A vacation with Alex at the wheel, in every sense of the phrase, made Carmen realize that she knew nothing about planning a vacation. Watching him was a lesson in itself. It didn't take hours of researching areas and roads, but it did take some forethought. Alex looked at Arizona as he did any other state. Up to that point she hadn't realized that she viewed every other state as foreign. It wasn't a conscious thought, and no doubt the tendency was born of ignorance. She had never been anywhere but Texas. Being Alex's home state made it automatically an ally of Arkansas. Instead of embracing the different things that each state had to offer, she had compared them to Arkansas.
It came as no surprise to Carmen that Alex was a fantastic tour guide. When he guided tours on their safari, he thought of things that had never occurred to her in perspectives that she found fascinating. No doubt all of that had to do with his experience with people all over the world. She had learned from him then and she was learning from him as they traveled.
Alex didn't merely take them to see things and places. He provided history that made it all the more interesting. Lake Havasu wasn't simply a beautiful port on the Colorado River. The London Bridge had been disassembled and reassembled across the river. None of them knew that until Alex told them.
Alex took them to see the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Carmen had seen pictures of both, but pictures didn't do either justice. Pictures minimized and flattened landscape. Actually seeing them was awe inspiring. Reading about things in books was fine, but if it was at all possible, people should experience them as well.
She had thought of Arizona in terms of desert, but it was so much more. In a day's ride a person could go from the scorching Mohave Desert to the chilly rim of the Grand Canyon. The terrain ranged from 70 feet above sea level to over 12,000 feet. A person couldn't see all that from a butte overlooking a waterhole where wild horses visited. What was she thinking?
Jonathan loved the desert, and Arizona had plenty of that, but he enjoyed the mountains and canyons as well. Arizona wasn't the only state with deserts. New Mexico, Texas and California had them as well.
Traveling with Alex had opened a new source of learning, and the entire family benefited from that. Everyone didn't have the option of travel, and that started Carmen thinking about something else. She had already made upgrades on their Wildlife Safari so that she could take handicapped children on free tours, but why limit it to their land? Why spend the money on a travel trailer or a motor home when they could purchase a handicap van that would allow handicapped or underprivileged children to travel with them?