Biking Before Hiking

Monday started off wonderfully. I woke up from the deep sleep I had been in all night on a plush pillow top mattress in my luxury tent cabin…oh wait, no, I didn’t. I didn’t really sleep Sunday night, much like I already told you I didn’t think I was going to. Toto woke up at 7:30ish and informed me that it was time to get up, as we had things to do! I sleepily refused and rolled over muttering about having gotten something like 4 hours of sleep, MAYBE the night before. Toto was very apologetic but told me it was still time to get up. So I crawled out of my warm and stiff cocoon of woolen blankets and sleeping bag and sat down on the steps of our cabin waiting for Toto to hand me my breakfast (a bowl of cereal).

After my bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats (I brought them from home) and a Diet Coke I was finally coaxed into getting dressed and getting on my bike and setting off on an adventure: exploration.

Our first stop was Mirror Lake. It was tiny, smaller than Oregon’s Mirror Lake but just as pretty. Next to it, was a pile of rocks; actually, hundreds of piles of rocks. We called it The Zen Garden. It was really pretty. Of course, Toto and I each had to make our own pile of rocks.







Next, Toto wanted to show me the Ahwahnee Hotel. The cornerstone for this hotel was laid in 1926. It was designed by the same architect who designed the lodge at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park and the Lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (where I had that amazing BBQ Salmon Panini). All the other hotels in Yosemite were prone to burning down, so when this hotel was designed, it was designed to be fireproof. Now, when our tour guide, Rebekah, told us this I was a little bit skeptical, I mean, it’s obviously made out of wood. Well, no, not obviously. The reason I thought that the place was wood is because it was built out of concrete using wood forms to put the pattern of the wood onto the concrete. Then it was stained an orange-brown color. So while it appears to be a wooden structure, there is actually very little wood in the structure (and it is a large structure). The biggest bit of wood used was in the entryway to the hotel. Originally the front door of the place was going to be what is now the back lawn. Most of the windows for guest rooms in the hotel face out onto this lawn. Ten days before the hotel’s grand opening, someone realized that having the cars pull up there would make a lot of dust go up into the windows (this is before paved streets). So they hastily built a wooden portico and walkway into the hotel. The boardwalk still squeaks because it was built so quickly. An interesting tid bit of trivia: Robert Redford used to work at the Ahwahnee Hotel. It has also has hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth, President John F. Kennedy, Lucille Ball (who actually got kicked out of the main lounge for being too loud on the piano), Mel Gibson, and several (like a ton) more celebrities. Apparently, once it was added to the National Historic Places list, it wasn’t considered a luxury hotel anymore (it still is, just a different sort), so celebrities didn’t visit as often. It is packed with history. If you ever get down here to Yosemite, go and take the historic tour of the place (it’s free and very informative).



After we left the Ahwahnee, we went to the Ansel Adams gallery and over to the Yosemite Village Store. There are several villages and little areas in the Yosemite Valley. We are staying in Curry Village, which is towards the east end of the valley, Yosemite Village is in the middle, and Camp 4 is on the west end. The awesome thing about California is that the government isn’t involved in the sale of alcohol, so they sell it EVERYWHERE! We found it in a gas station about an hour and half outside of Yosemite on Highway 120, and we found it in the Yosemite Village Store for three dollars cheaper than at that gas station! We didn’t buy any though. We scouted some “I made it to the top of Half Dome” shirts, but you can’t buy one until you actually do it (or well at least you SHOULDN’T) and then we headed back to the tent cabin.

Many people have heard of the giant Redwoods on the Northern coast of California. What a lot of people don’t know is that those tree’s cousins, the Giant Sequoia’s live in Yosemite. They are similar trees, but the Redwoods get much taller where the Sequoia’s are shorter but rounder (diameter). We drove up to Mariposa Grove to take a look at these giant trees, but were only there for about 45 minutes. The reason for this is because the parking lot at the grove was full, so we had to park ten minutes down the highway and ride the free shuttle up. Well, we got there at 5ish, and by the time we got up to the grove on the shuttle it was 5:15ish. Then the shuttle driver kindly informs us that the last shuttle runs at six, and if we miss it, they will pick us up at about 9am the next day. So Toto and I hoofed it up the trail as fast as we could without killing ourselves and saw a few things. Then we high-tailed it back down to the parking lot to catch the shuttle.



The last stop on our list for the day was Glacier Point. This viewpoint is about 3000 feet directly above Curry Village. So it offers a wide view. We thought that we would for sure have cell phone signal and therefore internet signal on our Verizon Wireless WiFi card, so I carted my laptop up there. I got a lot of funny looks from other tourists when I plopped down on a rock and opened my laptop, and then started swearing at it for the serious lack of internet. We also had wanted to see the sun set from up there, but all the road construction on Highway 41 had delayed us quite a bit and we missed it. So we got back in the car and headed down the road, only to be delayed for another half an hour (at least) by the construction.



By the time we got back down to Curry Village, the only option for food we had was the Pizza Deck. So we got a pizza. We made friends with a group of guys (who were probably in their late 20’s) who had just done the Half Dome hike that day. They had enjoyed it, but had made the mistake of starting at Glacier Point. By starting there, you have to go downhill to te top of Nevada Falls, then go back uphill to the top of Half Dome. The problem with this is that that is a long and tiring hike, so by the time they hiked back down to Nevada Falls on the way back, they had run out of energy to hike back up to Glacier Point. They talked about the hike, and it made us a little less scared. Then Toto made friends with a couple who also did it that day. They had just gotten back to the village (and it was after 10pm at this point) because they had taken a wrong turn at some point and it had taken them a while to correct their error. We asked them how much training they had done for this hike and the answer we got was astounding: none. We told them we had been training pretty hard core for a month and they were really impressed. We all ate pizza together and then Toto and I went back to the lodge to see if we could get a little internet, but we couldn’t. While we were over there we chatted with a young couple (probably 18 or 19) that had done it that say as well. They had experienced some difficulties as well, in the form of dehydration. When we asked them how much training they had done all we got back was: training? It was good to know that all these people were up here doing this massive hike, and we were the only ones who had trained for it.

We went back to the tent cabin about 11pm. Toto made sandwiches with stolen condiments and I drugged myself (with melatonin) to try and ensure a better nights sleep than the one I had the night before. We went to bed hoping that we were tired enough from the previous night’s lack of sleep to allow us to get an adequate amount of rest for the massive hike the next day.



Playlist
Heart
Carrie Underwood

License Plates Seen
Michigan
Alabama
New York
Virginia
Pennsylvania
Nebraska
Alberta
Utah
Georgia
Maryland
Missouri
Louisiana
Massachusetts

Speeding Kills Bears

**NOTE** I wrote this Sunday night...keep that in mind as you read it.

The very first thought I had when I woke up this morning was “ugh.” The second thought I had was “Holiday Inn Express Breakfast BABY!!!” That thought fueling me until the actual food could, I jumped in the shower, a rather claustrophobic one at that, and got ready. Toto and I went down and scarffed some of our long lost friends, biscuits and gravy (though I held off on the gravy and stuck with a couple of biscuits and jam with sausage). Then we headed out.



We had stayed in Woodland, just north of Sacramento. As we entered Sacramento, Toto remarked that we were officially in the Sacramento Valley. My next comment was “If this is a valley, where are the mountains that make it one?” Apparently they were there, just out beyond my eyesight in the misty hazy air down here. We drove down to Stockton, and just south of there we got off I-5 and took Highway 120 to Manteca. Toto was supposed to stay on the 120, but ended up veering off or turning off or something off onto Highway 99, heading north. After correcting this little mishap, we ended up back on 120 (also known as E Yosemite Ave) and driving straight through the heart of Manteca. Right after we turned, we saw a few young girls (probably 12ish) waving “Support our Troops” signs. Then we saw another was holding a sign that read “Car Wash”. I guilt tripped Toto into turning in. There was a parking lot filled with Marines. Most of them were in t-shirts and tank tops and shorts, but a couple were in ACU’s. They had a great time washing our car. Three or four of them asked us what the crap on the windows (and the rest of the car really) was. Toto’s answer: “Pitch, don’t worry about it.” They also had a good laugh at all the fir needles built up in all the crevices in Toto’s car. They were pulling handfuls out from under the windshield wipers: which, side note, I broke one of yesterday. And I totally spaced putting that in the blog. Yep, we were filling up in Weed and I thought Toto’s wipers locked upright for windshield washing, and found out with a loud “SNAP!” that they don’t. Note to self, MY car’s wipers lock up, not Toto’s. Anyhow! Then the Marines brought out their best tool yet, a leaf blower! No, they weren’t using it to rid Toto’s car of needles, they were using it to jump start the drying process, before using the towels. Rather ingenious I thought!! Toto said to me after with a tear in her eye, “Everything happens for a reason. I had to take the wrong turn to come back past those guys washing cars.”



We then had about two hours of driving to look forward to. I couldn’t bring myself to continue the audio book from the previous day, so we listened to fun music the whole way. It looked like pretty standard desert for a while. Then the hills started to roll and even though everything was some shade of brown, it was beautiful. We began to notice that there were trees on some of the hills ahead of us and Toto recounted the line line: “They know their line!!” This, you may remember from the Nevada blog entry from the really big trip in June. It has become one of the most often used phrases in the Newberry house. We began to climb a rather steep hill. It was nearly 90 degrees outside and we noticed that there were old Clorox bottles on the side of the road in pull outs that said “H2O for You” on them (incase of an over heated car). It was a nice gesture by some unknown person or company.

We drove a while longer and then we finally made it into Yosemite. We stopped to take pictures by the Welcome sign, and discovered that one of the metal letters on the sign, the E had been lost. To replace it, someone had used duct tape and formed an E. The greatest part was that we didn’t notice it at first.



After getting our maps and all that jazz at the check point, we drove into the park. The first sign we saw was a speed sign stating that the speed was 25 MPH, and a little sign next to that said “Speeding Kills Bears”.



Ok, so that is the big thing about today. Bears. I am not a fan of anything that is big enough to eat me. So, therefore, not a fan of bears. I realize that they are less likely to attack me than say, my own dog, but still. In Yosemite, they have learned how to scavenge for people’s food. So every tent cabin and campsite has a bear proof food storage box. It’s a big metal box that has a really weird handle and you lock it with a padlock. Well, I researched the whole bear thing before we came. On average, bears break into 100 cars a year down here, looking for food. They can smell it, through metal and glass and plastic and everything. The “interesting facts about bears” thing hanging just above my head right now says that their sense of smell is several times better than that of a blood hound. After we took a picture of that sign (the “speeding kill’s bears” sign) we drove on. As we came around a corner, there was one of those electronic flashing signs, but instead of insurance point values flashing on it, it said (in three flashes) “In 2009 27 bears hit by cars.” The next words out of my mouth were “Good, then there will only be 73 cars broken into by them this year.” Bad Sean. I took pictures of course.







Shortly thereafter we came around a bend that yielded all of Yosemite Valley to you. We could see all the way to Half Dome. It was impressive, though maybe not as much as Toto had chalked it up to be. After hearing for 23 years about how majestic this place was, it was a little less impressive than I expected, but it was still very beautiful.

We got down to Curry Village about 3:30pm. We checked in and discovered that you can not park by your tent cabin. There is a HUGE parking lot for all the campers to park in and then you have to lug all your junk to your cabin, which locks with a padlock as well, and the keys don’t have holes to attach them to key-rings. You just have to keep them in your pockets and hope not to lose them. It took us like eight trips back and forth to get everything to the cabin. AND THEN we had to organize the bear proof locker.



By the time we were done, it was almost five, so we headed over to the bar. Yes, there is a bar. In fact, there is a whole little village, with three or four places to eat, a lodge with electrical outlets (the tent cabins don’t have any of those) and internet access (which I will get to) and a bunch of other stuff. It is a great place to people watch. We scored a table on the main deck and had a few drinks (I had three whiskey sours and Toto had a couple of Blue Moon Hefs) and some chow (nachos, garlic fries and a cheeseburger). Then we made some friends. The deck was pretty crowded, and we were only two people at what was easily a 6 person table. There was a man and his wife who needed a table, and they inquired as to whether the extra space at our table was taken. Since it wasn’t, they joined us and we had a nice little conversation. They were from Boston. They flew out because they were kidless for a few weeks and were leaving tomorrow: heading out to San Francisco to see some friends before flying home on Wednesday. Right as we were getting ready to clear our dishes and go find the internet (so I could do my homework) their friend came over. We chatted with her for a few minutes, gave her the link to this blog, and went on our merry way. Her name is BeeBee (like the gun, and I probably totally butchered it just now). She is from Texas, and ended up on a four day backpacking trip with Ann and her husband (our Bostonian friends).

After supper we went to the lodge to get online, as we had little or no cell signal to allow for the use of our WiFi card. The internet in the lodge was great…for 10 minutes. Then it kicked me off. Right in the middle of the homework I was trying to finish (that was due at 9am Monday morning). I sat and tried to get on for the next two hours, while writing and thinking and doing the homework without being able to get on to the online portal for the class. Eventually though I got so fed up with it (after learning that several people were having the same issue I was) that I went to the front desk and told them there was an issue. The sweet little gal there informed me that there is a cap on the network so that only a certain number of people can be online at a time. I had suspected something like this earlier, about having only enough bandwidth for so many people, but I told her I was trying to get my homework done and had been trying to get online for two hours and it was due tomorrow, and well after seeing how flustered I was, she told me she would reset it so I could get online. It worked. I got my homework all posted up online for my teacher to grade, and right in the nick of time too: a few minutes later it was 10pm and the lodge was closing for the night.

Toto and I came back to our little cabin and got ready for bed. The way these things work is there is a bed (or two in our case) and you have to make it. There are blankets and sheets in the cabin, but you got to put it all together however you like it. I was wigging out about the bears, and I ripped the wool blanket back to reveal an older mattress that the cover had torn on. I mock yelped and said to Toto, “BEAR CLAW MARKS!” this filled her with mirth so we recreated the scene for your viewing pleasure!











I am carrying my mace (which is bear spray strength) everywhere with me here. No chance a bear is going to eat me. Although there really is little of that. The gal at the registration desk told us that there haven’t been any reported injuries in a while, unless you count the guy who was BBQing. What happened was said guy was making steak for dinner. He turned his back for a second, turned back and a bear had taken the steak off the grill. What did the man do? He tried to take the steak out of the bear’s claws. What did the bear do? He slapped the guy.

On that note, I bid you goodnight. Toto is asleep next to me, and it is nearly midnight. I don’t presume to think I will sleep much tonight on this wonderful bed (and by wonderful I mean really hard and uncomfortable), nor will I sleep late as I am in a partially canvas building, the partially being the roof where the light comes in at dawn.

Playlist
Miranda Lambert
Jo Dee Messina
Lifehouse

License Plates Seen
Washington
Oregon
Maine
Ohio
Nevada
Texas
Colorado
Illinois
Connecticut
Oklahoma
New Mexico
New Jersey
Florida
Arkansas
South Carolina

And You Thought The X-Files were Over…

On a dark and rainy Friday night in March Toto was at the gym with Dad and our friends Steve and Enrique. They were sitting in the café part at a table drinking beer and eating peanuts talking about birthdays and age and that her 50th birthday was coming up. She mentioned that if anyone was going to throw her a birthday party, me and her friend Marguerite would have to be the ones to do it. Then, out of the middle of no where she says “You know what I really want to do on my birthday? I want to hike Half Dome in Yosemite.” Five months and some crazy training hikes later here we are on our way to Yosemite National Park.

Toto and I (yep she’s still Toto) started our first day off by bustling around the house like chickens with our heads cut off. I had gotten all the clothes that I planned on taking in a laundry basket the night before and had gone out bowling with some friends (Ashley Burson, Kyle Smith and Jared Brownlow). Toto thought I was crazy for going out and coming home late (got into bed about two am) the night before we left for our grand adventure (well I guess this is our second grand adventure this year). We managed to get everything packed and in the Tahoe by about 12:30 and pulled out of the driveway at 12:53. Our plan was to be gone by noon but Josh had spent Friday night elsewhere and Dad had gone to work, so we couldn’t leave until JD got home to watch the wee man.

I have homework due Monday morning for my Romanticism class (that’s the English Romantic literary era thank you very much, NOT smut books) so we had to stop at Borders so I could pick up a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. I have it on audio book and we listened to it in the car, but I wanted to be able to highlight it and make notes in the margins too, which is hard on an MP3 file.

The very first thing we put on the iPod was Billy Joel. I think my subconscious was working its magic here because I know (deep down somewhere) that when Toto was my age and drove to Yosemite the last time, the only tape her 1980 Honda would play was Billy Joel’s “Innocent Man”. So it was all sorts of appropriate that I put that on first, though it wasn’t a conscious decision. After we went through that album, we listened to the audio book for a couple of hours, but had to turn it off somewhere in the windy hills of southern Oregon because we were both dozing from the narrator’s droning voice. I thought I was just dozing because I was tired from staying out half the night before, but nope, it was Frankenstein. Which I find entertaining because in the introduction by Mary Shelley herself she states that this story terrified her when she came up with it and she wanted to terrify her readers, and well, I was falling asleep. Granted, I hadn’t gotten to the scary part, just the background info on Dr. Frankenstein himself, though at this point in the book he is still just some guy that Captain Robert Walton picked up off a chunk of ice in the Arctic Ocean. It isn’t a horrible story so far, it’s interesting enough, I am just not loving the guy reading it.

We stopped in Grants Pass for gloves. The last 400 feet (that’s elevation, not distance) of the Half Dome hike is basically straight up the side of half dome itself. This covers about a quarter mile (that’s the distance), maybe. So there are 2x4’s and cables to pull yourself up that last leg. You NEED gloves for this, leather gloves. We hadn’t bought any in Gresham, and Toto wanted to get them before we entered the land of sales tax. I discovered the most amazing ATM in that Freddie’s (I am sure they are in other Fred Meyer stores as well): while depositing my first paycheck from WHBM I discovered I didn’t need a pen or a deposit envelope. The ATM has a special little mouth for checks and it just sucks it in, reads the check info and KNOWS how much it is for (when it is a paycheck like that). How awesome is that?! It pretty much blew my mind for the next 15 minutes or so. It was the most exciting thing of the day so far.

We got down to the California border without much excitement happening (aside from the aforementioned ATM of course). Toto had me hide the Subway sandwich we had gotten in Grants Pass when we approached Cali’s “Border Patrol” as she didn’t want to take any chances that they might take it from us because it might contain “fresh produce”. I told her what I have always wanted to do as we drove towards the flashing red lights and the incredibly bored looking border agents: Border agent: “Do you have any fresh fruit ma’am?” Me: “Yes. I do. But I’m not going to tell you where. Find it.” How much fun would that be?! They wouldn’t be as bored then would they? That got a good chuckle out of Toto, and we passed through the checkpoint without so much as a glance in the car after answering “no” to the “ya’ll have any fresh produce?” Right as Toto rolled up her window (which is a long process because it’s broken and the motor goes about four times slower in the drivers window than in all the others) I yelled “HA HA SUCKERS!!! WE GOT YOU!” When I say “yelled” I mean pretended to yell. I didn’t even yell loud enough for Toto to wince, but I didn’t really feel like getting detained by the California Fruit Police so I only said it for Toto and I to have a laugh at.

Immediately after this I looked up and saw Mt. Shasta. Toto had been saying that you can always tell which mountain is Mt. Shasta because it has the little side volcano thing on the side of it.



We stared at it for a while and then I said to Toto, “It’s like the circus freak with the half absorbed twin.” I made this X-Files reference without expecting her to know what I was talking about and she smiled and said, “I had that exact same thought about half an hour ago. This is like our X-Files themed summer.” The episode which we refer to is S02E20 and it is called “Humbug.” Here is a link to a weird site, but you can watch the entire episode there (it has a bunch of weird Arabic letters and things, but the episode is in English, don’t worry):

http://www.clipmass.com/movie/7721591282964

We drove until nearly midnight. All the little towns down between Red Bluff and Sacramento were all booked up for some random reason so we couldn’t get a hotel room any closer than Woodland. Woodland is to Sacramento sort of like Troutdale is to Portland on I-84. The first day of our trip concluded on several high notes: first, the hotel next to ours (a Hampton Inn) had little baby palm trees out front whereas ours were huge; second, the guy at the front desk’s jacket could have easily fit three more of him into it and he was a bit of a dunce (this proved entertaining for us at midnight after driving for 10 hours); and third, we got to sleep in a huge king size bed!

Playlist
Billy Joel
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
The Eagles
Sara Evans
Trace Adkins
Lady Antebellum

License Plates Seen
Montana
Georgia
California
Idaho
British Columbia
Kansas
Mississippi

Epilogue: An Account of Everything in Between Everything Else

Toto and I left on June 4th, and Josh, Toto and I returned home in the very wee hours of June 21st. We were technically only gone 16 days (if you count June 4th to June 5th as one day and so on and so forth), but there are 17 days worth of blogs and pictures because each day had its own story, or more precisely, each date had its own story. Well we’re assuming you have already read the stories from those days. The purpose of this epilogue is to let you in on the little things that we felt you should know, but didn’t get to in the everyday entries.

This trip was a “Whitman Sampler” of the country. We did not go to DC or NYC, but we already know those are destinations and not just stops on a trip. This of course refers to Whitman’s Chocolates. Whitman’s is part of the Russell Stover Chocolate family, and we passed a facility of theirs in Kansas! We drove 7029 miles from when we left home til when we pulled unto the driveway again. That nearly doubled the longest road trip we had ever taken (at a whopping 4000 miles), which was a decade ago when we went to The Grand Canyon the first time.

We had a blast in Denver with the family! We want to take the RV out there sometime soonish (next year or two) and spend more time with them. Plus there is so much to do in the Rockies and in Denver. Really I can’t list all the things we could do up there.



We have determined that St. Louis is somewhere we need to go back to. The Gateway Arch was never on either of our bucket lists, but once we got there and were exploring, Toto turned to me and says “Well, we can check this off the bucket list, now that we know it should have been on there.” It should be on everyone’s bucket list. It is an amazing place. Let’s just talk about the engineering that went into the physical arch itself. They built both sides up separately and pretty much had to hope they were doing it right so that when they got to the top the last piece would fit and tie it all together. That’s no small feat in and of itself. Now let’s discuss the symbol of the arch. It is the Gateway to the West. Louis and Clark started their epic journey from this spot. I think a lot of people misuse the word epic these days, myself included, but this really was an epic adventure. If not for Louis and Clark, the west would have remained wild and unsettled for many, many generations. I might live in West Virginia where a lot of my family is from if not for them.



Another city we loved but didn’t have nearly enough time in was Nashville. Yes it was hot, and humid, but we had a blast! CMA Fest was in full swing and we came really close to bumping into Big Kenny from Big and Rich, but we’re pretty sure he was in the bar next to the one we were in (Josh couldn’t get into that one). We spent three nights there, so two full days and we didn’t even scratch the surface. There is so much Civil War history down there and since Dad wasn’t with us, we didn’t go see any of it. We figured he would be irritated if we went without him. So we saw plantation houses instead. I love those things! Plus there are all the things like tours to see the homes of the stars and hanging out in grocery stores in Franklin where some of them are known to shop, stuff like that which we just didn’t have time for!



Page, Arizona is also somewhere we want to go back to. The slot canyons were so cool. Then there is Lake Powell. We could actually go and relax for a bit without running ourselves ragged. The weather down there is AMAZING!! I could spend two weeks just basking in the sun.



Somewhere I never need to go again and I urge you to avoid: Roswell. It was boring and disappointing. The best thing about it was the weather.

So, who is down for a movie night? We’re going to watch a couple of Elvis movies, then The Shining (the original Stanley Kubrick version), and then some X-files. There is something else too, but I am drawing a blank on it, so I will have to ask Toto what it was and have her get back to us on that. She promised me she would remember the movies for me.

I think you all need to take part in a new superstition we have. We tell all FedEx semi’s with two, count ‘em two, trailers to “Behave yourself!!”. We did it all through the trip, and at one point Josh really wanted to know why we did it (he hadn’t read the blog and we weren’t explaining it to him, he had to read it for himself). At one point, we even encountered a small FedEx truck babysitting a big one!! I walked into Fred Meyer’s on Tuesday to get some groceries and there was a FedEx driver there who I literally had to bite my tongue before I yelled at him. It was bad. But way funny at the same time. The funniest part is that the FedEx in Troutdale is now hiring and I am going to apply there.



So. We were awfully delusional the last few episodes weren’t we? Well, halfway down the ET Hwy in Nevada we diagnosed ourselves with Road Madness. We determined that the most severe of the symptoms are extreme delusional tendencies and idiotic laughter at nothing in particular, followed by crying so hard you can no longer breathe. The less severe symptoms are things like talking to inanimate plants as if they were real people, which of course we all know they are(n’t) and playing the same songs over and over for many more miles than is appropriate. Frolicking and prancing have also been known to occur in more serious cases of this illness. Also, Toto and I took to asking odd questions to the sky and the rearview mirrors. There were other symptoms as well, but they were one timers so they didn’t get written down. The good thing about Road Madness is that it provides the sufferer(s) with a highly entertaining experience. A great example of this is now planted in the back yard next to the patio. Wait, no…there are no stolen shrubberies that resemble deformed pineapples in my backyard. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Toto has made the decision that 14 days in the car is about the maximum we can handle without going a little too batty for our own good. I agree with her.





We also have some new words to share with you. While Toto and I were driving through Missouri on our way to St. Loius, we put on the emergency weather alert station to make sure we weren’t going to get caught in a twister. The weather man on the radio said to us “Today is not appearing to be tornadic in the Missouri area…” Toto said, “Tornadic?” And I replied, “Tornadic.” So one of our new words is Tornadic. “So Zack is in a tornadic mood today.” Another word is dissable (pronounced dis-ub-el). It generally is used in relation to Josh. He puts himself into situations where it becomes easy to diss on him, so he dissable. The last one is an invention of my own genius. Well, I have to give a shout-out to my loyal reader and friend Shea Hergert who sort of helped me come up with this one. Awesomething. I was sitting in Page, AZ uploading pictures to Facebook and writing the blog for that day, and chatting with Shea on Facebook IM and he said “….something…” right as I was writing “awesome!” and I read it as I was typing and I was really tired (it was nearly 2am at this point), and I typed “awesomething.” When Shea inquired as to what the meaning of that word was exactly, all I said in response was “ask me in the morning when I might have an answer.” I don’t think I had an answer in the morning when he asked me.

Have you ever seen a sign that reads “Bridges May Ice Before Roads”? We hadn’t either, until we got to Colorado I believe. Then we saw it in pretty much every state we went into until we got to Nevada. Toto and I have taken to looking at each other quite seriously, and saying “Did you know, the bridges may ice before the roads?” It doesn’t seem all that funny but it really was.

Something we had a pretty big issue with was Josh’s language once we picked him up. We understand that swearing is something that happens a lot in the Army, and we swear on occasion too, but hi useage of the F word was so extreme we had to yell at him multiple times. So I told him to get creative with it. I say Holy Canolies Batman instead of Holy $#!t, and I say “effing” and finking for the F word. So we came up with Ferret for him. If you ever hear him say Ferreting Ferreter, you know what it means now! We came up with one for Toto but I don’t remember what it was. I’ll ask Josh later.

Something Toto and I argued a little bit about were the continental divides (which is the imaginary line that determines where the streams in that area flow to, the Gulf of Mexico, The Pacific, etc). You may recall on the day we drove from “I’ll-be-quirky” to Page, I mentioned we had crossed our one. Toto didn’t believe me. So I did a little remembering: somewhere in Wyoming we crossed the first one. Then we crossed it again at some point that same day. On our way home we crossed it again in New Mexico. I commented to Toto that that was the third one we had crossed. She didn’t think that was possible. Now because I am the crazy researcher I am, I know it is in fact true!! In Wyoming, right across our path, is a weird circle in the divide. So we crossed it twice there, and then once on the way back. That makes three times. See the map below for clarification.



The Wednesday before Toto and I left on this grand adventure (which I now believe might rival that of Lewis and Clark in overall awesomeness) I made a bow tie pasta spaghetti sort of thing. I decided to take it with us so that we could have something yummy to snack on in the car. I ate a little of it to curb the nausea I get from my migraine meds at one point in Kansas, but we never ate it all. But it was in a Tupperware so we didn’t want to just throw it out. Then it took on an identity almost like JT did. But we didn’t talk to it. We were just determined to make it go the whole trip. And it made it all the way. Not a speck of mold in sight either, though none of us were going to eat it.

We only lost two things during the entire trip! One was one of Toto’s earrings, and the other was her brand new (well she’s had it since Christmas), bright pink iPod Nano. That’s right. It’s gone. Toto thinks that it is somewhere in Josh’s stuff because he was the last one using it. I think it got lost out the door of the car on one of the thousands of stops we made. BUT we bought her a new one at Costco on Monday, though it is purple and she misses the pink.

Toto and I did a little math the other day regarding this trip. We were gone for 372 hours. Almost exactly. We figure between freeway speeds and highway speeds, we probably averaged about 62 or 63 miles an hour for the whole trip, which would put us in the car for 112.5 hours (30% of the entire trip). We spent 16 nights away from home and slept an average of six hours a night which comes out to about 96 hours of sleep (25.8%). I calculated that I spent a total of 21 hours blogging, but since I did that while driving, I can’t really give that a piece of the pie chart. I was multi-tasking: riding in the car and messing with the computer. Between the two of us, Toto and I took a total of 3087 pictures. That averages out to 181.5 each day. Wow. The most we took in a day was on Day 15 (Friday June 18th) in Page, with the slot canyons. We took 351 pictures that day. Thank God for digital cameras! Could you imagine taking 351 photos with a film camera?!

Now. Here is something neat I am going to do. Some of you may know that I want to be a writer someday (as well as an architect). Well this blog has been my practice to see if anyone really cares at all about what I have to say. I have gotten such a good response from all of you, that I have decided to do something. This idea started out as a present for Zack since he did not get to go with us: I am going to self publish this blog into a book. Not a novel obviously, but a story book with a lot of the pictures from the trip. Probably a soft back, like 8" x 8" or 12" x 12". If you want a copy, email me (seanydawg@comcast.net) and I will send you one free of charge (though if anyone WANTS to donate a little moola to the cause that would not be unappreciated). Let me know. I will even sign it to you if you want (if I make it big someday as a writer you'd have major bragging rights).

Well folks, that's it for now. I do plan on recording interesting details about the trip to Yosemite Toto and I are taking in August, but since there will not be long hours of boredom to battle, I can not guarantee that it will be as humorous as this trip was, but stay tuned anyway. And I apologize for taking so long to write this epilogue.

Peace out sauerkraut!

There's No Place Like Home...There's No Place Like Home

Sunday, June 20th was to be our last day on the road. It was also Father’s Day. At one point in the evening we jokingly told Dad “You get us for Father’s Day!!” He laughed but we know he was totally alright with that idea.

We left Minden by about ten in the morning; after eating our last Holiday Inn Express breakfast of biscuits and sausage and eggs. Josh made a friend at breakfast! Toto and I went down after beautifying ourselves, and low and behold Josh is sitting with some guy who looks to be about Toto’s age. They weren’t really talking though. We went over and put our stuff down (we had both taken our laptops down to breakfast with the intention of blogging/facebooking on the free internet of the hotel), and the gentleman looked up and seemed surprised. “I thought he was alone,” he said to me. “Nope,” I replied, “but I’m sure he’d love to get rid of Toto and me.” Then Toto sat down and he asked me “Are there more of you?” (it was only a four person table). He seemed a little relieved when I told him no, there were not more of us, or more precisely, the rest of us were at home. We chatted awhile while we were all eating, and we discovered that he had been active duty and National Guard for 22 years! He gave Josh lots of advice, and to the untrained ear of a civilian, it sounded like really good advice. Hopefully Josh will take it to heart.

After our little conversation at the hotel, we got everything (including JT) packed up and ready to go. We knew it was our last day on the road, so we weren’t quite as meticulous in the organization of the car, but Toto still wanted to be able to see out the back window, so we decided we could accommodate her on that.

We started the day off on an interesting note. I was in the backseat, but I was still in control of the iPod. The very first thing I played was the song that is Josh’s ring tone on my phone, and I dedicated it to him. Then Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” came blasting out of the speakers. Toto didn’t get it. She complained a little bit about the ghetto music until Josh told her to listen to the lyrics. Then she understood. Josh threw the hood on his sweatshirt up over his head and started dancing like a white and nerdy wannabe gangster, it was quite entertaining.



Then I wrote the blog about the day before, which if you are reading this, you probably already read. And you know it is my best work yet, but I can’t guarantee that the one you are reading now is going to top that one, I mean, we didn’t really do much on Sunday.

Toto wanted to make a few stops along the drive home, the first of which was Lake Tahoe. We were only ten minutes south of there where we stayed, so we drove on up. Then we discovered that it cost seven dollars to get into the park. Toto didn’t want to pay it because all she wanted to do was show us the lake for five minutes and get back in the car and drive on. So she looked at us questioningly, and Josh told her his opinion: “Let’s just go. I want to get home.” She looked back at the guy in the toll booth and asked him nicely (yes Toto was nice to someone) “We’re driving home to Oregon today, and I just wanted to show the kids the lake, it’s been 30 years since I was here. Is there any way…?” He let us in without paying, he gave us ten minutes and told us to stay in the car. So she drove in, waited till she couldn’t see his little booth, then parked and we went out and looked at the water. The sand on the shore of Lake Tahoe is not nice when it gets in between your feet and the soles of your sandals, let me just tell you that right now, but it was gorgeous! Someone told us that it was agate sand, but it wasn’t really sand. It was more like really little pebbles everywhere. Some were tan, some were sparkly, some were grayish, it was nice.



The next stop wasn’t really going to be a stop. Toto wanted to drive us through Virginia City, which was what she described as a ghost town. Yeah, so not a ghost town. I mean it was hoppin'. It’s about a mile long, and lined with shops and restaurants and things in a western style. It was really cute. I remarked to Toto that it was a good thing we were only driving through because it looked like an awesome place that you could spend all day in. Then I saw them. Cute boys in cowboy gear. Like Campbell’s soup says, "M'm! M'm! Good!" and they were. I think I got whiplash from yanking my neck back to look behind the car as we went past them. It was a blessedly wonderful moment. We got to the other side of town and Toto pulled over so I could get a soda out of the cooler. Then we decided we were hungry. There were restaurants up by the cute cowboys. Josh just rolled his eyes and grumbled about getting home but Toto and I overruled him. We found somewhere to park, and then we walked around a bit. We found where the cute guys went: they went into the gunfight place. It’s a show they do three times a day. We just barely missed the first one (at noon) and Josh wanted no part of sticking around until the next one (at 1:30). So we peaked in between the boards for a minute, and then went on out merry little way. Across the street Josh found a shirt he just needed, a black t-shirt that said Sons of Anarchy Virginia City on it with the logo of the biker gang. I don’t know if you have ever watched this show or not, but you should. It’s on FX in the fall, and it is good. Josh got into it a couple years back, and Dad and I have since become addicted to it. Speaking of which, I think he and I are overdue for an episode or a marathon. Check it out at http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/soa/. The shirt was hanging in a shop that didn’t sell them, but was a western picture place. The gal asked us if we’d like one, and we asked how much it was. It was going to end up around $25 after tax, so we decided to go ahead. It turned out great! I look like a floozy, but I think that’s part of the point.



About three stores down from the picture place was a western clothing supply store. After trying on a bunch of boots, Josh and I each got a pair, and I got a pretty sweet hat too. I found it entertaining that I tried on every hat I could in Nashville, but I had to get to Nevada to find one that I liked enough to buy. We ate lunch at a place called The Palace, where Josh got the biggest burger in the western states (I don’t think it was bigger than the Hub Cap Burger). I finally got some pulled pork that had been cooked in the BBQ sauce so I felt better. Mom ate the same thing I had but pulled chicken instead of pork. It was good food. Then we headed down the street in search of the place with the SOA shirts. We found it and Josh got a sweatshirt, I got a long sleeved tee and we bought Dad a t-shirt. All in all, we were in Virginia city for about two hours. Josh complained that this was precious time that we could have been driving and therefore two hours closer to home, but deep down he loved the western picture and the SOA sweat shirt. So he didn’t complain too much.



We stopped in Reno for gas, and then Toto drove us down the main strip. It was neat. But we didn’t get out as we didn’t want a verbal lashing from Josh.



Then we drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. And still, we drove. I took pictures of all the state line signs along the trip, except Colorado which we passed without even noticing, but I informed Toto and Josh that we wouldn’t juts take a picture of the Welcome to Oregon sign, we would get out and be dorks. I hadn’t planned on hugging the sign, but when I saw it I couldn’t help myself.



Then we drove some more. And some more. And a little more. We got Taco Bell (or Tango Bravo as Josh has been calling it) in Klamath Falls and then we kept on trekking North. Toto decided she wanted me to start reading the entire blog to her out loud after we ate out food. I read until we arrived in Eugene about 10:30pm and took I-5 North. We passed the turn off for Corvallis at about 11 and pulled in the driveway at 12:28am June 21, 2010. How on earth we made it from Eugene to Gresham in two hours, I have no idea. But we were glad to be home.

Now since the day the blog is about isn’t over until we go to bed, I still have more to talk about. Josh’s friends Austin, Mike and Sarah all got to the house about three minutes after we did. So we let the guys unload the car while I gave Dad his father’s day presents since it was sort of still Dad’s day (he got a new book and new grill racks for the BBQ).



Then Toto and I divvied up the souvenirs to Dad and made a pile for the munchkin. Then we discovered that he had not been reading the blogs while we were gone. He claims to have read a few, but until he reads this one and then tells me he knows what happened in all of them, I don’t think I will believe him.

It wasn’t a terribly exciting day, but it was busy enough, what with the driving and all.

For those of you who have become avid followers of this blog, don’t worry. This is not the last posting. I will post an epilogue in a day or two.

Wait For it….Wait For it….And We Just Kept Waiting…

With a day of driving ahead of us, we didn’t think we were going to have all that great of a time yesterday. Our goal was Reno from Page, AZ, and that’s not a short drive.

We left Page about 9:45 yesterday morning. Toto was driving, Josh was in the back and I was navigator. I set to work writing the blogs for the previous two days as I knew I had a ton of time on my hands. Toto wanted to go through Zion National Park on the way home, though she swore she wouldn’t stop for longer than it would take to snap a few photos. When we got up to the turn off it was closed. She was very disappointed. Ten years ago when we had been in this neck of the woods, we hadn’t gotten to go to Zion either. Our trailer was too large to fit through the tunnel into the park without guidance, which they provide, but not at midnight. We had continued on to our other destination and Toto had been disappointed then too.

Somewhere on the highway in Nevada, we came across some plant life that we feel a certain affinity for: Joshua Trees. Of course we found a good sized one and took Josh’s picture with it.



Now, what I am about to tell you didn’t really happen. There is no proof of it ever occurring, no pictures and certainly no physical evidence. Think of it more as the wandering imagination of three very delusional people who have been trapped in the car for way too long together. After taking the picture with Josh and the Joshua Tree we had gotten in the car and driven on. Two or three minutes later Josh made some comment under his breath about stealing a Joshua Tree. Somehow, and I am not sure how, we convinced Toto to turn around and backtrack about a mile (I will xplain why we had to go back in just a moment) until we found a small Joshua Tree that Josh could dig up. The tree in question was about 18incehs tall. Still is I suppose. Josh was rooting around in the back of the Tahoe for something to do said digging with, and all he could come up with was a hammer. So he and I went trotting out to the chosen tree (it was about 50 feet from the road): him to dig it up and me to NOT document it with the camera. Josh and JT (what we have subsequently named the thefted tree) got to know each other really fast: JT poked Josh in the forehead. I was a little behind Josh on the trip to the tree and all I heard from twenty feet away was “OUCH!!” and saw Josh clutching his left eyerbrow. After recovering from JT’s initial defensive move, Josh attempted to remove the soil from JT’s roots with the hammer. This did not work. Josh was the one to get violent next. He kicked JT near the ground a few times from different directions. This was apparently what JT had been waiting for because he came loose from the soil rather rapidly. Josh then picked him up by the trunk, and RAN to the car because there was a car coming towards us. JT is now apart of the family. At one point, Josh said “If he wasn’t so prickly, I would sleep with him.” Then Toto replied “He can’t help being prickly kind of like Kansas can’t help but be boring.” We did have to hide him when we crossed into California though, we didn’t want anyone to think he was a deformed pineapple.



Now the reason we had to turn around to go find JT is thus: somehow in nature, trees and shrubs know where to grow and not to grow. As we were leaving the photo site (where Josh and the big tree had been posing together) we were on a downward slope. Right before Josh made the suggestion of stopping and acting like a kleptomaniac, Toto had made a comment about how flora (plant life) knows where their lines are (where to grow and not to grow). It was like the light came on and she just said “It’s like the Joshua trees know where their line is…Josh, you should know where yours is too...”

When we were at the International UFO Museum and Research Center on Wednesday, we had seen something about a highway in Nevada called the Extraterrestrial Highway.







I had immediately asked Toto if we could drive down it. Of course she said yes. So we were heading towards Nevada and this highway that went past Area 51. One of the highways we were on in Utah was a horrible road. It had the tar to fill in the cracks all over it. We determined that this must be how the government communicates with the aliens. They write them messages in the roads and we humans can’t see the grand scale of it so we just assume they’re fixing the roads.



Well ok so they really are just fixing the roads, but maybe that little bit of crazy talk will make it into the “facts” of some of the crackpots who are always going on and on about aliens spout off. We made it to Highway 375 (the aforementioned Extraterrestrial Highway, or ET Hwy for short) in the early afternoon and had a blast by the sign at the beginning. I realized about twenty miles before this that I did not have the X-Files theme song, so I used what little service we had on the wifi card to download it from iTunes. I told Toto and Josh that we were going to listen to it the whole 100 miles of the ET Hwy; I don’t think they believed me. Boy did I show them. About a mile down the ET Hwy was a bright silver metal Quonset hut that had a gigantic metal alien in front of it. It was a store of some kind. We did not go in as it was closed, which we found out by sending Josh up the hill to it on foot while we waited in the car. Right as he was walking back a Jeep pulled into the parking area we were in and asked him a question. We didn’t hear it but when he got back in the car he said she was Geo-Caching. Geo-Caching is like a scavenger hunt using GPS. We went on our way. A few miles down the road we encountered yet another car that was pulled over on the side of the road. Geo-Cachers. We saw them every few miles for the entire 100 miles of the ET Hwy. Let me give you a little geography lesson about the part of Nevada we were in. There were mountains and hills and valleys in between. The hills weren’t all that tall, neither were the mountains, but they were much more mountainy than the things Kentucky calls mountains. We would drive over a pass and come down into a valley and be able to see for what felt like forever. The highway was long and straight and flat, and we would make bets on how far to the other side of the flat stretch. The first was seven miles. The next was closer to 14. It was very beautiful in a desolate sort of way. We encountered this sort of terrain for a while until we found a pick up on the side of the road that was completely smashed in the front. I started making up a story about Al driving home from Rachel (a tiny town I will explain later) from his step daughter’s birthday party and all of a sudden he gets abducted by aliens. Right as I was getting to what I would have called the good part, we were approaching something on the side of the road. Toto thought it was a bag of trash because it was black and one end was flapping in the breeze and I thought it was something dead. I was right. It was a dead cow, but there was something flapping on it, a buzzard. It was all bloated and kind of gross. About 300 yards down the road we found another dead cow on the other side of the road. Because we were so bored, we actually backed up and took pictures of both of them. Upon the reproach of the second cow, Josh inquired “Where’s it’s head?” This was a very good question. I had rolled my window down to take the picture, and was therefore holding my breath, but when I looked at it, I couldn’t see the head. When we got to the other side of it (we were driving rather slowly) we discovered that the head was completely under the body of the animal, obviously its neck was broken in the impact that killed it. Then I realized what REALLY had happened to Al. He probably was driving down the road late at night a few nights ago (on his way home from his stepdaughter’s birthday party in Rachel), and we think this cow was waiting on the side of the road for unsuspecting drivers with a friend because she was depressed. As a final hurrah in her life she had decided that she would commit suicide but jumping in front of a car. Her friend was there to help with the timing. “Wait for it….Wait for it…not yet....NOW!!” and then she jumped in front of Al’s truck. He probably clipped her after swerving to try and avoid her. Then he looked back through the back window, and when he looked forward again he was face to face with yet another depressed cow that had determined now was the right time to jump as well. I mean, if I were a cow and lived in that area, and did nothing but wait to be abducted by aliens or be slaughtered, I would be depressed too. I don’t think he had time enough to swerve to avoid the animal and hit it dead on. Then in his shock he probably was only able to drive half a mile before the truck pooped out on him. Then he would have gotten out of the vehicle and started hiking towards home, and this is when the aliens got him. He was already in such shock he probably thought it was his wife who he had called to come get him after the accident. If you are sick and twisted (like us) and you want to see said pictures of the deceased bovines, feel free to email me, but I am not going to put them up here. If you are wondering why the cows were near the road, it is because the whole stretch of the ET Hwy is open range land. Now the funny part is that there was an episode of X-Files that involves dead cows, though it was a brief involvement, but Toto was adamant that there was.



After that excitement, we found the town of Rachel. It is seriously tiny. Almost as small as Point of Rock, but it had a few more trailer homes and a diner. The very first part of it you see is desolate and looks kind of deserted, like a town that Mulder and Scully would encounter on one of their cases so we had to take pictures. Then we found the part with the diner which looks a little more occupied, but not much. Across the highway from this little town is a broken down and dilapidated something, possibly an old mine of some sort. Next to it was a bunker looking thing. We told Josh to go investigate, but he decided with where we were (nearish to Area 51) and the creepy music playing and the weird looking little town next to us (where the locals were probably cannibals and ate unsuspecting outsiders) he wasn’t getting out of the car. We snapped a picture from the road and left in a hurry.





About halfway down the ET Hwy we found a heard of cows. Sure enough two were nearish the road. Thankfully they were brown and it was daylight so we saw them and did not hit them, wreck our car, abandon it in search of help and get captured by aliens.

We had meant to see Area 51 as we traveled along the ET Hwy yesterday. I didn’t expect it to see way to get into it, but I figured I would at least see a chain link fence and a no trespassing sign. I didn’t see either.

We finally got off the ET Hwy and I turned off the X-Files theme music. We turned and headed down highway six. A little while later there was a rest stop and next to it was this huge rusty metal thing. When I say huge, I mean HUGE. Probably 15 feet tall and 30 feet across. It was almost a half circle shape. Toto made a comment about it as I got out of the car to use the facilities, and somehow between the two of us we spaced taking a photo of it. So I do not have anything to show you. Ten miles later or so we were nearing civilization. Right before the little town was a gravel road with a missile next to it. About half a mile down the road was what looked like the other half of the weird metal half circle. Toto wouldn’t go down the road because it looked all forbidding and scary so we just settled on not knowing what the fink it was (we hypothesized about it being a UFO).

A little bit later we saw something amazing. We saw our second “Orange Squeezer Thingy” of the trip. We had commented to ourselves (Toto and I at least) that we had seen a serious lack of them this trip; I mean we had seen them all over the place when we were little. So when we saw this, we had to switch lenses on the camera to the mega-zoom lens because it was WAY off the road. Then 20 miles or so later as we were nearing the California border, we saw yet ANOTHER ONE!! We were psyched! Just now as I sit here writing this we made a connection…we saw one in Hermiston near the army depot up there. And now we saw two in Nevada near Nellis Air Force base and Area 51 and the Nevada test site. So maybe they have something to do with the bases?





Toto had been going on and on about Mono Lake and the neat little things that “grew” on the shores of the alkaline lake in the Sierra Nevada’s all day. She really wanted to get up there and show it to us. She had seen it when she was my age, and thought it was super neat. When we got there, she said to me “Well, that’s not how I remember it. That’s not real exciting.” And that was it. We were done there. We had dinner in Lee Vining at a little joint that had a soup and salad bar with FRESH and HOMEMADE stuff, so Toto and I enjoyed homemade white bean and ham soup and piles of freshly chopped salad for dinner. No salad mix there (unlike all the places we ate in the south). It was a very nice change.

We ended up staying in Minden which is just a little south of Carson City. Got there about 11:30 and Josh went right to bed. Toto messed around on the computer a while then crawled into bed next to me. I was up till 1:30 or so uploading pictures and finishing posting the blogs for the prior two days (the internet card had been being wonky yesterday in the car so I couldn’t upload photos on the road).

Playlist
Nickel Creek
Paramore
TATU
Don McLean
Patty Loveless
X-Files Theme (for 100 miles)
Three Days Grace
ACDC
Don Henley
Dierks Bentley

Sun, Sand and Slot Canyons

I assumed we would get to sleep in yesterday. I mean, we got into Page at one in the morning the night before, so I thought Toto would let us sleep in since we were staying in Page for two nights. Well, I guess nine is sleeping in, but it didn’t feel like it. Toto got up and went out for a walk, and dragged us out of bed when she got back. We sleepily went down to breakfast, and when we got back Toto disclosed the plans for the day. We had a 1:30 tour of Antelope Canyon. Before that though we were going to go explore because we had a couple hours to kill.

Toto drove us up highway 89, across the river, in front of the Glen Canyon Dam, and up the highway some more. We found a gas station, got gas, bought ice (and ice cream) and then decided we only had enough time to head back and maybe stop at the dam visitor center (hehehe, DAM visitor center, hehehe). We learned some cool stuff there. The Glen Canyon Dam construction began in 1958 (I think) and it was completed in 1964. Lake Powell (the reservoir behind the dam) took 20 years to fill up. The water from the Colorago River was needed down stream so only one of the two bypass tunnels through the cliffs on either side of the dam (that were built to reroute the river during construction) was shut off. That allowed the people downstream to continue using the water but also allowed the lake to start filling up. It didn’t explain this on the large photographic time line on the wall and Toto and I were all sorts of confused so we went and asked the kid behind the counter (by kid I mean mid twenties, probably just a few years older than me). He explained it to us. We discussed a few other things and then I gave him the link to this blog. Mr. Dam Info Dude, if you’re reading this, HOLLA!!

Up by Page, there are a ton of slot canyons. A slot canyon is a crack in the sandstone that gets eroded by water and winds over time. They are these little crevices with a flat sandy floor and the sun comes down into them in such a beautiful way. Google image search them. Do it now. You’ll understand why we went. Toto has been dying to see one for ten years, so she was not going to let this trip go by without going to one. These canyons used to be open to the public but people got destructive: they would graffiti the walls of the canyon, some people shot guns at the walls, so the National parks people closed it down and relinquished power of them back to the Navajo Nation because they are on their land. So you have to prearrange a tour through one of the tour agencies. They will pick you up at your hotel, drive you out to the canyon, then they guide you through the canyon and tell you where all the great pictures are (if you’re like Toto this just annoys you because you like to take your own photos), they give you lots of information and then they drive you back to your hotel. The whole process takes about 2 hours. The only bad thing is that there a ton of people in the canyon. The 1:30 tour we went on had 6 or 8 truck loads of people. Each truck had its own tour guide, but they all went in at the same time. But everyone worked well together and stood out of the way when someone was trying to take a picture. Toto took a million pictures, to see the majority of them go to my facebook. When we got to the tour office from the hotel there was a wide selection of four by four rigs to truck us out to the canyon. There was one in particular that Josh wanted to ride in. It was a bright blue (the tour company color) 1977 Chevy pick up that had a six or eight inch lift and 35” off road tires on it. He requested us to sit in that one and went to save us a seat. When Toto and I got out to the truck, Josh was at the very front of the bed, and the only two seats left were at the very back. But he was happy because he got to sit squished up against a cute girl from Switzerland. The ride out to the canyon was fun. Obviously. We were in the back of a pickup, and it was a bumpy ride along a dried up creek bed.



It was perfect temperature, probably 93ish or so, and windy and it brought out the redneck side of me that would be content with life if I had nothing but a big truck and a farm. When we got to the canyon we filed in and heard some interesting things from JR, our gigantic Navajo tour guide. The way the slot canyon is formed, they have an open top. You can’t always see the sky, but the wind up above will kick up sand and throw it down into the canyon which then lands on you and your camera. This doesn’t occur the entire time you are inside, just once and a while and it isn’t as annoying as you would think. The falling sand gives you a beautiful photographic opportunity, and you forgive the minor irritation it causes to your eyes as you take the picture that will make your friends wish they had been there with you.







After the slot canyon (or slut canyon as one of my friends is calling them now), we went in search of a light lunch. There was some disagreement over just where the Subway was, and in the long run I was correct and I got to say “I told you so.” Ok, side note: in Oregon when you get a meal at Subway you get the little paper 21 ounce cup with your sandwich and chips. Apparently, EVERYWHERE ELSE gets the big plastic 32 ouncer with their meals. I think we’re getting jipped Oregon. We need to write an angry letter. After our food we went back to the Grand Canyon. But this time we went to the North Rim, and on the way there we made a few stops. We stopped at a bridge over the Colorado River down near the Vermillion Cliffs. This is the Navajo Bridge. It was built in 1929 and was the only bridge over the Colorado River for 600 miles. It opened up commerce routes (obviously) and made life better for everyone nearby. It is now a walking bridge, with a newer one built right next to it for the highway. Kind of like the Crooked River bridges in Central Oregon. We also stopped, very briefly (like did not get out of the car) at a little wide spot in the road at a marker called “People who live in rock houses” (see photo below). Toto says “People who live in rock houses shouldn’t throw glass.” It was retarded but funny. We may have been stuck in this car a little too long.



We got to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim between six and six thirty. We walked out to this view point that actually puts you out in the canyon. It was pretty amazing. It was windy, and cool (somewhere around 70 degrees), and clear. The sun was higher than it had been the day before, so Toto had better light for pictures. There was a large rock next to the view point that Josh wanted to climb. We wouldn’t let him. Toto has always worried that God blessed us with Zack in case Josh does something stupid and we “need a spare.” So we wouldn’t let him go anywhere near climbing the rock. There was a lower ledge on it that I was sitting on, so we let him go up there, but then he was getting way too close to the edge and I freaked out on him a little. He finally got the point and came down from there.





We helped a few people and took their photos so they could all be in the picture together instead of in groups. We struck up a conversation with one group of these people. Toto asked them “So where are you guys from?” The wife answered “Oh we’re from Delaware.” Upon hearing the word Delaware I screamed “WHERE IS YOUR CAR!!??” (We were fairly certain this was the last license plate we needed) at the same time as Toto asked the same thing, grant it not quite as emphatically as I did, and we scared them half to death. They probably had this brief moment of horror thinking we were psycho lunatics on the loose, until I recovered and apologized and explained that we collect license plates while we are on trips and theirs was the last one we needed. They then apologized and said that they had flown in and rented a car. Their vehicle was in the parking lot of the Philadelphia airport. Pooh. We chatted with them for a few minutes, and then we went on our way. On our way back we discovered the lodge. It was slightly reminiscent of Timberline lodge and the lodge at Old Faithful in Yellowstone. It was just a huge old stone mason building with huge timbers in the ceiling. We put our name on the list for the restaurant and had an hour to kill so we decided to wander around. The gift shop was just across the porch from the main hall, so we headed over there. I found a T-shirt and a sweatshirt that I liked so I bought both. The t-shirt looks like it must have been from the same company that made the sweater I bought in Louisville on our way out of town in April. The design was the same, but the words were different. Toto just got a T-shirt and Josh got a flashlight key chain that said Grand Canyon and Josh on either side. Then we went over to the sun porch that overlooks the canyon. It had gotten dark though, so we couldn’t see much. I started playing with the camera. I was messing around with the F-Stop (which adjusts the amount of light that comes into the camera and adjusts your focal depth of field) and the shutter speed to get lighter pictures without using the flash. I only got one picture that I really loved. The others were alright.









Dinner was amazing. I was dickering over three or four items on the menu, one of which Josh was getting, until I read them to Toto and she decided for me. I had a Frontiersmen Panini. It was salmon and cilantro and red onions smothered in BBQ sauce on Italian bread (that was suspiciously like whole grain sourdough). Served with home made sweet potato chips. I was so happy that I got that instead of the pasta Josh got. It was a parmesan encrusted chicken breast over a bed of noodles in a butter cream sauce with asparagus in it. It was good, but the sauce tasted really standard, and for how much the food cost I would have expected it to be better if it had been my dinner. I stole bites of his asparagus though. Toto got a salad of spinach with sun dried tomatoes, walnuts and goat cheese drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette dressing (ladies and gentlemen, we have left the south behind with its horrible-for-you-food). I tried a new drink too. By now you all know that I love cosmopolitans (the drink). Well they have their own version of a cosmo there. Its almost like your regular one but instead of regular vodka, it has Prickly Pear Vodka in it. It just makes it a little crisper. It was good. Toto and I shared it.









It was 10:15pm when we got in the car. The North Rim is 125 miles from Page. It took us two hours to get back. Josh was sleeping in the back seat (again, I joked with Toto that its not really like he is even with us when we’re driving, it’s a little like the first leg of the trip), I was super sleepy but I knew Toto needed me to stay awake to keep her awake. When we did get back to the hotel I was in the shower within 45 seconds. After all that sand getting dumped on us I needed a good scrub. We only stayed up late enough to look at the pictures for the day (and by we I mean Toto and I, Josh crashed). We had some pretty entertaining ones. The lights went out at two, and we went right to sleep. It had been a good day.

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Josh Turner