LA, Baby!

We're just back from a few days in LA. We took our kids (and one of Pumpkin's friends) to Universal Studios. Pumpkin has become quite the Potterhead, and has been longing to go visit Universal Studios to see the Harry Potter world.

Long time readers may remember that when we were planning our trip to Disneyland for Petunia's 6th birthday, Pumpkin thought about the fact that turning six warranted a trip to Disneyland and decided that this must mean that we'd visit on birthdays that were multiples of six, too. I don't know why, but this seemed obvious to her. Mr. Snarky and I decided to roll with it, because with our proximity to Disneyland having a method to limit trips to the magical money-sucking kingdom seemed like a good idea.

But then Pumpkin decided she didn't much care for Disney, so we modified the rule to be that the kid turning 6, 12, or 18 could pick a special destination (subject to parental veto, of course). For several years, I assumed we'd be returning to Yosemite this year, because Pumpkin really loves it. Then she fell for the Harry Potter books and so it turns out we visited Universal Studios, instead.

We went over our long President's Day weekend because she has other plans for spring break, and our "Friday before President's Day" trip to Disney worked so well last year. We didn't have such good weather luck this year, but it was still a good trip. It rained off and on most of the afternoon and evening, but we'd managed to see the big outdoor attractions before it started raining and the rain didn't seem to bother the kids at all. I thought it was a little cold, but I survived.

I'll write up the trip over on Adjusted Latitudes before too long. Universal Studios only needs a day - unlike Disneyland/California Adventure, there didn't seem to be any point to extending the visit to two days. So we also spent a day exploring downtown LA and then a morning checking out some sights in Griffith Park: Travel Town (cool trains, but this would have been better to visit when the kids were littler) and Walt Disney's Barn (we happened to be in town on the one day of the month it was open, and so Mr. Snarky felt strongly we should see it - it is the barn/workshed where Walt Disney did some of his early work on Disneyland).

One of the things we did in downtown LA was take Petunia to see where the video to one of her favorite songs was filmed - The video for Play That Song, by Train, was filmed in Grand Park. Both kids decided to get their feet wet in the fountain even though it was not at all warm! 

One of the things I learned on this trip is that it isn't a good idea to work right up until the time I need to leave to pick up the kids. Doing this meant that we had to get everything ready the night before, and while we managed to get the kids packed well, I got up on Friday morning and discovered I hadn't brought any contact lenses and so would be wearing my glasses all weekend. And I didn't have my prescription sunglasses with me, either. Oops. I also did an incredibly bad job of picking jackets for the weekend, ending up with two pullovers and a raincoat and spending a lot of time awkwardly trying to get out of the top pullover when it was too warm inside for me.

Luckily, I did better on the other end. I took today off work (I don't automatically get this holiday - for some reason, we get the day after the 4th of July, instead). I spent most of my day doing laundry, buying groceries, and doing the other chores that would normally fall on the weekend.

I also took the kids shopping. When we were trying to pack Petunia's suitcase for the weekend while also saving aside some long pants for her to wear for the rest of the week, I realized that she does not have enough long pants to make it through a week. This was a very Southern California moment. However, we're having uncharacteristically cold weather here right now (the highs are only in the high 50s/low 60s) and she needs to wear long pants most days. When I said we should go buy her new pants, Mr. Snarky pointed out that all of Pumpkin's pants are about an inch too short so she needed new pants, too. So the kids and I went to the mall today to buy pants.

All in all, it wasn't my favorite way to spend a day off, but it was much better than trying to cram all of the chores into the evenings this week!

I did get to spend an hour drinking tea and working on my projects this morning. This is my Sunday morning routine, and I just transported it to Monday morning. I also found time to write this blog post... so the day was not all chores.

Still, I hope those of you who had today off had more fun than I did!

Let's Ignore the News and Talk about Disneyland

I am a bit overwhelmed with all the news right now, and so I'm going to ignore it and talk about going to Disneyland.

The promised Disneyland trip happened last weekend. That is why there were no weekend links: I was too busy wringing every last second of fun out of our two day park hopper passes.

I’m exaggerating, of course: we left a lot of fun behind. There’s only so much Disney a person can take. Still, we did have two full days in the parks, and I feel like we got our money’s worth. Or, at least that we got our money’s worth once you factor in the Disney premium. So if you ignore the egregiously high room rate for a pretty standard hotel room (but it came with Magic Hour!) and the fact that a single serving bottle of Diet Coke (needed to restore equilibrium after I braved a roller coaster) was $4… we got our money’s worth. And I’m not even joking: Disney does a really good job of delivering the fun, particularly if you’re willing to shell out for the premium experience of Magic Hour and pay the extra $10/ticket/day to get MaxPASS on the phone app,

After we got home, we talked about what our favorite part of the two days was. Petunia loved the roller coasters. She didn’t brave the really big ones — the biggest we did was Thunder Mountain (which necessitated that Diet Coke for me), but she went on the little one in Toontown over and over, and she liked Goofy’s Sky School a lot, too. We did the Radiator Springs Racers as the first thing on our first day, and she looooved it. Thanks to the magic of FastPASSes, she and Mr. Snarky rode that ride two more times. She also really liked the Grizzly River Run water ride. She enjoyed the tamer aspects of the visit, too — her top priority was visiting Minnie and Mickey’s houses in Toontown again, and I have the best photo of the look on her face right before she met Minnie. She knows Minnie isn’t real… but still the magic lingers.

And that was the best part of the weekend for me. I wanted to take Petunia back to the park before she aged out of the magic, and I got my wish.

This is the third time we’ve taken the kids to Disneyland, and I’m not sure if there will be another. We made the first trip to celebrate Pumpkin’s 6th birthday, mostly because the idea of figuring out what to do about the kindergarten birthday party stressed me out. Then we did the same for Petunia’s 6th birthday, because that was only fair (and figuring out the kindergarten birthday party didn’t sound any more appealing the second time around). Somehow, the kids decided that this meant that they got a trip to Disneyland on birthdays that are multiples of 6, and we thought “hey, that’s not a bad way to deal with our proximity to Disneyland, so why not?” But I started to suspect that Pumpkin won’t really want a trip to Disneyland to celebrate turning 12. She’s aged out of the magic, and doesn’t like roller coasters or “scary rides” and so Disneyland’s not really the place for her.

I was right about that: she didn’t have nearly as much fun on this trip as Petunia did. Her favorite part of Disneyland was the canoe ride (in which you actually paddle the canoe). She found a lot of things too noisy and I think overwhelming. She’s more a National Parks girl than a theme parks girl. I think that we’ll let her pick a different way to celebrate turning 12. I’d still like to make it a special trip somewhere (I rather like the idea of having a special trip for your 6th, 12th, and 18th birthdays… with the 18th birthday trip marking the end of the childhood vacations) but she can pick a different destination. And if she decides she just wants to stay home and celebrate with friends, I’ll let go of my idea about the special trips and do that.

As for the grown ups: Mr. Snarky’s favorite part was finally getting to do the Radiator Springs Racers ride. He loves the attention to detail at Disneyland, and that ride really showcases that aspect. My favorite part was how much Petunia loved this trip, but when forced to pick an actual thing we did, I settled on the Animator's Academy. That is where you sit in an auditorium and a Disney animator teaches you how to sketch one of the characters. We did it twice, sketching Goofy one time and Olaf the other. Olaf is a lot harder, and Petunia was pretty bummed with how poorly her Olaf came out. But our Goofy drawings weren't too bad. Here's mine:

Not great, but pretty amazing given how poor my drawing skills are!

All in all, it was a good trip. The crowds were not bad, even on Saturday (we were there Friday and Saturday — San Diego Unified gives a 4 day weekend for President's Day) and even though our feet were still tired on Sunday, it was worth it.

I would have liked another day "off" — not necessarily in Disneyland, but off from my chores and the things that need to happen around the house, and off from following along with the news. But that wasn't how we planned this trip, so we drove home on Saturday night, and I got up Sunday and picked up my usual chores, then went to work on Monday. And of course, the news continues to be distressing. But the brief respite in Fantasyland was nice.

Trip Story: Mammoth, Manzanar... and Home

I am determined to finish writing up our summer road trip before Halloween... and Halloween is right around the corner. So, tonight I have managed to finish the most pressing items on my to do list and will finish off the story.

At the end of my last installment, we were enjoying a final relaxing dinner on the lawn at the Epic Cafe in Lee Vining, having enjoyed Yosemite. We got up the next morning with plans to visit the Devil's Postpile National Monument (another Junior Ranger badge was in the offing!) but we were thwarted by the unusually heavy snowfall of the prior winter. The road to the National Monument was still impassable for the bus that usually takes visitors to there, and the only other way to reach it would be a hike that sound far too long and too strenuous for us.

We were in Mammoth, because that was where the bus would have picked us up. So we decided to go on up the mountain. The remarkable thing about this was the fact that people were skiing and snowboarding in bikinis and board shorts. It was a beautiful, warm day... but the snow was still on the mountain, so people were still skiing and boarding down it.

The view from the top was pretty, but it was really windy, so we didn't linger long.

After coming down, we gave in to the pleas of our children and let them go on the bungee trampoline thing. Then we had lunch, and headed south.

Our next stop was Manzanar National Historic Site. This was one of the internment centers set up by the US government for Japanese-Americans during World War II. It is not a proud moment in our history, and it felt even more disturbing to be visiting it at a time when some foolish people were referencing that time as a justification for banning Muslim immigrants. However, the site itself is very well done. There is a museum in the visitor's center that does an excellent job explaining what happened (but not justifying it) for both adults and children. They have activities aimed at children Petunia's age, such as asking them to think about what they would pack if they could only bring 10 things with them. However, I don't think the meaning of the site really sunk in for Petunia. Pumpkin, though, read and understood a lot. I think the visit made a strong impression on her.

As for me, I cried during the film and I cried looking at this wall:

The writing is the names of all the people interned at the various camps.

I cried reading a lot of the exhibits, actually. It was a horrible thing we did, and the exhibits show that and the effect of it on people's lives starkly.

We were visiting at the end of their day, so we didn't get to spend much time in the barracks that are still standing. However, we did drive the perimeter, stopping to see the remains of the Japanese garden the camp residents had created.

They named it Pleasure Park.

And to see the cemetery and memorial.

Most families chose to move the people who were buried here once the war was over, but there are still a few graves.

After leaving Manzanar, we drove on to Ridgecrest, where we spent the night. Ridgecrest is not really a tourist destination, but it was a convenient stopping point. And we saw a gorgeous sunset.

Taken from our motel parking lot.

The next day, we drove home. We stopped for lunch in Riverside. First we walked around downtown a bit (and admired the famous Mission Inn), and then we drove to a brewpub called Wick's for lunch. Lunch was very good... which was a good way to end the trip.

As always after a vacation, we were glad to be back in our own beds (particularly since the beds in our last motel were pretty uncomfortable), but a little sad to have our adventures over. But we're already talking about future explorations!

Trip Story: Yosemite and Lee Vining

Most people visit Yosemite from the West, but on our summer road trip this year, we decided to come in from the East. 

The advantage of this is that you get to stay in the utterly chilled out little town of Lee Vining, and see Mono Lake and its tufas as well as Yosemite. The disadvantage is that it takes a couple of hours to drive to Yosemite Valley from Lee Vining. The drive is gorgeous, through Tuolomne Meadows and past many lakes, waterfalls, and viewpoints.

One of the prettier lakes.

When we visited, in early July, there was also an extra bonus: snow! The kids had a blast playing in the snow.

However, that two hour drive to the valley meant that we arrived with the crowd instead of ahead of it. And OMG, the valley was crowded. Unlike at the Grand Canyon, which has managed to ban cars from the most popular part of the park during peak season, cars are allowed in at Yosemite. We parked our car and planned to take the bus around to see the sites, just as we had at the Grand Canyon. However, as we learned after lunch, if there is a traffic jam of cars, the bus isn't going any faster. (There was some road construction that closed the bus only lane: perhaps if that had been open, we would have had a better experience.)

But at the start of the day, we didn't know about the traffic jam that would mar our afternoon. We walked along a meadow to get to the visitor's center and get our Jr. Ranger books. It was a nice walk.

After collecting our Jr. Ranger books, we decided to head back to see the Yosemite Falls. We took the bus back to the trailhead for the Lower Yosemite Falls and walked up to see them, along with a bunch of other folks.

My kids admire the falls. You could feel the spray from this spot.

By the time we got back down from the falls viewpoint, it was basically lunch time, so we headed back to the dining options near the visitor's center and had lunch.  On our way, we saw a deer.

We had seen a couple of deer earlier, in more natural settings, too, and we'd see even more the next day. But still, this was quite a sight.

After lunch, things started going poorly. We tried to take the bus over to the trailhead for Mirror Lake, but traffic wasn't moving, and in the end, we had a walk (with none-too-happy children) over to Half Dome Village, where we ate dinner. After dinner, the traffic had cleared, and we were able to catch a bus back to our car and then drive out of the valley. 

We got back to our cabin late, a little disappointed with how the day had gone.

The next morning, we headed out to Bodie State Park. Bodie is a genuine ghost town. I think Mr. Snarky was the most impressed with this stop, but we all enjoyed it. The buildings are in a state of "arrested decay." 

You can only go inside a few, but you can peer into the windows of most.

Petunia was quite taken with the store display. When we got home from vacation, she rounded up some small bottles, filled them with salt and sugar and the like and made her own shop display. She still hasn't let me reclaim the bottles.

We were very glad we'd gone to Bodie in the morning, because by the time we left, it was quite hot. We finished up before lunch, and headed back to Lee Vining.

After lunch, we changed the kids into slightly warmer clothes, and headed back to Yosemite, planning to explore Tuolumne Meadows. I am so glad we did, because this second visit to the park rescued my opinion of the visit. The meadows were far, far less crowded than the valley had been. With the help of a ranger, we chose the Soda Springs hike as out best option. It was a beautiful hike.

We saw several deer.

And saw the soda springs. (That's carbonated water bubbling out of the ground!)

And then we headed back to the car. 

Petunia is carrying her new stuffed bear, bought the day before. Its name is Strawberry.

Pumpkin and Mr. Snarky got ahead of Petunia and me, and missed out on one of the great treats of the trip: a group of 5 bucks running past us, so close that I was actually a little concerned for our safety. They were big animals! Of course, Mr. Snarky had the camera, so I couldn't document the moment.

On our way out of the park, we stopped to play in the snow, of course. 

We had to drag the kids away. 

As we left Yosemite, I wished we could have seen the "big" sites in the valley at a less crowded time. Perhaps we'll come back in spring or fall some year. But I was glad to have gotten to visit Tuolumne Meadows, and that is not as accessible in the shoulder seasons, when there is more snow on the ground and the temperatures are lower. So I scored it a good stop.

We returned to the Epic Cafe for dinner. Mr. Snarky and I split a bottle of wine, and the kids did cartwheels once the crowd cleared out.

Not our feet. This was the view from our dinner table.

We went to bed quite happy with our stay in Lee Vining. We'd leave the next day, heading home. We had a couple more interesting stops (such as Manzanar)... but I'll pick up that story next time.

Trip Story: Lake Tahoe to Mono Lake

I am determined to finished writing up our summer road trip! In the last installment, we were in Carson City, Nevada. The most direct route to our next stop, Lee Vining, California, would have involved heading south from Carson City, but it seemed ridiculous to be so close to Lake Tahoe and not see it, so we drove west, instead.

Lake Tahoe is as beautiful as I'd heard. I think my biggest mistake of the trip was not putting the kids in their swimsuits that morning and letting them have a swim in the lake. I certainly heard about that bad decision for quite awhile! But even without taking a swim, we enjoyed our visit. We first went a little bit north, and visited Sand Harbor, which is in Nevada.

A cove near Sand Harbor

Here, the water was crystal clear and we really got a sense for why Tahoe is so famous. There is a Shakespeare festival here, and it would be a beautiful venue.

After dipping our toes in the water, whining that we weren't swimming and/or stand up paddleboarding, and walking about a bit to enjoy the view, we drove south to South Lake Tahoe, which is just over the border in California, stopping along the way to take a picture of a classic Lake Tahoe vista: pine trees, blue water, and snow on the mountains.

The water was less clear in South Lake Tahoe, and the crowds more obtrusive. We picked up some Subway sandwiches for lunch and ate lunch at a park. There were steps where the kids enjoyed letting the waves come and splash them, and all in all, it was a good stop.

Waiting for a wave

We resolved to come back and see Tahoe properly sometime, and headed south. There was some absolutely beautiful scenery between South Lake Tahoe and Loope, but we failed to capture any of it on the camera. If you ever get the chance to make this drive, though, take it. The mountains are spectacular, and I still think that in retrospect, knowing what I later saw in Yosemite.

As we drove own from Loope, we passed the preparations for the famous Tour of the California Alps, aka the Death Ride. It would be a beautiful ride, but I was tired after driving the road. I can't imagine cycling it!

By the time we got out of the mountains, it was almost time for a snack/rest break. I'd found Walker Burger by searching on Google Maps. The reviews said it was a great roadside stop, so we decided to try it out. It was a wonderful stop. It had a beautiful shady yard and patio, and the same relaxed vibe we later appreciated so much in Lee Vining.

Respite

After our rest, we drove on, and began to appreciate why people love the Eastern Sierras so much. It really is beautiful country, with lush green valleys and snowcapped mountains in the distance.

View from the car window

Eventually, Mono Lake came into view. Mono Lake is an alkaline lake, famous for its tufas, which are limestone protrusions. Sunset is late in early July, so we managed to go see some tufas, made even more spectacular by the late afternoon sun.

After our visit to the tufas, we returned to our hotel and had dinner at the onsite restaurant, the Epic Cafe. It really was epic... we all loved our food, and we ate on a grassy lawn, and the grown ups got to linger over our drinks while the kids did cartwheels in the distance.

We turned in early, hoping to get an early start for the next day, which was to take us to Yosemite Valley. I'll pick up the story there next time.

Trip Story: Carson City and Virginia City

I feel like escaping from all the bad news right now and so I will revisit my summer vacation. In my last trip story post, I wrote about our drive across northern Nevada. The target of that drive was Carson City, where we stayed for a couple of nights. We arrived late in the afternoon on July 3 and left first thing in the morning July 5... and we spent a big chunk of July 4 in nearby Virginia City. But I still felt like we'd seen something of Carson City, and we enjoyed our time there.

Our first order of business upon pulling into town was to go see the state capitol. It would be closed the next day (July 4), and Mr. Snarky was adamant he wanted to go inside. So we went to the capitol before we went to our hotel.

For once, I'm actually glad we did go into the capitol. They had a little scavenger hunt for the kids to do, and one of the items had us go into the Secretary of State's office and see the vault that Mark Twain's brother had installed there when he was the Secretary of State. That was pretty cool.

The kids were more impressed with the fact that you could go into one of the meeting rooms. They could even sit up on the podium and pretend to be in charge.

Pumpkin contemplates a career in politics.

After checking in to our hotel (a casino...), the kids and Mr. Snarky went for a swim while I rested for a bit, trying to stave off a headache. It worked, and a little later we headed back into the downtown area and had a very nice dinner at a place called The Union.

The next day, we headed out to Virginia City to experience a fourth of July parade with an Old West theme. I think Mr. Snarky was the one who enjoyed it the most. I'm not much of a parade person, and the kids thought there were too many loud cars and too many loud fake guns (or real guns shooting blanks, more accurately).

Owners of some of the loud guns

Virginia City is where Samuel Clemens started writing under the name of Mark Twain, and before the parade started, we went into the basement of a shop to see the desk he worked at and some other related memorabilia. There are other historic sites there, and I think if we'd visited on any other day, I would have enjoyed it more. As it was, it was just too packed full of people.

After the parade, we took a ride on a steam train traveling a portion of the old Virginia and Truckee line. That was a really nice ride, but we all agreed that when it was done, we were done with Virginia City, and headed back to Carson City.

View from the train

Petunia had seen a fun fair set up not far from our hotel, and begged to get to go to it. And so we did. Petunia had an absolute blast, and Pumpkin had fun, too. Mr. Snarky and I were less excited by the fun fair, but it is always fun to see your kids have so much fun.

We left the fair and had dinner at the Fox Brewpub, which has a nice patio looking out at a fountain/splash pad that the kids really enjoyed. I have to say, downtown Carson City has real potential. It is not large, but it is nice and there are several interesting looking restaurants, including one across from the Fox called "Scoups" that specializes in soup and ice cream. Those are two of my favorite types of food, so if I ever go back to Carson City, I'll make a point to visit that establishment!

Looking at the Fox from the other side of the fountain.
The blurs in yellow and blue are my children.

And then it was time for fireworks. We drove to a parking lot that someone had recommended and watched the show... only to get back to our hotel and discover we could have watched it from our hotel parking lot. Oh well. They were nice fireworks. We only cared about the lost time because it was quite late for our kids to be up, and we wanted to get up early the next morning for a big driving day: we were heading back into California, to Lee Vining. I'll pick up the story there next time.

Trip Story: The Great Salt Lake and Northern Nevada

Time for the next installment of the Western Road Trip! In my last installment, we visited Salt Lake City. Our next main stop was in Carson City, Nevada. But first, we had to get across northern Nevada. When we planned the trip, I looked at the big expanse across Nevada with a bit of dread, but it turned out to be a beautiful drive.

Before we got to Nevada, though, we had a couple more stops in Utah, one planned and one spur of the moment. The planned stop was at the Great Salt Lake State Park, so that we could dip our toes in the lake and say we'd at least seen the lake in Salt Lake City.

The kids were a bit underwhelmed with the lake: it was slimy and muddy and there were sooo many flies.

Those dots on the water are flies. 

But they enjoyed doing the junior ranger program and getting the cool badge at the end, so it wasn't a complete bust. On the downside, doing the junior ranger program made us spend longer on this stop than I'd anticipated, and so lunch was late.

Luckily, no one minded that lunch was late, because before we got to lunch we made an impromptu stop at a rest area that turned out to be the Bonneville Salt Flats. The fact that this was an unplanned stop was a break down in my planning process. If I'd known that these salt flats were along our route, I would definitely have planned to stop there. But no harm done: we stopped and we all thought the salt flats were really cool.

All that white stuff is salt. If you squint, you can see a car in the distance.

We threw "salt balls" at each other (the fall apart quickly, so none hit their marks) and just marveled at the weird landscape. Other people drove their cars out onto the flats. The flats are the location of a lot of land speed records over the years, and there is an active racing association that holds races on the flats every year, if the weather permits.

We chose not to drive our loaded Mazda 5 minivan onto the flats, and instead headed on to West Wendover, for lunch at a Pizza Hut.

After lunch, we drove on to Elko. We arrived too late to catch any of the Basque festival that had been held over the weekend, but the kids did enjoy a swim in our hotel pool. Since it was Sunday night and the night after the festival wrapped up, most of the restaurants in the downtown area were closed, but we enjoyed a short stroll around and admired some large boots.

We found an open restaurant for dinner, and then headed back to the hotel for the night.

The next day, we had breakfast at the Denny's next to our hotel before continuing our drive west. The notable thing about that was the row of Tesla car chargers outside the restaurant. I was a bit surprised to see them outside a Denny's in Elko, but they got quite a bit of use: we counted three different Teslas charging up while we had breakfast.

Since we hadn't had any Basque food in Elko, Mr. Snarky really wanted to eat at the Basque restaurant I'd flagged as a possible lunch stop in Winnemucca. It was called The Martin Hotel, and the food was wonderful. I didn't want a big lunch, so I had a sandwich, but made it interesting by choosing the garlic soup as my starter (it was delicious). Mr. Snarky went all out and had lamb and garlic mashed potatoes and I think he had something approaching a religious experience eating it.

After lunch, we drove on. I found the landscape pretty, but knew from experience it was the sort of landscape I'd fail to capture in a picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it. There were grasslands rising into hills and mountains, a big blue sky, and the sense of openness that is one of my favorite things about landscapes in the American West.

Our next stop for the day was for "snack"- we stopped for ice cream at a place called Steve's Homemade Ice Cream, in a strip mall in Fernley, NV. The ice cream was delicious.

From Fernley, it was just another hour to Carson City. I'll pick up the story there next time.

Trip Story: Arches and Moab

In the last installment of my posts about our 2017 road trip, we were in Monument Valley. We drove from Monument Valley to Moab, and stayed a couple nights there. The main attraction of Moab was Arches National Park. I had been to this park before, but Mr. Snarky hadn't, and neither had the kids. Now, late June is not the best time to see Arches. It is hot there in June, usually in the high 90s. And there really is very little shade in Arches. So I didn't plan for any big hikes.

As it happened, it was even hotter than average during our visit, with a high temperature just over 100. We did attempt one short hike, out to see Landscape Arch. The kids got to a patch of shade along the trail, not far from where Landscape Arch comes into view and basically refused to go any further. Since I'd seen Landscape Arch before, I stayed with them while Mr. Snarky went ahead to see the view.

Suffice to say, the kids were not all that impressed with Arches. But Pumpkin was glad to find a lot of license plates for her license plate games- including Alabama, which had so far stymied her attempts to play an alternate version of the game where you have to find the plates in alphabetical order (she is currently looking for Florida). Petunia thought that Balancing Rock was pretty cool:

Both kids enjoyed scrambling around at The Organ, in the shade provide by Courthouse Towers:

Mr. Snarky was so impressed with the scenery that he didn't complain about the heat. Perhaps I should print out photos so he won't whine when the temperature in our house gets to 80?

Perhaps because I'd seen Arches before, my favorite part of the time in Moab was the other stuff.

We stayed in a hotel called River Canyon Lodge. It had a nice pool, which we all enjoyed. We had dinner the second night at a place called Zax, which had a great upstairs patio. We enjoyed watching the colors change on the nearby rocks as the sunset while we ate.

And the final thing we did before leaving town was drive out along Kane Creek Blvd in search of some rock art.

Our inspiration for this was a blog post that I found while sitting on that upstairs deck at Zax. I should have read that post more carefully, because it clearly states that the first rock art panels are on the RIGHT side of the parking area at the Moonflower Canyon campground. We looked on the LEFT side and then set off on a pointless hike up past the campground, on which I gathered approximately eight mosquito bites. OOPS.

Not visible: Lots and lots of mosquitos.

But we found the Moonflower panels, and then continued on to the main draw: the rock with the rare "birthing panel." The drive was nice, although part of it was on a dirt road. The river and canyon are quite beautiful.

And we made it to the rock with the birthing panel, and yeah, it is awesome.

After seeing this, we drove out of town and headed towards Salt Lake City. I'll pick the story up another day.

Trip Story: Monument Valley and Surroundings

In my last post about our 2017 Summer Road Trip, I wrote about our visits to Walnut Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

Not long after we left the Grand Canyon, we came to the Little Colorado River Gorge overlook. We were tempted to skip it. After the Grand Canyon, it was sure to be underwhelming, right? No, it wasn't. I'm glad we stopped. It is a much more compact gorge, but also a beautiful spot.

The gorge

Near the gorge.

Our next stop was at a set of dinosaur tracks just outside of Tuba City. There is something awe-inspiring about standing and looking at the tracks of creatures so long extinct.

Dino track

However, Petunia, our resident dino-lover, was underwhelmed. I think she prefers dinosaur bones.

Or maybe she was just getting hungry. We were running a bit later than I'd hoped, and she'd been promised McDonald's for lunch. She got her Happy Meal once we got to Tuba City, and perked up for our visit to the Navajo Museum, which was across the street from the McDonald's. This museum was not in existence the last time I came through Tuba City, and I was glad we got a chance to visit it. It provided a great introduction to Navajo culture and history.

From Tuba City, we headed toward Kayenta, where I'd read there was a Codetalker museum in the Burger King. There was indeed a small, but really good, museum in the Kayenta Burger King. The owner's father was a Codetalker and had supplied the core items for the exhibit.

On our way to Kayenta, we stopped to admire the Elephant Feet:

The drive to Kayenta and from Kayenta to Monument Valley was beautiful. I can't do justice to describing the scenery, with dramatic mesas and buttes, red rocks, and a brilliant blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds. It was the sort of scenery that made me wish I could paint. I could imagine retiring to the area and living out my days trying to capture the colors.

We pulled into Monument Valley not long before sunset. We had booked into The View, which is the only hotel in the tribal park, and promised that every room would have a spectacular view of Monument Valley. That promise was definitely fulfilled. I put the view from our balcony in the awards show post, so here I'll put a sunset picture Mr. Snarky took from the viewing area near the hotel restaurant.

The next morning, we got up to watch the sunrise from our balcony. It was beautiful and would have been peaceful, except Petunia was annoyed at being woken up early and periodically let us know that. Lesson learned: we should have just let her sleep while the rest of us watched the sunrise!

After breakfast, we met up with our guide from Dineh Bekeyah tours, who took us on a 2.5 hour tour of Monument Valley. This was one of the highlights of the entire trip for me. The tour took in a lot of famous monuments, a visit to a hogan that included a demonstration of traditional weaving techniques (sometime, I'll visit the Navajo Nation when I'm feeling wealthy enough to buy a rug... they are simply gorgeous), a look at some petroglyphs, and a chance to lie back against the cool rock while looking up at "the eagle's eye" and listening to our guide play his traditional flute.

It was a great morning.

After our tour, we checked out of the hotel and headed north. We drove to a little town just outside the reservation, called Mexican Hat. It is named for a rock that looks like a sombrero. We saw its namesake rock as we drove out of toen, but our only stop in the area was at The Old Bridge Grille Cafe, where I had my last fry bread of the trip for lunch.

From Mexican Hat, we drove straight to Moab, a two hour drive through pretty country. We had thought we might try to watch the sunset at the Delicate Arch viewpoint in Arches National Park, but we arrived in Moab to discover that roadworks were underway in the park, and the road would be closed at 7 p.m., well before sunset. So we had a swim and had dinner, and saved the visit to Arches for the next day.

Trip Story: Camp Verde, Walnut Canyon, and the Grand Canyon.

I think it is time to start posting stories from our 2017 road trip!

Our vacation this year started from Mesa. We'd left our kids there the week before, after celebrating my grandparents' 75th wedding anniversary with my family. We enjoyed a kid-free week at home before once again making the ~6 hour drive to Mesa to pick up the kids and start vacationing.

The plan was to leave Mesa mid-morning and drive to Sedona for lunch. My Dad warned me that there were often traffic jams on I-17 and maybe we should take a different route, but I was sure we could handle it. I must officially admit that my father was right. There was a several hour traffic jam on I-17, caused by a car fire. We ended up having to give up on Sedona and instead had lunch in Camp Verde.

(Aside: including the burned out hulk left after the traffic jam-inducing fire, we passed the aftermath of at least five car fires on this trip. Hot weather and mountain climbs are not a good mix, I guess.)

Anyway, our detour to Camp Verde turned out to be a nice one. We had lunch at Verde Brewing Company, a very good brewpub. It was so good that Mr. Snarky was tempted by the lifetime beer offer.

That is not an economical option for people who live in San Diego, though, so he contented himself with what the described as the best BLT ever and a pint of IPA.

We hadn't really acclimated to the heat yet, so no one had much interest in exploring Camp Verde. Everyone whined at me when I wanted to walk half a block to see this old building, which turned out to be the old prison.

We got back into our air conditioned car and drove on to Walnut Canyon. This is a National Monument, so was our first chance to use our 4th grader parks pass. This pass was awesome, even if you don't consider the amount of money it saved us. Every ranger who saw that pass was very enthusiastic about it, and made Pumpkin feel special. I hope the program is still around for Petunia's 4th grade year.

Walnut Canyon is a beautiful spot, but what makes it really special is the chance to see and even go inside of the remains of Ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings.

The cliff dwellings are those holes in the cliff.

I always marvel at how people lived in these canyons. They must have been very good climbers. The ranger explained that one of the reasons Walnut Canyon was a good place for the Ancient Puebloans to live is that the cliffs both offered protections from storms and made it easier to gather water.

After our short hike in Walnut Canyon, we drove on to Tusayan, a small town that is basically a base camp for visits to the Grand Canyon.

The next morning, we took the park bus to the Grand Canyon. We could have driven in, and were in fact up early enough that we would have been sure of getting parking. But the bus stop was right outside our hotel, and we liked the idea of helping to reduce traffic and pollution in the park. This time of year, the road that goes to the most popular overlooks and the in park hotels is closed to anyone not actually staying in the park, so we would have just been driving in to park our car, anyway. I think this is great: the buses ran frequently and the lack of cars made the visit a little more peaceful, even though there were still hordes of people.

I am rather pleased with how my plan for our Grand Canyon visit worked out. We started at the visitor center to pick up our Junior Ranger books. Every National Park, Monument, or Historic Site we visited had a Junior Ranger program: the kids complete some easy exercises, take a somewhat hokey pledge to protect the park and educate others about it, and then they get a badge. Our kids love collecting those badges!

After we collected our books, we set out to walk a portion of the Rim Trail. This was a long walk, but there were plenty of places to refill our water bottles, and I'd brought lots of snacks. We stopped frequently to admire the view, take pictures, and work on the ranger books.

Visibility wasn't terrific for our visit, due to a wildfire in the region. We still got some nice views, though.

Mr. Snarky usually waits patiently to get pictures without other people in them,
but in this case, the people give a sense of the scale.

We did not do any hiking into the canyon, but we did get a great view of the famous Bright Angel trail. This is the trail that goes to the canyon floor.

The trail is the ribbon of read running down the slope.

Bright Angel is, unfortunately, a killer trail... literally. People die trying to hike to the floor and back in a day, particularly in the summer. It was a warm but not uncomfortable 90 degrees on the rim. On the floor, it was probably over 110. The signs the park service puts up warning people about hiking into the canyon are really explicit about the risks, and still people do it and get in trouble. People die of heat exhaustion and also of hyponatremia. People who are not accustomed to a dry heat don't always realize how much they are sweating! Still, some day, I'd like to hike that trail. I would not try to make it back up on the same day. The people I know who hike it and enjoy it always spend at least one night on the canyon floor.

Anyhow, we didn't do anything like that, and just stayed on the nice, flat, paved Rim Trail. We made it to the Village by lunchtime, and had lunch at the Bright Angel Lodge. The food was nothing special, but the old lodge is pretty cool. After lunch, we boarded a bus to Hermit's Rest. The wind had picked up, and so we didn't end up lingering at this stop or doing the short walk part of the way back that I'd planned. Instead, we had a snack, I failed to buy the water bottle in a leather pouch Petunia really wanted (I was sure they'd have it back at the shop at the Visitor's Center. They did not. I heard about this for the entire remainder of the trip.) and we got back on a bus. We got off to admire a couple of viewpoints, but then went back to the Visitor Center to get the kids their badges. From there, we got back on the bus back to the hotel.

On the way out of the park, the bus screeched to a halt. A car had stopped in the middle of the road. This seemed odd... but it turned out the occupants were admiring some wildlife.

Well-documented wildlife

The kids got their swim in the hotel, and we had dinner and decent margaritas at Plaza Bonita, a Mexican restaurant near the hotel.

Then next day, we drove into the park. We turned right at the Visitor's Center and drove to see the Tusayan ruin (pretty cool, the grown ups thought) and then the Desert View Watchtower.

The watchtower

Pumpkin in the watchtower. The paintings on the wall are reproductions of the type
of rock art found in the region.

The kids were more impressed by the Desert Watchtower, even though it is not nearly as old as the ruin. They liked climbing all the stairs, and Pumpkin liked taking pictures of the view. The watchtower was built in the 1930s, and was designed by architect Mary Colter, who drew from inspiration from the Native American buildings she had seen in the region. Some of the interior artwork was done by a Hopi artist named Fred Kabotie. It is an interesting reminder of the history of tourism at the Grand Canyon, and of our changing opinions about how to accommodate it. If you're curious, you can read more about the watchtower on this NPS site.

The view from the watchtower includes a good view of the Colorado River.

After admiring more views of the Grand Canyon and the desert to the East of it, we headed on out of the park. I'll pick up that story next time.