Arizona - June 2004

Arizona, the country of saguaros, rattlesnakes and tarentula but also the place where the world's largest binoculars is being built: the Large Binocular Telescope. For this reason, Elise went there at the end of May to mount the Large Binocular Camera blue channel on the telescope. During two weeks, she stayed at the summit of mount Graham with Jacopo, the italian gang. Ten days to improve her italian cooking, in the middle of pine forests full of red squarrels.

Joel arrived in Tucson at the end of June and we spent 10 days of vacations at Christian and Shari's place. We flew 3 times with Christian and even did a few acrobatic figures...

... we drove up to the north of Arizona and Utah. In four days and 3600 km we went through the Grand Canyon...

and then to Lake Powell, Antelope Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, Sand dunes...

Bryce Canyon ...

before to stop at  Meteor Crater to discover this big impact,

and at Petrified Forest National Park to see how natural processes can transform living materials - trees - into stone.

We turned back to Tucson for the last days and went to the south and visited both the Karchner Caverns and the ghost towns. Before leaveing, we also passed by the San Xavier mission.

 Great holidays with a surprise a few days after coming back to Europe: Elise was pregnant... and even if at the beginning it was just a positive result of a test, it is much more concrete now (picture from mid-January). The baby is due early March.