Fun times in Tucson!

Thursday morning found us headed out to Bill and Marcy's at 7:30 to see everyone and then Bill off to work and Marcy had a day of running errands and teacher's conference for Connor's preschool. He's doing great!

We had some G&G time with Connor and Jillian on Thursday and we had fun!  Dinner was at Bill and Marcy's and then we headed back to the Beast and some R&R.  Friday we met the kids to head out to their Country Club for a morning of fun at the pool and water park with picnic lunch in the shade (it's been 95+ here!!!).  

Friday night Bill and Marcy took us to dinner--it was our "adult night out" as the club has a drop off for kidlets while the parents are dining.  This was perfect and we had a wonderful dinner and conversation. 

Then, it was pumpkin patch time!  We drove out about 90+ miles to Apple Annie's to pick out pumpkins, look at the corn maze, check out the acres of sunflowers and enjoy our picnic lunch.  We had a great time picking out just the right ones!!

Son, Dr. William Daggett (that makes me feel really old!), sponsored a hole at the mini golf tournament benefiting "Kids of Steele".  Marcy picked up her niece and nephew, Hannah and Rocco to participate with Connor, Jeff, Marcy and myself as a "sixsome"---is that even a  real word?  It was pretty much chaos but fun (and funny!)!!

Lost wallet, great RV park, good hikes

After arriving at Flagstaff, AZ and getting set up at our nice campsite, we went to get groceries at the local Safeway and then decided to have a quick dinner out at the Beaver Street Brewery--highly recommended through Tripadvisor.  We were pleased with our dinner and left to have a good night sleep.

The next morning I was going to run errands and could not find my wallet!! We looked everywhere, under, over, between, everywhere!  Even in the freezer!  The only thing I could think of was that when we went to get groceries, in looking for places to put the groceries, I must have put my wallet on the roof to find places and whoosh!  We drove away with it on top?!  Crazy!
We went to the Safeway, etc. looking for it, but...

So, I spent the rest of the afternoon cancelling debit cards, credit cards, etc.  I didn't think much about the cash in my wallet--I had just gone to the ATM but had split the cash with Jeff.  After calling home several times each day (my home phone # is of course on my DL, etc) to no avail, I had pretty much given up, and luckily, my husband was a trooper in not calling me out on the loss--my fault of course, but who hasn't lost something important along the way???  Anyway, we went about our time in Flagstaff, having fun and going on hikes and enjoying ourselves.  We had great weather, 65 degrees or so, no wind, no rain!  We enjoyed the Wupatki National Monument which includes several pueblo ruins, with walks at each of them.

We did a driving tour of Wupatki and the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.  I saw my first tarantula "in the wild" before we left the parking lot--a "little guy" (according to my husband) that was probably 3" across, headed for the grasses.  My first thought was 'I thought these guys were nocturnal'...Jeff agrees so we're not sure what's up.

Anyway, after we finished our tours we headed home (to the Beast) to get ready to take off the next day for Tucson.  We went to a Greek restaurant for happy hour dinner and had a good time watching the "fire breathing barkeeps" and the skittering waitstaff dancing Greek-style while the the Greek music played in the background--really fun and good value!

Wednesday morning we got up early and went out to a 'Best of Flagstaff' restaurant called The Place.  OMG!  These breakfasts are HUGE!  We took home enough for 3 breakfasts!  After arriving back at the Beast, I gave one more call to our home voicemail....after logging in I hear "this is the Flagstaff Police Department"....and I'm thinking oh no!  Someone has taken my ID and done something awful!!  Continue to listen, I hear "someone has found your wallet and turned it in to us!!""  Wowsa!!!  I can't TELL YOU how happy I was!!

We went to the Police Dept and got my wallet, complete with all my cards, pictures, notes, and cash!  Every last dollar!  Even my postage stamps!!  This was so appreciated and I am so grateful for this wonderful person's honesty and integrity!  I couldn't leave a reward with the Police, but they gave me the person's address to send a reward to, so a heartfelt thanks and check went to her!!  What a great thing to do--I told Jeff that I hope her children or grandchildren were with her when she turned in my wallet so they could learn from her example.

We were late heading out to Catalina State Park due to this hoopla, but that's ok!!!  We took the 17 south to highway 60 to 79 down to Catalina (20+ miles north of Tucson).  We had reserved this State park site weeks in advance and were delighted with the park!!  Very few campers and a beautiful site.  We took a bike ride around the area and then settled in to see the g-kidlets tomorrow!!

Navajo Tribal Park

Even though we anticipated leaving this morning, we couldn't bear to miss the Monument Valley 17-mile trip and a 3.6 mile hike that takes us to "West Mitten" butte...we knew it was a day-long tour, so we extended our stay for another night and then headed out for the Navajo Reservation beauty.  A note on the "Goulding's" everything...by everything, I mean: RV park, grocery, museum, park shuttle, lodge, gas station, restaurant, food court, laundromat, earth spirit theatre, gift shop and  Monument Valley guided tours!  The Goulding's story centers on Harry and his wife Leone, known as "Mike"--they were sheep traders in the valley in the early 1920's looking for a new business opportunity.  When the reservation relocated, land came up for sale.  They purchased some and set up a Trading Post. 

During the depression, the Navajo Reservation had tough times, too, so Harry and Mike decided to try to sell a movie production company on the idea of movies made in the Southwest.  This was to bring $ to Monument Valley and bring income to the local Navajos.  Travelling to Hollywood, they met John Ford, director, and after being shown pictures of the area, he gave them an advance and immediately sent crew to the area for filming of "Stagecoach" starring John Wayne!  Too bad it's not so easy to drum up $ during a economic downturn now!

Anyway, we entered the Navajo Reservation excited about the 17-mile drive we would do first thing.  We got a small map of the area showing the buttes along the drive and a warning that only 4x4 vehicles with high clearance allowed on the drive.  We went on in our Honda 4-wheel drive and had gorgeous views right away!

The road wasn't great, with extreme wash-boarding in places and big pot holes, but we were fine.  Here's an example of the road:

We stopped at the Artists Point, which was also a stop for a French tour group in two tour jeeps (so about 25 people) just before us.  We were so impressed with the number of foreign travelers here as well as their desire to talk to Americans and were kind enough to take a photo of us at the point:

We continued to the John Ford point and had another beautiful spot to see the beautiful buttes and stark country-side.  Here's a picture that I took of a native horseman pausing to determine where to go, with elephant butte in the background.

We finished our drive and headed to the trailhead for our 3.6 mile hike around the "mitten" butte,shown below.  We were only 2 of maybe 5 on the trail (and no other dogs except Casey Noddle) for the entire trail... we enjoyed solitude and beautiful vistas!   

We saw a lizard (probably 2' or so) scamper away from us on the trail, and also these horses grazing on the grasses and brilliantly green (this is like spray-on grass green on steroids)  flora.  The horse poop was even brilliant green!  These were free-range horses and doing well.

The hike led us down from the lip of the campground, around the "mitten" buttes (east and west), and back up.  Beautiful!!

     

Canyonlands yesterday, Natural Bridges today

At Canyonlands NP we began our trek at the Visitors Center, then heading out for the "Island in the Sky" area and beyond.  We always like to mix hikes/walks in with the sightseeing, and we weren't disappointed as we did the 40-50 mile park route.  There was Washer Woman Arch, Whale Rock and Potato Bottom.  Every view as one of my friends noted, is gorgeous...

  But best of all for us was the walk into Upheaval Dome, which is spectacular no matter what you think was the source of the crater--whether meteor or not, it's really beautiful to view!  We had hail, rain and pretty good wind as we hiked to the crater and arches in the area.   So many arches, so little time!

There are many ways to enjoy this area around Moab...it's a HUGE  ATV/ORV/Hummer/mountain bike area...just driving through town you see sooo many tourists in one camp or the other, with the majority of the employment centering around the hotel/restaurant/touring businesses.  This was a particularly busy time for the area, as there is a 24-hour bike ride this weekend, a bike show just concluded in Las Vegas and the folks are headed here after and of course the bus-load of Japanese tourists. 

In keeping with the wild west image, there is also a homage to the old western movie--many a western was filmed in this area with the wonderful canyons and buttes in the background.  Lots of John Wayne movies were filmed here, with the usual claim to fame of "John Wayne stayed here"...prominent among the claims is the Apache Motel..still their most attractive feature!

We continued on to Natural Bridges National Monument Friday.  We were on Hwy 95 from Blanding to the NP-note:  this is a "scenic byway"...code:  narrow, winding and hilly, sometimes impassable roadway...not bad here but oh, what we had to look forward to!  We had snow skiffs on the side of the road and deer herds crossing, but we (okay, I was only the passenger-seat driver!) navigated it successfully.  Hail and rain pelted us periodically, but 45-ish degrees prevailed and we saw 3 beautiful arch-bridges as we went around the 9-mile loop.

On our way to our destination of Monument Valley, UT (just north of the AZ border), we (okay, I don't take any credit here!) decided to take the "shorter route" and went down 261 to Mexican Hat...in his favor, it looked like an ok road on the trucker atlas we have...but after 6 or 7 miles we came up to a sign that said "in 23 miles, 10% downgrade, 5 mph switchbacks and gravel roads"...okay now I'm more concerned!  No problem my husband says...so when we get to the area where this is indeed the situation, we unhook the car and I'm in the car with Casey Noodle and Jeff is in the beast as we head down this road....

Needless to say, we made it okay and not the worse for wear, except 2 or 3 years off my life!  I'm well past my demise at this rate! 

We're getting so excited to see Bill and Marcy and the g-kidlets in Tucson...won't be long now.  Off to Flagstaff tomorrow, but only after we spend a couple hours in the morning exploring the Navajo Reservation we're on now, at the Goudling's Park.

Arches NP!!

Hello,  Arches!!  We've never seen so many natural arches anywhere, ever!  So really cool to think of how they were formed........but starting the day with breakfast at the Jailhouse Cafe (used to be the jail portion of the old courthouse in Moab), we arranged to have Casey Macdougal shopped out to a doggie daycare--really a nice setup for the old boy...

Then, off to the Park!! We're again using our "Senior Pass" for free admittance--such a deal!  Then off to the Visitor's Center and the design for our day.  We love to hike so we tried to include as much of that as possible in our trip plan.  If you've never been to this NP, it can be done driving in half a day, but with a variety of hikes/walks it takes the better part of a day.  We saw so many beautiful arches and unusual rock/sand formations.  There was "Parade of Elephants," "Three Gossips" and then Balanced Rock, which appears below.  

It's interesting as you're walking the trails to listen to the different languages.  There were many different languages spoken on the trails and very little English.  We spoke with one very nice Italian woman who noted this was very different than her landscape.  I hope she doesn't think that all of the US is like this!  Our variety of mountains, lakes, oceans and weather differences is amazing--but because we are such a big and diverse nation it must be hard for foreign visitors to take more than a small section in on a single vacation.  In talking to the Rangers, they say that the majority of the visitors to this NP are foreign....which is great but you would like to see more US folks take advantage of the beauty here, too. 

There is a campground about 15 miles in that is fantastic!  We took note of this for a future visit!  We hiked the Windows loop which included the North and South Windows arches and then the Sand Dune Arch.  The best for me, though, was the Landscape Arch, which a large portion of which came tumbling down in 1991...yikes!

We also visited the "Tunnel" Arch:

 and then on to the Visitor's Center to get our goodies for the kidlets.  Then off to pick up the Case-bomb and, wonder of wonders, he was a good boy (according to the woman I was paying at the time)...he was exhausted when we got home and hasn't moved much since arriving at the Beast.  Hardly a head move even during dinner! 

Off to Canyonlands NP tomorrow.  We will have a 70% chance of rain tomorrow, which is much better than the 45-55mph winds we had today--we fought sand in our eyes and neck and hair all day hiking...on the last hike I had to shield my face with both forearms in front of me to prevent my face being sandblasted to death!  (only a SLIGHT exaggeration)

All of you frequent followers, let us know what  you think of the new format vs the old background...is this easier to read or would like to see the "old" format?  We appreciate all of your good cheer for us and we think of all of our friends and family often...

The Great Salt Lake and on to Provo and Moab

Great Salt Lake---We went out to Antelope Island, the largest island in Salt Lake and a state park with lots of trails and protected wildlife including Bison, antelope (duh) and mountain sheep.  Also my first time touching my tootsies into the Lake was interesting--very shallow for a long way out, salty (!) and sulfur-smelling!  We were both getting over some good colds, so it was only a short walk for us today.  We took a lunch with us and had a picnic along the Lake and pretty much called it a day...wimpy, but we were happy to take a breather day to re-coop and hope for the best with the braking system check on Monday.

Charlie's Repairs--located just out of SLC--was a great spot for looking into the braking system issue.  This place is a family-owned business (Dad started it, passed away last year and son Justin is now in charge) that is absolutely the quintessential model of small business in the US.   Eight long-term employees, all clean-cut and wearing those cute old-fashioned brown short-sleeved shirts with their name on the pocket--all very service-oriented and super hard working.  They helped us get back on the road and off we go to Provo to spend the night Monday night.  Right on the river, we walked with Casey along the river and saw several fishing spots and picnic areas. 

Later, we went to dinner (first time for dinner out for us this trip except with the kids) at Ruby River Steakhouse.  Well, it was ok.  The veggies were pretty good, and the salad was better than the other places we have been;  the "baked potato" that Jeff ordered was baked and then deep-fried---how does that even work?  It was not a winner with us.

Off to Moab via the Prehistoric Museum--g-son Connor (Tucson son, Bill's son) is a huge dinosaur guy so we were anxious to stop here and get some new "ammo" for him!  We enjoyed the museum--nice displays of bones and tracks found in the eastern Utah area--even one known as Gastonia burgei, aptly named for the the museum's founder, Don Burge.  There is also a display of Utah raptor, the slasher in Spielberg's velociraptors in Jurassic Park!  The coal mines in the area are replete with tracks, bones and fossils representing different types of meat-eaters and veggie-eaters.  Good museum!

Landing in Moab, we will conquer Arches National Park tomorrow.  Casey MacDougal will be lounging at the Desert Doggie Daycare while we hike and view the park.  Blog tomorrow!!

Bliss in Utah and then Cherry Hill

We were headed to SLC Utah on Friday, still thinking of how hard it was to leave Caroline/Josh and the g-kids!  After we were on the road, we were gratified to pass by many, many miles of "severe winds next 20 miles" and "severe dust storms--do not stop on road!!"--we passed them like we didn't care!  (okay, the winds were maybe 20 mph at most).  Compared to this spring in these type of areas we were home-free!
 We left with just some cantaloupe under our belts and a thought of breakfast after a couple of hours. ID and UT get high marks for their highways--ID has many miles under construction and their handling of the transitions--wonderful!

 We had breakfast in Bliss (how can it get better than that?), ID.  Unfortunately, we discovered that our automatic braking system between the Beast and the car was not working.  We called the installer, the manufacturer and then, after many tries to restore it, the repair shop closest on our route:  "Charlie's Repairs" in Sunset, UT.  We feel really comfortable about that whole thing!!

Anyway, we decided to stay over in Kaysville, UT, which won't be too far for us to get back to  "Charlie's Repairs" and easy to get to SLC with the car to see Temple Square, etc.  We pulled into Cherry Hill RV Park--where there is mini-golf, batting cage, water slide, and scary Halloween maze!  On the RV site!!  :)))))

Well, we headed into SLC on Saturday morning and were intent on seeing Temple Square and particularly the Tabernacle, Family History Museum and hear the organ recital at 12:00. Here is the inside of the Tabernacle:

  When we got there, there was the huge Mormon conference where 25,000+ Mormons converge on SLC from all over the world to worship and hear their leaders speak.  We had no idea this was going on now, but when we discovered it, we reveled in being immersed in a sea of 15,000 or so white shirts (EVERY single male of any age wore a white shirt and slacks, at least;  most wore suits with white shirts and ties).  The women were dressed as if they were going to a ball--beautiful dresses, fab shoes and hair ornaments, etc.  So here Jeff and I were, in jeans and non-white shirts (at least we didn't have shorts on!).

 Even so, we were welcomed and treated with so much kindness as we toured the Tabernacle, Mormon History Museum and beautiful grounds.  We sat in on a "session" and found the people in the audience (from everywhere in the world--Tasmania, Japan, Jamaica---everywhere!!) to be universally clean-cut, immaculately attired, and totally interested in the message.  What a unique experience for us to be one of maybe 20 that were not Mormons among the 25,000!  In the History Museum, we sat in on a simulated classroom for 8 on the Deseret alphabet...the phonetic alphabet created to help all non-English speakers to share a common language,  used in Utah from 1860-1880.  The teacher was quite a task master for us students!

The grounds in Temple Square were beautiful and yet SO interesting with the Conference sessions going on.  We were respectful and in awe of the attendees and their dedication.  Unfortunately, as with every big gathering, there were protesters and nay-sayers.   There were even ticket-scalpers looking to sell high-end tickets!

We're headed to Salt Lake tomorrow and a picnic lunch.  So excited to see the lake!