The weather here when i arrived Phoenix is horrible, at 114 degree and nearly 0% humidity, your skin dry up like Sahara and your lips crack into little jigsaw puzzles... I can still remember even my skin hair dried up and become curly during the 1st week, but now the weather is a bit forgiving, as its gently leaving the summer season.
The first weekend is mostly jetlag week, spent most of my time shopping for groceries and familiarize myself alone with my rental Camry. Successfully mapped my route to work and also the nearest shopping mall.
The 2nd week is more interesting, where a group of us drove 120 miles up North to a place called Sedona, along the route we stopped by Prescott, which is a lush town with a big park where all the toy dog owners came and have a relaxing day out, background with choir and the local orchestra playing.... really a nice place to enjoy a timeout weekend.
Then we reached a "mining turned ghost town turned tourist attraction" place called Jerome, they have a few souvenir shops and basically used by the people around as a gathering point for power bike and supercars... I had the opportunity to feast my eye on a Dodge Charger SRT and the owner is so kind to pop up the hood and let me know a thing or two about this American muscle car... yup that's a 6.1litre V8 HEMI engine, and its just USD40k for a new car -.-
The main course of this trip is of course the red rock canyon, where you get to have the big scenic view of the natural formation. Picture paints a thousand words.
The view before reaching the observation area
This is taken from the side of the observation post looking into the valley
Some say the valley looks even pretty than the grand canyon itself because of the lush green dotting the valley, as compared to the huge red grand canyon. I haven't been to grand canyon at this point and thus couldn't conclude.
The 3rd week is even fun, we had decided to take a whooping 5 hours drive to Los Angeles via Interstate I-17 South and head towards I-10 straight to West. As US is celebrating labour's day on the 1st of September, it will be a 3D2N trip extending to Monday. We moved out on 3am Friday and reached Universal Studio, LA on 8am Saturday. On the way I found this to be pretty....
All the while, I thought Universal Studio is just a stupid place to rip movie buff off their hard earned cash, but I was utterly impressed with the amount of effort and work they done, especially on the detail for each ride and show.The major show had shown extensive story building before presenting us the experience, for example Simpson... when we are queuing up, it shows us a few movie clip on the story, and before entering the motion master seat, more clips and story... because instead of the motion master ride we had in Genting, the screen enveloped the whole theater (I am not sure how they manage to make a screen round and so big), and it gives a feeling of surrounding, plus its 4D (meaning they add water, smell, wind into the theater) and it makes you feel very real, even its just Simpson cartoon motion master
Then there's Terminator 2, Shrek, Jurrasic Park and Waterworld.... despite being turkey of the year movie for Waterworld, the enactment of the waterworld fortress is great, with a 30 minutes screen play and pyrotechnics, this is one heck of a show, the shotgun does sound loud...
Overall Universal Studio is a worthy place if you are coming to LA. With the price at $64, its worth every dollar IMHOSunday was a crazy ones, we paid money to enter a themepark that would make me suffer. Even blogging right now made me feel dizzy... the place was Six Flags Magic Mountain at Valencia, just off the border of LA. I had tried all the ride in Malaysia and still laugh at death in its face, this place does redefine that... a little
Most of the thrill ride here had a reason to be stay in the park... world fastest, world tallest, world first, 5D rides (as if 3D is not enough)... I only manage to take 70% of the ride as the queue had build up alot after 2pm. It was considered lucky I could capitalize on the low queue during the morning session. With me was a crazy guy who opt to take all the ride on the FIRST carriage, for those who don't understand, first carriage is the most scary because you don't know where the roller coaster will actually go during a fast corner and you are the first to see the end of the track after the high climb, those carriages behind at least could know what to expect and therefore not so scary.... despite such thought, you can see that the first carriage will have the longest queue, while the other carriage queue can be as low as empty queue line... there's a lot of crazy people here in the States, that's for sure.
After some of the ride, we got bold and went to try the external payment of $20 free fall cum commit suicide ride.... and that redefine my thoughts on committing suicide by jumping off building.
Overall not recommended for the faint hearted. If you can't accept Sunway Lagoon or Genting ride, then no point ruin your appetite in this theme park.
Besides that we also went to Beverly Hills and Hollywood... no biggie, as I am not a fan of rich people and hoo haa. 
This is taken from Chinese theatre if I am not mistaken on the name..
The 4th week we went back the scenic drive (notice how we plan our alternate scenic, entertainment, and back to scenic trip?) and this time we are going to one of the world's natural wonder - Grand canyon. The trip would require us to drive north along I-17 up to Flagstaff and then redirect to 180 towards Grand canyon, the trip was 3 hours up and 3 hours down and unfortunately I have to do most of the driving because my colleague complaint of sleepy. WTF.
Anyway the trip was great! We stopped by Flagstaff, witness a local car gathering at their area, where all the vintage and supercars came to say hello. Pictures to come...
Yup, those are a line of Ford Mustangs which they gathered, park and showcase their car, while the owner slide behind the shade and have some R&R himself. They claimed that they do this every week. Really different from the way we did our gathering back home in Malaysia..... yeah, ours are more like illegal gathering anyway.
Of course there are the boring Porshe and some of the rare cars like the Ford GT400, Shelby Cobras, Mustang GT, Mustang SVT, and the likes.... We really thought that they are fund raising event or motor show... but apparently prior to the existence of Interstate and freeway, this part of town is the intersection of a famous road called Route-66, and last time people would just drive their car and stop here for a night, before resuming their journey next day, so in honor of this ancient history, folks around the town will drive up here to kinda 'celebrate' the event every weekend, funny huh? These people drove as far as 300 miles just to be here. Crazy people at the States.
Once we reached Grand canyon, a superb sight greeted us. Really beyond words.
The depth and horizon is amazing... the picture couldn't really show the 3D effect when you are looking at the panorama view... we are at 7500 ft above sea level and the whole place is literally.... canyons.
Standing by the edges really made you experienced "vertigo" where your balls starts to shake itself .... not literally. But I did feel dizzy when stand near the cliff, and my manhood shrinked a few cm if I am not mistaken
Ain't it breathtaking?
Here area more pictures to show:
Yes, there is an ancient tower build somewhere near the Desert View observation point at the South entrance of the grand canyon, pretty neat stuff
These are the places I have been to for the past 4 weeks... I haven't even blog on the food and the shopping trips I had made... Nevertheless, I will try to blog as much as possible. Work is getting really hard and pressure is mounting (its about time)
Next week we are planning for San Diego trip, hope it will be equally fun.
