15 Your Future Will Come

Chapter 15 YOUR FUTURE WILL COME "Woo hoo!" Coke hooted as the Ferrari crossed the border. "The Grand Canyon State, baby!" Outside, Arizona didn't look all that different from New Mexico. Mesas—or were they plateaus?—lined both sides of the road. A truck stop called Speedy's was quickly followed by the Tee Pee Trading Post and a line of other souvenir shops hawking cheap jewelry and moccasins. But even so, just crossing another state line made everyone feel like they were just a little bit closer to home. "How much farther do we have to go, Mom?" Pep called from the backseat. Mrs. McDonald looked it up on her laptop. "Nine hundred and fifty-eight miles," she reported. "A hop, skip, and a jump," said Dr.

McDonald as he continued on I-40 West. Mrs. McDonald dropped her New Mexico guidebook in the trash and opened a new one— Arizona Arisin'. She flipped through the introduction "Let's see soaring mountains red- walled canyons vast deserts," she mumbled. "Hey, did you guys know that Arizona has more mountains than Switzerland and more golf courses than Scotland?" "I suppose you're going to tell us about all the oddball museums and weird stuff there is to see here, huh, Mom?" asked Coke. "Well, the official state neckwear is the bolo tie," Mrs. McDonald said. "In fact, there's a bolo tie museum close to Phoenix." "Please say we don't have to go there," Pep begged from the backseat. "Please?" "You guys are no fun," said Mrs. McDonald. "Hey, you want to go to London Bridge?" "Isn't London Bridge in London?" asked Coke.

Actually, it is and it isn't. There are several London Bridges. But one of them was sinking into the Thames River so England put it up for sale in 1967. An American bought it, and he had all 10,246 bricks shipped to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to be reassembled there. "London Bridge is on the other side of the state, five hours from here," said Mrs. McDonald. "I'm not driving five hours to see a bridge," said Dr. McDonald. "I want to see natural beauty. I want to see the Grand Canyon, the red sandstone at Sedona, Monument Valley "Forty minutes after crossing the state line, they were still arguing about what to see in Arizona. That's when they came to this sign.

Dr. McDonald pulled into the parking lot at the visitors' center. It was at least a hundred degrees outside, and Mrs. McDonald made sure everyone had a bottle of water and was covered by sunglasses, hats, and sunscreen. A park ranger was just starting a short walking tour, so the McDonalds rushed to catch up. The Petrified Forest isn't a "forest" in the common use of the word. It's more of a rock garden, with spectacular colors. That's why part of the Petrified Forest is called the Painted Desert. "I don't get it," Pep said to the ranger. "If this is a forest, where are the trees?" "We get that question all the time," said the

ranger, a tall man with blond hair. "Usually when a tree falls, it decays over time. But these trees fell into rivers and were buried in water, minerals, and volcanic ash. So they remained intact and became fossilized. That is, they turned to stone. Some of them are two hundred and twenty-five million years old." Mrs. McDonald took some notes for Amazing but True. After a short walk, the ranger stopped and knelt down to point out a flat rock that had a picture of an eye carved into it. "Graffiti?" somebody asked. "You might say that," said the ranger. "These pictures are called petroglyphs. Prehistoric people made them over eight thousand years ago." Everyone got down on their hands and knees to examine the petroglyph. There were others depicting a squatting man, a caterpillar, a ladder, and a spoked wheel. "What do they mean?" Pep asked.

"There are lots of theories," the ranger told her. "They might have been primitive maps, or astronomical markers. Or maybe they were religious symbols, or boundaries between different tribes. We really don't know for sure." Pep, always interested in codes and secret messages, was fascinated by the petroglyphs. Her brother—he of the short attention span— had wandered a short distance away from the group. He happened to look down to see a large gray rock with these letters written on it. EDIWEFER Coke called his sister over. "Look at this," he said. "The ancient people couldn't have known English, could they?" "Of course not." Pep knelt down and touched one of the letters with one finger. It rubbed off. The message appeared to be written in chalk. Clearly, it was recent. A good rain would have washed those letters away.