Update #2

Things have been pretty mundane since the last update. Now it just feels like a regular city. The only thing of note is probably that we rented a car over a weekend and clocked about 650 miles, covering landmarks like the grand canyon, a meteor crater, a pretty famous place called sedona.

Here're some photos:


We stopped by at a town called Flagstaff, which is along the way to grand canyon, and also in relatively close proximity to a few other attractions. The photo above was taken just outside the visitor center. As can be seen in the photo, there's nothing to stop a pedestrian from going on to the tracks. I stood on the "yellow line" and it can be rather scary, and awfully loud. I don't have photos showing the train here because i was shot it on film. Show you guys after i come back.
Next i went to the famed canyon.



Grand Canyon is HUGE. What you can see on the horizon in the photo is the North rim, since i approached from the south. If i remember correctly it is 20+ km directly across the canyon. If you were to drive around the side to the north, it is 200+ miles. It is such a big place that you can literally stay in there for a week, and people really do that. There are plenty of inns inside the canyon area itself, and the tickets are valid for a week. So you could hang around the explore the part of the canyon you're already at. It would take a really long time to cover the whole area.



What you can't see in the photo is the Colorado River, which runs among the canyons. It is quite a distance to the north, too far to be seen. One of the precautions written on the boards near the visitor mentions warns visitors not to plan on hiking to the bottom of the canyon and back up in a single day, probably because it's simply not going to happen. We planned to visit a few other places during the trip, so we couldn't stay for long at the canyon. It was quite a pity.

Other than getting to the bottom of the canyon by the honest way (hiking), you could ride a mule down. No photos here, also because i was shooting it on film. Other than transporting people, mules are also used for transporting goods down into the canyon, since the paths are rather narrow.



What i also didn't capture on photos is the whole trail of shit left by the mules. Goods are usually transported by a convoy of mules, so when they do shit they leave quite a lot around, which is hard to step around because of the narrow path. Despite that, mules have an amazing track record of zero casualties. Regardless of weather conditions, they have always been able to get in and out alive, along with their human passengers. A story i read in the bookstore in the visitor center made me slightly skeptical about their safety record however. It goes like this:

A man was transporting some goods along with four mules down the canyon along the path, during which a winter snowstorm occurred. They were driven to the edge of the canyon and the man released himself from the mule in order to save himself, kicking down the mule in the process. Since the mules were all bound together, the four of them tumbled down the edge, hitting the ground more than 300 feet below. Despite this, the mules still kept a perfect safety record because they all survived the fall. Pretty amazing creatures aren't they.

The photo above is taken at another place called Sedona, along with Grand Canyon, it is one of the biggest attractions in Arizona. Nothing much to say about it, except the mountains in the area are formed by red rocks. It was free, because the entrance to the visitor zone was so crowded that we gave up waiting. The photos of Sedona were all taken on the highway.



Over here you can almost expect them to charge you for every location you see on the tourist map. The state of Arizona is heavily dependent on tourism for its economy, and it has an annual tourist population of about 33.8 million. Most of them are domestic tourists though. One side thing to note is that only 25% of US population owns a passport, main reason being that there're too many things to see and do in their own country anyway.

Coming back to the present, I've been noticing a lot of bike seats being stolen, and someone just told me her bike seat got stolen as well. I got panicky for a bit and removed my bike seat so that i could keep it in the house. This morning i woke up to find my rear wheel stolen. That seriously sucks. About the bike, It was part of the lease agreement. Only that they took a month to fulfill it, including internet access. Over the next few days i'll have to hunt for a wheel somewhere. The bike is far more important here than it is in the SG. If you feel bad about the transport prices in SG, it costs USD$1.75 for a single ride on either the bus or the rail, $3.50 for a day pass. The single ride pass makes no sense because you're going to take at least two rides if you're going back, and you have to take more than one bus ride to go anywhere. Since the city is organised like a grid, the buses usually go either only in the north-south or east-west direction. So diagonal travel means two bus rides.

I'll keep the rest in a future update!

cw