Roadtrip Rewind: The Grand Canyon

Okay, this has been a really long time coming. I had a bad feeling that if I didn’t post on this right away I would get busy and wouldn’t get to it and I was right. So here I am, finally getting to it.

The Grand Canyon is incredible. If there was another way I could describe it that I thought would do it justice, I would try, but I’m pretty sure words alone can’t really do it. I also don’t think pictures can really do it either. Basically what I’m trying to tell you is if you want to know what the Grand Canyon is all about you have to go there. Talking to someone about it and seeing their pictures isn’t going to sufficiently communicate to you what the Grand Canyon is.

It was pretty cold when Cris and I were there so we didn’t feel the need to rush out there early in the morning. For anyone that’s never been there, let me provide a brief explanation of how the park is set up. You drive into the park and there are a handful of parking lots where you can put your car, and then right the Park Service shuttle service to a variety of point of interest. There are campgrounds in the park, a village with hotels, restaurants, and shops, and a series of scenic viewing points scattered along the shuttle route.

I’m really happy with how we approached our visit, and I would recommend others doing the same thing. It was pretty cold when we were there so we didn’t go out to the Canyon until late morning. We parked our car near the main ranger station and hoped the shuttle out to one of the point on the east end of the shuttle route. After spending some time there, we rode back in and went to the village and got some lunch in the mid afternoon, after the lunch rush. After getting some lunch and visiting some of the shops, we took the Hermits Road shuttle out to the scenic viewing points on the West end of the park. I remember the name of that route because I think its the best one. If you only have time to go down one route, its the one to take.

A couple of things that really struck me about the Canyon. Everyone knows the Canyon is big, but you have no concept of how damn big it is until you’re standing on the rim. Even though you’re standing there looking at it and experiencing it, it doesn’t seem real. Its a bit hard to maintain some kind of perspective about its size b/c of how expansive it is. One of the best ways to get a little perspective is to watch hikers go down one of the trails that goes down into the Canyon from the Village and see how small they look down at the bottom.

Another thing that was quite striking about it was how quiet and still it was. When you get out away from the crowd at the village, and if you can make it to one of the viewing points without alot of other people, it almost seems like the world stops. The only you can really see moving are the clouds, and if you can catch a glimpse of the river its moving, but its so far away that you can even really sense the movement and you definitely can’t hear it. You have to remember that you’re out in a desert plateau and there are very few living things. We saw a handful of birds and two or three elk near the village, but I honestly don’t remember seeing any other living creatures besides people while we there.

The weather was really crazy while we were there and I’d kind of like to go back when the weather is nicer. I never thought that it would rain, snow, sleet, and hail on us all in one day at the Grand Canyon. I sort of feel robbed, because I’ve always heard how amazing sunsets and starry skies in the southwest can be and I didn’t get either, so I might have to try to go back one day.

I’ve included a sampling of the pictures that Cris and I took while at the Canyon so you can see what we saw.

Delta’s In-Flight Entertainment System

I mentioned in a previous post that I loved flying Delta Airlines.  Our trip this past weekend to Atlanta did a little to strengthen that love, though it wasn’t all pluses.  Another nice plane, flight left on time, and the in-flight entertainment system was pretty sweet.

We were on a 767, I believe, and there was a small monitor in the back of each headrest that was controlled through a touch screen. The system allowed you to watch about 15 channels of satellite TV, listen to the typical set of in-air radio stations that airlines usually offer, listen to a pretty decent selection of CDs covering all genres of music, or play a trivia game against other passenger on the plane all for free.  Additionally, you could pay a relatively small fee to watch HBO TV shows, movies, or play games.  The movies were $6, the TV shows $2, and $2 for games if I remember correctly.  Before anyone balks at those prices, keep in mind that a movie in the theater will cost you $10 in a lot of theaters these days.  One nice feature of watching the movies is that you could pause and rewind them as much as you want.

So the bad part of the flight was when we got to Atlanta.  Now I have to admit that I’ve had really good luck when it comes to flights and having my luggage meet me at the airport every time.  I didn’t have that luck this time.  I understand there are going to be issues sometimes, but coming off a red-eye with very little sleep had my patience way down, and the policy the airline had in place didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me.

My bag didn’t make it on to our plane and had to be sent on the one after us.  The problem I had with the whole process was they couldn’t tell me where it was for at least an hour.  They kept trying to convince me that mine was the only bag of over 200 passengers that hadn’t made it into the baggage claim from the plane at the gate yet.  After a half an hour, when all the other passengers were gone and I went to ask them about my bag, their only response was to wait another half an hour b/c they could see that it had been loaded.  What they either couldn’t see or didn’t tell me, was that it wasn’t loaded on to our plane.  Somewhere in the whole process was a breakdown in communication that I could have dealt without.

All that being said, Delta is still my favorite airline to fly and I’ll fly them every chance I get.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

This past weekend, Carissa and I took a quick trip back across the country to Atlanta for my best friend’s wedding. Overall it was a really great weekend, but we’re both pretty beat now that we’re back in LA.

The trip started with a red-eye flight out of LA on Thursday night. This was the second red-eye I’ve taken, and it really put a hurtin on me. Our flight took off just after midnight LA time, landed in Atlanta just after 6:00, and I think I got about 2 hours of sleep on the plane. Unfortunately, there was no time to take a nap when we got to Atlanta because I had to help my friend, Steven, set up for the wedding on Saturday. We picked up our rental, (crappy, thank you very much Thrifty) we went to Carissa’s brother’s house, I grabbed a quick shower and then took off.

Setting up for the wedding was no problem. For the most part, its easier to work with people who don’t get overly worked up about stuff, but it isn’t always helpful when you need someone to make a decision and your questions are responded to with a shared shrug and a “whatever” or “I don’t know.” After getting everything set for the wedding, we went and picked up Steven’s fiancee’s daughters and met Cris for dinner. (she spent the day hanging out with her brother) Good meal, good company, and fortunately for Cris and I, we got home early enough to get about eleven hours of sleep on Friday night.

Waking much more rested on Saturday, Steven came by to pick me up and we headed out to the church again. The wedding was a pretty small, intimate affair with mostly family and close friends attending. Now that I think about it, the whole deal is sort of odd in my head, in that it wasn’t odd. Let me try to explain. I always mentally put the people I know into a sort of a box, and when they do something that doesn’t fit in that box its really sort of weird for me. Normally, seeing my best friend at standing in front of a minister getting married totally wouldn’t fit in that box, but it seemed totally normal, which was sort of weird. In addition to seeing them together and interacting, it supports my belief that the marriage is a really awesome thing. To say the least, I’m really excited and happy for both of them.

I know someone will bring it up so I’ll get it out of the way by saying, a six year old having a crush on you is funny and cute for a little bit, but only for so long. I do think its pretty funny that she was giving Carissa the “I got my eye on you” hand gesture at the reception.

After the reception Cris, her brother, my sister’s family, and my parents all got together for dinner. Its sometimes hard on quick trips like this one to see everyone you want to see, so I’m really glad that we had the chance to get together. Everyone seemed to be doing well and we had a really enjoyable dinner, even if we did make my sister and brother-in-law go to a chain restaurant, which they prefer not to do. After dinner, I had the great opportunity to try to explain all of the underlying reasons for high gas prices to a 7 year old, who, surprisingly, liked my answers better when they were longer. She seemed to understand all the fundamentals, and I fear my explanation was going to fall short before her ability to understand ran out.

Sunday, we were fortunate enough to be able meet my parents for breakfast for Father’s Day. Because we live in D.C. and my parents live in South Carolina, I don’t get to see them that often, and I see them most often on the major holiday’s like Christmas and Thanksgiving. Seeing my pops on Father’s day was a nice treat.

The flight back was insignificant, which is what you always want in a flight. All in all a great weekend. Great to see Steven, great to see him get married, and awesome to see my family and visit with Cris’ brother a bit.

Roadtrip Rewind: Denver to the Grand Canyon

Well, I think I have to say this was the worst day of the trip.

We actually got off to a good start, leaving around 6:30 am, which is when we wanted to take off. We didn’t hit a great deal of traffic heading out of Denver which was also a welcome surprise.

The shenanigans started soon after we got out of Colorado Springs. The original plan was to take I-25 South to Albuquerque and then I-40 West until we had to take hwy-64 N to the Grand Canyon. Somewhere south of Colorado Springs on 25 there was a massive accident that closed down the freeway, prompting Carissa to look for alternative routes. After some thorough map reading and consulting with our GPS we decided to set out across southern Colorado and choose an alternate route to the Grand Canyon.

Good and bad choice. We got the adventure we were looking for on our trip, just a little more than we had anticipated. The hilarity included lots of snow in the mountains, my first ticket ever, and driving through the darkest dark I’ve ever experienced.

Colorado was the state of most of the badness.  Once off the freeway we were driving through some pretty rural areas.  Some mountains and some flat areas in between.  All in all, it was beautiful country.  The problem came in the weather we experienced and what I believe was a law enforcement official eager to fill the coffers of his township.

We’ll go ahead and get the ticket talk out of the way.  Getting your first ticket sucks.  At least it does for me.  Going almost thirty years without getting a ticket was a little bit of a badge of honor for me.  It is particularly annoying getting a ticket in the circumstances in which mine came.  I’ll do my best to keep this short and simple.  In a valley with long straight roads with a speed limit of 55-65 for the most part.  Get stuck behind two cars straddling the yellow line on the side of the road with right turn blinkers on with nowhere to turn going about 25, and unable to pass.  As we come to a cluster of about 15 buildings they start to pull over and I try to jump around them before getting to the buildings.  Cop pulls me over for, according to him, doing 50 in a 40.  Not sure that I believe him on that speed.  I’m not sure that I could have gotten up to that speed in the short distance between getting out from behind the cars I was stuck behind and him.  The worst part about it is that the fine was doubled for speeding in a “work zone” where no work was being done and there wasn’t any work equipment around to indicate work was being done except for some barrels on the side of the road.  After looking at the town’s website, the work didn’t begin until after we had gone through the town, so there’s a kicker for you.

Call me cynical, but I believe I fell victim to a cop in a no-stoplight town that found an easy way to fill up the township piggy bank.  He knows that I can’t contest the ticket b/c there’s no way I can appear in their municipal court, so he got my money and the money from the car behind me that he also pulled over.  This is an event that I hope to forget soon.

The next bit of fun came after I made Cris drive for the first time on our trip out here.  I wasn’t feeling that well when we stopped for lunch so I asked to her drive.  In one sense, I felt bad that she started driving when the weather got crappy in the mountains, but in another sense it was a good thing b/c she has more experience driving in the snow and I felt more comfortable with her behind the wheel than I would have been.  The picture below pretty much say what needs to be said about Wolf Creek Pass,  which by the way is where the continental divide is at that point in the mountains.

After Wolf Creek pass, things were pretty easy going, and quite beautiful until we got into Arizona relatively near the Grand Canyon.  Everything that I’ve heard about the southwest is how beautiful the sunsets are and how big and starry the skies can be.  I got robbed.  Our trip through the desert was, generally speaking, marked with clouds and rain off and on.  What’s worse is, when its cloudy in the desert at night when there are no cities giving off ambient light, its dark.  How dark is it you ask?  Try this: tonight, turn off all the light in your house, go into an interior closet, close your eyes, and put a black hood over your head.  That’s almost as dark as it is in the desert when its cloudy.

So driving through the dark isn’t that bad if you’re going along straight roads.  The worst part on straight roads is the lights of oncoming cars seem much brighter than usual and messes with your eyes a bit.  For us though, we got the joy of driving along Hwy 64, which winds through Grand Canyon National park along the canyon, in the pitch black.  For anyone that doesn’t know, I have an irrational fear of ledges, which doesn’t mesh well with driving along a curvy road next to a really big cliff that you’re not sure how far away it is since you’re driving through ink.  It probably took us an extra hour or two to get to our hotel b/c I was going so slow through the park.  Now that its been done, I can look back on it and I have a good story to tell, but I won’t be signing up for that again any time soon.

So that was Denver to the Grand Canyon.  Not the best day of the drive, but I have to admit that it could have been worse given the circumstances.  Last Roadtrip Rewind will be about our day at the Grand Canyon, which I hope to do pretty soon.

Road Trip Rewind: Denver

As promised, here is the first of my catch-up posts to fill in some of the days that I missed while on the road. We arrived into the Denver area on Tuesday evening after a relatively easy drive from Missouri. As I noted before, Kansas was not near as bad as I thought it would be. It was much more rolling land through much of the state and didn’t get really flat until the western half of the state. Eastern Colorado was extremely flat, but was really beautiful as we were driving in.

When we arrived in Arvada, the suburb where my aunt an uncle live, we went to an awesome place for dinner called Mimi’s Cafe. It is sort of a Chili’s level of restaurant, but the menu had a huge variety and the food was really good. If you end up in Denver any time and are looking for a good place to eat you should check it out.

Wednesday was a pretty good pseudo-relaxed day. Carissa and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and checked out all the flora and fauna they had to offer. It was a beautiful day and the gardens were really nice. The facility was separated into smaller distinct areas that housed similar kinds of plants or garden themes. Some of our favorites were the Japanese Garden and the Romantic Garden. Another favorite from the visit was the squirrel that scored himself an apple bigger than his own head from some kids that were visiting the garden. I didn’t think he was actually going to be able to carry the thing away but he managed it. Below are a sampling of pictures that we took from the day, including the thieving squirrel and his bounty.

After the botanic gardens, Cris and I made a quick trip to the 16th Street Mall. We didn’t spend much time down there, but it seemed like a very cool street of shops, restaurants, and entertainment type spots that was all walkable. Other than the bus dedicated to assisting mall-goers, the street was only open to pedestrian traffic.

Our final activity of the evening was a really awesome dinner at my Grandfather’s assisted living community. He invited all of my relatives that live in the area to join us and almost everyone was able to come. My uncle who I was staying with was working so he couldn’t come, but altogether there were two aunts, an uncle, three cousins, one cousin’s husband, one cousin’s fiancee, a grandfather, a step-grandmother, and a partridge in a pear tree. The great thing about it was that my aunt and uncle from Greely (an hour+ away) were able to come down, and my cousin who is trying to work his way on to the professional golf tour was in town and was able to come. We had a great meal and a great time catching up with everyone.

Its generally been kind of hard for my immediate family to get together with my extended family on my dad’s side b/c we live so far away from each other, so any time we have that many people together at once is a real treat. I’m definitely glad that we were able to work our trip out so that we could spend some time in Denver and visit with everyone.

We Finally Made It

Well, I sit here happily, and tiredly, writing this post from our temporary dwelling in Marina Del Rey, California. Today’s drive was interesting, but not as eventful as some of the previous days. We left the Grand Canyon around 10:00 or so this morning and got into Marina Del Rey around 6:30 local time. People keep telling me that I shouldn’t be all the surprised, but why in the heck is it snowing in Arizona in May. When we stopped to get breakfast this morning in Williams, AZ it started to snow pretty significantly. Apparently the 9,000 ft. altitude had something to do with it, but my brain still has a hard time doing the math of Arizona+May=snow.

Other than that, Arizona is a beautiful state to drive through in my opinion. Its not nearly as brown and dry as I thought it would be. That started in California. I think when the two guys negotiating the border between California and Arizona were working things out, the guy from California might have been drinking. Everything on the Arizona side leading almost right up to the Colorado River is nice to look at, and almost as soon as you cross the river the land looks desolate and dead.

The most curious thing of the day was the fact that we had an apple confiscated crossing into California. They have a vehicle inspection station just over the border, so we stop like good little motorists to talk to the attendant standing next to his booth. He asked how far East we had been and after telling him that we were coming from Virginia he asked if we had any produce in the car. Admitting to the apple, orange, and carrots we brought for snacks he asked to examine them. The carrots were okayed without thought, but after thorough inspection the apple was declared contraband and taken. The thing I thought was sort of odd, was the complete lack of explanation as to why the apple was being taken. I really don’t care that it was taken, but people give others excuses or reasons for doing things all the time when they don’t need to. In a situation like this, you would expect that someone would explain why they were taking something from you. Just a weird sort of exchange.

Last thing I’ll say is that one of the worst parts of this whole trip was coming into LA today. I grew up driving in Atlanta (anyone who’s ever driven there knows, the traffic and the drivers can be kind of insane) so driving in LA in and of itself doesn’t really bother me. The problem was going from driving in the desert on extremely straight roads with no one around to a four lane freeway in the mountains surrounded by crazy people whipping by you in a very short amount of time. To say the least I was happy to get out of the car when we got here.

Road Trip Day…something: Executive Summary

So I’ve been incommunicado for a couple of days due primarily to a busy schedule.  We’ve packed a ton into the last couple of days and I don’t think one post is going to be able to do justice to everything that we’ve done so I’ll throw this summary post at you for now, and I’ll do my best to provide more thorough posts with specifics later.

We left Missouri Tuesday and made it to Denver with no problems beyond massive amounts of bugs committing suicide on our windshield.  Kansas isn’t as flat as I expected, eastern Colorado was more flat than expected, and it was a generally beautiful drive.

We stayed with my aunt and uncle while in the Denver area and has an awesome dinner with some family while there.  We also went to the Denver Botanic Gardens.  The day in Denver will get more later.

The drive from Denver to the Grand Canyon was an adventure.  Southwestern Colorado and northeastern Arizona are beautiful, the weather driving through the mountains in southern Colorado can be crazy (read, it snowed a ton), and driving through really rural Arizona at night is really, really dark.  More on this with pictures later.

The Grand Canyon is amazing, even if it does freakin snow in May.  What’s that all about?  Way more on this later as well.  I think we took about 500 pictures today.

We leave for LA tomorrow and hopefully spend the rest of the weekend getting settled in, posting more thorough posts on the above, and starting to acclimate to the LA smog.  Can’t wait.

No big update today

It was a long day and I’m tired so no big update today.

We went to Columbia, MO today to look at a handful of possible wedding venues and we met with a photographer.  Here’s the quick quick on what we found.

- Photographer was great.  Good personality that I think would mesh well with what we would want.  Now its just a question of how much we want to spend on photography and if everything would match up.  If you’d like to see some of their work go here.  One really interesting thing from our meeting was the sample album that she brought for us to look at was that of Tim Allen of Home Improvement fame.

- Le Bourgeois is a possible location for the ceremony and reception.  Beautiful outdoor space for the ceremony, pretty good indoor space, but some of the other logistics like time limitations on when during the weekend we could do it aren’t ideal.

- Last stop of note was Stephens College.  We’re very interested in the Kimball Ball Room for the reception.  I think it is the best space for a reception that we’ve found, but ceremony site options there aren’t as exciting to us.  They’re nice, but again, not sure they’re what we’re looking for.  We’d really like to have the ceremony outside and those options are limited.  The chapel they have is a unique and interesting space, but I’m not sure its exactly what we’re looking for.

We don’t have the quickest Internet connection here so no pictures to upload right now.  I’m not sure how much time we’ll have in Denver to upload stuff and I don’t know if we’ll have Internet at the Grand Canyon.  Be patient and I’ll try to post some as soon as I can.  Really long drive tomorrow so I’m gonna hit the sack.

Day off the road today

We spent today in Jefferson City, MO at Cris’ parents house.  Her dad is in Seattle on business, but we spent the day with her mom visiting family and looking at a couple of possible wedding venues.  One place we looked was the Governor’s Garden, which is just next to the Governor’s Mansion.  It looked like a venue with a lot of potential, but they didn’t have any of the flowers planted.  They’ve had a ton of rain lately, and they may have had to pull up the flowers to replant when it isn’t so wet.  I still really liked the way the garden was set up even without the flowers.  The bad thing about the garden is that you have to do everything in terms of setup and facilities yourself.  Also, there isn’t any kind of alternative site close by in case of rain.

We also looked at the country club Cris’ parents belong to for a possible reception site.  Its a pretty nice place, but there are a couple of concerns about that as well.  Its a bit outside of town and may not be the easiest place for guests to find.  We were also a little uncertain of the size and how well it would fit the number of guests we’re looking at having.

Tomorrow we’re going up to Columbia, MO to look at a couple of other venues and to talk to a photographer.  We haven’t decided 100% that we’re having the wedding in MO, but if we do we’re pretty sure we want to use the photographer we’re meeting tomorrow.  If things go well when we meet tomorrow, I’ll tell you more about them.  I’ll also tell more about the venues we’re seeing tomorrow, one of which has probably peeked our interest the most in terms of a setting for a reception.

If I have time tomorrow when we get back, I’ll try to post pictures from today and what we see tomorrow.

I was told today that my narratives are a bit short.  I’ve found that at the end of the day when I’m writing these posts I’m tired and my brain has a hard time trying to put together an interesting story for whoever reads this.  So basically,  I’m trying not to bore you guys.  I hope I’m succeeding.

Hi mom!

The St. Louis Arch, Bee People and the Biggest Cross I’ve Ever Seen

Today’s drive was from Pickerington, Oh just outside of Columbus to Jefferson City, MO, which is almost exactly in the middle of Missouri. Our route took us by a couple of interesting landmarks; some expected the others, not so much.

Even though I’ve flown in and out of St. Louis on several occasions, I’ve never actually seen the St. Louis Arch until today. It being the gateway to the West, we felt it was fitting to go ahead and drive though downtown to see it, even though it made our drive a little longer. I thought I’d include a small snapshot so everyone else could appreciate it with me. I always knew it was big, but I didn’t really realize how big it was.

Just after passing through St. Louis, we stopped at in a suburb of St. Louis named St. Charles.  They have a historic district there that Cris wanted to get out and walk around a little bit.  It was a pretty cool little area, and they happened to have a Louis and Clark heritage celebration going on.  People were dressed in period costume including frontier explorer type stuff, to British/American soldier uniforms.  The main street of the town has a bunch of small shops and restaurants along a brick paved street.  Any of you that have been to Old Town Alexandria, its a very similar setting, though not as old as Old Town.  The most interesting thing we found were the bee people we saw.  We think they were doing promotional stuff for some kind of nursery, though I’m not sure exactly how.  They weren’t really talking to anyone or passing stuff out.  They were just walking up and down the street wearing these outfits.  It was also a little odd, b/c you would expect to see little kids in these outfits, not high school or college kids, which is about the age it seemed these girls were.

The most interesting thing we saw today was the most unexpected.  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Illinois is a little town named Effingham.  Someone decided that it would be good to put the largest cross I’ve ever seen.  According to The Cross Foundation website, the cross was placed there at the intersection of I-70 and I-57 to serve as a beacon of Hope to the travelers that pass it every day.  I’m not sure if it gave me the kind of hope that it was intended too, but it did provide some interest to a day that I was expecting to be fairly mundane.  I can also counter all the pre-trip exhortations I got from friends saying that I need to seek out the world’s largest ball of twine by showing them pictures one of the biggest crosses ever.  Its kind of hard to see the scale, but know that the semi is probably a couple of hundred yards nearer to us than the cross is.