaff)
And I thought Arizona was all desert!
When I was little we used to live in Tempe, near Phoenix. It was all flat dirt with scattered scrub, and that's all you got. I guess it eventually had to give in to the trees and such of Colorado, but I never suspected for a minute that that might be in the middle of AZ.
Kind of reminds me of the first time I went to Death Valley on a job (a story and photo album for another blog). Whenever you see scientists interviewed there, or news coverage there, it's stark, bleak, and featureless. But when you actually go there, there's an amazing variety of terrain and scenery. You have vast white salt flats, in the lowest point in the country if not the continent, and this is surrounded by hills and mountains splashed with red, blue, yellow, green, and orange from all the rich mineral deposits found in the soil. There's a place there called Artist's Palette because it's so saturated with colors, it looks like just that. There's even a band of wild horses out there! Death Valley is one of the most amazing and strikingly beautiful places I've ever seen. And if I hadn't been there to see it myself, I'd still be convinced it's nothing but a big stretch of sand.
This place reminds me of that. The last things I expected to see were big green groves of trees and brush. The man sitting behind us told us Flagstaff is home to the biggest grove of trees and biggest population of elk in the world.
Going to Death Valley taught me that no matter how many times you've seen a place on documentaries, never to judge a place before seeing it yourself. Today I learned that you can't judge a place just because you've been someplace nearby, either!
