One Last Little Bit

Even though it seemed like Mesa Verde was our last stop we did stay two days in Denver, Colorado where we spent time doing laundry, swimming and preparing for our three day marathon drive home. I also took the girls to Boulder, Colorado which used to be kind of a neat hippyish town but now that the hippies have grown up they’ve turned into rich folks where we had to pay $15 for small ice cream cones;  it wasn’t quite the town I remembered from the late 70′s, yes I am that old!

The drive from Cortez up to Denver was fairly spectacular. Shortly after leaving Cortez the landscape again began to change as we entered the Rocky Mountains and saw beautiful snow capped mountains, trees showing color and flowing streams all round. It was a two lane road all the way into Denver so the driving was more challenging than the empty highways we had been on previously but we managed only getting turned around once. Thanks for the compass in my van I realized we were going south while headed north and we only lost about 30 minutes.  We did stop to take a couple of photos and Anna did her best out the window while I drove.

After Denver we were fairly desperate to get home and so we drove over 2,000 miles in three days. We drove from Denver to Junction City, Kansas, the next day on to Ferdinand, Indiana and our last day we made it all the way home driving through the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. It was a long ride but we finally made it home and the rest is history which will always stay in our hearts and minds. After our recovery of sleep and good home cooked food we can’t wait to do it again. There is so much to see out there.

Mimi

Finally the Final Saga

Geez, where does the time go? Thank goodness for all the photos and yes, even my blog as the trip seems farther and farther away. In one way I left the best for last but that was only by chance and I may have to borrow a photo or two as I was driving and did not stop to take any photos, though I wish I had now. We took the long way home driving 25 miles around the rim of the Grand Canyon which was breath taking. I kept yelling look over to the left, look straight ahead, on the right! The kids must have thought I’d lost it. By this time they were really tired and I hate to admit this publicly, they were watching a movie, that’s also why I was doing the yelling, I couldn’t possibly be watching all this beauty by myself.

We then entered the massive Navajo Indian Reservation which starts in northern Arizona and goes on right into Colorado if I remember correctly. The landscape began to change and before I realized it we were in a strange land. It was like nothing I had ever imagined, never mind seen. The landscape was red and rocky where giant rocks and cliffs jutted up out of the earth. We drove by Monument Valley with its famous Mitten Rocks and other amazing rock formations. We did not go the route directly through Monument Valley as we were heading to Colorado and not into Utah but we had plenty to see along the way.
I could not believe the stark beauty that surrounded us and it went on and on. Sprinkled along the red earth were the trailers of the Navajo people, some which seemed to literally be in the middle of nowhere with not a neighbor in site. I had learned that the Navajo traditionally are not farmers but keep animals, sheep, and horses and other livestock. It must be quite the life out there in the desert.

We passed through Tuba City, Arizona which had deep meaning for me and for the United States, especially during in World War II. Tuba City was the home to the famous Navajo code talkers. It was not much to drive through, probably took us less than five minutes but I was happy I knew something important about their history.

I have to admit I said a little prayer that we would not have car trouble and thank goodness we did not. It would have been a long wait in the desert if we would have, with no place to pull over. There just isn’t a whole lot out there. We stopped in an outpost of a casino, some stores and pulled up in the parking lot to have our picnic and it was so windy I could barely assemble the sandwiches and than one after another stray dogs began to come to the car looking for food. Several bitches obviously with hidden litters of pups. I felt horrible for them and threw a few scraps which surprisingly they did not fight over but in the end I got back in the car fearing they might get a little too familiar.

By the end of the day we arrived at our next to last destination, Cortez, Colorado where we would spend two nights so we could visit Mesa Verde National Park. I had heard about this place while in Albuquerque and could not resist a visit even though we had not originally planned it. It was hands down my favorite location because of the beauty and the archeology all wrapped into one. We drove about 30 minutes out of Cortez to get to Mesa Verde and climbed a mountain which offered us spectacular views. Sadly a couple of years ago they had some rather drastic forest fires which burned most of the trees so the landscape is full of black sticks.

Because of the value of the archeology the park rangers try and suppress the fires which are a natural and important part of the ecosystem so that every now and again they get one that wipes them all out, like this one. It will take about 75 years for the trees to grow back but the landscape is still gorgeous.

I had some thoughts recently in this little brain of mine which seemed kind of ironic, the thoughts not that I had them. I find it rather hard to fathom that the people who built the homes into the cliffs at Mesa Verde did so as stone age people, they did not have any metal or even a wheel to speak of, not to mention that they lived in a desert with little water. The only  domesticated animals they had were dogs and turkeys. The ironic thought I had was how with absolutely NO technology they built houses that are still standing 800 years later while we so called “modern people” with all manner of tools and technology build houses that we’ll be lucky to have standing through a good storm.

It was an amazing feeling to walk through their wonderful structures and see how they lived and worshiped. Ttheir kivas (small places of worship) are still being used today by Native peoples today. Just getting to the sites was an effort in itself, even with the wooden ladders added to help us climb up and down. They didn’t bother with that but just climbed right up and down the rocks. In the museum there we did get to see a pair of small crutches, apparently they missed step on occasion. The artifacts tell them much about the people but walking through their homes I could almost imagine them there with us, perhaps they were in spirit.

Cliff Homes of the ancient Anasazi people

The Cliff Palace

not an easy climb to reach the cliff homes

Walking into The Cliff Palace

Kiva for religious ceremonies, still in use

1000 year old wooden beams, that's some good construction

From recent fire, nature's way to start over

On the Road in the Southwest Part 3

After seeing the Grand Canyon I figured it would be hard to get a “wow” out of us but I was wrong. So we were having serious homesickness and I realized that our initial plan to travel up through Utah might not be a good idea. We all decided we would just really like to head for home, fair enough. However, there really are only two ways home from the Grand Canyon, either back through Flagstaff or miles through the back roads and up through Northern Arizona. The path back through Flagstaff probably would have been the quickest but despite our homesickness we didn’t really want to retrace our steps so we headed down “the road less traveled”, literally in this case.

Back when we were in Albuquerque I had met a woman traveling like us who was from Kentucky. She couldn’t stop raving about Mesa Verde. I asked her where it was and she said the southwestern corner of Colorado. She really made me want to go there and when I looked it up I wanted to go even more. I had also planned to visit a friend in Denver so a plan started hatching in my brain. We would drive 25 miles around the Grand Canyon to another view point called The Desert View , still considered part of the South Rim but quite a distance and with a watchtower with a neat history.

So off we went on our way home, sort of, but taking the long road. What was wonderful on this first day of driving was that every where we turned we were rewarded with fantastic views. In fact, a good bit of the way we could see the canyon to our left. We stopped and took the perfunctory photos but quickly headed back into the car for our ride to Cortez, Colorado where we would find a cheap motel and stay to be able to see Mesa Verde. This drive up through northeastern Arizona.

Navajo Land, just outside the Grand Canyon

On our way to the Four Corners

The Grand Canyon

Our ultimate destination on our crazy trip was none other than the grandest of grand, The Grand Canyon. My first thought about this amazing place is that it is not over rated in the slightest. It is truly about the grandest place I have ever been. It is so vast that to look upon it made me feel teeny. A park ranger told us that if you dumped the entire state of Florida in the canyon it would only fill 40%. It gave me such a strange feeling deep down within, a sort of queezy, tingly strange sensation that made me wish I could be a raven just long enough to fly around. I knew that despite our snapping away with a rather wonderful camera and a so-so camera we would be disappointed when we looked at the photos. We have the memories in our minds and hearts and that will just have to be enough. All the kids are old enough to remember it. I hope they can go back again someday as I hope to visit there again.

After our initial arrival and  taking in the enormity of the whole thing and being scurried around with the rest of the crowd what immediately surprised us was the amount of area around the edge that was indeed open to nature for better or worse, open to drops of several hundred feet directly below. While we were there we happened to see a couple going merrily(dangerously) out to the edge being followed by a woman tripping along in heels and a matching handbag. While they climbed down she traipsed haphazardly along behind. They climbed directly on to an edge where she; and I am not making this up, threw them a camera so they could take a picture of themselves embracing along the edge. How romantic(idiotic)! People will do what they do and I was horrified but not at all surprised to read today about a four year old girl going over the edge. There are warnings posted but some people feel they are special and gravity doesn’t apply to them. Each day we saw folks going dangerously to the edge and scratched our heads.

The next thing we weren’t expecting were the number of foreign visitors. I guess, in truth, we just never thought about it but this place is a bit out in the middle of nowhere. I just had no idea how many people would be there from so many countries. As Americans we were definitely in the minority. It was interesting to chat with the many people from all over the world though we were annoyed by the folks who made us breath in their cigarette smoke,… Oh well.

We camped while there as the place was booked solid. I had been warned about that. Even the camp ground was very busy and full of overseas visitors. There are shops that rent tents and lots of people must have taken advantage of that. We camped next to two girls from France and a large group of people from somewhere in Europe. I guess it’s a good time to visit the US because the dollar is so weak. Even the Canadians were saying it’s the first time their dollar has beat out the US dollar since 1970. My latest thinking out of the box is that land doesn’t belong to a country or a people it is just here and whoever wants to take care of it should be able to use it but that’s for another esoteric post for another esoteric day I suppose.??

We were also treated to the the very tame wildlife in the park. The mule deer had no fear of anything and were found lolling through our campsite on the second day. The girls got a great look and some nice photos too. The birds were a bit overly friendly even landing on Jenna’s shoe and pecking her pink toenails thinking it was food. We left a water jug out on our picnic table to come home and find it destroyed by an animal but that was the worst of our worries.

It was at the Grand Canyon and on our third week out that all of the sudden we looked at each other and decided it was time to go home. The only problem, as I had mentioned in one of my previous blogs is how far we were from home, over 2,000 miles. So, we decided to take the longer way driving 25 miles along the edge of the canyon but to begin our journey home. The Mather Campground at The Grand Canyon also taught us to appreciate lengthy hot showers because we had to pay $1.75 for a five minute shower. I was fine as I am used to saving water but my teens really grumbled. We all managed but breathed a sigh of relief upon arriving home to a few long hot showers. It was also surprisingly cold at night. I had read about it but to read about it and then to wake up at 2 am in almost freezing weather is quite another thing. I just makes one appreciate a bit of good old fashioned shelter. In fact,  much of what we learned on our trip was to appreciate what we already have. I do wish we weren’t quite so far from Arizona though as who knows when we’ll ever get back?

Watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon

Trying to stay warm in the early am

On the Road in the Southwest Part 2

Well, where was I, let me see? I better get on it and finish my blogs of our trips before I forget what happened. I was so fried by the time we got back from Denver that my brain hardly worked. So my last post on the Southwest left us in Albuquerque and the Petroglyph National Monument. We packed our car yet but again for more adventure this time for the big adventure of the Grand Canyon.

I had decided to spend on night in Flagstaff, Arizona because I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get all the way to the Grand Canyon from Albuquerque and I really didn’t want to try and put up a tent in the dark after a long drive. As it turned out we could have made it in one day without too much trouble BUT… we would have missed one of the most amazing things we happened in to, Petrified Forest National Park.

We ended up spending about four or five hours touring a truly amazing sight. I am trying not to use the same adjectives over and over but for me the Southwest was one wonder after another. In the Petrified Forest we made several stops in the miles long park seeing such things as The Painted Desert, an excellent name for the spot.
We kept thinking we had somehow stepped on to another planet. It really looked like alien territory. We saw  Newspaper Rock. I took photos but I do not have a zoom lens so you can’t really see the  petroglyphs like you can in the link above.  The sight was beautiful but since we had seen the petroglyphs in Albuquerque up so close it wasn’t quite as exciting.

The highlight for me was the Petrified Forest where there were petrified trees fallen as if there had just been a huge storm to blow them down and there they lay. Only it’s been 200 million years since the storm and the trees are all rocks now. It was so cool. We walked around for almost a mile but I had two girls who were desperate to find a bathroom so we didn’t stay too long. They are trying so hard to keep people from helping themselves from taking the rocks that they have signs posted all over and when you leave the park you must pull over and allow your car to be searched. They just waved us on but I wondered if they did sometimes actually search a car??

While Sara was getting her Junior Ranger badge from the Park Ranger we read their bulletin board in the visitor center which had a number of letters people had written to apologize for helping themselves to the rocks. In all cases they had sent them back and asked for forgiveness. We were able to buy a small box of petrified wood in the gift shop but were told not to open it until we were out of the park.

The Painted Desert

Newspaper Rock

The Petrified Forest

Jenna and Anna at the petrified logs

There’s No Place Like Home.

This post will be a bit out of order but I will continue our journey with part 2 of On the Road in the Southwest even though we are now home. We arrived home after 7 pm on Friday after a twelve hour ride in a cloud of dust, dirty laundry, crumbs, crankiness and exhaustion. We did our drive home in three days from Denver which isn’t the world record but I was the only driver and we were fairly wiped out from our trek across the United States. In the end we covered 5,541 miles and made a huge figure eight through eighteen states.

We learned things I didn’t expect to learn. Number one, for example, is we live in a nice house and we have a pretty darn nice family. We may fight a fair amount but we also love and appreciate each other. I don’t think the girls realized how much they have because they often compare material things with their friends but this trip surprisingly taught them about the things they have that are not material, in the end the most important things. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and I think it made them also realize what a great dad they have, a dad who commutes a long way  to work every day to pay for their trip and who even cleaned their hamster, guinea pig and fish homes while they were gone.

Mia exclaimed upon surveying the grandness of the Grand Canyon, “how can anyone be an atheist looking at this”? It’s one thing to see that it may have been created by  purely physical means but another to feel the beauty of it. We saw things I never expected to see either. I had never traveled through Arizona. It is well worth it. We drove with our mouths hanging open, it looked like we were on Mars much of the time. I will discuss that more in the part about the Southwest.

Man were we glad to get home though. It hit us all somewhere in the Grand Canyon where we were 2,351 miles from home. We all kind of looked at each other and said in unison, “I want to go home”. Certainly we were enjoying the amazing beauty and vastness of the canyon but we had traveled enough and definitely camped enough. We were ready for a hot soak in a tub and some clean clothes. I sat and thought about it and discussed it with the girls. We had only two ways home, one back exactly the way we came and one a rather wild and rural way, right through the desert and a huge Navajo Indian reservation. We decided on the second, “the road less traveled” and we were not disappointed but we were still homesick.

There is absolutely nothing like your own bed, especially for a homebody like me. My sister and my husband were truly surprised that I planned and actually followed though with my grandiose plans to take such a long trip with four kids in nothing but a van which seemed to shrink as we traveled. It certainly wasn’t always easy but absolutely well worth it. I have a feeling the girls will have the memories for ever and will remember many details. I had each of them keep a large binder for all their ticket stubs, post cards, brochures and paper to journal about their days. They did a great job and hopefully will look back in years and remember even more. Thank goodness for digital cameras and even though we kept ourselves to two cameras we managed to take well over a thousand photos and about thirty short video clips. These will serve as reminders of what we did but in the end I think the memories will be from things we experienced and felt while away from home.

On the Road in the Southwest Part 1

I have not blogged in several days, I don’t know how many because I haven’t even kept up with what day of the week it is. I was surprised to learn today that it was October 1. When I last blogged we had stayed at Palo Duro Canyon. We are now finished with the journeying part, mostly anyway, and are on our way home via small mountain roads in Colorado. We will stay one day in Denver to regroup and drive all the way home in as few days as we can make it, straight across this big country.

I have not been able to think about blogging because my mind is so full and my body so tired. We have seen more beauty, history and unusual sights in the last week than I honestly think I’ve seen in my whole life and I have traveled to a fair number of countries. I don’t really know where to begin but I’ll start with Albuquerque.  We stayed with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in over twenty years. She now has two lively ten year olds who were great friends to my girls while we were there. It was fun to see her and meet her family and we were grateful for the hospitality.

On our first day there we went to the quaint Old Town and walked around, bought souvenirs and went to the Rattlesnake Museum. I had seen it in a guide book and it looked interesting. It was interesting but a little over priced for the five of us. After this I was itching to see some Native American history or art so we headed up to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. It was interesting and thankfully had a number of hands on items of interest for the kids. One thing I have been disappointed in is that we have not been able to see a pow wow. They have them regularly but mostly on weekends and we have just missed a few while traveling. I guess I’ll have to work on going to one back East when we get home.

We had decided to take it easy on the second day and went for a swim but on a lark I decided to take them to a place called Petroglyph National Monument. This turned out to be the highlight of our trip. We were able to climb hills of volcanic rock to see numerous ancient petroglyphs (pictures carved or chipped into rocks) up close and personal. It was fascinating to see the images people who lived in the area up to 700 years ago carved. It was like a wonderful scavenger hunt to see how many we could find. It was also a good hike for exercise and we were rewarded at the top of one of the trails by a beautiful view of Albuquerque. We also saw a roadrunner hopping around on the rocks which I had only seen in cartoons as a child.

On thing I have learned on this trip is that if something has “national” attached to it as in monument or park it is most definitely worth checking out, they are usually fairly spectacular. Each of these sights also has a program called the Junior Ranger program which is a neat idea for kids under twelve. Children are given a booklet with puzzles, questions and  activities for them to complete. When they do this they are sworn in and given a badge. Sara and Jenna did several, collected their Junior Ranger badges and learned much in the process.

What we loved most about Albuquerque was the beautiful mountainous scenery surrounding the city. It was so different to what we are used to. After Albuquerque we headed for Flagstaff Arizona a stop over for our most exciting adventure camping in the Grand Canyon which you can read about in part 2 of this blog.

I just can't seem to get away from the kitchen.

Palo Duro Canyon

The hardest part about this trip for me is wanting to get there faster than the car will take us and the fact that I am the only driver. I am keeping the driving to no more than six hours a day, it is all I can manage. We left Tulsa and were headed for a friend’s house in Albuquerque but we had planned to stay in Amarillo as it is about half way there and about four or five hours depending on whether you travel the 75 mile an hour speed limit or go the 80 miles an hour that most people drive.  I had thought we might go ahead and crash in a motel since we were only staying one night but it was early enough and I remembered a place that looked great on the internet called Palo Duro Canyon State Park We were NOT disappointed!. We couldn’t get a cabin but that didn’t stop us. We headed to Walmart to get provisions and ended up in the most beautiful campground I have yet to see. We hardly knew what to say it was so beautiful. They call themselves “The Grand Canyon of Texas” and I don’t think the name is corny. The views all around are breathtaking.
I was a little nervous as it was late in the afternoon and we hadn’t gotten our tent skills honed quite as well as I would have liked but all the girls were excited to sleep in a canyon. Also, I must admit I bribed them a bit. I told them if they got really good at helping me do all the chores I would give them each $10 more dollars to spend on souvenirs. Well it seemed to do the trick. We got the tent down and the beds set out and the dinner prepared in one hour and fifteen minutes.

We were SO glad we were not in a stinky hotel! As we had found in the Indiana Dunes our neighbors were friendly and immediately offered any help we might need. I felt safe. The only problem was the heat which was super intense, so much so that both Anna and Mia felt a little ill after getting the tent and the beds set up. The weather which was supposed to be very cool at night stayed a bit warmer than we had hoped but we still were glad to have such amazing surroundings. As Mia said, “how can anyone be an atheist when they look at this!” I couldn’t have said it better. Our hearts were moved by God’s love in his gorgeous creation, we felt  so small but loved.

The best part was waking up and finding a tarantula which the girls wanted to bring with us. I told them it was best left in it’s natural environment but they played with it for at least an hour. The bugs were all around us and oddly enough made us feel at home. The sound of the crickets which so disturbed the very first English settlers back in the 1400′s were a familiar sound of home for us.

Tulsa and the Land of the Tigers

So much is happening during our amazing trip that it is hard to take it all in, never mind try and write thoughts about it but I’ll do my best. We stopped in Tulsa for four whole days because my girls have a wonderful friend there. I didn’t see much of them the whole time I was there. We didn’t do lots of touristy things but we bonded with another family and frankly that can be better than the most exciting tourist spot. We stayed with our good friends the Bowles and just fit in like family. We ate well, laughed well, worked in the garden together and talked about our hopes and dreams. Isn’t that what people have done since they arrived on the planet? It was great and we were sad to leave.

We did do something rather unusual while in Tulsa we ventured to the Land of the Tigers better known as Safari’s. The Bowles girls have an unusual affinity for nature and all creatures great and small and both work at Safari’s. The elder sister has a love of animals I have only seen a few times in my travels; her life is animals. She has found her life’s passion and is fully immersed in it. From the age of 12 she has worked at Safari’s. She knows all the animals there on a first name basis. She took us on a special tour where we were able to hold lemurs, hang out with wolves, pet skunks, play with foxes, stroke a bobcat and feed lions and tigers. It’s one thing to go to the zoo but to see these creatures up close is quite different. Most of the animals come to them from people who have tried to keep them as pets and have found, for example that tigers don’t make such great pets after all. Here are some photos of our trip there.

Lemur on Jenna's head

Gertrude pet skunk, minus her stinker.

Me petting a kangaroo

Mia with a coatimundi

Cutest little fennec fox I ever did see

Anna feeding a tiger

Sara petting a wolf

Mia feeding a liger, and yes there really are ligers.

Galena, Kansas

You just might be wondering where Galena, Kansas is. Well,let me just tell you. Galena is a tiny town on the southeastern corner of Kansas bordering Missouri and only about two miles from the Oklahoma border as well. Today, unfortunately it is rather depressed, at least it seemed that way from our hour and a half visit the other day. The reason for our visit on our way to Tulsa is that it is the place my father was born and raised. Many of his extended family lived there as well and several of them are still buried there. We were able to pass the little house he was born in and it is still there. I wanted to knock on the door just to tell the people that my good old dad was born in their very house almost 100 years ago but I didn’t because there was a questionable bull dog tied up on the side of the house and I wasn’t sure how long his tether was plus my sensible children were telling me not to under any conditions.

After visiting the house we proceeded  down a couple of streets to the original Methodist Church where my great grandmother’s sunbonnet was buried in the cornerstone of the church. People always raise their eyebrows at this one and my guess is just that she was a true pioneer woman and this church symbolized the settling down of their lives somewhat and to honor her as a cornerstone member her bonnet was immortalized in the cornerstone, but that is only my guess??

After the church we happened into what used to be the old train depot and is now The Galena Museum which in fact is a delightful couple who could have been contemporaries of my dad’s generation and two or three large rooms full of cool stuff. I asked if they might like any copies of my dad’s old photos and he politely replied that they had more than they could display or store at this point. Here are a few photos to give you an idea of the museum which was quirky and interesting.

The day was bittersweet for me as I could for the first time connect to my father’s past in some way and yet it was sad because all of my family like many of the other residents of their time are long gone and I missed them. I was thinking how nice it would have been to have met them and I was sad that their once beautiful and prosperous mining town was now mostly a ghost town. At least I was able to honor them by visiting their past and teaching my children about them.

My dad's birthplace Galena, Kansas.

Toy bank from the Galena museum, yes there is a Galena museum.