From Vacation
Some thoughts on my most recent excursion to parts elsewhere:
:if you ever have a chance, and are headed towards Arizona at a time of year when the weather looks reasonable, you really must to the drive out I-70 into Utah, through Moab, and down into AZ through Monument Valley. I'm not sure I have any words adequate to describe the awe I felt driving through these extraordinary rock formations. It was as if God decided at one time to build a temple to himself out of redstone, and chose the deserts of the American southwest as his location. It is really beautiful, and awesome, and well worth the drive. Not to mention a little bit quicker route to Phoenix than Albequeque.
:it was very good to see my brother, his wife, and my nephew (the one with CF). They seem to have settled into a strange dance routine around his treatments and keeping him healthy and breathing, and. . . it's pretty remarkable. The lad has an abundance of energy, and with the exception of the treatments you'd never know he was sick--in fact, you'd think him a prime candidate for ritalin. I'm not sure what God was thinking vis-a-vis my brother and sister-in-law, but I'm quite certain that he chose them as parents for Tyler for a very specific and positive reason.
:Phoenix up to Vegas is another awe-inspiring drive. The black canyons of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area are God's temple in blackstone--a breathtaking collection of canyons and lake beaches--, and the Hoover Dam is man's incredible attempt to measure up as engineers. It is a vacation in itself to see such sights, and none of that had anything to do with why my wife and I got into the car in the first place.
:Las Vegas is Las Vegas. First of all, the architecture, as gaudy and in poor taste as much of it is, is also representative of what Americans are capable of. Just, for example, the Venetian Hotel, which has an actual canal running through the shopping district, which is roofed by a very good replica of a skyline. Just unbelievable. And everything is getting bigger--three of the big hotels were in various stages of expansion while we were there.
:It occurred to me while I was there that more money goes in and out of Vegas in a week than through many (perhaps most) small countries in the world in an entire year, and we devote the whole thing to entertainment. Easy to see why we're the subject of so much envy around the world.
:Um. . .there are . . .well, there is . . . an odd obsession with butts in Vegas. I mean, I know that there is a seedy underbelly to the City of Lights. But I guess it still catches you off guard to see a 60 foot billboard of the posterior region of a showgirl. And then more on the busses. And then the cabs. and. . . and. . . Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Just, well, an observation.
:And I managed to return to Denver with some of my money still in pocket. All in all, a grand success.
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