A surprisingly nostalgic Arizonian Summer
- Jun 20, 2016
- 2 min read
Greetings! After 50 days of travelling and numerous people asking; I've decided to bite the bullet and create a travel blog. I'm currently in Sedona, Arizona during a heatwave. As I write, it's 41 degrees. And of course, my accommodation during this heatwave is the humble tent. Olivia and I met a little less than a week ago in San Diego. We met through couch surfing after she posted in the Phoenix page about her road trip plans and I jumped at the opportunity to join her. Being a solo traveler under 25 with a dream to drive to the Grand Canyon, it was looking very costly to rent a car and find travellers to fill it. Following the spirit of the trip so far, everything simply fell into place and right now we're both sitting in a tiny local coffee shop in Sedona waiting for the heat to break so we can begin exploring the famous vortexes.
Today is the fifth day of our trip, having left San Diego last Wednesday for Phoenix. We started our road trip with an appropriate farewell to cool weather and to California where we'd both spent several weeks. We went to the beach.
Running headfirst into waves bigger than both of us, I bid farewell to the West Coast and to the first month of my time in the United States. One down, two to go. Our 6 hour drive to Phoenix flew by and we both acknowledged how fantastic it was to be travelling with another solo female traveller after spending the last few weeks with dudes. We laughed when our cell phone providers sent us messages welcoming us to Mexico and shared tales from our travels thus far. We stayed with Mario who was a friend of a friend I'd met in Portland several weeks earlier. Walking up to his house, we were certain that it was the house of someone who hosted couch surfers. The outside was a mish mash of plants, bicycles and flags - all hanging from the roof. The inside was a equally eclectic mix of art, books and knick knacks. We met Darich, a young Puerto Rican man who had hitchhiked from Northern Arizona earlier that day. In the spirit of couch surfing, we made a meal together (pasta) and watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It was sitting in a living room in Phoenix, Arizona watching arguably one of the best Australian films that I was aware of the similarities between an Arizonian Summer and a West Australian Summer. The heat of Perth is one of the reasons I'd left, so to find myself willingly in the same temperature again was interesting and I felt a nostalgia that has followed me through Arizona thus far.
From sleeping on Mario's lounge room floor with fans overhead blowing hot air around the book-filled room. The smell and sound of sprinkler water hitting hot concrete in Arcosanti. To the feeling of legs pricked by the heat of a car parked in the sun. It's funny what reminds you of home.
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