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On Friday, July 9, Em picked us up and we headed over to Pacific College, but not before getting some good cuddles with Mel. Mel has loved all the attention from "company" and will miss the extra pets she has been getting during the day. At Pacific College we had a wonderful tour with Gina, admissions director. We saw the classrooms, clinic and pharmacy. 
Chris finished putting the soundboard on the upstairs opening, and Ray made friends with one of Emily's roommates, Pia. She is very well trained and will sit on command. However she just about knocked me over on the way in. Not a fan. Chris got his orders to report to a destroyer in Jacksonville, Florida. Emily is riding cross country with him and they left early Saturday morning. She'll fly back to West Hartford this weekend and then go on to Maine with us for a couple of weeks. Classes start September first. 
We picked up Carrie Nichols at the University of San Diego where she is attending a workshop on history of shipping in the United States. She flew in on Friday and had Saturday as a free day to tour the town with us. After catching up over coffee, we headed over to the Scripp's Aquarium back up in La Jolla, very close to Sara's apartment. For some reason rattlesnakes like the aquarium too. This was the first I'd heard of rattlers in the city! I say more of these and fewer reclaimed water signs are in order. 
This fish is for real. He and thousands of others live at the Scripp's Aquarium. Most of the fish were from the Pacific, from Alaska down to South America.
Really good margaritas while waiting for a table at George's, a popular restaurant in LaJolla. Here we are at our table overlooking the Pacific. Kind of felt like we were on a cruise. It was lovely and the food was great. 
The girls went shopping while Ray read the NY Times in the car. You can do that in San Diego because it's only 65 degrees and cloudy, so no chance of heat stroke. Both Sara and Carrie decided to use the restroom at the same time. One of them used the men's room...... I think this has become standard operating procedure for women because we always have to wait for a stall. And that's just plain unfair. But I wonder what would happen if a man decided to use the womens' room! Would your reaction be different if you saw a guy coming out of the womens' rest room? Tell the truth. Let's see if we can get a few comments going. Saturday was my mother's 82nd birthday. We all got together and sang happy birthday to her over the phone. Then we just relaxed at Sara's apartment.
Here's a pic of my mom on her birthday either last year or the year before.
We drove though hot desert, over 100 degrees, most of the way out of Las Vegas. When we hit the San Bernadino the temperature started dropping and by the time we reached San Diego it was about 65 degrees. Sara and Em and kitty Mel were waiting for us and we had a lovely reunion. Sara made us dinner and we hung out in her apartment.
Next day Sara went to work and we went to Em's apartment to help her set up. Car unloaded and everything in one piece.
Em's apartment in "Fashion Heights,"
Mission section of San Diego. Overlooks the upscale mall, naturally.
She has the third floor to herself. Really nice space.
Sara's current apartment right off Rt. 5. Walkable to Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Ralph's grocery and Starbucks. 
Trip to Lowes and Ikea.Chris and Ray worked on closing up the inside opening from Em's room to the living room vaulted ceiling area.
Earthquake Right Here AT IKEA!!!! 5.7
No one batted an eye. Except ME! I left the building.
Sara's new apartment is in this lovely beach town. She'll be moving in August 1. Out of the city and into the suburb.
Mel is frisky and will climb anywhere, anytime. You can find her not only in the cabinets, high or low, but on the top shelf of the closet, and on top of the stacked washer/dryer.
Her second most favorite activity is chewing apart electronics cords. She bit Sara's computer cord right in half but didn't seem to get enough of a shock to deter her from future activity of this nature. You can't leave anything plugged in to recharge without being right in the room with her.
Em's bargain chair and ottoman....found today and they actually fit up the staircase to her room!Will she be able to study while sitting in it???Tonight dinner in Del Mar. Tomorrow night Carrie arrives for her history seminar. We'll make plans for Saturday.
On Monday, July 5, after living and breathing the reverence of Zion, we drove to Las Vegas, the antithesis of any national park. It was pretty much a straight shot down route 15. We had been warned of a mountain pass by a man from Indiana who was traveling with his 83 year old mother and had just driven in from LV. We rode the Zion your bus with them, they heading later to the Grand Canyon.
That afternoon when we got the part that he had mentioned we chuckled, imagining him negotiating those hairpin turns out of the canyon, much trickier than this highway through the mountains.
We arrived in Las Vegas welcomed by the massive commercialism, crowds of people cocktails in hand roaming everywhere and traffic all to the tune of eight lane streets. 
Even Tom Tom couldn't get us to our hotel, or at least we couldn't move the car to the right spot fast enough. It was 104 degrees outside and quickly warming up inside. After about 15 minutes of effort, and me imagining just driving away without a visit, we finally maneuvered our way through the gates of the Signature at the MGM.
I immediately headed to the pool for sunbathing, but once there in the sweltering heat, decided the only way to survive was to sit on the edge of the pool. For about five minutes!
The highlight of Las Vegas was the David Copperfield Show. We had a quick drink and snack before the show at Wolfgang Puck Bar and then went into the land of illusions. The drink and the food was very good. About half the people in Puck's were alone. Eating a quick dinner and heading back into the casino, another drink in hand.
David Copperfield's tricks are pretty amazing, and his tongue is sharp. He uses people from the audience in every act and Ray kept yelling for him to pick me. I avoided eye contact at all costs and luckily he only picked pretty young things. After the show we spent a little while in the casino and Ray came out only 25 cents behind! As you can imagine, it was not a high stakes evening.
Even after the show, I was amazed at how many families were in the casinos. Strollers abounded and little ones tagged along. Honestly, I don't get it. Why aren't these people in the national parks or at the beach? Maybe the pools were the family attraction.
About the only thing the national parks and Las Vegas had in common was the sheer scale of what you were looking at. Everything was huge in Las Vegas, every building. The prices were huge too, the price of a half bottle of water was $6. You could only purchase large size coffees at the Starbucks in the lobby.You want small or medium, try another city. 
Next morning we headed out around 10, along with the millions of others leaving fantasyland and bound for California. Maybe this was what the gold rush was like. We easily found our way to the highway and began the long crawl to San Diego. Traffic was bumper to bumper most of the 300 miles and we didn't pull into San Diego until 5 pm.
On the morning of July 4, Jim, manager of the Quail Park Lodge, had coffee ready early. The donuts, and these were real old fashioned donuts, hadn't appeared yet, so we drove the block into town to see if Little Lena's coffee shop was open. Lena's has the best coffee in town and the scones weren't bad either. But we were out of luck. So we pushed on to Zion.
Zion is on a "scenic route", route 9 running east/west connecting Kanab to Route 15, the road to Las Vegas. Nothing we read prepared us for this ride through the park. We knew the road was under construction, but what we found was a drive from the top to the bottom of the canyon on hairpin turns. It was canyon walls up close and personal... I was afraid to look in the other direction, off the road into the abyss. Ray only had to drive the gravel and keep us from the edge. It was pretty much white knuckle driving.
We finally arrived at the bottom. As we entered Zion National Park our first sight on the way to the visitor center was this checkerboard mountain. It was originally a sand dune, but solidified over millions of years. Some of the original dunes were 3000 feet high.
Zion is different from Bryce and Grand Canyon because you are seeing the canyon from the bottom, not the top. We took the bus through the canyon and got a good tour. We first got off at the Zion Lodge, and found that elusive cup of great coffee! They serve Green Mountain! We sipped the brew gazing up at the rock wall and beautiful greenery at the base.
Like the other canyons, it's impossible for a camera to capture the scale of the canyon. We alighted the bus further up into the canyon and walked to the edge of the Virgin River, the waterway responsible for carving out this entire canyon. Ray is standing next to it and you might be able to tell that it's just a few feet wide. 
Zion became a national park in 1919. It was named Zion by a Morman, Zion meaning peace and refuge. It is amazingly so even today.
This is the site of the highest sandstone mountains in the world.
Zion was one of my favorite sights on the trip. Being in the canyon and looking up was moving in a very different way.
On our way back to the visitor center the bus driver told us that they had put on extra buses for the 4th of July holiday weekend, expecting big crowds, but traffic was much lighter than expected. She didn't think it was the economy keeping people away because they had had record crowds of 35000 over Memorial Day.
We left the park around noon and moved on to Las Vegas where we found THOUSANDS of people, all the ones who didn't come to the park and then some!
Kanab, Utah- July 3, 2010
This town of 3500 residents serves as host to many visitors going to the three national parks within 100 miles. People arrive late afternoon and depart in the morning, crisscrossing the area to the next great site, looking for a comfy bed and a good meal. It's hot and dusty but very friendly to travelers.
It also was one of the prime movie locations for filming westerns back in the 60s and 70s and earlier. The streets are lined with plaques to movie stars from great movies and tv shows like Death Valley Days, Roy Rodgers, Wagon Train.
After dinner at the Rocking V Cafe again, we watched fireworks from the front yard of our motel. We had missed the town picnic and road race while we went to Bryce. It was small town America at its best.
This is is the only town where we did not stay in a chain hotel. The Quail Park Lodge is a motel, completely done over to the quality of a ***. It's funky 50's look on the outside but inside is all new and had the ammenities of the boutique hotel. We chatted with Jim who manages the motel for his son who bought it 2 years ago. Jim is almost 80, a former marine who married a girl from Kanab, and came back to run the motel for his son. A great host. 
Bryce Canyon:
Bryce is amazing. Full of hoo-toos or the stone columns that you can see to the right. We drove 60 miles to the park and then another 25 inside, along the top of the canyon. Each look down was more breath taking than the last. As with the grand canyon, nature on this scale makes us feel pretty insignificant, in a good way.
Today's ride was an exercise in faith. We left the hotel at the Grand Canyon around 9 and drove through the park then got on 89 north. Rt 89 is a two lane road with everyone trying to go 80 mile an hour. That's the guy behind you and the guy coming at you across the thin yellow line. At 70 mph, we were the poky one, and cars just kept passing us... barely in time to avoid oncoming traffic.
89 skirted the canyon for some miles north and then the landscape began to look different as we climbed up and down the mesas of northern Arizona and got into some real desert areas. Later the landscape turned more to ranges where we spotted cattle and horses grazing.
We stopped at one of the many "scenic views" along the route where natives sell their jewelry and wares on makeshift tables shaded by umbrellas and in stands by the side of the road.
We planned to stop for lunch in Page, AZ, which is on Lake Powell. Page is a new city, founded in 1959, with current population of 6000. All the buildings are modern and well kept. 
At Lake Powell is a huge dam built in the early 60s , which must supply good jobs to this desert oasis, and around which the town grew up. The average household income for Page is $56,000, higher than Flagstaff and Grand Canyon. And we found a Starbucks inside the Safeway Grocery, more proof of prosperity! Good coffee has been hard to come by out west. Maybe it's too hot here to be important to many. No Newman's Own at Macky D's. Not a Dunkin Donuts in sight.
Just past Lake Powell, we crossed into Utah, and the clock went back an hour to Mountain Time from Arizona's Pacific Zone. It's hard enough to figure out what day it is, let alone the time! This is where a cellphone comes in handy, always realigning immediately. However, we cannot figure out how to change the car clock, and apparently Emily never did either. When we started the trip back in CT it was already one hour off. Yesterday we were subtracting 4 hours, and today it's minus 3!
It's naturally dry in this desert climate but a real curiosity out here is how they talk about "reclaimed water." We first saw this term in a rest room in Flagstaff where we were warned not to drink the water. This "reclaimed water" was in a toilet and I can't imagine why they needed a sign like this. Next this warning appeared on our Grand Canyon hotel bathroom seat cover, but instead of "do not drink," we should not "come in contact" with the water in the toilet nor on the lawn out front. Made me hope I wasn't splashed by accident! Then there's the half flush and the full flush. Some give you the choice. If you hold down the half flush button for a long time, does it equal a full flush? I guess there are some advantages to living in the land of spring showers.
We arrived in dusty Kanab, where many western movies and TV shows were shot over the years. We had THE BEST dinner at a place called Rocking V Cafe. TripAdvisor has yet to let us down. Tomorrow we head for Bryce Canyon,80 miles north. We'll return to Kanab tomorrow night and then head out to Las Vegas by way of Zion National Park on Sunday. Ray got us tickets to a David Copperfield show, so that's how we'll be celebrating the 4th of July.
Grand Canyon- July 2,2010
Double click to enlarge the pics.
We started out from the hotel and entered the park. There we drove to the east end of the canyon, Desert View, where there would be less traffic.
Check out the Colorado River. View from
east side of canyon.
Despite the coming holiday weekend, there really wasn't much traffic. We purchased a "senior" National Park pass, good for life! and only $10. Ray felt he had to swear to the attendant that I was indeed over 55. 
We saw glorious sights all the way along. Many families with kids getting too near the edge for my liking. Many Germans, Italians, Asians and French tourists. No other country holds a canyon this grand. 
It was hard to stop staring. Every which way we looked was another breath taking site: The magnitude, the colors, the play of light, the history of the earth laid bare before us. It makes one feel very humble. 
Natives lived in the canyons a thousand years ago. Today people hike down and back. 
Tusayan Pueblo Ruin- The natives established small villages near the canyon rim at the east side about 800 years ago. From 10,000 years ago, they were hunters-gatherers, but these villages show that they were moving toward agriculture: beans, squash,corn with hunting as supplement. There are 4000 sites like this discovered so far.The stone circle is the outline of one home. 
Around 2pm we headed back to the hotel and took a break from the hot morning.
Around 5 we drove back to the Canyon, this time to the south rim. We went to dinner at the Bright Angel Inn which is on the rim. After dinner we walked the rim trails waiting for sunset around 7:45. The canyon changes in every light and with every cloud.
A few sprinkles on us yielded a beautiful rainbow above the canyon!
Chris finished putting the soundboard on the upstairs opening, and Ray made friends with one of Emily's roommates, Pia. She is very well trained and will sit on command. However she just about knocked me over on the way in. Not a fan. 
We picked up Carrie Nichols at the University of San Diego where she is attending a workshop on history of shipping in the United States. She flew in on Friday and had Saturday as a free day to tour the town with us. After catching up over coffee, we headed over to the Scripp's Aquarium back up in La Jolla, very close to Sara's apartment. 
The girls went shopping while Ray read the NY Times in the car. You can do that in San Diego because it's only 65 degrees and cloudy, so no chance of heat stroke. Both Sara and Carrie decided to use the restroom at the same time. One of them used the men's room...... I think this has become standard operating procedure for women because we always have to wait for a stall. And that's just plain unfair. But I wonder what would happen if a man decided to use the womens' room! Would your reaction be different if you saw a guy coming out of the womens' rest room? Tell the truth. Let's see if we can get a few comments going. 
Here's a pic of my mom on her birthday either last year or the year before.
