Arizona, as the home of my mom’s parents, was the other state we visited most often in my childhood. Not having access to photos from my younger days leaves me without the chance to use a photo of me on my grandpa’s shoulders in a swimming pool, or riding in a Stutz Bearcat at Old Tucson, picking out geodes at a roadside rock shop, spotting a bobcat at the Sonora Desert Museum, or wandering through Cold War relics at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Arizona has its own set of particular memories, like the visiting Grandma and Grandpa at La Posada, eating dinner with their friends, playing board games in their ultra air-conditioned house, as well as the general memories of stifling heat, smooth-driving American cars, golf carts, scorpions, and that huge bookstore in Tucson that sold back issues of magazines – why didn’t anyone else think of that?

The photo above is from my most recent visit to Arizona, in the summer of 2006 as Aimee and drove to L.A. to find an apartment. We stopped one afternoon at the Painted Desert Inn, within Petrified Forest National Park, for a walk around and a chance to see the incredible vista that lay beyond the inn. It was a toss-up between this photo and one of the tipis at the Wigwam Inn where we stayed that night, but there will be enough Roadside America-style pictures to come that I thought some scenery would be a good idea.