As might have been guessable, for the last week and a half or so I’ve had visitors, and for a while prior to that I’ve been preparing… end result, less blogging. The last few days we took a brief trip to southern Utah, visiting Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. Some notes:
1) A whole lot of American tourists. Not really surprising.
2) A sizable fraction of the non-American tourists were, based on accents and language, French. Isn’t France’s vacation month August?
3) A recognizable fraction were Germans.
4) A lot seem to have been Chinese (possibly Korean… I doubt i could tell the difference). Their children do not seem to have functional volume control systems, and they’re all stuck on 11. The adults seemed incapable of noticing Americans, like we’re wearing fricken’ cloaking devices. They seem to think that proper elevator etiquette is for people waiting for an elevator should charge in before those in the car can get off. However, they *do* tend to finally notice Americans when the Americans in question are on the car and shove the pushy ones out of the way…
5) Relatively few Brits, though there were a few. I spoke to a few, general shooting the breeze chitchat; a common comment that they tended to come up with is that they were surprised at how friendly and generous Americans have proven to be. That the reality of America did not match the apparently rather crappy image being portrayed Over Yonder.
6) A whole lot of Europeans began their voyaging around the southwestern corner of the US in Las Vegas. I would have guessed LA, but there it is.
7) Arches and Canyonland: holy crap. Not to be missed.