Post-Trip Bombardment

Due to popular demand, I, who have as of 5 minutes ago never written in this blog, have managed to scan all the drawings I made on the trip, and therefore will now share them. If I can figure this out…

Natural Bridge, VA

Diana, Biltmore

Lakeside Cafe, AK

Arkansas border

El Alamo, San Antonio

Mission Concepcion

Hamilton Pool

Hamilton Pool

Grand Canyon (brownie points to whoever finds El)

Grand Canyon, Overlook

Grand Canyon, Bright Angel Point

KOA kampground, CO

Balcony House, North Plaza

Balcony House, South Plaza

Landscape Arch

Double 'O' Arch

Doublt 'O' Arch, looking north

July 30 – Canyons and Flagstaff

Wednesday morning we got up, packed the car again, and went to the lodge to stare at the canyon some more. Dad and I rode the bikes (thus making them meaningful and useful and worth bringing!) to the lodge, and the road we’d traveled in the dark two nights earlier turned out to be RIGHT on the edge of the canyon, shielded by some trees (people aren’t in danger of driving off a cliff). It was quite something. We got hot chocolate and shopped in the gift store. I got me a gigantic poster for my dorm room. Then we went and sat on the “sun porch” and looked at the canyon.

(I won’t trouble you with more pictures)

(okay, maybe one more)

Then we left, to drive back to Flagstaff to spend the night. We stopped for a brief frolic in a meadow, created by an ice age glacier.

I took pictures of flowers while Sarah chased a deer.

Maybe 50 or 60 miles back towards the main route 89 south to Flagstaff, we stopped, dad and I got the bikes out again, and rode them six or seven miles downhill. It was astounding. Just picture whizzing downhill on a bike, yellow reflective vest flapping, sun shining, rounding a corner, and seeing something like this…

It was worth the sun and wind burn.

Also we stopped at a scenic overlook and bought some pretty Navajo jewelry.

We stopped once to stare at the desert and wonder at the sky and considered the sheer enormity of the country. You don’t get this kind of sky back East.

We stopped again for lunch at Lee’s Ferry on Glen Canyon. The Colorado River flowed beneath us, and we didn’t really have perspective on the size until these boats passed. Man is the measure of all things.

We got to Flagstaff in the afternoon, found a KOA Kampground (sic) and set up for the night. Dad and I went grocery shopping, and then we tried to make turkey burgers and baked potatoes. The burgers were great, but the fire wasn’t hot enough for the potatoes, so we ate salad and were content.

July 28/29/30 – The Grand Canyon

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the Grand Canyon that really does it justice. Nor will the pictures really suffice. Every time we looked at it, it was different (probably why there are so many pictures). It became understandable why people would just show up and stare at it. We stared. We camped in a sweet, quite, well-forested little camp ground on the North Rim. A short walk down the road and bam, big hole in the ground. So we’ll take a little turn from our regularly scheduled blog post (which isn’t so regular, and hardly ever scheduled, shut up) for a gigantic slideshow.

July 15 – Rusk to Rockdale (the first in the Don’t Mess With Texas series)

Yes, yes, I know I’m a bit behind– but it’s all the picture uploading and the organizing that I have to do that is such a toll on my delicate sensibilities… or something.

We left the campground at Rusk about 9 in the morning. The campground was nice—it was pretty, it was not crowded, it had a cute little picnic and play area and potential swimming area, although why one would want to swim there unsupervised among the lilypads, exactly, I’m not sure. But it was very pretty.

Almost as soon as we left Rusk we experienced the climate change. It lost its tropical rain forest humid feel and became hot and dry and flat.

We drove and drove until lunchtime, when we stopped at a grocery store to grab some snacks and tried to find a picnic area near the Brazos River outside of Hearne, Texas. At first we stopped just after crossing the river at a historical marker, but all we found there was a shot-up stone marker and some kind of neat brown lizard.

So we reconsidered and drove a little farther to a real picnic spot.

After lunch, we piled back into the camper and drove a little farther, whereupon we experienced our first setback of the day. After only a few miles, a belt had broken. Mom and dad worked to repair it, and we moved on, only to be stopped again less than five hundred yards from where we started by the radiator boiling over and spewing coolant everywhere. The Engineer’s Log of July 16 has the specifics, if you’re desperate to read them again.

At any rate, we moved the whole event to the Chevy dealer in Rockdale, TX, where we spent the night at a Regency Inn and tried to figure out what to do with the Cacafuego. We were instructed in no certain terms that we were not allowed to “make nasty” in the motel room, which we sort of imagine means we are not allowed to have loud drunken sex parties. I think. There were no loud drunken sex parties, at any rate, and instead we ate Chinese food for dinner and watched something on HBO.