Beauties of Arizona…

Just to warn you, I went a little crazy with this post…

The first time Jared and I went to Arizona was November 2008 for a conference with training that they company Jared was interning for at the time paid his way to get.  When we left Utah it had been a blizzard and my mom had dropped us off with Christian in the car seat in the back of the car…I was afraid they wouldn’t get back to my mom’s house because of the awful weather.

When we arrived in Phoenix Airport, we walked outside to warm air and the sight of palm trees glowing and green in the street lamps…what a contrast!  Then throughout the next days I was amazed by the cleanliness of the roads, and the dryness of my skin (My skin was literally falling off…I spent $5 at the gift shop at our hotel on lotion because the “designer” stuff offered in our room, though full of scent, just was not doing the job.) the high volume of people and the spottiness of bad vs. good areas frightened me (what am I saying?  It still frightens me).  The weather was sure nice, as we were able to eat the most lavish meal I’ve ever experienced outside under the palm trees downtown (though the Arizonians had the heat lamps turned on…it was only 65 degrees).  When Jared applied for an internship here, I was pretty distressed inwardly because I knew he’d get it and that we may have to move to Arizona.

In March of 2009 when we drove down to Phoenix to check out areas/apartments I was thinking the whole time “What is wrong with these people?  Who would live here on purpose??”  “What is beautiful about this place anyway?”  “Yuck, all I see is dirt!” 

I know, pretty negative huh?

I still thought all of these things for months as we moved down here and started to live here.  It wasn’t until we were coming back after a trip to Utah for Thanksgiving that I realized something…Arizona can be beautiful!  I was so shocked that the scenery looked beautiful to me that Jared and I sat and discussed why it actually seemed so beautiful that day.  What did we figure out was the reason why?  It was the sky.  All of the other times we had driven around the sky had been hot, almost colorless and cloudless. 

On that particular November day, there had been a storm system moving through and there were clouds and various shades of blue.  The light reflected off of a cool blue sky cast warm shadows on the “dirt” and cliffs making them become mysterious and majestic.

It’s amazing what the lighting can do!

The funny thing is that now that we’ve been back an forth since that time, I have found beauty in different parts of the ride that I never noticed before. 

This last drive we took, we decided to take a different route up to Knabe and this is what we were greeted with about a mile off of the turn-off in the other direction….  A Rainbow!

Honestly, I haven’t seen a rainbow in years.  Christian and I have had the worse luck in seeing rainbows.  He had never seen one before.  I made Jared pull right over and I got out of the car to take a picture.

Just look at those colors!  Aren’t they amazing?  This is what I had expected to see in Arizona but it took a while for the light to be right so that I could really see the possibilities.

               Here is a picture of Christian and Jared under the rainbow.  Christian was very excited to see one too!

  Here is a picture of the sun that was making the rainbow…such a beautiful sky!  It takes your breath away…

  Here is Vivian being held up with that blue behind her gorgeous blue eyes (she gets the gorgeous color from her daddy).

Okay so after that, I kind of went crazy with the camera.  Here are some more that I took out the window of the car while Jared was driving…

        

When we came to this area with a lot of huge boulders scattered everywhere, I said to Jared “Do you know what this reminds me of?”  and then Christian yelled really loud “Giant pieces of poop!”  Wonderful *cough* and then I totally forgot what they had reminded me of in the first place…  This one reminds me of a dinosaur head…can you see it?  This cavernous looking mountain really opens the imagination about ancient inhabitants…       The sky was just so perfect that day!        Are we in Arizona?  It looks so green in this light!   My favorite view of the direction we had come from, as we climbed up the mountains

        Obviously, there was a forest fire here recently…               I am so sad that I couldn’t capture the sky here the way I really saw it…it was so red at the line of the tree tops!       Some deer along the way.         

The fiery sun behind the burnt trees.

I really enjoyed this day of traveling which is saying a lot coming from someone who absolutely hates car rides.