Arizona | New Mexico | Texas | Louisiana

Arizona - The Grand Canyon State

State bird: Cactus Wren
State flower: Saguaro Cactus Blossom
State tree: Yellow Palo Verde
Capital: Phoenix
Admission to statehood: 14 February 1912

The first stop on my trip is in Tucson, Arizona, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. I used to think deserts were empty places, all brown and dusty with just a few snakes and lizards crawling about – but this desert is rather green, and quite prickly. And many furry little creatures live here. Watch carefully and you´ll see rock squirrels and jack rabbits running from bush to bush. In the cool afternoons and evenings, pretty little cottontail bunnies and tiny mice come out of their homes to play with their friends and scamper about looking for food.

The Sonoran Desert is home to the world´s largest variety of cactus, the saguaro (pronounced SAH-WHA-ROE). Take a look at the art project I made for you to demonstrate the size of a typical saguaro. It would actually take 20 or 30 fox terriers standing on top of each other to be as tall as a saguaro, but you get the idea....

I like to think of saguaros as the apartment buildings of the desert, because so many birds live in them.

The desert is also home to many smaller cacti. (One prickly desert plant is a cactus, two prickly desert plants are cacti.) Cactus are usually covered in pointy needles and prickers – some as large as a sewing needle and others so tiny they look like fuzz. Whatever their size, they all hurt when you stand or sit on them. Ouch! Good thing I bought some new boots to protect my paws as soon as I arrived in Tucson. (Do you think I should have asked for two pairs of boots though....?)

By lunchtime, the sun in the Arizona desert is so hot that the thermometer reads more than 100 degrees in the shade. That means the ground is so hot it hurts my little paws. I soon discovered that the large drinking bowl in the backyard is also good for swimming. On really hot days, it´s a good idea just to cover yourself in a wet towel and stand right in the water to keep cool.

During my stay in Tucson, a huge forest fire burned in the beautiful Santa Catalina Mountains for more than three weeks. Those are not thunderstorm clouds I´m looking at in the picture here, but the smoke from the fires. Sometimes, forest fires start because careless people do not put out their campfires, or because they throw cigarettes from their car windows. This is a very bad thing.

But sometimes, fires start because Nature needs to rejuvenate a forest. Rejuvenate means “bring new life to.” How does something as destructive as a fire bring new life to a forest? I wondered the same thing myself....

It turns out that, if there are too many small, dead bushes in a forest – called undergrowth, because they grow under the trees – a fire might start naturally, perhaps by a lightning strike during a summer storm. After the undergrowth burns away, the majestic forest trees have more room to breathe. And underneath the tall trees, smaller trees and bushes have room to be born. Those healthy new bushes and trees then provide new, green homes for all the little animals of the forest. This is a very good thing!

So while you and I must never, ever do anything to start a forest fire, I find it most fascinating that Nature herself can use such a destructive force to help the forest grow stronger and healthier.

Before leaving Arizona, my People took a short trip to the Northern part of the state to see the world-famous Natural Wonder called The Grand Canyon. Although dogs are allowed at The Grand Canyon itself, my People traveled to the canyon on the Grand Canyon Railway, which departs from Williams, Arizona. Alas, The Grand Canyon Railway does not allow four-legged passengers. So your poor furry friend stayed behind in Tucson.

[Editor´s Note for Dog Owners: The company that operates the Grand Canyon Railway opened a doggy hotel in Williams after Chaucer´s People visited the canyon. Chaucer plans to check out the Grand Canyon Railway Pet Resort sometime this year and will post his review on the Paws Awhile section of his website.]

Riding the train is an awesome trip for kids, though! I´ve even heard rumors about masked cowboy bandits coming on board sometimes! So be sure to pack your own cowboy hat and boots and sheriff´s badge when you go.

By now you´ve seen the photograph here and are asking: “If you didn´t visit the Grand Canyon, Chaucer, how in the world did you get in this picture?” Well, I´ll tell you, my young friends. I was so miffed (a word that means annoyed, upset, or just plain grumpy) at being left behind that I got out my scissors and glue and pasted myself into the photograph afterwards! (Can you find the other photographs in my Grand Tour travelogue where I´ve done the same thing?)

We learned above how fire can have both a destructive and a rejuvenating effect on Nature. Water can do the same thing – if there´s enough of it. The powerful Colorado River actually carved the Grand Canyon from rock many millennia ago!

I learned more about how water creates Natural Wonders during my stay in New Mexico. Join me as I head to the state known as “the land of enchantment”....

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New Mexico - The Land of Enchantment

After leaving Tucson, I traveled East to New Mexico. The people who live here call their state the “land of enchantment.” My own People found the sunsets over these wild mountains “enchanting” indeed – but Cowbear and I think this old green tractor is a lot more exciting. Pity his arms can´t reach the steering wheel though.

By the way, can you guess what the place in this picture is called? A machinery graveyard! That´s a strange name for a lonely spot where farmers leave old plows and tractors and other farm equipment that they don´t want anymore. Once upon a long time ago, many farmers lived and worked the land in central New Mexico.

To stay healthy when traveling in the desert, drink lots of water. And to stay happy, always sample the local cuisine! My favorite food in the world is bread. I´ll be trying lots of bread made by local bakers as I travel across the U.S.A. In the photograph here, I´m eating a sopapilla (say SO-PA-PEE-YA) at Little Anita´s restaurant in Old Town Albuquerque. Sopapilla is Spanish for “light, crunchy, air-filled, bun-like thing drenched in honey.” Mmmmmm!

In addition to being my Very Best Friend, Cowbear is a Great Scholar (meaning he gets good grades in school and knows how to find out all kinds of cool things at the library). Shall we ask him to find us a recipe for sopapillas?

The city of Albuquerque (pronounced AL-BUH-KER-KEY) is home to the National Atomic Museum, where you can learn all about how airplanes fly and what it was like to be a great scientist like Madame Curie or Albert Einstein and maybe even pretend you´re a Brilliant Inventor for the day. Science is a lot more fun when you get to act it out, rather than just read about it in a schoolbook, don´t you think?

From Albuquerque, we drove north to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, for an afternoon visit. The heart of this historic city is its Plaza, and there I wandered amongst the artists and craftsmen selling their wares on blankets lining the sidewalks: gorgeous hand-crafted silver and turquoise jewelry intermingles with inexpensive bead necklaces just perfect for bringing back home to your young friends.

From beautiful Santa Fe, I traveled down State Route 285 to a place that is famous around the world (and perhaps beyond!): Roswell, New Mexico. In the photograph here, you can see me paying my respects to one of Roswell´s most famous residents.

I´m just kidding, of course. There aren´t really any large, green aliens living in this desert city – but some people do think that extraterrestrials landed in the barren desert near this part of New Mexico about half a century ago. “Wait just a minute, Chaucer,” you say. “What´s that big word?” Well, my little friends, if you haven´t seen the classic movie called E.T., then let me tell you: The word extra means above or beyond. And terrestrial comes from the Latin word terra, which means land or Earth. So an extraterrestrial is “something or someone from beyond the Earth.” Oooooo, scary!

And that´s not even the strangest thing I learned in Roswell.

It turns out that if you see a strange object in the sky (and it´s definitely not a kite or an airplane or your neighbor´s parakeet on the loose again), then you call it an Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO. Some people – including many who live in Roswell – even think UFOs are spaceships piloted by extraterrestrials. Could this possibly be true?! Let´s learn a little more about UFOs and extraterrestrials and see what you think.

Just before midnight on the Fourth of July in 1947 a farmer who lived about 75 miles outside of Roswell, heard a very strange and very loud sound. It wasn´t quite thunder, but it boomed across the hot, dry land just the same. The next day this farmer, named Mac Brazel, was driving around his ranch with his neighbor´s son, seven-year-old Dee Proctor. And guess what they found?!

A big mess.

Out in the middle of the desert, out where there should be nothing but tumbleweeds and a few dusty jackrabbits, Farmer Mac and Little Dee discovered something that definitely should not have been there. It looked like a giant-size roll of tin foil that had been shredded by a dozen frolicking dogs. And it covered an area as wide as three football fields and three-quarters of a mile long – in other words, as far as the eye could see!

And this is where the controversy started. (A controversy is something about which many people disagree, often angrily or passionately.) Government officials said the tin foil mess was nothing more than an experimental weather balloon that had hit the ground. Well, perhaps, but many, many other people believe that what Farmer Mac and Little Dee discovered was the remains of a spaceship that had crashed on the desert floor. In fact, they claim that at least one extraterrestrial was found alive among the wreckage – and then hidden by the Government. Imagine that!

Today you can see very detailed exhibits presenting “both sides of the story” at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. You can learn all about what the Government says happened that night in 1947... and what the spaceship believers say really happened. You can ask the friendly and knowledgeable museum employees all the questions you want to help you make up your own mind. And (if you´re a rather handsome fox terrier who did not make a mess on the museum floor) you just might leave with your very own bite-size, green alien as a gift from the museum staff.

Carlsbad Caverns came next! I could have spent weeks exploring these gigantic caves in the Middle of Nowhere. Did you know that once you are inside a cave, it is so dark that you cannot even see your paw in front of your face with your eyes wide open?! Thank goodness the rangers have strung electrical lights along the trail ways. When Jim White discovered the caverns more than 100 years ago, all he had were candles and lanterns – and if he brought friends in with him, they had to be lowered down in buckets no bigger than your kitchen sink!

How did these huge caves come to exist under the bare New Mexico land?

A long, long, long, long time ago, this area was not a dry desert, but a salty sea. Hundreds and thousands of years passed, and the sea started drying up, leaving behind a kind of rock called limestone. Many more thousands of years passed, and the rains started to fall. The rainwater combined with something called carbon dioxide – which is a gas trapped in the soil – to make a very weak acid. And very, very slowly, this acid dissolved the limestone and created the huge underground holes, or caverns, that we see today.

But that was just the beginning!

As the centuries went on and water began seeping into the enormous caverns from above (perhaps after a rain), it carried with it some of the ingredients in the dirt – most importantly, a mineral called calcite. Drip, drip, drip.... The water fell from the ceiling verrrrrrrrrry verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slooooooooooooooooooowly. And as the drips dried up, the calcite was left behind as a tiny blob on the cave´s ceiling.When you visit Carlsbad Caverns for the first time, you can understand why so many people think aliens tried to land a spaceship in New Mexico. Many sections of the caves are so strange and beautiful, you think you´re on another planet!

The process of water reshaping the Earth into caverns and cave decorations is very complicated, and the nice forest rangers at Carlsbad will talk to you quite a bit to explain how it all happened, but you can try a simple home experiment to get a good idea (see sidebar).

One drip of water leaves just a blob, but many, many, many drips of water start leaving so many blobs of calcite that they formed into strange and beautiful shapes hanging down from the top of the caves. And, sometimes, the water drops fell to the cave floor before drying up – and formed strange and beautiful shapes growing up around your feet.

The weird thing hanging above me in the picture above is called a “drapery” because – can you guess? – that´s just what it looks like. Some drapery formations are so thin, they are almost translucent (which is a big word derived from Latin that can be translated quite simply as “something light shines through”). But they´re made out of solid rock!

Other rock formations in the caverns are as smooth as silk, like this one here, which someone actually named the “Shy Elephant.” Can you see why?

More than 50,000 bats live in Carlsbad Caverns, and I was so excited to find out that visitors may help with their care and protection by adopting one. You don´t have to wait to go to Carlsbad Caverns to adopt one of the bats. Go to Carlsbad.Caverns.National-Park.com for more information. Since my adopted bat had to stay at the caves with his family, I also got a little plush toy bat in a can to bring on the road with me. Buckling him with my new green alien friends, we headed on to Texas!

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Texas - The Lone Star State

After leaving Carlsbad Caverns, I drove with my People to Texas – which is the largest state in the country except for Alaska. Look at a map of the United States in your classroom and see how many other U.S. states would fit inside Texas!

Perhaps you´ve heard the saying, “Remember the Alamo!” and wondered, “Just what does that mean?” Well, the actual Alamo is the building I am sitting in front of in the photo here (wearing a fabulous chapeau, or hat, which I tell you all about in the sidebar below...). But “Remember the Alamo!” does not mean you´re supposed to memorize what a pretty old Spanish-style mission looks like.

The Alamo itself was the site of a famous battle that has come to symbolize “a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds.” For 13 days in February 1836, a group of just 189 brave Texas volunteers held off some 4,000 Mexican soldiers in a battle that has been recorded as one of the most dramatic of all time.

“But, Chaucer,” I hear you asking me, “if the defenders of The Alamo lost, why is this battle so famous? Why is this site of such great importance to Texans today?” Because, my curious little friends, of how these 189 men died. In a situation where many people would have tried to run, hide, or surrender, these men chose to stand and fight. They fought so hard and so passionately that they were able to hold out against the enemy for almost two weeks – despite being outnumbered by more than 20 soldiers to one. Wow! Their actions have made them heroes to everyone who admires and values personal bravery and honor.

Now that you know what people are talking about when they mention The Alamo, I hope you´ll visit the official website at TheAlamo.org to learn more. The site includes all the details about The Alamo and the Texas Revolution, and some fabulous old photos, too.

So, the next time you and your pals are cornered by the playground bullies – or your soccer team is two kids short the day you play last year´s state champs – don´t think about the fact that you have almost zero chance of winning. Just holler “Remember the Alamo!” and give the fight every last bit of energy you have!

The Alamo isn´t the only sight San Antonio has to offer a curious terrier, though. The City Walk is a pretty stretch of property along the San Antonio River with plenty of cool spots to rest hot, tired paws. It is also called the Paseo del Rio, which is Spanish for “path of the river.”

Fancy shops and hotels line the 2.5-mile Paseo, but my favorite part was all the restaurants. This is definitely a dog-friendly town! Well-behaved terriers are welcome to sit with their People at many of the outside tables. Woof!

For those of you who prefer big booming boats to quiet river walks, you´ll really like hearing about the next stop on my adventure tour: the great battleship USS Texas! After serving in both World War I and World War II, the Texas is now moored off the San Jacinto Battleground near Houston. (Texans fought the decisive 1836 battle for their independence from Mexico at San Jacinto – but that´s another story…)

Well, we´ve had a great time in Texas, but there´s still much more to see in this great country of ours! So, getting out the maps, I turn my furry face towards Louisiana…

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Louisiana - The Bayou State

As soon as we arrived in the beautiful and exciting city of New Orleans, one of this state´s most famous cities, Cowbear and I began sampling the local cuisine (that´s a fancy word for food). Here we are making a breakfast of beignets and cafe au lait. A beignet (say BAY-NYAY) is a special pastry of French origin very popular in this city. Cafe au lait (say CA-FAY O-LAY) means “coffee with lots of milk.”

For lunch, we decided to try some seafood. Restaurants in New Orleans have fabulous shrimp dishes – and you can get as messy as you want eating with your fingers and paws! What fun!

In addition to wonderful food, New Orleans is known for its beautiful buildings. So, after a long bath to get all the shrimp sauce off me, I started touring the city by foot.

One of the first things I noticed is that New Orleans is awfully French! French street names, French architecture, French food.... French food... French food.... Oh, wait, I´m getting distracted.

Where did this French influence come from, I wondered? Well, it turns out that a French explorer named Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed the territory now known as the state of Louisiana for France way back in 1682. That same year, one of his compatriots (which is a nice, smart-sounding word that means “fellow countrymen”) stumbled onto a swampland along a bend in the Mississippi River that was filled with alligators, mosquitoes, and American Indians.

Within 40 years, the city of Nouvelle Orleans was founded right there in the middle of the swamps. (Nouvelle is the French word for “new,” and Orleans was the name of a French duke back home.)

You´ve probably learned in school about the “American melting pot” – the idea that our great country is made up of people of all cultures from all around the world. Kind of like a big international stew – or gumbo, to use the name of a local dish. (I can´t stop thinking about food!)

Well, New Orleans is like a melting pot on a smaller scale. Settlers from France, Spain, England and Africa shared their culture and cuisine with each other and with the American Indians – and wonderful things like Cajun and Creole food and jazz music were born. Why don´t you send me an e-mail if you´d like to try out some Cajun and Creole recipes.

No, I don´t have my photographs all mixed up…. The St. Louis Cathedral facing Jackson Square in the city´s French Quarter really does look a little like Sleeping Beauty´s Castle, don´t you think? This castle-like church is a real place of worship and history, though.

Still, New Orleans is rich with so many interesting and unusual sites that I sometimes did feel as if I were in a fantasyland. Look at the picture here: The street is named Pirates Alley! I sniffed around for a while but didn´t catch any of those bad guys from Disney´s “Pirates of the Caribbean” creeping through the back streets. Too bad.

The best part of my week´s stay in New Orleans was not the wonderful food. Nor was it walking around the beautiful streets of this historic city (truth be told, the August humidity made my naturally curly fur even more curly, a bit poodle-ish even). My favorite part was hearing about the highlights of my People´s visit to the National World War II Museum.

Wait, my young friends! I can already hear you grumbling about how borrrrrrrring history is, especially military history. Memorizing dates, names of battles…. Yes, I admit such exercises are rather tedious when you´re not also learning really cool facts and stories about the real-life people involved. Did you know, for example, that Allied forces used dozens of inflatable rubber tanks, jeeps, trucks, and cannons to trick the German Nazis? I sure don´t recall learning about that in history class at school!

Check back here soon for the rest of my Grand Tour travelogue – and for more about big rubber tanks and other fun tales from history. Until then, why don´t you check out the museum´s Kid´s Corner online at www.NationalWW2Museum.org?