Arizona, November 25th

Indian country! Just past Painted Desert (Nature's stunning palette, named by Coronado himself), and through the reservation, Route 40 is lined with billboards advertising blankets, beads, pipes, jewelry, pottery, and anything else suitable for filling up the storage areas in your basement. Like Andrews, Texas, the Navajo believe in free enterprise, but these 'trading posts' refuse to trade. Only cash and plastic, Kemosabe.

There's an old Yavapai Indian admonition, which says if you drink from the Hassayampa River, you'll never tell the truth again. Since I confine myself to beer and vodka, I didn't test this ancient legend, so believe me when I say that Sedona is the New Age capitol of the world. It's an upscale, woodsy and beautifully serene area with exquisite red rock and forested mesas - also requiring a pass just to pull off the road to take pictures. You know me. No pass, lots of pictures, and the spirits of the ancestors are so disturbed, they're probably holding pow-wows right now.

Sedona is known for its vortices. A vortex is "a place in nature where the Earth is exceptionally alive and healthy". (And a jungle is not?) It's better defined as a place where guides conduct tours so well-paying participants can believe they're absorbing this 'energy' to better commune with the Cosmic Universal Whatever. Again, only cash or plastic. Snake oil comes with all sorts of labels, but I must admit the golf here was delightful. The course was probably built on a vortex.

Five days in Scottsdale for R&R, sunning by the pool, great golf, fine food, good jazz, and a very enjoyable Thanksgiving evening with Bob, Donna, Pugsy and Little One. I needed the break. I've been on the road so much, I feel like I'm on the witness protection program.

But I took a little side trip to, what turned out to be, the mother of all upscale white communities, Carefree, Arizona. It makes Sun Valley look like a multicultural ghetto. It's a planned community so clean and meticulous, I didn't want to discard my used nicorette gum on the ground. It's where expensive adobe-like homes blend into the cactus desert, and the shopping malls look the same, only larger. No sports bars with satellite dishes here.

The residents are like William Hamilton characters whose urban neuroses have been baked in the Arizona heat (but it's a dry heat!) and are now engaged in guiltless romps of designer-label gathering. Their art and wine festival, at the intersection of Easy Street and Ho Hum Road (no kidding) did indeed display some creative (and expensive) artwork, worth a few photos.

As a side note, I've been noticing these upscale white enclaves throughout the U.S. (There are others I haven't mentioned). They aren't merely suburbs, but instead are self-sustaining homogenous communities built a protective distance away from the main commercial areas and major highways. The pendulum has swung: now it's the Indians with the casinos, and the Paleface on the reservations.

Biosphere II, in a remote area of southeastern Arizona, is the hugely elaborate and modern facility where experiments were held in the 80's and 90's to see if people could exist in a hermetically sealed environment (growing their own food, recycling all waste, etc.). Unfortunately, those experiments were compromised, but fortunately the facility is now a research and learning center run by Columbia University, and well suited for tourists.

The best tour (at an additional charge) takes you into the bowels of the structure to observe its complex engineering, designed to sustain a man-made rain forest, ocean, and desert. The ecological research performed here is quite significant and, I believe, will have a major impact in the years to come. Well worth the side trip. (It's called Biosphere II because Biosphere I is the Earth itself. Neat.)

The word 'quaint' may be overused, but it certainly applies to Yuma, Arizona. The downtown district is partially vacant, but the architecture of the stores and hotels is purely 50's nostalgia. Truly a step back in time. The city has received a government grant to refurbish this area, and a new civic center is being constructed nearby. An undiscovered and inexpensive jewel in the desert, with activities galore, invest in Yuma. I'm going back for the incredible dune buggy rides.

I love this State. The weather is ideal (except for mid Summer), the sights are breathtaking, and the people are very cordial. Since I did the Grand Canyon last year, I was quite content with the choice of music: Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite".

On to California. My gosh! Where did the time go?

Adios.