Sleepless in Arizona

This vacation, like most vacations in recent memory, has been partially ruined by my having a miserable cold. I guess I just can't take the lack of stress. Then last night I took my (in retrospect) non-drowsy cold medicine before bed, and proceeded to lie, calmly and wakefully, on one-third of a hostel bed for eight hours.

It's gonna be a great day.

So, Arizona... despite the fact that it is a desert, it's very green and actually quite pretty. There are mountains and stuff. But most of the "rivers" are just dry sand that floods when it rains- sad.

We started our trip with a stay in a Travelodge across the street from a nudie bar and not much else (the establishment next door advertised hourly rates and adult videos), and decided to get out of Phoenix as fast as possible. Things turned up when our rental car company gave us a huge, orange Nissan minivan with only 1000 miles on it instead of a compact! We christened it "JoJo" after the Beatles song.

Activities so far include a hike, visiting Biosphere 2 (the "bionauts" had their own two-story apartments with phone and email- I lived in that much social isolation last year!), and driving through Saguaro Cactus National Monument, which features 15-foot cacti as far as the eye can see.

Today we're going to try to cross the border into Mexico, and tomorrow we're busy all day visiting the school. It has a nice campus.