The Big Bang

Here we are: it’s Spring and the azeleas are blooming and the baby birds in the blue spruce by the front door are chirping like little cell phones. The formal homeschooling is nearing an end. This week, the girls go to the ISP office for the STAR testing. Their co-horts in the public schools are also testing this week.

Next week, we leave for the trip to Europe. Six countries in 5 weeks: England (primarly London), Wales (barging from Chirk), France (Paris), Germany (primarily Heidelberg), Czech Republic (Prague),  and Switzerland (Basel).  We have a France/Germany/Switzerland train pass, so we may go other places, too. We fly to London on May 1 and home from Frankfurt on June 5.

I will be updating the blog as we go, for those folks who want to read about our various adventures. I’m not taking my laptop, or my cell phone, so I will be in contact sporadically, but hope to write about everything. So, pack your proverbial bags (and my new, real ones) and off we go.

Done

This morning, after a night in our own beds, I sat and thought about what we accomplished over my coffee.

In nine weeks, we saw 29 states and yet we never ran out of gas, never had a flat tire or a breakdown. No accidents and we always found a place to stay. We only had to alter our plans for rain once in NY state, but we still managed to have the hike we wanted and drive around in the damp. No snow! And we saw everyone on the list. I think we went through 10 national parks, but I’ll count that up later. And no one got sick.

All in all, it was an amazingly charmed trip. It all worked out with very little fuss. We didn’t get too tired of each other and we didn’t have to come home early – in fact, we actually stayed out almost a week longer than I originally planned.

The full impact of the trip will take some time to come to us all. We returned to find Christmas fast approaching. Today we did school and laundry, trying to remember where we put things. It’s been almost six months since we’ve lived in this house. We need to turn the cable and the internet connection back on (I’m using Google wifi for now.) We have to get a home phone again (likely another cell phone rather than a land line). And we have to get used to being here.

I’m so glad we went and I’m so glad we are home again.

Home

Neal drove 400 miles from Lone Pine, past Lake Isabella, through Bakersfield and north along I5 to the Pacheco Pass. 152 was a parking lot in the rain with all the holiday drivers headed home. They managed to drive up from Gilroy in the dusky twilight, through the rain showers and arrived home at 5:30pm. I had a chicken dinner waiting for them.

In all, we drove 11,318 miles. We’ll unpack the car tomorrow.

Death Valley

Neal and Mom and the girls drove to Death Valley from Las Vegas. They stopped at the visitor’s center near Furnace Creek and watched the film, checked out the displays. After a picnic lunch, they went to the Devil’s Golf course and visited Badwater Basin, which at -282 ft in elevation, it’s the lowest point in the US. From there you can usually see the highest point in the continental US – Mt. Whitney summit, but that day it was too cloudy.

Then they drove along Artists Drive and stopped to hike in Golden Canyon. I remember how beautiful it was during our last visit to the park in 1989. From there, they skipped Scotty’s Castle (not enough time) and headed to the Sand Dunes. They were a big hit with the kids, who scrambled all over them. Everyone got lots of sand in their shoes, too.

The drive out of the park on the western side isn’t easy with the sun setting in your face, but Neal managed to get them safely to Lone Pine for the night.

Splitting Up

Saturday morning, our paths diverged. The family dropped me off at the Las Vegas airport and I took a flight to Long Beach, CA. They drove off to Death Valley.

Last year about this time, my writing partner died. He and his wife lived in Long Beach. Saturday afternoon, his wife had a memorial party for him. Forty or fifty people came to their house, ate some of Jim’s favorite foods, looked at pictures of his life, read some of his stories and talked about him. It was hard to be there, since I still missed him a great deal, but I enjoyed talking about him with his wife and friends. And laughing about things he enjoyed. He would have loved the party.

I took my friend Jill with me and then went back to her house and spent the night. We drank some wine and talked about writing and planned a writers conference we’d like to put on in a year or two. I got up very early on Sunday morning and headed out to LAX to go home. Despite it being the last day of the Thanksgiving holidays, the airports were prepared for the onslaught of travelers, so I didn’t have any trouble at either Las Vegas or LAX. I knew all the things I needed to do, from the 1 quart bag for my tiny liquids to putting the laptop in it’s own bin. No problem.

The weirdest part was knowing within half an hour when I would return home from this very long trip.

The Narrows

My friend, Nellie, had recommended checking out the Narrows. We read in the Zion park brochure that they began at the end of the paved path up from the Temple of Sinawava.  The canyon was formed by the Virgin River and hiking the Narrows means hiking IN the Virgin river, up stream. We decided that it was beyond the scope of our day, but I would love to go back and do it some time.

At this time of year, the shuttle was not running and I wish it still were. There were lots of cars parked all over the roadsides, as well as filling all the parking lots, as this week brought lots of visitors. We found a parking spot near the trailhead for the Emerald Pools and took the lower trail. It’s paved and rises about 70 feet above the river along the side of the canyon. You have to walk behind the waterfall that the pools create. From there, we continued up to the Middle pools and decided to go back down from there. The path, about 100 feet above the river, is not paved, but a real rocky footpath and very steep as it gets back near the end. We were glad that we’d gone down that way instead of up. All the views were beautiful and I took a lot of pictures.

By the time we headed back to the car, we decided we’d had enough hiking and so we left the park, stopping for coffee outside the gates. From there, I parked myself in the back of the van to read email, the girls sat in the middle to watch a movie and Neal drove with my mom as navigator. We had a two hour drive into Las Vegas. We were glad that we came down off the Colorado Plateau in the last of the daylight, instead of later, because the rock formations were dramatic and very interesting. From there, we drove in the dark until we found the wide pool of neon that forms the environs of Vegas. It’s amazing seeing it at night from afar.

The hotel wasn’t very exciting but it was well located near the airport. We didn’t go to the strip, as none of us likes to gamble and we didn’t want to shop or go to a show. We walked down the street and had dinner at a Gordon Biersch Brewpub/Restaurant and enjoyed a beer with our meal. Grace fell asleep in my lap, so I had to call a cab to take her back.

Thanksgiving

I didn’t want to eat a bucket of chicken in the hotel room for Thanksgiving this year, so I spent some time finding us a place to eat. I had made dinner reservations at a nice white-tablecloth restaurant called the Switchback Grill. They were doing a buffet for Thanksgiving Dinner. We paid up front when we checked in and got a table, ordered some wine and headed for the food. It was all good and we enjoyed a nice, peaceful dinner of turkey and trimmings. I missed being at home, but this was a lovely alternative.

I have a great deal to be thankful for – being able to do this trip is just the first. My husband and kids, my mom, the rest of my family and friends. Even though most of them were scattered across the world, I am thankful for all of them in my life. We have enjoyed taking the time to really see the world around us and to explore it. Driving across the country has changed the way I think about it. Just traveling through all that space is life-altering.

I hope that all of you are enjoying your time with family or friends, that you have a measure of peace and love at this time of year!

Condors in the Wild

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We left our hotel and drove north a few miles to see some of the closer rock formations in Monument Valley. The rode through the main part of the valley isn’t paved and the local Navajos make good money taking tourists on guided jeep tours (half a day – $50 per person). We didn’t want to do that, or risk our van, so we turned around before the pavement ran out, but we did get to see a few buttes.

Heading west and north, we got within a few hours of the Grand Canyon, but we had decided not to take the side trip. We wanted to get to Zion. Our trip took up north through Marble Canyon and across the Colorado River at the Navajo Bridge. We stopped to walk around and were there at just the right time. A woman told us to walk out to the center of the span and we’d get to see her shoo a Condor off the bridge. She worked for the Perigrin Fund, supervising the condors in northern Arizona and southern Utah, near the Vermillion Cliffs. This young male was spending too much time on human structures like the bridge and she wanted to warn him off. He looked like a large turkey crouched on the underpinnings of the bridge structure, but when she shooed him off, he stretched his wide wings and headed for the north shore. It was cool. My first condor sighting.

The Vermillion Cliffs were beautiful landscape, “a spectacular escarpment capped with Navajo sandstone underlain by multicolored, actively eroding, dessicated layers of shale and sandstone.” (according to the Bureau of Land Management website).

We also stopped at one point where large house-sized boulders had fallen down near the road. In the 30′s a woman had to stop here when her car broke down. She liked it so much, she bought the land and build a house around one of the large boulders. We stopped and took a few pictures of the ruins.

From there, the road rises into the forest near Jacob’s Lake, where we stopped for a very cold picnic and then falls again as you cross into Southern Utah. The town on the Arizona side is Fredonia. It looks very blue collar and run down. On the other side of the state line, in Kanab, UT, the town is growing and they are building large homes and new shopping centers. Other than being midway between a number of National Parks, like Grand Canyon and Zion, we couldn’t figure out why the town was booming. If anyone knows, please tell us.

Finally, we arrived at the eastern entrance to Zion National Park. I expected something much more desert-like. There were many more trees in the park than I’d expected. It looks a lot like Yosemite, only Red! We marveled at the dramatic geology, including the weathering of Checkerboard mesa. We had to wait a bit at the tunnel for a large motor home to come through. The 1+mile long tunnel was carved from the rock in the 20′s when cars were much smaller and big motor homes need to drive alone down the middle of the tunnel.

The tunnel drops you out at the edge of the Y shaped canyon in the middle of the park. Gorgeous. We took the switchbacks down to the base of the canyon and then south to the visitor’s center. We had an hour left before we needed to check into our hotel and make our dinner reservation.

We checked out the park information, I bought a pin for my collection and the girls picked up their Jr. Ranger workbooks for the next day. Then we left the park and drove a few hundred yards to our hotel, a Comfort Inn with a stunning view just outside the park gates.

Road Signs

The warning signs along this trip have been interesting. We’ve seen the usual ones, such as warning of cows or deer along the road, but some were downright strange.

Early in the trip, driving into Utah, I saw the cow warning signs, which didn’t mean much to me. I mean, it was dark and I was driving across the valleys into the night. I figured all the cows would be asleep. Suddenly, there was a cow walking along the white line on my side of the road, heading in my direction. We flew past at 70+ mph, but I was glad it didn’t decide to wander into the road at that moment. I was more watchful for cows after that.

Then in North Carolina, I saw all these yellow warning signs for Bears! Who the hell knew that there were still bears in eastern North Carolina? Luckily, we didn’t see any bears on the road.

Further along the trip, headed west, we saw signs warning about elk, deer, cows, horses and even water in the road.

I think that New Mexico got a deal on signs that said “Elevation 7000 ft.” because those are the only ones we ever saw. The road went up and down but there were markers placed wherever it hit 7000 ft. Arizona, on the other hand, only had 4000 or 5000 ft. elevation signs.

Then there were the strange ones that were hard to figure out until you’d seen a few of them. There was one like a mountain with a car beside it and some black dots in the air. They were supposed to be warning you about falling rocks, I guess, and they had little “No Stopping” signs along with them. The funny thing we noticed is that some had small rocks and some had bigger ones.

Another one that took a while to figure out was in Southern Colorado, mostly. It showed what looked like two cars on a see-saw, but we realized that it meant the hills blocked the view and you might find another car stopped in the road as you came over the hill. There has to be a better way to show that on a sign!

Cliff Dwellings

This year and this trip are about checking things off our lists. And one of the things on my list is the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. I’ve always wanted to see them, so we drove north into Southern Colorado today to do that. The only part of the park open at this time of year is the Spruce Tree House out on  Chapin Mesa. We drove about 20 miles into the park, up and up onto the mesa top, and then out to the end. We checked out the museum, which has some excellent exhibits and the girls did the Jr. Ranger program.

The museum has four or five dioramas, scale recreations of the periods of habitation at Mesa Verde. They were created in the 30′s by the CCC men that lived and worked at the park, creating the park buildings and the roads, too. They are fascinating works of skill and art and even humor. The men made everything from scratch, from the little people figurines in wire and cotton and wax, to the tiny dogs and turkeys. They even made some early fiber optic lights, bending glass to light up some of the campfires and kivas in the displays.

There are a few moments of humor in them, too. In one, a man is placing the final log in a kiva, only to find it is too short. He looks up at the man who cut the log and both look confused at the error. A small boy is walking past, laughing at the scene.

In another, a mother holds her arms up to protect her toddler who is joyfully walking along a stone wall. And a man holds his hand to his brow to protect from the sun. The rangers told us that on summer days, the real sunlight comes through a window at the end of the gallery, bouncing of the shiny floor and right into this figure’s face.

After seeing the museum, we had a picnic lunch, joined by a few jays who wanted the crumbs. Then we walked down into the canyon to see the cliff dwellings. Spruce Tree house is the best preserved of the cliff houses on the mesa. We were able to climb down into a re-covered kiva and see what it was like in the semi-dark. We could also see enough of the buildings to appreciate the decorations on the walls, the communal fire pits and the T shaped doorways. It was amazing imagining the ancient puebloans living there, climbing up hand and toe hold paths to the mesa top to tend their gardens and visiting each other around the mesa. There are at least half a dozen towns clustered around the two mesas that make up the park. The people who lived there eventually migrated south into New Mexico and Arizona after they left the cliff dwellings.

Later, that afternoon, we drove to the Four Corners. We didn’t realize that it is located on Navajo reservation land and they have a gate on the road. It closed at five pm and we arrived at 4:49. Luckily, there was no one manning the booth at the gate, so we didn’t have to pay the $3/head they usually charge, and the Navajo fry bread stands were all closed, but we got 6 minutes to take pictures of all of us standing on top of the four corners marker, before we rushed back into the car and drove out before they locked the gate. It was probably all the time really necessary to see the place.

From there, we drove through another fabulous sunset to the town of Kayenta, AZ, which is also on reservation land, south of Monument Valley. I asked the woman at the desk to recommend some place to eat. She said that they were all about the same. We ended up at the Holiday Inn dining room, hoping to get some food other than Tex-Mex, but it wasn’t very good. Now I understand why the “Curly Fry” truck on the side of the road was doing such good business (unless that wasn’t all he was selling).

The funny thing about the hotel was that the only place I could get wifi service was in the room with the indoor pool, so the kids took a swim while I surfed and got my email. In the morning, the lady at the desk kindly had the maintenance man let me back into the pool so that I could send some emails. It was a funny place.