Trip to Arizona
My wife and I went to Arizona last week for a swimming competition she participated in. Her parents flew in from France to see her participate and we decided to take a few extra days off to do some sightseeing.
Overall impressions: People we encountered were very nice, friendly and helpful. We flew into Tucson and out of Phoenix.
Phoenix international airport claims to be the friendliest airport in the country. From all the airports I have been to, I think I would have to agree. People went out of their way to help us. We needed to transfer from one terminal to another and Aurore (my wife) tried hailing a shuttle she saw that had the correct terminal number. That shuttle does not stop where we were standing. A driver of another shuttle saw us and came over to help us go to the right spot even though he did not have to. I have yet to encounter such an incident elsewhere. They also have people (volunteers mostly, I think) to direct you where you need to be. It is a very large airport and fairly spread out so this is very helpful.
Like I mentioned, we landed in Tucson. Southern Arizona is like a western movie. Desert and cactus. It is very beautiful in its own way. Tucson is a large university town; it is where U of A is located. Once again, very nice and friendly people.
After Tucson we went to Tombstone, a town where a lot of old western movies were made. That place was scary at night, I mean for a brown 
city dweller like me. Most of the town seemed pretty empty at night except for this one bar where it seemed like the party never stops. We saw a lot of bikers over there as well, not sure if this was just a coincidence or if they visit Tombstone regularly. When we were checking out, we ask the receptionist about directions to Kartchner Caverns where we were going next. He was not sure about the exact route but pointed us in the right directions. As we were loading up our car, he came running out of the office to give us some more information as he had called the place to get more info for us after we had talked to him about it. We did not ask him to call the place and he did not have to but he did, which is another example of how friendly and helpful people we met were.
Kartchner Caverns was a nice place to visit. We encountered some dirt road getting there, which I had not experienced since Fiji.
After Kartchner Caverns we went to tour Biosphere 2, which is a marvel as well. I was really excited to have visited this place.
After Biosphere 2 we went to Sedona and visited the Red Rock State Park, which was also very cool. The mountains in Arizona are real mountains, very grand, very large and very beautiful. In Sedona we also went for a hot air balloon ride. It was a lot of fun. Aurore and I had been on a hot air balloon ride in Napa, CA but it was not exciting or lengthy as the one we experienced in Sedona. I also got to act as a crew when we landed, which was fun.
After Sedona we went to the Grand Canyon, which is also a grand marvelous sight.
Some things you have to visit to experience for yourself so I did not go into details about everything. Ask me if you have specific questions.
I enjoyed the trip to Arizona very much but I am happy to be back home. The weather when we went (late October) was very good. The temperature did get high on a couple of days but cool breeze was always blowing so being in the shade was very comfortable.
Tags: arizona, biosphere, caverns, grand canyon, phoenix, tombstone, tucson