Going Out West





I am not ready just yet to write fully about specifics about our western trip, since we are still on it, and downloading pictures from here is extremely limited.

That said, I do enjoy having the internet access that this hotel provides, and fully intend to take advantage of it while the opportunity presents itself.

So, here I sit once again. Just tucked my son into bed after a pretty awesome swimming session in the hotel's pool, that lasted literally hours, going from day until nightfall. It was the first time in my son's life that he had ever been night swimming before, and it was one of the few times for me, as well. Also, the first time in many, many years.

Swimming, I must say, has felt almost like a sort of therapy for my back. It feels great. Physically, it feels like I just got a massage, or something.

Anyway, I digress.

The main point that I was trying to make was that every time that I come out west, it always just seems to have so much incredible stuff to offer. This is the fourth time that I have taken a trip out west. The first one, I got extremely lucky with. Agreeing to become the sports editor for the school newspaper, The Torch, at Bergen Community College almost twenty years ago now, I was able to go out to San Francisco for a journalism convention, which was awesome. I had one day entirely free, and one of those people who came to the trip also had the day off, and so she and I enjoyed exploring the city, which is absolutely beautiful. Plus, the trip was in February, so it really was just so cool to be in the fairly warm sun and with greenery all around. Definitely a new experience for me, especially at the time. It was so incredible, I felt ready to pack my bags and move out to San Francisco.

The second time that I came out west would be a year and change later, in May of 1997, this time to Seattle. My girlfriend at the time, who is now my ex-wife, had a brother who had moved out there, and we jumped on the opportunity to visit Seattle. It was amazingly beautiful, with lush, green fields and farms, and snowcapped mountain peaks off in the distance everywhere you looked. I saw the most beautiful sunset of my life during that trip (even better than the one my son and I saw yesterday at the Grand Canyon). In short, I loved it, and was ready to pack my bags and move out to Seattle.

The third trip out west came in the fall of 2001. I wanted to visit something new, and so my then wife and I took a trip back to Seattle, only we left for Vancouver while out there for about five days, with a side excursion to Vancouver Islands and Victoria. I was already familiar with Seattle, but found Vancouver to be wonderful, and a very livable city, seemingly. There were lush gardens everywhere, and Stanley Park, with its magnificent totem poles, was amazing! So was Victoria, which is sometimes referred to as the most British city outside of Britain itself. We enjoyed tea time, and marveled at the snowcapped peaks in the distance, as well as the amazing Butchart Gardens. Again, I loved it and felt ready to pack my bags and move to British Columbia.

Now, this fourth trip out west, and the first with my son. It had been almost fourteen years since my last trip to the west, and immediately, there were things to marvel over. My son and I were both excited and amazed to see huge cactus trees. Prior to preparing for this trip, I had always assumed that cactus plants were, at most, around the height of a grown man, at most. Not so. They can grow to be around twenty feet, and we saw many of these cactus while driving around in the desert, which is something else that was entirely new or both of us. The mountains are spectacular, and also oddly shaped. The stars are so amazingly clear at night. The temperature difference is something to marvel at, and heading up further north towards Flagstaff is inspiring, as well. There is just so much to see here, from soaring mountains to the Grand Canyon to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest (my son made the very cute mistake of calling it the "Terrified Forest," which made both of us laugh). It is an amazing landscape, and although we are not quite done with the trip just yet, on some level I am already missing it, and yes, feel ready to pack my bags and move out to Arizona.

Yes, it has felt like an amazing experience, and there is just so much beauty surrounding you, everywhere that you go. Here, you feel that the Native American presence is much more alive and relevant than it feels in sleepy New Jersey, where the legends of the Lenni Lenape feel exactly like just that: legends. Sometimes, it is almost impossible to imagine a time when that state was not an overcrowded piece of suburbia. Not that I don't take advantage of hiking in the rich woods there, and often going with my son. But it is just different. There are not quite as many things that make you truly marvel, like out west. There is beauty, but there is also plenty of stress to go along with it. Massive traffic jams, overpopulated towns and counties, as New Jersey is in between New York City and Philadelphia. The cost of living there is ridiculously high, and I would be lying if I claimed not to factor that in when feeling tempted to make a move, like those that I dream about sometimes when I have come out west.

Needless to say, we are having a good time, and still amazed to see some of the things that we have seen. Today, we happened to stumble upon an ancient archaeological site, called the Elden Pueblo Ruins in Flagstaff. It was nothing that we had heard about or expected. All of a sudden, though, there were signs, and so we stopped there, and it was awesome! Sure, they are ruins. But it is nonetheless a visible, physical reminder that people were here, living their lives, over eight and nine hundred years ago.

So, with tomorrow being the last full day that we are out here, and likely the last day that we can actually visit some cool things, I am hopeful and look forward to what tomorrow might bring, and feel very fortunate, very blessed that my son and I were able to come out here and share this time together.