The western trek

Posted By on November 1, 2009

Katy and I went to Arizona in the third week of October to look at Arizona State University in Phoenix and the University of Arizona in Tucson. Katy’s a senior at Beaumont School and is interested in psychology. She has a gift for it, working with kids with special disabilities the past two summers in downtown Cleveland. She loves that job.

Arizona State was gigantic—69,000 students at four separate Phoenix-area campuses—and the Tempe campus is very attractive. It’s the kind of place where you can create your own career, it seems. The facilities were excellent, the weather the week of Oct. 19 gorgeous. The Tucson campus was more logically laid out and more manageable; that city is probably a fifth the size of Phoenix, too, so the scale is easier to handle.

We must see whether Katy gets into either school or both; she has also applied to Ohio State University and Denison, a private school in southern Ohio. Our trip—our first together—was a lot of fun. We stayed in three different hotels—including two nights at a modern Best Western in Phoenix, where we wound up so I could cover a Best Western convention—and got along really well. My favorite memory is of stopping at the Tom Mix Memorial in Florence, where we met Jim and Mary, a motorcycle couple from Phoenix.

Katy and me

Jim and Mary

Never exchanged addresses but we did exchange kindly words. The encounter made the desert feels less deserted.

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I'm a veteran critic and business writer who reads and listens and writes about music, books, hotels and travel. I've been in the business for many years and still enjoy it. My pride and joy is my book, Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CarloWolff
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