Posted By Wayne on February 3, 2010

Over the years - 24 - that I have been sharing my love of the Southwest with visitors from all over the world, I have heard this question asked or some version of it hundreds of times.  With Canyon West being opened in the last few years and it being only a couple hours drive from Las Vegas, the question has become more prevalent.

The answer is unequivocally ARIZONA!

People from all over the world travel to visit the Grand Canyon.  The two closest major gateway cities to the Grand Canyon are Phoenix and Las Vegas.  Both are also major tourist hubs with international flights bringing tourists from all over.  Both cities advertise they are the gateway to the Grand Canyon.  Over the 20 plus years I have watched these two cities duke it out to attract foreign visitors, I have seen Las Vegas grow in popularity.

It seems to me Las Vegas has built its entertainment industry by building one monster hotel and casino after another; they also continue to grow the amount of advertising money they spend on their attractions, one of which is the Grand Canyon.

Barry Aarons, lobbyist for the Arizona Tourism Alliance, said there’s more than just pride involved in having it known world wide that Arizona is the Grand Canyon State.  He cited a survey done more than a decade ago of foreign visitors to the Grand Canyon.

“Seventy-one percent think the Grand Canyon is in Las Vegas,’ he said.

That, he said, is not surprising.

He said many of the tours of the canyon, both by air and bus, originate in Las Vegas. And he said, that may lead foreign visitors to believe that the canyon is simply an extension of the city on its far outskirts.

This has led to a movement to officially declare Arizona the Grand Canyon State with Arizona State lawmakers taking the first steps Tuesday to officially declaring Arizona “The Grand Canyon State” - - quick, before Nevada claims it!

The push for HB 2447 follows the discovery by Marshall Trimble, the state historian, that the phrase that appears on license plates, tourist brochures and even signs welcoming visitors to Arizona actually has no official status. And Trimble said he discovered that only because a school girl asked him about it.

“So I made a promise to this girl that I would see what I could do,’ Trimble told members of the House Government Committee. He convinced Rep. Sam Crump, R-Anthem, to sponsor the required legislation.

“With our centennial coming up, it would be a nice gift to the people of Arizona,’ Trimble said. Arizona became a state on Feb. 14, 1912″.

Let’s all give Marshall Trimble a hand in promoting this through the Arizona legislature by writing letters to the editor, commenting on this blog and any others talking about this bill and talking it up to all we meet.  Let’s give our children and our children’s children the legacy that Arizona is truly the Grand Canyon State.

To add legitimacy to this claim, all 277 miles of the Grand Canyon National Park are in the state of Arizona, so what better way to claim it than by making it official?

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Posted By Wayne on January 29, 2010

Last May I wrote a whole blog on some of the craziest things tourists have said to me during their visit.  This blog has become the most visited of all my 200 plus blogs over the last year with the exception of my daily home page which had over 3,000 visits.  Over 1300 visits to my “Tourists Say The Craziest Things!” blog over the past year.  My question is why?  What makes this blog the most popular?  Why is this blog head and shoulders higher in visitation than the second most popular - a blog about whitewater rafting the Grand Canyon?

My thoughts are that people want a good laugh, people want to see if some of the questions were their questions, they want to see if they may have asked the same thing, they want to see if they are smarter than the other visitors, or some other reason.  If you have any suggestions as to why this blog has become so popular, please comment below I would appreciate your input.

I decided to add a few more of the latest fun questions I have been asked since I wrote the May post.  Here’s a few of the many that I have accumulated.

“Will my cell phone work in the desert?  Is their internet service on the Indian Reservation? Will I see a Rattlesnake on my desert hike? (This is funny since snakes hibernate in the winter and the question is always asked in the winter).  “When do the lights go on in the Grand Canyon?”  “How long did it take to dig the Grand Canyon”.  Will I have cell service in the Canyon? When the clouds fill the Canyon so it is not visible, “how do I know there is a Canyon out there?”  John Hance, the father of great Grand Canyon stories spins the yarn about how when the Canyon fills in with clouds, he and his trusty horse ride the clouds from the South Rim to the North Rim and back.  Or the one about how he dug the Grand Canyon and when asked where he put all of the dirt - he pointed to the South at the San Francisco Peaks saying there’s where he put the dirt. He had many more wonderful stories he used to share with Canyon visitors and I would imagine many great and funny questions from his visitors were answered with equal craziness.

Another of my favorites is a visitor to Monument Valley asked me one day, who built the spires in the Monument Valley? And of course the Anasazi Cliff Dwellings scattered all over the southwest are rife for many fun questions too-such as “how did they get up into the caves? Another one from a visitor from the Midwest “why didn’t they live in the towns we came through?

My all time favorite is the one from the visitor from the east coast - when does the Grand Canyon fill with water?

I will keep my notebook handy and keep adding to this list for your reading pleasure.  Thank you for reading and commenting, I appreciate you!

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Tags: Funny, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Questions, Tall Tales, Tourists