Amy said it best.

If we ever colonized the moon, it would look exactly like Tempe, Arizona.

There is something so eerie about the ride from Flagstaff to Tempe. On our way to you coast on highways, past pueblos, cacti, desert, volcanic craters, green valleys, rocky mountains, red rocks and somehow end up in a cement flatland surrounded by expressways and  speckled with palm trees. yes, palm trees. of all things it was the last vegetation we expected to see, but there, to our dismay… palm trees.

Our dear friends live in the flight pattern for the Sky Harbor airport which is really no different than my parents house under the Midway airport flight path. In fact it was a bit comforting to hear a familiar sound in such a eerie looking landscape. There was just something about the dirt, or dust rather, the color of the ground, the structural sound geometric shape of the lamposts and traffic lights that made the place impenatrable to any weather or outside disturbance.

Though efficiently built, their architecture was not created upon aesthetic value, but purposeful and practical needs which leads me to think that maybe those area 51 conspiracy theorists are not so crazy after all. This desolate landscape seems made as the perfect setting for a any landing, as, even if it did land it seems it wouldn’t really effect the space.

Everywhere else we visited there was a sense of liveliness in the environment. All of Tempe’s activity seems to be taking place in the sky above the airport, everywhere else felt empty.

Just glad we had 2 wonderful friends to invite us in for the night. It was so nice to have kind faces in such an eerie place. We played frisbee till the sun made silouettes of the palms and reminisced of the midwest.

For the record:

if you can’t stand the heat, stay the hell outta Tempe.