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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Arizona: Grand Canyon and Last Minute Road Trips

How to choose between the Grand Canyon and a spontaneous road trip to visit a friend? Don’t! write about them both :)

I believe I was in high school when we went as a family to visit the Grand Canyon. I remember it being one of the most incredible things I had ever seen or imagined, and to this day it still is high on the list.

One thing that sticks in my mind about that trip and experience was from one of the hikes we went on. I have always loved water (always as in from infancy – as in my parents used the sound of it to distract me so they could change my diaper and hearing it would often make me stop crying). On one of our hikes, I noticed a small dripping sound. When I located it, I saw the beginnings of a stalagmite (that’s the one that builds from the ground up, right?).

It awed me – that a tiny thing like a drip of water could build a totally new structure over a long time.

I wanted to remember that, and to emulate that. To know that with consistent, and often seemingly so small, effort I could do incredible things. Things that seemed too hard at first. And to remember that even seemingly insurmountable things are possible with perseverance.

Years later I went back to Arizona shortly after graduating undergrad. A number of us were living in Utah for the summer, and one of our dear friends was living in Arizona and having a bit of a rough go of it. So we packed ourselves into a car and drove down to visit, as a surprise. She was definitely surprised! It was such a cool thing to be a part of – to see her, to have her show us her part of the world, to leave her with her spirits lifted.

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