From moonscape to Crystals R Us (Sedona)

The drive from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon takes you through a moonscape of orange sand, cliffs of grey rock, and towering saguaro cacti.

Saguaro (pronounced sa-wah-row) will be familiar to all of us from road-runner cartoons, but these protected plants only live in a limited area, the Sonoran desert. Each cactus only begins to grow arms at 75 years of age, and won't reach full height until at least 150.

We stopped for lunch at Sedona, the "new-age" centre of Arizona. It's one of those towns that has somehow managed to land firmly on the tourist trail, for no particular reason, and now it's filled with tacky gift shops, overpriced restaurants, and not much else. In other words, a bit of a dump.

The scenery nearby is beautiful, however.

The photo above is of Bell Rock, site of the failed 1987 Harmonic Convergence (essentially a bunch of gullible visitors who paid to sit on the rock in the hope it would launch itself into space). Now less visited by alien well-wishers as it is by giggling tour groups

Well, Alice Cooper likes it.... (Phoenix)

Phoenix... the fifth largest city in the USA. If you include the suburbs, there are 4 million people (according to the Rough Guide) living in the middle of a desert.

There's no water there, so it has to be piped in from vast distances. There's very little of cultural interest, and it's not a particularly attractive city to explore (for many reasons, not the least of which is a complete absence of shade from the burning sun).

Like much of America, everyone drives everywhere. The only people you see on the streets are the poor, the disenfranchised, the dissolute. In Phoenix, it's mostly native Americans from the local reservations. All of which means there's absolutely no sense of life on the streets. The town feels dead. Or at least it feels that way to someone used to European towns and cities, as I am. My main thought, as I explored the down-town, was (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein): "there's no there, there."

What is does have is a lot of golf courses (in the middle of the desert)....

I couldn't wait to get the eff out of town.