Day 11 - Saturday

We made it home safely Saturday night, after a brief layover in Garden City for steak and potatoes.

Saturday morning wasn't very restful - Adie woke up a couple of times, and Crys said it took about two hours for her to get back to sleep. I slept through part of it, but even Acacia got involved by singing her a lullaby at about 2am.

Around 4am, we noticed that the power had gone out in the hotel, but it came back on about 20 minutes later. What sleep we did get was pretty light, and so we still made it up around 6:30am (without the alarm that got reset in the outage), and we were on the road around 7:30am.

We had to stop on the way out of town for Acacia to get her picture taken with the chrome dragon. Crys had really talked it up, but she was quite disappointed to learn that it wasn't "real".



We stopped on top of the Monarch pass to stretch and look through the gift shop. I finally talked Crys in to driving down the pass since she's never driven in the mountains before. She did great, and actually took us all the way into Canon City.

We rolled into Garden City around 6:30pm, and Roz had supper almost ready for us. Unfortunately Ken had been called out, but we had a good time with Roz. She's looking VERY pregnant, and I'd expect that we'll be driving back out within the next week or two to see a baby boy.



The drive home from Garden City was dark but uneventful. The kids both slept most of the time, and Crys stayed awake to talk with me.


We both agree that we had a wonderful time. The kids were far better than we ever thought they'd be after that long. We got to see a lot of cool things, and generally speaking, we wouldn't have changed a thing about the trip.



Total Miles Traveled: 3132
Hours in Vehicle: 63

Day 10 - Friday

We took it easy today around the Crested Butte area. This morning we drove up Kebler Pass, which is about 10 miles outside of town. The hotel concierge tipped us off that the trees were beautiful up there. They were, and I have photos, but they're still out in the van.

We came back to swim, but it was pretty chilly even for the heated pool, so we spent most of the time in the hot tub.

After that, we went down down and walked around to all of the little shops. We bought a print from a local photographer of the chrome dragon that used to sit just outside of town (it's now inside of town because of a trespassing dispute). Other than that, about the only thing of note was that we made it back to Bacchanale which is an Italian restaurant here in Crested Butte. Crys and I ate here on our honeymoon, and they had one of the best peanut butter pies. This is the second time we've come back, basically to eat their pie.



Tomorrow we had back to Kansas. We're still debating whether or not we'll drive on home tomorrow night, or if we'll stay in Garden City and be home sometime after lunch on Sunday.

Day 9 - Thursday

We decided to be brave this morning and launch out for Crested Butte, instead of staying about half way in Grand Junction. We left the Canyon around 6am (local) time this morning, and arrived at the hotel about 7pm (local, with a 1 hour time difference). It made for a long 12 hour day, but we had some fun, and we're glad to be here. We'll be staying in Crested Butte for two nights, so basically no traveling tomorrow.

Originally, Google Maps said to go through Grand Junction to get here, but when we started out this morning, the GPS decided to take us through the Four Corners, which saved us about 2 hours total drive time. I modified the route slightly to take us through Silverton and Ouray, which we're really glad we did. The trip was absolutely beautiful, with the Aspen trees turning colors.



We stopped in Silverton and visited some of the little shops that we'd went to two years ago when we were up there. I'm glad we stopped, because when we got out, it was very apparent that I'd been riding the brakes too hard as they had a pretty good smell to them. Most of the rest of the trip through Ouray, we stayed in low gear to minimize the braking (yes, Dave, we gave them a break :-) ). I'd never noticed it to be a problem before, but my van only has 3rd gear and 1st gear for options. It was a long trip down the mountain.



The girls were fine on the long drive. Adie actually slept quite a bit today (naturally, no sedatives involved). She's also been talking up a storm - she's even said some two-sylable words (though I can't remember them right now). This morning, she was singing to herself back in the car seat. When she's out, she's really been walking good, even on the uneven rocks at the Canyon.



She also got her first big scrape on the knee yesterday.



We've seen tons of deer the last two days. Most of them (20-30) were in the meadows right outside of the Grand Canyon park. Today we've run across probably another 15-20. We only had to slow down for one of them - the rest have mostly been grazing in the meadows.

Total Miles: 2400

Day 8 - Wednesday

Well, I was right about my suspicions – we have been in the middle of a Ponderosa Pine Forest since about Fredonia.

This morning, we drove up to the Grand Canyon National Park (North Rim), and made it to the visitor center around 9:30. The drive was great through the forest with an occasional meadow clearing.

After talking with the ranger about the park, we drove to one of several points. The sky was clear, temperature crisp (about 64F), and was just good all the way around.

The Canyon was rather amazing. What more can I say, photos just don't do justice to its shear size.

Obviously we've taken lots of photos this trip, about 600 in total so far. I think we've done pretty good about keeping ourselves in a lot of them, and not just scenery.

At the moment, I'm sitting outside of a laundromat here at the rim. We've been driving all day (it's almost 4pm). We needed some more clean close to make it home. Unfortunately, I don't have a cell signal, so I can't get on the Internet right now to upload this.

I'm sitting here watching dozens of bees flocking around the front of everyone's vehicles. When I first saw it, I though it might be a coolant leak that they're smelling, but they're at everyone's cars. It appears that they're eating on any of the dead bugs on the grills. So far they haven't been too interested in actually coming inside the vehicle.

Tonight, we'll be staying at a lodge about 20 miles down the road, just at the entrance to the park.

And some other random thoughts....

I noticed this before on a previous trip (I can't remember where), but it's amazing how many Europeans are at places like this. Just taking a guess, but it seems like roughly 25% of the visitors are from across the pond. I'm not sure what that says when we as American's aren't enjoying our own back yard.

The Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS has been wonderful this trip. Other than specific parks, I haven't looked at a map the entire trip. Initially, I noticed that my van's trip odometer and the GPS's trip odometer were dead on (within .1 miles). Later I saw them start to drift apart by a couple hundred miles. As we were leaving Las Vegas, I stopped for gas on the edge of town, and when the GPS turned back on, for about 20 seconds, it showed a map that appeared to be 20 miles away at the hotel. Ever since then, the trip odometer has been WAY off, and I noticed that my average moving speed jumped up to over 80mph. It appears that it temporarily got lost, and as it found itself, it believed that it was moving very fast for an instant.

Other than that oddity, we've had basically 0 issues with the mapping or routing. I also noticed another useful feature last night in the dark on the windy road. By having a moving map right in front of you, it's very easy to anticipate sharp turns. That came in very handy – now if we could just get obstacles like cows to show up on there...

Miles traveled: 1900

Hours in the vehicle: 39

Day 7 - Tuesday

Overall, Crys and I did okay in Vegas. I think we gambled nearly $200 between us, and brought back all but about $40. We had fun - the slots experience was basically new for both of us so it was a bit of a learning experience along the way.

This morning the girls got to swim, and Acacia got to ride a number of rides in an indoor amusement park. I think she had fun, but you could tell she was tired and wasn't fully enjoying herself.

We made it out of Vegas around 3:00pm, and other than two very short stops for gas (if there's one thing I've learned about the American Southwest is to never pass up a gas station...) we drove non-stop to our "cabin" at Jacob Lake. The drive was about four hours, and all but the first hour was quite pretty.

North of Las Vegas, we crossed over the Virgin River on Interstate I-15. Right after that, we entered the Virgin River Gorge, which basically put us into the mountains for the rest of the trip. The gorge itself was very pretty (although dry), and the girls enjoyed looking at all of the caves in the side of the mountains.

The sun set along our journey, and the last 20 miles was windy highway, along what I think was the side of the mountain, but it was too dark to see. I told Crys to keep her eyes open for deer. About 5 miles down the road, there was a warning sign to watch for deer. Another 2 miles down, and there was a sign to watch for cattle, which I instructed her to do.

All was good until a few miles from the cabin, when I spotted a large black rock on the right side of the road. Black rocks are fine, until they lift their heads up and look at you. I yelled at Crys then that she should have warned me.

We made it here just fine, and didn't hit any deer, cattle, or rocks for that matter.

The cabin that we're staying at tonight in Jacob Lake is leaving a little to be desired. I think it's beautiful outside - I can't see anything but there's trees all around and they smell like pines. Unfortunately, our "2 room cabin" looked like it was built in 1900, and has had very little upkeep since then. It's kind of a bungalo style conctruction, with a tiny bathroom connecting the two rooms. As I walked in the room for the first time, I flipped on the light and it immediately burned out. I walked through the bathroom (watch your step!) to find the other door being kept closed by the chain, so I wound up searching under the bed for surplus animals.

There's a room heater in each side, and one of them won't run, apparently because the pilot light went out. I think the one heater will keep us going just fine, but it's kind of annoying to spend $100 for a dingy little place with leaky faucets when our very nice and clean room on the Vegas Strip cost less than half that.

Tomorrow we'll drive the hour down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I'm sure I'll have plenty of photos then. Given the sunset time and the temperatures, I'll probably get them uploaded tomorrow night. The Alltel modem card is working quite well here, which is nice because in Phoenix and in Vegas, it was constantly disconnecting on me, and occasionally refusing to connect at all.


BTW, several of you have asked and yes, the two girls are doing great on this trip. The DVD player has definately been a blessing, but they've been very good otherwise. We received two compliments from people in two different restaurants today alone saying how well behaved they are.

Total miles traveled: 1800

Day 6 - Monday

We left Phoenix this morning to head over to Las Vegas. The drive was fairly dull and about five hours. About an hour outside of Phoenix, we saw what we're assuming where Joshua trees in the Joshua Forest. They were a very unique looking tree, and for a few miles down the highway, they were very dense. I don't recall running across the anywhere else on the trip.



Once we got up to the Hoover Dam, things got a little more interesting. There were several signs indicating that semis, rental trucks, and the like are not permitted over the dam, I assume for terrorist reasons. They stopped every single vehicle a couple of miles from the dam and peered through the windows to look for anything suspicious. It looked as if they had a special spot for detailed inspections of anything that they didn't like.

The dam itself was interesting, but we didn't spend a lot of time there. We took some photos, and visited the gift shop. It was just too hot, and we were so close to our destination to bother too much with it.




Once in Vegas, we got checked into the Circus-Circus, and then walked down the strip a little ways to a mall. We had supper and I finally got to the slots about an hour ago. I put in $21 into the slots and wound up cashing out $63. I came back up stairs with that (I'm sure I'll lose it back tomorrow). Crys went down, and she just came back up $20 broker that when she started...



Tomorrow we'll play some more games, and Acacia is looking forward to the indoor amusement park. Then, we'll head on towards the Grand Canyon.

Day 5 - Sunday

Today was a little more relaxed. We went to church this morning at Christ's Church of the Valley, and enjoyed ourselves. The church was quite literally a campus, and had separate buildings for the different ages of kids to play. The service was held in a separate building altogether.

We happened to sit right next to the sound booth, and got to see their digital sound board and their video equipment. It was quite impressive.

Later we went swimming at David's mom's house in their pool. David cooked us up a good home-cooked Mexican dinner after we got home. I bought myself a Mint Chocolate-Chip pie from Baskin-Robins here in Phoenix. I used to get these every year at my birthday before they closed up in Hutch. It was as good as I remembered.

Tomorrow we hope to get an early start towards Las Vegas. With a little luck, we'll be there around lunch time.

Speaking of Vegas, my mom gave us some money to gamble for her. It was given to me in a well-decorated envelop.



Apparently Meme has some bad habits...


Most of the gas has been in the $3.30-$3.40 range. In Flagstaff, I filled up at $3.69, but later saw a place further away from the Interstate that was back around $3.47. The worst case was in Gallup, NM where there was almost a $.30 spread between stations close to the Interstate and further away.

Total miles traveled: 1280

Day 4 - Saturday (continued)

We went shopping this evening, and wound up eating Italian and had cheesecake for dessert.

Afterwards, we went over to David's mom's house who lives on the edge of town. She wasn't there, but had a black-light, where he searched for scorpions. The black-light causes the scorpions to glow in the dark (even if they're dead).

We couldn't find any outside, but after looking around inside, he found several in a bathroom.



The ones we found were all dead, but he scooped the biggest up and we'll be bringing it back to Kansas with us.

Day 4 - Saturday

We drove up to Wickenburg Saturday morning to look at some land that George owns the mineral rights to. According to the instructions, we drove south from Wickenburg on the Vulture Mine Road, which was a nice paved highway. This was the view from the highway...


We soon saw the windmill on the right side of the road.


We went past the first one to the south entrance to the land.



After turning off the highway, we had to stop several times to check the road conditions. Here the road transitions from a rocky road, into some soft sand.




We drove to the Lat/Lon coordinates, and then continued past a little ways. The road was passible in a mini-van, but you definately had to be careful. There were two spots along the approximately 1 mile drive that we had to take a good running start at, and I almost got stuck in some soft sand, even though the road appeared to be in good condition.

Once we got there, there were lots of cactus, and plenty of sand.




After doing some digging...



We took a family photo in front of a cactus.

Day 3 - Friday

We made it out of the hotel in good order this morning, and were at the Petrified Forest around 10:30 this morning.

Basically, the park consists of a 30 mile loop that starts at the Painted Desert. Every mile or so is a turn-out to take photos and look at the rocks. The last 10 miles or so are the petrified trees.

The first few stops were at the Painted Desert side. Here you can see our group photo at a lookout.


About this time, Acacia latched on to our small Canon PowerShot camera and started taking photos. Here's one of her self portraits in the Painted Desert.


We drove around to the south side of the park, and after a short lunch break consisting of some delicious Minnesota Summer Sausage, we wound up at the Petrified forest.


These logs are quite amazing. They feel like solid rock, and have some very deep and rich colors.


Next we drove down I-40 to the Meteor Crater. That was an interesting place to visit, even after paying the $30 for the two adults to get in. The crater was absolutely huge, and there was a pretty good climb just to get to the top of the rim. They no longer allow people to actually go inside the crater, but that was fine with me - it must have been several hundred feet deep.



There was a "documentary" being shot there, and it was immediately clear who the star of the show was. You could hear some clanking has he walked up, and when you looked up there was a man literally dressed in a suit made of mirrors. None of the workers really knew what the subject matter that he was documenting, but he sure attracted a lot of attention.



They were doing some amateur style video, and some higher-end still photography using the old light box style cameras (the ones you have to put a sheet over your head to see through).

We made it into Phoenix around 6:30 tonight. The kids were restless and hungry, but lucky for us, David has a Chucky-Cheeses about 2 blocks from his house, so we went there for dinner. It worked out well, and I think we'll all sleep good tonight.

And tomorrow, we plan on getting up reasonably early and heading out to Wickenburg to look for gold.

Day 2 - Thursday (continued)

We rolled into Gallup, NM tonight around 5:30pm local time. I was able to find an iPod Touch in Albuquerque, so I've been watching Survivor and playing with the new toy all evening.

All of the technology seems to be working quite well.

I've got a small issue with my brights and windshield-washing-fluid switches in the van. Until the brights switch is cycled about 10-20 times each morning, the van will randomly alternate betwen turning the brights on/off, or spraying the windsheild with fluid. I'm pretty sure it's not a matter of me pulling wrong or fat-fingering it. At this point, it's just an annoyance, and I'll probably wait until I get home to tear into it.

The APRS positioning has been tracking all through New Mexico, and into Kansas. I don't think it's transmitting quite a frequently as I thought I'd configured it, but it's adequate and is getting iGated on a regular basis.

The Alltel wireless Internet card was working fair in the van traveling down the Interstate I-40. It disconnected 2 or 3 times while trying to write the first part of Day 2 blog entry, but it got the job done.

And the iPod is pretty cool. I'm still in the process of getting all my music and photos sync'ed up with the laptop, but it's attaching to the hotel's Internet just fine. It's user interface is very intuitive, and I feel like I'm already 90% up the curve on using it. It looks like it's going to hook up just fine to my work's VPN connection out of the box, without any extra add-ins!


The good news and bad news: Crys is very impressed with the iPod and is thinking of putting one on her Christmas list. And the bad, I've been monitoring the ham radio 146.52 simplex calling frequency for almost 12 hours through four states, and haven't heard a single voice.

Day 2 - Thursday

Things are still going well. We made it out of Garden City about 5 minutes early, and didn't have to stop until our early lunch at 10:30am. The DVD player that we borrowed from the Frey's is working it's miracles. We've watched about 4 movies and have had no fighting.


It looks like the APRS tracking is getting gated onto the Internet pretty well. I'm running about 25W out of a 5/8 wave vertical on top of the van. It's sitting about 2 inches away from the Garmin GPS-35 unit that we used to use on balloons. I would up running a ground strap to the radio, and to the shell of the APRS controller box. I also put a couple of ferrite beads on the coax and RS-232 cables.

We stopped for lunch in Tucumcari. While getting gas and ice, we bought three lottery tickets. Acacia's was a winner, and earned her $2 of spending cash! Lunch was at an A&W / Long John Silvers joint. There was a centipede trying to crawl into the men's restroom.


We just got on the Interstate I-40 heading west towards Flagstaff, but have been in contruction zones for the last 20 miles. Hopefully they're over now. The next planned stop will be at a Best Buy in Albuquerque to buy an iPod Touch.

Day 1 - Wednesday

Our trip started Wednesday in Hutchinson. We're staying the weekend with my friend David, and if you know David, you know that you have to bring Taco Hut if you visit him. So, our first stop was to pick up some tacos.



We made it to Garden City in good time, with no stops! We hit a piece of tumbleweed rolling down the highway, but otherwise nothing much to report yet.

We took this photo of the wind farm near Dodge City. This thing is huge. They're kind of pretty when they're all out there slowly turning. On the other hand, I think they could quickly become an eye sore if they were allowed to deteriorate over time.


The APRS tracking system seems to be working thus far. Our progress can be found on findu.com.

Total miles traveled: 190