Arizona 2001: The 10cc Tour

Elliott and I decided that, being variously lovelorn, it would probably be a good idea to skip Christmas 2001 and go and get drunk somewhere fun. We picked Arizona.

It's a dry heat, dude.

I'm not in love, so don't forget it
It's just a silly phase I'm going through
And just because I call you up,
Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made
I'm not in love, no no, it's because...

We got started with a day out to the Coolidge Dam. The Coolidge Dam rocks, man. Imagine a great big gorgeous dam festooned with eagles and arches and buttresses. Can you see it? Hold that image, because it's even cooler than that. It's very obviously meant to look like three great big art-deco breasts bobbing in the water. It's beautiful. I had photos. Honestly, I did. All of these photos are from the disposable camera we took. My Minolta ate the film full of really cool pictures.

There's a lot to see in Arizona, but none of it's next to any of the rest of it. You just have to drive miles and bloody miles at foolishly low speeds. We seemed to do a lot of driving, and Elliott got very bored. I tried to cheer him up by driving like a lunatic, but to no avail. He got bored and took silly photos. I did finally get to see petrified forest though. Sweet.

Ahh, the inevitable Grand Canyon shots. This was my third visit. I'd probably go again. Take a tip: go see the south rim, but don't just drive straight there; take in the Little Colorado Canyon, to the east of the Grand Canyon, first. It's smaller, but very striking. It's big, but small enough to see the bottom and the other side clearly. See that, then go and see the Grand Canyon. It'll take your breath away. Take photos if you must, but take it from me that nothing will do it justice. Oh, by this point, folks, it was snowing quite steadily.

After having seen the Coolidge Dam, Casa Grande, Biosphere 2, the Petrified Forest National Park, the Little Colorado Canyon and the Grand Canyon, we were very, very thirsty. We had a bit of a drink. It's fair to say that we reinforced our respective stereotypes and made sure that Flagstaff knew that Brits know how to drink. Fun was had, photos were taken, people were very nice to us and all in all, we had a damned good night out. We didn't even get arrested!