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For stats, scroll down. I'm still in the same internet cafe, so nothing has changed (unless... is that a tumbleweed blowing past the window?? Oh. No, that's a UT student.)

Friday was a good day. Paul and I spent the morning relaxing and catching up on email and the sort while Peter was at work, all in anticipation of that evening’s events. Sherman Alexie, an author who I happen to really enjoy, was speaking in Durango, CO – an hour’s drive from Cortez – that evening and tickets were free. The only catch was that the 700-seat auditorium could fill up fast. Sherman Alexie, not only an extremely talented and acclaimed writer, is also a hilarious, political, forward speaker and never boring. We popped in the car as soon as we could, and the three of us took off for Durango. After realizing that we may have overestimated how quickly seats would fill (we arrived at 5,) we decided to grab a quick dinner at a Himalayan restaurant in downtown before returning to Fort Lewis’ concert hall. Friday also happened to be Peter’s birthday, so we got to toast him over dinner, which was nice. Dinner was delicious (the matter paneer was better than Nawab’s…) but I, for one, was eager to return to the concert hall. Good thing, too, as the place had filled considerably since we left! The auditorium was nearly full, yet somehow there were extra seats in the front, so we grabbed three of those and sat down to await Sherman Alexie’s entrance.

I really don’t know what to say about the event except that I probably laughed 90% of the time. He spoke about the elections, he spoke about “veee-gans” (which he is not,) he spoke about Native Americans (which he is,) he spoke about his appearance on Oprah, he spoke about his family, he spoke about a lot and made fun of it all. And it was just hysterical. He also flirted with the crowd as a whole and also, and we can thank our front row seats for this, Paul and me specifically. He talked about Paul for a little while (“I bet you could buck a few bales of hay”) before we figured out it was actually Paul that he was speaking of but once we did, it was awkwardly hilarious. Alexie even recommended to us that we start a website: hotfreerangecouples.com

We stuck around after the show for the book signing. We were all the way at the end of the line, and assumed that he would be exhausted by the time we got up there, but we were amused (and red-faced) that he again called us out. He even apologized for embarrassing us, but made a pretty good point: “If you’re going to be called out in front of 700 people, it’s probably not bad to be called out for being good looking.” True, Sherman. Things could have been worse. We thanked him for his speech, got our books signed, and moved along our way. Poor Peter, who hunched down in his seat and then hung back a bit during the signing, didn’t get noticed enough to turn it into hotfreerangetrio.com but perhaps that actually makes him luckier than us. We drove that night to Bondad, just outside of Durango, to stay the night with Jan and Joe (Peter’s dad.) They are newly moved into their house (about one week ago) which is just gorgeous. Big windows overlooking the river, airy rooms, it was all just amazing.

The next morning, after delicious huevos rancheros prepared by Joe, the boys went about some business of transporting the llama or something (don’t ask me, I have no idea. They left while I was on the phone with my parents and appreciating the views from the deck.) We soon packed up and headed into town with Jan and Joe to catch a screening of Borat. Now, this was the first time I had ever seen that character – I am apparently the only person in the country to have missed the Ali G show – but after rave reviews from critics and excitement heard from both Paul and Peter, I had high hopes. I think we all agreed afterwards, though, that while the movie had very funny moments, it was quite over the top and hard to watch at parts. We headed back to Cortez for a relaxing evening before retiring early with ideas of an early morning for the next day’s plans for Arches National Park.

The next morning proved rainy and less than ideal for a day of hiking, so Paul and I delayed our plans for Arches for a day and had another relaxing day. We read, emailed, napped, wrote, and had just a really great day of doing nothing. It’s amazing how tired we get on this 4-month trip, but we are appreciative of those sorts of days. Or, in the case of Cortez, the entire weekend. Anyhow, that Sunday night also brought about an event that Paul and I had been waiting many moons for. It brought about our version of the Superbowl. It brought about… Iron Chef America, Rachel Ray and Mario Batali versus Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay. Oh, Paul and I had been drooling over this event for weeks. We had gone out to Tequilas for dinner that night (a delicious Mexican restaurant) and we rushed rushed home in order to get there in time. It was intense, it was fun, and it was a beautiful showcase of culinary mastery. Especially on Rachel and Mario’s side. They won, which pleased Paul and me immensely. I tell you, between the midterm elections and Iron Chef, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many things going my way at once.

Monday morning, the weather was much nicer (despite our first snow of the trip, for the first few minutes of the drive) and we headed out to Arches National Park, back in Utah. Shortly before reaching the park, though, we stopped at what I was hoping to be one of the most touristy spots of the trip: Hole in the Rock. We took the guided tour of the house that had been built into rock (not in any natural cave either. The man dynamited out all of the rock he and his wife needed for living space.) It was hilariously awful.

Not quite sure why the " is after the N, but okay!

On to Arches. The drive had been lovely and the park was lovelier. We took a mini hike up to the Windows, appreciating the red and orange colors of the rock up against the brown and yellows of the desert sand up against the blue snow-capped mountains. It was really something. After that hike, we debated over whether to hike up to delicate arch (the one on the Utah license plates) or to head to a longer hike in the back of the park recommended by my mom. As I had done the delicate arch in May and Paul was happy to see the arch from a viewpoint, we decided on the latter hike and were so glad that we did. It was a 7 mile hike that took us to many arches and up and over rocks and culminated in Dark Angel, a rock formation that was so stunningly interesting, largely due to the fact that we ended up seeing a total of five different angel faces in the rock. Paul believes that he knows the actual one for which the rock is named, but I think that many of them could be the namesake. Any which way, it was a glorious hike and we tiredly but happily returned to the car for the drive back to Cortez. We stopped along the road for dinner at Nero’s, an Italian restaurant with Southwest décor. It was… interesting looking. The food, though, was exquisite. (In the words of our good friend Roy, Paul and I are “looking very well-fed” and we are only growing more so.)

The windows also make for a creepy face

Paul and the Arch

Ohhh, snow-covered mountains...

Can you spot the dark angel?

One more thing worth mentioning about this drive home is that Speed Blazer picked up yet another quirk. The overhead light in the car now flickers on and off, at its own discretion. We attributed the problem to the backhatch, which you may remember stopped opening, as we believe it’s stuck in a state of not-quite-closed-yet-not-quite-open and thus triggers the open door light from time to time. It was disconcerting at first, but we’ve grown quite used to it and hardly notice it now. We just feel for the other drivers on the road when it is dark, as they must be perplexed by us (and maybe even, at a distance, confuse us for a cop car with blinking lights.)

Tuesday, Paul and I headed into downtown Cortez to check out some shops and the bookstore, for Internet access and lunch before meeting up with Peter to head out to Mesa Verde, the National Park nearby which houses ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings. We got there in time for a guided tour down to Spruce Tree House, where we saw and learned about a massive dwelling that was home for 60-80 people. Our tour guide was great – informative, interesting, and very good at dealing with the obnoxious members on the tour (not us!) – and we even got to climb down into a reconstructed kiva, which was exciting. We returned to Peter’s house for dinner and a viewing of Tortilla Soup, a very cute, fun, and delicious movie. Between Iron Chef and Tortilla Soup, I think Paul and I are craving the liberty of having kitchens again when we finally get off the road in December. I know we both have had multiple dreams about food, including one for Paul where he (I was awake to witness this) started chewing noisily and said, “Mmmmmm, that’s gooooooood!”

the cliff-dwellings

the non-roofed kiva

Wednesday morning, Paul and I left early for the gorgeous drive along the San Juan skyway. This is a loop that Cortez is conveniently located in the middle of, which drives through gorgeous scenery and several adorable old towns. The high elevation and the cold weather of the past several days gave us beautiful snow pretty much everywhere we drove. Our first stop was in Telluride, the well-known ski town. Unfortunately we were just a little too early for the ski slopes to be open, but it didn’t stop us (well, maybe just me) from lusting after the map of the slopes. I had hoped that we could take the free gondola up the mountain to get a good view but, for the second time in my life now, the “Every day, 7 AM to midnight!” sign was a lie and we were out of luck. We enjoyed just walking around the town, though, even while lamenting its lack of coffee shops.

Back in the car, we enjoyed more snowy scenery as we headed into Ouray, another tiny town with a cute little downtown. Again, we had some difficulties finding a place to grab a hot beverage (and some soup for lunch) but I suppose that happens when you visit towns between the summer tourist rush and the ski tourist rush. We drove through many more towns and many twisty roads not stopping again until Durango, where we paused just briefly (having seen some of it already the night of the Sherman Alexie event) to visit the famous Jean-Pierre French bakery to pick up some croissants for the next morning’s breakfast. Paul and I also, and I can’t remember how it started or why we thought it was such a good idea, decided to speak in only rhyme for part of the drive. This lasted for probably, oh, about two hours. Two hours, people. Needless to say, we forced ourselves to end the game when we started reprimanding ourselves for not thinking in rhyme. We got back to Cortez that evening just in time to see the sun setting behind Sleeping Ute and pick up some groceries for dinner. We got back to Peter’s house in time for cooking, foosball, and several episodes of Arrested Development. This was one of the nicest days in quite awhile, in my opinion.

San Juan skyway

Ouray

Thursday morning, after those delicious Jean Pierre pastries, Paul and I bid farewell to Francesca and Peter and hit the road. We drove a short while down to the Four Corners monument where we enjoyed standing in four states at once. Even more than just stand, though, I had a dance party in four states and Paul ran through four states! After that exhausting workout of ours, we got back into the car and headed across New Mexico to Taos, “the soul of the southwest.” We walked around, enjoying the southwestern architecture and cute shops, for a few hours before pressing on to Santa Fe. We got to Santa Fe late enough to check into our hotel, grab a quick dinner at a Mexican restaurant down the road recommended by our check-in guy, and retire for the evening to Austin Powers 3.

Dance Party

Long run

We took a nice relaxing morning in the hotel room, catching some news, before heading to the Santa Fe plaza. The town was cute but I think that the guidebooks were right on to note that many tourists will wonder, “what’s the fuss about?” It was quaint and the architecture was certainly lovely, but after a quick lunch at the highly praised Tia Sophia, we were on our way.

I did my best to look South-western

Our next stop was one of my highly-anticipated places of the trip: Roswell. Roswell has all of the alien merchandise you could dream of, as well as a knock-out museum detailing all sorts of UFO info, including a well-done chronology on the events of the alleged UFO crash near Roswell in 1947. The information that was presented was really interesting and certainly makes you wonder. Now, I think neither Paul nor I were convinced that the crash definitely took place, but we were not certain that it didn’t happen either. It was curious that so many military personages had issued statements in favor of the UFO and military cover-up theory.

If only Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny had been part of the exhibit...

Our awesome dining experience

We planned to camp Friday evening in the Bottomless Lake State Park down the road from Roswell, but we sadly discovered that we needed a New Mexico state park permit in order to do so. We pressed on looking for another campsite. Or at least that’s what we said we were going to do. We both secretly were scouting out motel signs, hoping to find a cheap one along the way that we could nonchalantly mention to the other. When we discovered that the other didn’t want to camp, either, we happily found a motel in the town of Carlsbad, not too far from our planned stop the next day at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. And so there we sat, enjoying Paula Dean on the Food Network and having walls and a bed.

The following day we got into the Park too late for our long spelunking expedition that we so badly wanted to do (4 hours of crawling through mud into tiny spots) because it had filled up; but we were not dissapointed due to the great lecture on bats and well-guided 2 hour tour of one of the caverns. Our tour guide looked remarkably like Ellen from "Pete and Pete." Anyone know if that actress pursued a career in the National Park Service? We pressed on to camp that night at the Guadelupe Mountains National Park, enjoying another gorgeous campsite before losing all natural light. We concluded Season 3 of Arrested Development in our tent that evening. It was intense. It was enjoyable. It was also very sad, knowing that we were officially done.

The following morning, realizing just how big Texas is, we decided to get as much distance covered that day as possible. There's not much to say about the day, as we just drove and drove, except that we made good progress in Anna Karenina, which we are happily engaged in once again. We camped that night outside of Fredericksburg, a German-settled town, which had a very cute and festive main street. We dined in a Texas bar, complete with a crooning guitar player with a strong Texas accent.

The next day we drove to a campsite in between San Antonio and Austin, set up the tent, and heading south into San Antonio. Our first matter of business was, of course, to check out the Alamo. It actually was very neat to see and great to get a history lesson in the surrounding museum. I feel we got a better understanding of Texan mentality. And we have been careful not to mention our political leanings too loudly.

After the Alamo, we walked the riverwalk ("Other towns have rivers. San Antonio has a riverwalk.") which was exceptionally pretty until you look too closely down into the river and notice the chairs and soda cans littering the bottom. We dined at a restaurant right on the river (very fancy for our budget) and enjoyed the lights along the river as well as all of the people-watching. We also enjoyed our second night of hangman games while awaiting our meal (I just realized how hilariously appropriate it is that we get into that game while in Texas...) much to the amusement of our waitress.

We returned to our campsite for sleeping that night, appreciating and admiring the lake-front site that we selected before retiring. And now we're in Austin! I don't really know much about Austin yet, as I sit in a Pita Pit for the wi-fi to complete these posts and Paul sits somewhere nearby in a garage while Speedy gets a makeover (an oil change and new brake pads!) But I'm sure we'll have good stories to tell about the city on the next post. Until next time!

(And good job to those of you who read through the whole lengthy post(s)!!)

Love, hugs, and kisses,

Alina

Sometimes cafes with WiFi are hard to come across

Location: Austin, TX
Mileage: 12500
# of Tumbleweeds seen: 4
# of Tumbleweeds run over!: 1
Number of times one of us has broken into the chorus of "All my exes live in Texas" since entering the Lone Star State: Far too many.

We hit Zion National Park just long enough before the sun set to book a campsite and set up tent. We had no firewood that evening so our camp night was not the typical meal-wine-fire sort of evening, but we instead utilized the cell signal (in the middle of a national park!) and caught up with friends for awhile. That was nice to chat with our friends but we were also appreciative of the fodder for conversation it provided over dinner. Sometimes Paul and I run out of things to say to each other, so it was nice to just be able to talk about the lives of whomever we had spoken with instead of trying to think of something interesting on our own. We retired to the tent and, it being close enough to Thanksgiving, we finally watched the copy of Home for the Holidays that we had brought with us. Between the phones and the laptop, this was probably our most technology-dependent camping evening. However, we were both awake and alert after the movie and it was one of the warmer camping nights we had had in a long time so we decided to walk around the campsites and admire the canyon walls surrounding us by the still nearly full moon. (See, we like nature, too.) It was stunning.

Our campsite as the sun went down

The next morning we tore down camp and hit the park. We picked out a scenic drive through the canyon and two medium-lengthed hikes to fill the day. The drive was lovely, taking us through gorgeous rock formations with varying colors. The sights were particularly special due to the trees. Dozens of yellow-leaved trees framing the reddish multi-hued rocks made for striking sights. After our drive, we stopped at the Emerald Pools trailhead and hiked up to the middle and upper pools and falls. At this time of year, the falls are little more than trickles, but the pools were calm and glassy and attracted a lot of photographers.

River, Rock, yellow leaves -- what more could you ask for?

Reflecting Pools

All the photographers even looked the same

Our next hike was Sandy point loop, which didn’t take long to confirm its name. Steep hikes are difficult; steep hikes on sand are much more so. We worked hard to make it up the hills on the sand but thoroughly enjoyed the views we got for doing so. We settled down on a rock about halfway through the loop to enjoy our lunch and the views. Zion is magical; after hearing less than favorable accounts of the park, we realize that it is a park that must be visited and appreciated later in the year. This is partly because of the fall colors but also because the park, which is purportedly packed during the warmer months, feels as if it is nearly empty during this time of year.

Paul, proudly wearing the fanny pack

Zion and the moon (hey, that would be a good name for a bad band)

After our full day of appreciating Zion, we hopped in the car and made the short drive east to Bryce National Park. This day also happened to be Election Day and our plan was to find a bar somewhere along the way for us to sit in to watch the results come in. Well, folks, we discovered something about Utah — they don’t have any bars. Or if they do, they’re cleverly disguised as tiny houses with Republican candidate signs in their yard. So no bar for us; but, we did find cheap firewood! Two big bundles for $5, which sure beats the standard $7-one bundle that most national parks provide. We set up camp at Bryce and called some friends (again cell signal in a national park – maybe Utah does have a couple perks…) to plead for election news. The rest of the evening was spent anxiously around the campfire awaiting cell phone calls. Needless to say, every time a call came in, Paul and I were excited and happy with the news we received. We were left that evening waiting to hear about our home state’s election results but pleased with everything else.

The next morning, we embarked first on Bryce’s scenic drive, blasting NPR the whole way. The park certainly is lovely, but Paul and I were actually hesitant to leave the radio in order to check out the viewpoints. Between the news of taking the House, possibly taking the Senate, and Rumsfeld’s resignation, you can imagine how we might be eager to listen, as everything we were hearing was such good news. We were able to pull ourselves out of the car finally to hike down into the canyon, passing through multiple hoodoo formations. It’s hard to describe exactly what hoodoos look like, if you haven’t seen them, but they are rocks that have been weathered away on the sides, forming what somewhat resembles all the drip castles I used to build at the beach. We hiked back up, out of the canyon, and headed back to our campsite with an hour of sunlight to spare. We enjoyed some reading before having to put our books away and enjoyed a more typical camp evening that the prior two evenings.

A Bryce arch

NPR was more important than getting out of the car. Hey, I could see the sights from there anyway...

Hoodoos

We had planned a very long day of driving that morning, taking a very loopy route over to Colorado. After packing up the car, we headed south out of the park in order to catch a drive through some more national park beauty. We headed down toward the Grand Staircase and Glen Canyon for some views. We took a slight detour into a state park before righting ourselves and getting directions from the woman at the entrance booth, who had kindly taken our $6 only ten minutes before. I showed her the road that we were trying to drive on, having initially believed that said road ran through her state park. She directed me towards the dirt road that Paul and I had not taken, assuming that the little dirt road that we passed could not be the 45 mile-long road that was on our map. It was and the guide assured me, “that road’s just been re-done and is in the best shape it’s ever been in. It’s 45 miles and will only take you 2 hours!” We were moderately worried about driving Speedy on the bumpy, dusty road, but the sights were enjoyable! We pulled off for a stop at an arch (whose name I’ve just forgotten,) just another of Utah’s interesting natural formations. Who knew Utah would be so pretty?

Memorable arch, unmemorable name

We finally hit the highway and were relieved to have our wheels on firm road again as we headed east, dipping down into Arizona briefly before heading northeast through Monument Valley. Our stop at Monument Valley Memorial was gorgeous, looping through massive formations that truly resembled their names (just ask Paul about Elephant Butte, which made him exclaim at least 5 times, “Oh my god, it actually looks like an elephant. Look at it!”) After Monument Valley, it was late enough that we decided to forgo the Four Corners Memorial for that day and head straight to Cortez, CO. We arrived late, having driven all day, through three states, seen so much, but we were welcomed kindly by Peter, his mother, and his sister, Francesca. Our first piece of business: showers. Campfires, good hikes, and no showers for several days make Paul and me pretty disgusting. Multiple shampoos and a few games of foosball later, we sat down for a delicious meal at a real table! (Picnic benches also get old.)

A very happy driver (wearting the BEAUtiful necklace of drink wrapper that I created for him)

"Oh my god, it actually looks like an elephant!"

The three sisters. Notice the sun shining above them. I like to think that it is because they are so holy and wonderful. Much like three other sisters that I can think of... ;)

Mexican hat (not in Monument Valley)

Arizona is the Grand Canyon State but it should be the Superfantasticly Enormously Incredible Canyon State With Other Cool Stuff Too

Hi friends. This is another catchup post that takes us from Southern California all the way to Vegas via Arizona. If you want to read the last leg of our California adventure and haven't yet, just scroll down to the last post. Soon we'll be all caught up with a Utah/Colorado post so keep checking! Miss you all!

The drive from San Diego to Phoenix went rather smoothly. Alina read the entire way and I sped down the freeway through the desert and sang along to music. We made very good time and arrived in Phoenix by mid-afternoon. There we met up with Stacy, a friend of mine from William and Mary who just started graduate school in Phoenix for clinical psychology. She is an extremely fun and interesting person. At the beginning of the trip I actually thought that we might stay with her in Las Vegas where she spent the year after her graduation working as a welfare agent, which, as you might imagine, provided her with many funny stories which she shared with us over a delicious dinner of salmon and corn chowder that she cooked for us. Alina and I knew we were in good company when we were staying with some one who is big into cooking and the Food Network AND loves Arrested Development as much as we do. We had a nice long chat over dinner and did some catching up as well as getting to know a friend of hers who she had over for dinner. The plan was to hit the town for some Halloween celebrations, but Stacy’s friend was feeling under the weather and Alina was sleepy, so it was just Stacy and I. We went down to Tempe, where Arizona State University is located and where a huge Halloween street party was taking place. We had a great time walking up and down the main strip and seeing all of the costumes, some people had really gone all out. Our favorite was the guy dressed as Borat because he did the costume, and the accent, perfectly. Eventually we got tired of walking around and found a nice bar a bit off the main strip where we could have a couple of beers at and catch up. We had a huge amount of fun catching up and talking and then, having had our share of bars and Halloween for that evening, we made our way back to her apartment in Phoenix and hit the sack.

The next morning we all woke up at about ten and had breakfast while watching a few episodes of Arrested Development (season 3!!!). After that we showered and organized ourselves before going to lunch with Stacy at a nice Mexican restaurant called Aunt Chilada’s. Hilarious. Having enjoyed a fantastic lunch – hands down the best fish tacos I’ve ever had – we said goodbye to Stacy and hit the road. The drive up to Sedona was rather uneventful, but the scenery took a turn for the beautiful as we neared the Sedona area and began to see the striking red rocks that the town is known for. In Sedona we stayed with Peter’s father Scott, his wife Kari, and her three children. When we arrived it was just about to get dark and we sat down to catch up with Peter and get to know Scott, Kari, and the kids. After a while everyone was getting hungry so we ate a delicious salmon dinner. After dinner I played Scott and the twin boys, Chris and Joe, at a rock ‘n roll trivia game and won in an upset after Scott had led the entire game. It all had to do with escaping from disco purgatory and getting a few lucky questions: Lou Reed lyrics and the conditions surrounding Janis Joplin’s death. By the time the game was over it was past everybody’s bedtimes and we settled down to sleep.

Stacy with us right before we left Phoenix

Our first view of the red rocks as we approached Sedona

The next morning we were up and out early to go exploring in Sedona. Peter showed us around the pleasant little touristy town for a few hours and we window shopped through the booksellers and New Age stores before grabbing lunch at a cool vegetarian place called D’lish. Now fueled up with healthy vegetarian food we embarked upon a hike that featured both great views of the red rocks as well as many other beautiful colors from the changing autumn leaves. We were quite pleasantly surprised by the changing leaves in Arizona since this was the first that Alina or I had seen of any true fall colors. Our hike was beautiful and took up most of the afternoon. By the time we were finished we were due back at the house to meet Scott to ride up to Flagstaff. The drive to Flagstaff, a slow climb up the Colorado Plateau, was a beautiful hour long ride. Scott and Peter went up to Flag to go to an indoor rock climbing gym for the evening. In the presence of such good climbers (Scott is one of the world’s best and Peter is good himself) Alina and I decided not to burden them with amateur climbing lessons and instead enjoy watching all of the skilled rock climbers tackle different routes. We both had a lot of fun watching them, and for the first time in my life I think I might even, one day, far in the future, consider the possibility of rock climbing. Maybe. That’s a big step from thinking that climbing up rocks over dizzying heights is the most illogical of all pursuits, which was my former opinion of the sport. At any rate after a few hours at the gym we made our way back to Sedona and made ourselves a late pasta dinner before passing out, tired from all that rock-climbing watching. It’s surprising how tiring watching other people exert themselves can be.

The incredible view of the stunning red rocks and that foxy Blazer from Scott and Kari's living room window

View of the rocks from our hike

The next morning we left Sedona early and drove back up to Flagstaff, this time to see the town outside of the climbing gym. We spent most of the morning just walking around the cute town. It’s a pretty place with a lot of small town character, with the famous Route 66 cutting right through it. At a nice thrift shop Alina and I both found things we’d needed for a long time (her: earring backs and jeans, me: light zip-down jacket) and, of course, more used books. I think that the count of used books in Speedy’s backseat may be approaching the triple digit range. After a bit more walking around we ate brunch at one of Peter’s favorite restaurants, Bellavia, where we all had absolutely delicious and huge portions of breakfast food. Alina had a particularly interesting meal of a humongous oat filled Swedish pancake stuffed with blueberries. Now all fueled up, we did a little more walking around before saying goodbye to Peter and hitting the road once more, this time headed for the Grand Canyon.

There really aren’t words or pictures that do the Grand Canyon justice, and there isn’t a way to describe what it feels like to see it for the first time. As John Muir famously wrote of it “Nowhere else something something nature’s single bold statement in stone.” We pulled up to Mather Point late in the afternoon and spent a good little while just gaping at the immense and colorful canyon. It is truly one of the most spellbinding things that I have ever seen. After our share of jaw-dropped amazement, we made our way to a visitor’s center to get a little info about the canyon and to ask a ranger for some hiking recommendations. Having settled on a busy agenda of hiking and programs for the following day, we made our way to the campsite, got our site, and set up our home for the next two nights. That night was a pretty standard camp night featuring a hearty but modest dinner and a few hours around the campfire.

We got up early the next morning to be at the rim for a nine o’clock ranger walk. The walk was informative and the ranger was very good, although the fact that we were about the only people there between voting age and AARP membership was a slight indication that ranger walks aren’t something targeted towards our demographic. After the hour long walk we did a bit of browsing around Grand Canyon village before gearing up for our hike and taking the bus to the South Kaibab trailhead. We had an absolutely spectacular time hiking down into the canyon. The descent into the canyon was quick and beautiful. I’m glad that the ranger recommended the Kaibab hike to us; she had told us that it offered unparalleled views and she was certainly correct. We reached Cedar Ridge, which was originally our intended turn around point, quickly and, though we knew that we had the tough climb back to the rim ahead of us, decided that we could still go a little deeper into the canyon. After a while we looked back up to the distant rim and figured that was a lofty enough goal for the day and turned around to begin our ascent. On the way we took a break back at Cedar Ridge for lunch before trekking back up the trail. The way up was pretty steep but still very enjoyable. Though there were lots of warning signs about over-exertion, I think we both felt that the Grand Canyon hike was a bit easier than both the Vancouver and the Yosemite hikes. We made it back to the top relatively quickly and took the bus back to our campsite, stopping on the way at a viewpoint near our trailhead where we could look down and see most of our hike into the canyon.

That afternoon we rested a bit at the campsite playing scrabble and reveling that golden post-long-hike feeling. Alina somewhat disrupted my reveling by clobbering me in the scrabble game, but that’s okay I’ll get her next time. As night fell we made our way back to the rim for a moonlight walk with a ranger, which sounded like an awesome program. Apparently it sounded awesome to a lot of people, because we arrived to find sizeable cadres of tourists walking around in the dark aimlessly looking for the “westernmost point of the Mather area rim path.” In an impressive show of organizing with strangers, we set up watch groups and search squads and eventually found the ranger already surrounded by a large group of people located at what is certainly not the westernmost point of the Mather area rim path. At any rate, happy to have found the program we walked with the ranger, a goofy rambling old man who really didn’t tell us anything all that interesting and was quite prone to esoteric tangents. For instance he got the crowd all riled up about scorpions and we talked about that for about a quarter of the hour-long walk. Oh well, though the program could have been better, the Grand Canyon glowing in the light of the full moon couldn’t have been a more spectacular sight. The moon illuminated the canyon surprisingly well, and the buttes and plateaus looked much like ghostly grey ships floating on the black void of the canyon below. We gawked at it for as long as we could stand the biting cold and then made our way back to the campsite to build a big fire, eat dinner, and shiver in our sleeping bags until morning.

My first view of the Grand Canyon

What is she looking at? Doesn't she know it's right in front of her?!

Crows over the canyon

The formations in the canyon are too beautiful to simply call buttes, so they call them temples. This is Isis Temple, which our hike offered many stunning looks at.

The view of the hike below from where we took a brief rest. You can see the path weaving down to Cedar Ridge.

Hiking in the canyon

No pictures even began to show how pretty the Grand Canyon was in the moonlight, but hopefully this might offer a tiny flavor of it.

The next we’d planned on waking up super early and being packed up and watching the sunrise over the Canyon by 6:45. Well we actually woke up at 8:30 so that didn’t happen, but we packed quickly and made our way back to Grand Canyon village for a last look over the rim and a bit of shopping for gifts and souvenirs. After that we drove out to Desert Point, where a four-story tower sits on the edge of the Grand Canyon overlooking the surrounding desert and its sudden transformation into the canyon. After some last views we ate lunch in the parking lot and began to head east, having not heard from my friend in Vegas and therefore deciding to bypass it and head straight up into Utah. But just a few minutes into the drive we finally got cell reception and were able to contact Travis, an old High School friend of mine working in Vegas as a software designer who told us to come on over. And so we turned Speedy around and drove towards Vegas, stopping along the way only for gas and a brief stop at the Hoover Dam, which was impressive and perhaps even neat. Other than that there’s not much to say about it.

We didn't get a great vantage point of the Hoover Dam, but you get the picture.

We made great time getting to Las Vegas and arrived at Travis’s apartment a couple hours before dinner. We spent a while catching up with Travis and getting cleaned up before hitting the strip. Las Vegas is such a bizarre anomaly of a place. Set up by mobsters tired of doing business in Los Angeles, which had the pesky problem of laws and even police, they moved out to this little valley in the middle of the desert and established what would become one of the most glamorous and lavish places in the country. It’s hilarious and sickening and fascinating and lots of fun. We parked at the Bellagio and made it outside just in time to catch the Bellagio’s fountain show to “Proud to be an American.” We walked up and down Las Vegas Blvd just looking at the outlandish sights before heading into the Monte Carlo casino where Travis knew a nice Irish Pub. We had a tasty dinner at the pub, where they had their own microbrewery featuring a particularly good red. After dinner we walked down the strip and caught another fountain show at the Bellagio, this time to Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas,” a much more appropriate song we all agreed. Next it was time to do our big Vegas gambling adventure. We went to Travis’s favorite casino, the (relatively) less showy Barbary Coast where Travis demonstrated himself to be the only real gambler among us by hitting up the craps table. I stuck to something more my speed, the penny slots! I really wasn’t there to win money, just to have free drinks brought to me while I spent a couple of bucks. This is how Stacy, having lived in Vegas for over a year, assured me I could beat the system and extract far more in alcohol costs than I contributed through the penny slots. Well I did beat the system, but in a different way. I couldn’t get a drink on that busy night, but I did win $40 from my dollar in the penny slots, so I’m quite happy. I should have just quit then but thinking I could do it again I played a few more bucks. Once I realized that my forty to one victory was only a rare glitch, however, I gave it up, and went home that night up by over thirty bucks. Sweet!

The Bellagio fountain show

Did you know both Paris and New York are just Vegas neighborhoods?

In the MGM they have lions. Freaking lions! Why?

My lucky casino

The next morning Travis had to leave for work early and we got up with him and went back the strip to see it by daylight. It is perhaps less garish without the neon but it is certainly the same insane little city. It actually seems perhaps a bit stranger in the morning, where the morning light illuminates grandma and pimp alike, sitting side by side and both smoking Marlboro Reds and sipping their martinis over a game of blackjack at 8:30 in the morning. Curse Vegas if you wish, but never deny that it’s one of the country’s truest melting pots. We walked into a couple of the more famous casinos, such as New York New York, Caesar’s Palace, and the MGM. It was at the MGM that we splurged in a big way on one of the famous Vegas buffets. For the low price of $14 I gouged myself with every kind of food imaginable and consumed probably two days worth of calories. It is only the second time in my life that I’ve feared that my stomach might burst under the pressure of how much I’d consumed. Alina actually fared much better than I, not insisting on finishing plates but instead emphasizing trying to at least sample everything at the feast. She was nearly successful, and was actually keeping pretty good form until she loaded up on frozen yogurt at the end. Then her color began to take on the lovely distinct green tint that mine had adopted. Both ridiculously full we waddled slowly back to our car in the Caesar’s Palace parking garage and drove away from that sinful and fantastic city towards the natural beauty of Utah’s National Parks. Join us next time for our adventures in Zion, Bryce, and more!

Fondly,

Paul

Southern California II

Dear friends and family: I’m very sorry about the extremely delayed posts. We’ve been pretty busy and often far from reliable internet, but mostly I’ve just slacked on it over the past few weeks. To make it more this all more manageable to read and to post, I’ve broken the time since our last post into three segments. This is the first, with the rest of Southern California. The posts on Arizona and Utah will be following over the next few days. We miss you all and hope all is well!

Sunday (this is a few Sundays ago – 10/22), after our aforementioned day of visiting Beverly Hills, went back to Leah’s where we were all set up to enjoy an extremely Cali type evening: dinner from In N Out Burger and a viewing of Terminator III, featuring the Governator himself. The next morning Leah left early but, being unemployed, we slept in way past commuting hours and took out time getting stuff together. Once we had packed everything up we met Leah during her lunch break at an Armenian café. We got delicious paninis and ate them on the stairs behind Leah’s office before saying our goodbyes to her. Then we got on the freeway and speedblazed our way to Venice Beach. We had a great afternoon walking up and down Venice’s bustling boardwalk, enjoying the weather, the water, the window shopping, and most of all, the eclectic group of characters the neighborhood seems to attract. My favorites included the self-proclaimed “World’s Best Wino” and the guy with the fake but convincing cobras who actually did scare me and Alina. We spent a few hours there people watching and strolling, and then took a break to talk to our families in a little park where kids were spray painting graffiti all around us. After we got off the phone we had just enough time to walk to the water to enjoy the sunset over the Pacific. Feeling like we got a fair tasting of the Venice funk, we drove to neighboring Santa Monica to see if we could do something about dinner. After a walk around the carnival-like pier, we found ourselves in a little burrito joint on the Third Street promenade, where we enjoyed some cheap Mexican food before enjoying some spectacular gelato at a little place down the street. Full and happy, we drove up to Studio City, where we were to stay with Alina’s Uncle Rod and his girlfriend June, who greeted us with warm conversation and an open bottle of wine. After a bit of hanging around with them everyone agreed it was bedtime so we hit the sack.

The boardwalk of Venice Beach

They graffiti everything here, even palm trees.

Mom, I called you from here.

Seagulls at sunset

So incredibly California

Tuesday we decided to visit the South Bay area, which I was particularly excited to see because when I was a kid my family spent a lot of time visiting my grandparents there. We drove down to Hermosa Beach and enjoyed some time reading in the sun and eating a picnic lunch. It got a bit overcast so we decided to go for a long walk. We strolled down the boardwalk all the way across Hermosa and Redondo Beaches down to Palos Verdes. The walk was beautiful and took up the larger part of our afternoon. By the time we returned to the car it was about time to head back to Rod and June’s so that we could clean up before dinner with them and Alina’s cousin Rory.

The Redondo Beach pier

That afternoon we got our first real taste of the truly crushing power of LA traffic. The drive from Hermosa to Studio City took almost three hours, most of which was spent in one place on the 101. Luckily Rory was running late as well and we weren’t being waited on when we arrived at 8:30 for dinner (previous ETA: 6:15). We had a lot of fun that night sitting around and talking and perhaps consuming far too many calories and alcohol units. It was great for Alina to catch up with her family and me to get to know them because they are extremely fun and interesting. They both work in the entertainment industry. Rod works for a new company that’s making comic book adventure type movies (think X-men and Hulk) and June is VP for human resources at Universal Studios, so we got to hear a lot of interesting stuff about “the industry.”

Speaking of the entertainment industry, after over a week in LA we decided that it was finally time to tackle Hollywood. I dressed in what Leah called my “producer look,” t-shirt, baseball cap, and sunglasses, and we cruised over the millionaire-infested hills that separate Studio City from Hollywood and arrived to do some walking around. We made our way up and down Hollywood Blvd, keeping our eyes out for the sidewalk stars of our favorite celebrities. We were surprised how many of the names on the walk of fame we had never heard of, but then again we’re hardly insiders. We stopped by the famous Graumann’s Chinese Theater to view the celebrity impersonators and see the handprints of some of the biggest names in showbiz, including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, and many more. After much trial and error, I finally found the celebrity with the same type of hands as me, Richard Gere. Hopefully I won’t go grey as early as he did. At any rate, after Graumann’s we got lunch at a nearby Thai place, but as Leah had warned us, the Thai food in LA wasn’t very great. Right across the street from the restaurant was a Scientology outreach center and I really wanted to go chat with them as kind of a joke, but since Leah had been so right about Thai food, I decided to heed her advice about Scientologists in LA: stay away.

After our fill of Hollywood we drove down Sunset Boulevard to Westwood to check out UCLA, a potential graduate school. The campus is absolutely gorgeous, all set in Spanish Colonial architecture. The student body also seemed very diverse and engaged, so UCLA won a lot of points for both Alina and me. While on campus we got in touch with Leah and decided to get together with her before we were to leave the city in the next couple of days. We decided to meet her at her apartment later that evening when she got off work and take a walk around Burbank with her. We drove back to Rod and June’s, cleaned up, and had a bite to eat. Then we drove back to Burbank and had a really great evening walking around the Burbank Town Center with her. When we were saying our final goodbyes she said that if we were around the next evening we could hang out more since Thursdays are the beginning of her weekend (she works four ten hour days). As soon as we left her apartment building Alina pitched the idea of skipping Joshua Tree National Park to stay with Leah for another weekend, which sounded like a great idea to me. Though I really wanted to see Joshua Tree, we figured that we had found a place that we really enjoy and had a great friend to stay with so it just seemed like the right thing to do. Having traveled for two and half months by this point, staying in the same place for more than a few days was getting extremely enjoyable.

Graumann's Chinese Theater

And so, having added four days to our LA itinerary, we decided we could take the next day and spend it relaxing and not being tourists. We lounged around and watched the Food Network pretty much all day. At one point we did take a nice long walk down Ventura Blvd through Studio City, as well as a trip to Trader Joe’s down the street, but mostly it was a day on the couch. It felt great to take a day off of sightseeing. It sounds strange to say that we needed a bit of a rest from all the roadtripping, because the concept of needing to rest during vacation sounds a bit whiny, but still it’s true. After our spectacular day with the couch, Paula Dean, and Rachel Ray, we decided to cook Rod and June dinner as a small thanks for their hospitality. Alina prepared a delicious stir fry and we had a nice dinner and a long conversation that lasted right up until bedtime.

The next morning we said goodbye to Rod and June and got everything packed up before making our way back to Leah’s. We stopped at the store on our way because we intended to prepare Leah, a single woman in the big city who seems to make a habit of tiny meals to save money, a huge dinner that would involve lots of leftovers. The dish of choice was lasagna. When we arrived at Leah’s we spent some time hanging out before deciding to drive out to Pasadena to walk around and see one of Southern California’s oldest communities, which is now home to pretty much every high end-store imaginable. Leah and Alina were both simply aching for some time in an H&M, so that was our first stop. After that we sat down for coffee and very delicious dark chocolate at a little café, and then as we were getting up to leave Leah recognized a couple of her best friends walking by. So we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with her friends Travis and Christine, two very fun and interesting characters. They also both work in “the industry,” Christine as an illustrator for a new show at the Cartoon Network, and Travis, well, we’ll just say his work involves a more mature crowd. They wanted to find a place to get a few drinks so after a long walk around Pasadena looking for a bar that turned out to not serve liquor (the horror!) we made our way back to the cleverly named Bar Celona tapas bar which is where I’d wanted to be the whole time (to Alina’s horror, a punny name practically guarantees my patronage). We hung around there for a few hours and then made our way back to Leah’s for a very late lasagna dinner. After dinner we watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, which both the ladies were shocked and appalled I had never seen. The movie was funny and afterwards we stayed up way, way past our bedtimes talking about all sorts of things and getting into a debate about pharmaceutical advertising of all things. Finally we petered off and fell asleep not too long before the sun was due to make its appearance.

The late bedtime translated into some serious sleeping in the next day, and we didn’t really start moving until noon. After a breakfast of reheated lasagna we drove down to Long Beach, which was new to Leah as well as to us. Right as we were arriving I got an exciting call from a group of friends who had reunited in Williamsburg for homecoming weekend. They passed the phone around and Alina and I got to chat with a few people we hadn’t been in great touch with over the last few months, which was really great. We were sad at being so far away from everybody, but the pain was dulled by comparing that sunny, beautiful, warm day in the breeze from the Pacific to nippy Williamsburg in late autumn. We walked around for a very long time along the beach, down the boardwalk, and around Long Beach’s more commercial area. Along the way we stopped to enjoy tea and gelato at a little café. The Long Beach area, perhaps the busiest port in the country, is a surprisingly nice neighborhood, and our day there was very enjoyable. That evening we drove back up to Burbank and ordered cheap and delicious pizza from Leah’s local place, a tiny joint named Pizza Man He Delivers. We ate pizza and hung around all evening before retiring considerably earlier than we had the night before.

Chasing gulls because we're mature


Leah and Alina

The next day we got an extra hour of sleep courtesy of daylight savings time, which was appreciated. We had a relaxing morning bumming around Leah’s place and taking a nice long walk through the neighborhood before finally facing the fact that it was time to be on with our trip and leave LA and Leah, one of our favorite stops of the trip. Both Alina and I have surprised many of the people we’ve talked with because of how much we really like the LA area. I can’t really speak for Alina (though I think that the weather may be the main factor attracting her) but I really appreciated the areas vastness and variety, so I was sad to leave and left LA feeling like I have so many times this trip, like there was so much we didn’t have time to see. Leaving people is always even harder than leaving places. Though the people we’ve met have been almost certainly the best part of the trip, leaving new and old friends never gets easier even though we have to do it so often. We said goodbye to Leah for good this time, fueled up, and sped down the freeway towards San Diego. Though leaving is sad, being back on the road always feels nice

The battle continues

We ate at a Greek diner on the road and arrived in San Diego that evening. We stayed with my friend Scott’s aunt and uncle, Marianne and Gary. Scott and I had stayed with them last summer in London when they were working there for a year, and when I was telling Scott about this trip he recommended that we stay with them now that they were back in the states. So we arrived at their house to find them as welcoming and kind as they had been to me last year in London. They were in the middle of Halloween festivities, their house fully decked out with spooky festive decorations and having just come from a neighborhood Halloween party. We spent the rest of the evening chatting with them until we all watched Prime, a new Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep romantic comedy which I think I might have been the only one present to actually like. I suppose I can’t expect everyone to have the same (perfect) taste as me.

The next day we tackled the world-famous San Diego zoo. We were there for nearly all of their operating hours that day, from ten in the morning to nearly five that afternoon. The zoo deserves its prestige. The place is enormous and has a huge number of different animals, even a few that Alina and I had never even heard of. I thought that they had a particularly great collection of reptiles and primates, two of my favorites. We were also lucky enough to catch a seal show, though as Alina pointed out, they become much less impressive once you’re old enough to pay attention to the ridiculous number of fish they have to feed those seals to get them to jump and bark. In addition to a great collection of cool animals, the San Diego zoo is special in how beautiful the grounds are. We had a really great day walking around and enjoying the lushness of the zoo. After our share of wild animals we walked around Balboa Park, which surrounds the zoo and is home to a huge number of museums. It’s a very pretty place, and most of the buildings are in that Spanish Missionary style that characterizes so much of Southern California’s architecture. Unfortunately all of the museums were closed by the time we made it there, and because we’d fallen behind schedule in LA we were leaving the next day, so we just made a note of how interesting they looked so that we can remember to go there the next time we’re in the area. By the time our walk was over it was nearing dinner time, so we drove into downtown San Diego and walked around the trendy Gas Lamp neighborhood until we found the one place there that seemed to be within our price range, a mediocre Mexican restaurant that was made great by their cheap margarita special and the fact that it was Alina’s day to drive.

We got back to Marianne and Gary’s late in the evening and spent a little time talking to them. Gary and the kids were busy carving some of the most enormous pumpkins that I have ever seen. Alina did some piano playing on Marianne’s baby grand, which she was extremely happy to do. Around bedtime we fell asleep to the third season of our favorite show, Arrested Development. The next morning we got up early to say goodbye to our generous hosts and then went to a nearby car repair shop to get an oil change before embarking upon the long journey to Phoenix. I also asked them to inspect the brakes, which they did and reported that they looked good though the front pads are getting on the low side and might need replacing after a little while. We were just happy to have the car go all the way down the Pacific Coast without a major problem. The hatchback no longer opens, which makes getting anything out of the back of the car a struggle, but that’s definitely something that we can work around. After we were done at the auto shop we pointed Speedy east for the first leg of our long trip back to the East Coast. First stop: Phoenix.

Love,

Paul