Aliens landed!

Day 8: A place you’ve traveled to and where else you want to travel.

When I was in Jr. High, my sister got to go to Europe. Stinkin' awesome. And, I think, because my sister (and my mother) got to go to stinkin' Europe, my awesome aunt & uncle invited me to go with them and my cousins to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. It was definitely awesome. We went to Meteor Crater (where aliens probably landed, according to the gift shop), M&M's World, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, some tourist traps along Historic Route 66, stayed in the Luxor Hotel, and, of course, went to the Grand Canyon.

Highlights: Inside the Luxor you can see how the walls slope in to the peak at the top of the pyramid. It's a little bit dizzying and off-putting, but the elevators have to go kind of sideways, which is cool. My cousins and I went swimming in a pool with columns that had big fountains at the top of them, pouring into the pool.

This looks a little dumb in retrospect.

The height made the water falling kind of painful, but no so much that it was impossible to swim with. We would hop back and forth between the pool and the hot tub, certainly guaranteeing a future illness.

In M&Ms World, I bought 2 pounds of M&Ms. I got black, white, grey, and neon blue M&Ms. We went to the Petrified Forest the next day in a rental car with okay air conditioning, at which point my giant bag of M&Ms melted into a giant, chocolate/candy-coating lump. That was an odd greyish color. Kind of like this, but worse, and in greyscale. It was highly unappetizing and I chipped off hunks of M&Ms for the next couple of months so I wouldn't waste them (gross, I know).

In the Petrified Forest, we took a lot of pictures and considered taking some petrified wood, but we didn't because it was apparently illegal or some silliness like that. You know, preservation and whatnot. Pshaw.

On Historic Route 66, two tourist traps stand out in my mind. One had some big ol' teepees that you could...go into. And stuff. I have no idea what that was about. Another had 2 giant piles of colourful, broken glass. Like big hunks of it.

Now a part of your balanced breakfast?

We bought some glass pieces...and you know what? It was a fun experience to not get cut to bits while digging in a pile of glass!

We also saw some place with rock drawings. I can't remember what or where it was...=/ I'm bad at this!

Finally, the Grand Canyon. The 2 things that stand out to me (apparently I can only remember 2 major details about any one place) were the look of it when I got there and watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. A lot of people are amazed by the scale of the Grand Canyon and stunned and such by its beauty. I thought it looked like a very pretty and realistic painting. It was very nice, and it spanned the horizon and was, you know, pretty. But the sun rising on the Grand Canyon: that was lovely! That was just breathtaking, peaceful, and lovely. It just crawled down the rocks, turning everything to shades of red and gold. I loved it.

In the future, I want to visit Europe. Like...all of Europe. I want to see Vienna and La Scala and go all over Germany and stop by Russia, as well. I'd love to visit Ireland and Wales and England and...and... Just all of the things.

I would love to see buildings older than my nation and the places where influential composers lived and worked and performed. I want to hear their songs performed now in those same places where they were performed so many years ago. I want to eat delicious food and learn new languages. It's just...it's the birthplace of Western culture and art, you know? ARGH. I want to see all of it.

Frankly, I love going to new places and I love the traveling it takes to get there.