And
we visited Phoenix and Grand Canyon in Arizona and also Santa Fe, New Mexico
at October, 1998...
We had a hard time
last month trying to meet a deadline for our persian translation system.
We were working couple of days till morning, this is crazy really. Especially
we are only two programmers here, so we did everything after all.
After presentation we created the same system for korean language and after
we were FREE. Our manager gave us a week off and we decided to visit Arizona.
We were traveling by car again.
First
we drove to Phoenix, capitol of Arizona. It's about 6 hours drive, not
so far as Corpus Christi for example. We took a short route but it wasn't
efficient and we end up driving 50mp/h between different villages :) We
reached the place, took a room in the hotel and relaxed... Phoenix is pretty
big modern city and also clean a one. We haven't been in real jams there,
that's a good feature too. I'd say it's the best place to live on the southwest.
We walked in the downtown, visited very original desert botanical garden
which had so many different cactuses...
We left
Phoenix at evening and drove to Flagstaff by a mountain road, scary...
Flagstaff is the closest town to Grand
Canyon. We left it in the very morning and reached Grand Canyon in
a hour. The Canyon is very very big and deep. The view is so exciting and
it's hard to describe the beauty. I think everybody needs to see it at
least once. We parked our car and used a special shuttle to visit the most
interesting view points. We made a lot photos there. How can you do a few?
The only problem was that we were only at the top of canyon but really
it's better to go down by some trails but you need to spend there 2-3 days
or more. There are also airplane rides but they are quite expensive. Some
firm has a special trip on the Colorado river inside the canyon. One need
to make reservation a year in advance. Actually it's my goal sometime!
At evening
we left the Canyon and moved back to New Mexico. We've been on the famous
4 state crossing point where the borders of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and
Colorado touch. It's funny that you can jump between them and then tell
everybody you've been in these 4 states. We saw some Indians ruins at the
north of New Mexico that we are not so old actually, don't go there. After
we spent two days in Santa Fe, the
capitol of New Mexico. It's not a big town and similar to Las Cruces. The
only good place there is native mexican downtown with many good restaurants,
galleries and shops. You can find there very good stuff... We liked mexican
restaurant there.
At the
end we went to Roswell, it's place where (maybe) some UFO landed. They
have a museum that contains all facts about that time and current research.
It's not so exciting as I thought before, just all shops do a business
on this concept.
After
this trip we found that Arizona isn't bad state and has a beautiful nature
too...