Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian reservation. We were camping there. Found out from an Indian who spoke with a weird mumbling sort of Native American pidgin and communicated it to us mostly by drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick.
When he said “and then the buildings came down” while erasing with his hands the buildings he had drawn, my wife and i were in disbelief.
We really thought the dude was making it all up (these Havasupai people had been telling us some tall tales all week).
He then told us “they hit the pentagon too.”
What. The. Fuckk.
This was 3 days after it all happened. We hiked from the campground to the rez office and read the story on CNNs website. They had dial up so we didn’t see any video.
Anyway, long story cut waaaayyyy short, we didn’t sit down to a tv until 5 days after it all went down. Watched a recap on a hotel room tv in Needles, CA. In a way we were lucky to be so unaware. The Event had some time to be processed by the populace before we really knew the scale of it.
As an aside, my mom flew from Boston on the same flight that flew into one of the towers except she flew the day before. Same departure time, same flight number. I wasn’t sure about her flight date and for a few moments I thought she was probably gone. Called her and she answered the phone crying.