tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70804016998375677142024-03-05T12:42:47.856-08:00Millennium MomJoanna Zucker, author of Millennium Mom; tips to help you go from a working women to a working mom, blogs about her family, work, life and managing it all.Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.comBlogger233125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-44748087459739380262013-07-15T09:43:00.002-07:002013-07-15T09:43:26.795-07:00Our "priceless" trip of a lifetime<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
8,500 miles<br />
14 national parks<br />
4 national monuments<br />
7 old friends visited<br />
17 states passed through<br />
32 nights in the RV<br />
10 nights with friends<br />
5 trips to DQ<br />
1 swim in the Pacific<br />
5 swims in lakes and rivers<br />
32 loads of laundry<br />
42 days spent with your kids, parents, and husband visiting the most beautiful places in America...<br />
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PRICELESS</div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-64055188928656634632013-07-15T09:33:00.001-07:002013-07-15T09:33:53.833-07:00Badlands National Park - our last stop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We can't believe it has come to this, but today we will visit our last national park - #14 if you lost count, Badlands in Western S. Dakota. We stayed at another KOA last night, this time outside of Hot Springs. We didn't go to the hot springs, given we did that in Washington state, but we did pass through downtown which is famous for its sandstone buildings (I hope I got that right). It was quite pretty, here is City Hall.<br />
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Next we did a sight detour (if you count getting off the highway a detour) to Wall Drug. If you have driven through S. Dakota I am guessing you stopped there, the highway signs are just so alluring - like S. of the Border on Rt 95 down the east coast (though my parents never let us stop there). We decided to give it a go. It was a bit of a disappointment, quite touristy, but oh well, we can say we did it. The donuts were pretty good at least, and the picture of Sarah is priceless.<br />
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Next stop was Badlands. Badlands got it's name because of how "bad" the folks who first saw it said the land was. It felt like they picked up S. Utah or Arizona and plucked it down in S. Dakota. It looks like a dessert and was hot like a dessert. But of course this was very strange, as it is surrounded by miles and miles of prairies, and then you have these mountains in the dessert. We entered from the NW, so there was a great drive that was "above" the mountains per se, made it look more like the grand canyon, without the canyon, just sunk down. We saw lots of bighorn sheep females and their young on the mountain tops, it was pretty cool. We also saw a mom from Florida fall down the mountain..not fun. She just couldn't stop, and she scraped herself up pretty good. We tried our best to help clean her up using water, and our first aid stuff from the motor home, but she was pretty hurt. We ran into her later at the visitor center where she had visited the medic on staff.<br />
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The park has a northern rim drive and southern drive. The south part is co-run with the local Indian reservation. We did the entire north drive, stopping at various look out points. At each one there we signs saying beware of rattle snakes...not fun, as I am very afraid of snakes, but thankfully we didn't see any...remember it was like a dessert. Here are some different views from around the park.<br />
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These next pictures I took to give you a sense of what the surrounding area looked like. The one with the RV in it is looking back from a boardwalk that you hike on, so you can see it is prairies across the street. The other is as we were driving East through the park, in between the mountains you had this flat grassland area, so strange. The rangers at the visitor center said they believe it looked like the African Savannah at some point in time, and that is why they have so many fossil remains from animals there, because suddenly something changed it all.<br />
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It was too bad that it was so hot, as there were places you could climb around. In some ways this was good, as the kids could have gotten hurt, as they love to climb, but it was unbearable to be outside for too long. We would even turn the generator on and run the AC for Henry that is how hot it was. They did climb in this one shot, at least Ben and Claire and a nice boy took our pic for us at the Fossil walkway. They had tons of fossils in cases that were found around here. Here is a pic of one of them.<br />
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Our last stop was the visitor center and then the "sign" to take our pic like we always do. We didn't catch it on the way in, so had to stop on the way out of course. The visitor center had a great video explaining the park and how odd it is really. They also have a live fossil lab where they work to get the ground/sand off of fossils and show you, it was pretty cool. Ben is standing next to an image from one of our hikes that shows all the animals that used to live there and fossils have been found. While they don't actively dig the park, like all parks, if a visitor finds a fossil they will dig around it. One time a couple found a fossil under a picnic table, and the "great pig dig" ended up lasting for over a decade, that is how many fossils they found.<br />
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So we were done, it was about 4pm and we were SAD! I made a few phone calls as we just felt so sad to be driving home and not to another great adventure. <br />
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I drove until dinner, where we stopped at Al's another famous S. Dakota landmark. Then Arnie took over and we drove until midnight where we stopped in Sioux City, Iowa at the local WalMart, our first time staying at one (for those non RVers, WalMart and Sam's welcome RVs and tractor trailers in their parking lots overnight). The next day we cruised through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and made it home around 10:45 pm EST. Believe it or not, this entire trip, over 8,500 miles, we did not hit ANY TRAFFIC due to construction until the West side of Cincinnati, at 10pm at night...go figure.<br />
<br />But we were home safe and sound in one piece. <br />
Tomorrow we will spend all day cleaning the RV, doing laundry, and re-packing getting ready for phase 2 of our summer adventure.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-48872867055658186792013-07-13T15:03:00.000-07:002013-07-13T15:03:17.297-07:00Mt Rushmore, Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thursday July 11th - Day 39<br />
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After nice hot showers in the morning (it is quite funny how different they all are, from drizzling to this one which felt like the water was being shot out of a canyon), a stop at the post office (yes, I am a post card sender) and gas of course (7.5 miles to the gallon, we do that a lot) we headed East again.<br />
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The first part of the drive was beautiful over a mountain range at one point . Just as we were about to descend down the mountain, we saw a hand glider setting up his gear at a look-out point. We decided this was as good of a point as any to have lunch, so I began to prepare lunch as Arnie walked Henry and struck up a conversation with the gentleman. A large crowd ended up gathering to watch him take off in the end, and Arnie ended up driving his van down the mountain for him. We left it where he told us, but we couldn't find him anywhere (in the air or on the ground).<br />
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The rest of Wyoming was not so picturesque. It looked much more like Utah than Colorado, dry and dessert like, and lots of shades of brown/tan. We were excited to get to S. Dakota and the Black Hills it was a great change of scenery. We had not really planned out our last week until mid-way through the trip, and even with that it was "where" we wanted to be each night, but not the specific RV park. We booked Cody 2 days before and still had nowhere for tonight. During our last elk viewing we got talking to a nice family from Boston. It ended up she used to live in Cincinnati, in Anderson where we live, what a small world. They said "they wished they had stayed at the KOA near Rushmore", so we thought, heck lets try there. We had not stayed at KOA at all so far, they are the most expensive because they have the most amenities, but we mostly are staying at places to sleep and take a shower, not to "vacation." But this place you could have spent a week at - the had a water slide, 2 pools, jumping houses, climbing wall, jump mat, water park where it sprays on you, a "mining" area for kids, candy hunts at night, a pub, ice cream shop, horse stables for rides, you could rent golf carts and more. There were over 500 RV sites, plus hundreds of cabins, it was a small village and the kids were in heaven. The problem was we pulled in around 7:30. We still got in some put-put, giant checkers, candy hunt, bouncing around and basketball. Here are some pics.<br />
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The best part is that it was only 6 miles from Mt. Rushmore. We got there at 9am and were very excited. You could see it from the road, which surprised me, not sure why. It also surprised us that you had to pay for parking, and there was no park admission, but yet our National Parks pass didn't work, it was annoying for sure. Not sure why the gov't would give up money TWICE - for parking (it was privately owned) and for entry...god knows they need it and 3MM people a year go there. The monument was breath-taking, truly amazing. I can not imagine how the person imagined it, or how they did it, even after watching the video. And this was done 80 + years ago. The history lesson was great for all of us, I am sure I am going to get this wrong, but the four Presidents were picked because they represent Liberty (Washington), Freedom (Lincoln), Growth (Jefferson) and Prosperity (Roosevelt).<br />
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After the video we did the loop walk down to get a closer look. While on the path they also had more detail on each President. I had no idea that Jefferson lost so many children at a young age, it was quite sad really, and his wife died with the last childbirth (only two children lived past toddler age, and one past 25 - his first daughter). Also am curious how Lincoln became a lawyer when he had no formal education, I wish they had routes like that today, would save a ton of money for sure. I loved getting a more up close perspective from below of the carvings, made me even more in awe.<br />
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After a great few hours it was time to head out, this time South down to Custer State Park. We were a bit bummed as we could not do the Needles highway through the park. This was recommended by everyone who came into Yellowstone from S. Dakota. But, there are plenty of tunnels and the RV was too big, and because we didn't pull a car, we didn't have any options. Oh well. We also decided to skip Crazy Horse. The head is finished and you can see it from the road, and we really wanted to see more wildlife in Custer and get down to Wind Cave national park (that we didn't even know existed prior to this trip).<br />
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Custer is a beautiful park in the Black Hills. Besides Yellowstone, they are the only park with a Bison population. They were re-introduced here in the early 20th century with help from Yellowstone and the Bronx Zoo and they flourished, so there are a ton of them. We pulled off at a nice lake to have lunch. It was really hot here, upper 90's which we had not been in since the dessert, so the kids were having a hard time. They had a great time playing in the little beach there, and just hanging out building a volcano in the sand. <br />
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The bison here were slightly different here, in the fact that they were smaller in size than Yellowstone, and the herds stay close together and close to the road. Check out these pictures, it was unreal how many and how close they were. The signs were the same as in Yellowstone, saying how dangerous they are, but yet people still walked around close to them.<br />
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There was other wildlife in the park as well - we saw tons of prairie dogs, a wild donkey (I forget the right name and Arnie is on the phone right now), and pronghorns. The prairies were quite beautiful, and certainly reminded me of watching Little House on the Prairie for sure.<br />
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From Custer we headed down to Wind Cave national park. When we left Cincy we had no plans to go to Wind City, because we didn't know it existed. I bought a National Geographic book on the national parks back in CA at one of the bookstores, and we saw it in there, as well as on the map of the Black Hills that our friend Allan gave us. Also, Ranger Patrick from Yellowstone does winters at Mt Rushmore and he said it was awesome, so off we went. We pulled into the parking lot at 4;15 and had no idea if we could do anything. The kids were sleeping so Arnie ran in and got us tickets for the 5:30 tour. We went in and watched the video at 5pm and then headed off with Ranger Mary Beth for our tour.<br />
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Wind Cave is the 7th oldest national park - who knew? It was discovered by two brothers in the late 1800's who were gold prospectors. But the real person who made the country aware of it and led to it becoming a national park was Alvin McDonald - he had discovered 9 miles of cave in his time exploring. Today there are 130 miles known to the parks service, but they think this may only be about 5% of the total cave based on some wind studies they do. It is called Wind Cave because of the strong wind that comes out of the hole above. This is how it was found, the brothers heard a noise coming out of the mountain and found this hole, and it is windy. Strongest wind clocked was 70 miles an hour coming out of it.<br />
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There are three "levels" to the cave, top, middle and bottom. So you can be walking above or below someone. The tour we did was the middle level and it ended with us 220 feet below ground. There is an elevator that brings you back up. It is about 55 degrees underground. The cave is so unique, like nothing I have ever seen. It is very dry, so no stalactites or stalagmites. Instead they have what they call boxwood formations which were so cool. I am sure my pictures don't do it justice, so for sure google it to get some great looks.<br />
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all in all it was a great visit and we wish we had more time to explore but that was the last tour and we are off to Badlands tomorrow, our last park :(<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-11108875666067690052013-07-13T13:59:00.001-07:002013-07-13T13:59:29.491-07:00Yellowstone Day 4 and Cody, Wyoming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tuesday July 9th<br />
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I realized today I should have date stamped these entries to make it easier to follow and to help our memories as we look back on our trip, better late than never.<br />
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We slept well last night, boys with us, so one less child, made going to bed easier for sure, we didn't have to make up any beds (Ben sleeps above the driver, so it always remains a bed, and it is huge so Austin slept with him). The nights are quite cool here so it is great sleeping conditions. We are nice and put the heat on in the morning, usually Arnie turns it on when he goes for his morning run with Henry, this warms it up for all of us making getting out of bed a bit easier.<br />
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We have about half a day left in Yellowstone before we head to Cody, Wyoming this evening...more to come on that. Our plan was to take a 10:30 ranger led tour of the West Thumb geysers, but that didn't quite work out. Kelley read about a short 1 mile hike to a natural bridge down by the lake, so we detoured to do that. It was well worth it, but definitely longer than one mile. In the ranger station it said 2.5 miles, and we don't know if that was one way or round trip. The hike takes you to the view from below the natural bridge, then a steep switch back takes you to the top. The group let Sarah and I hike up and report back to them before they all headed up.<br />
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So we got some snacks in the store by the marina, and found a cool shirt (that each family bought one of) and then headed South to the West Thumb area. But of course, animal sighting...we saw more Elk, and these guys were great...so it was worthwhile to stop and see them. There were 3 total, one was laying amidst dead trees which was a cool shot. You might say to yourself - "haven't they already seen elk" and the answer is yes, but these things aer so majestic and huge, you just want to stare at them all day long. I can't begin to describe how HUGE their racks are. I can only imagine what the moose look like (I have seen a moose in the wild once, in Main back in 1994, and I was scared to death).<br />
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We finally made it to West Thumb at 11:30, only an hour late. We did our own tour around the boardwalk that surrounds the geysers. What is unique about these geysers are - 1) they are clear, you can see through them; 2) they are really deep and visible to the eye; 3) some of them are in the lake!!! It was a great little stroll and so beautiful as it was on the lake. I was jealous of the kayakers you see in one photo, I wish we had done this but with the five of us we can't, Ben isn't quite old enough to go on his own, and three person kayaks don't exist. Soon we will be able to do a family vacation with kayaking. <br />
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After a picnic lunch in West Thumb we headed back to Fishing Bridge to pick up our RV and take Henry for a walk before heading out the East entrance of the park to Cody, Wyoming. When we planned this trip, everyone said "you have to go to a rodeo in Cody." It was by far the most frequent thing we heard. Wyoming is the Rodeo capital of the world, and in Cody there is a rodeo every night of the week all summer long. We bough the Cody Trifecta ticket which got us a Western dinner, Western music show and the rodeo. We arrived in Cody around 4pm and walked around town a bit before heading to dinner at 6pm. The show was done by a family, plus one other gentleman. They also bussed the tables, brought drinks, showed you to your seats and more, hard working people. They spend their summers in Cody, but are from Spokane, Washington. The music was great, amazing fiddling and mandolin playing.<br />
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After way too much corn bread for me (a weakness for sure) we were off to the Rodeo. We were all VERY excited for this, all of our first time. Boy did we have a blast. The kids (my girls in particular) didn't like the calf roping, they felt it was very unfair to the calves. And when we explained what made the horses and bulls buck like the do, they also felt that was cruel. I thought the boys eyes would pop out of their head when we explained it to them, was priceless look on their faces for sure. They had all the events - calf roping, bull riding, bronco riding, pairs roping, barrel racing and the clowns of course. A highlight was a 12 years old girl who won the girls barrel racing event (12 and under) and then also won the women's event...she was so bloody fast. But the real excitement came three bulls into the event, they could NOT get the bull to go back into the corral after he bucked the guy off of him. And after about 10 minutes, he jumped the fence!!! Really did. The announcer told everyone to stay calm. He was in a staging area per se where the riders come out of when they do calf roping and barrel racing. But then he jumped that fence and went into the parking lot. You could tell the announcer was getting a bit anxious now. They sent every cowboy from the roping events out there and it took about 10-12 of them to rope him every way but possible and "tow" him into the corral they wanted him in. I don't have any pics of it because I was a nervous wreck. The funniest thing is when we checked into the RV park later that evening, they guy asked us how we liked the rodeo (he knew were were going because we told him we would be there when it ended) and Arnie told him about the bull. He is a season ticket holder and went that night, but had to leave early because his brother had a commitment, he was so jealous, he said that NEVER happens and he was bummed he missed it.<br />
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After a great night we said goodbye to the Coldiron's. They would drive back the 2 hours back to Yellowstone and we stayed in Cody for the night. The RV park had by far the biggest and nicest RV's of our entire trip, it was unreal. They also had tons of washers & dryers so we decided to do 4 loads of laundry, our last for the trip here...32 in total for the 6 weeks, not so bad, and the best part is we got to do half of them at friends houses :)<br />
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Tomorrow we have a long drive through Wyoming over to the Black Hills, next stop Mt. Rushmore.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-33344921300532113142013-07-13T13:16:00.000-07:002013-07-13T13:16:12.557-07:00Yellowstone Day 3 - Yellowstone Lake, The Falls and Mud Pots (July 8)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today is our first full day with the Coldiron's - Travis, Kelley, Austin and Kennedy. Austin is in the 5th grade with Ben and Kennedy in 4th with Claire, we have known them since our kids started at Summit Elementary 6 years ago and they live right around the corner in Anderson. When we told them about our trip back in February, they talked about maybe doing an RV trip out to Yellowstone this summer, and they ended up doing it. They rented a large pull trailer and are doing 2 weeks to Yellowstone, Teton's, Black Hills and Badlands. We were able to overlap for 2 days in Yellowstone which will be fun.<br />
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The first activity for the day (after a sleepover last night of course - boys in their RV, girls in ours) is a Ranger led hike to Storm Point on Yellowstone lake. On this hike we would learn about the wildflowers, forest and animals of Yellowstone. Our ranger was Shawn, he was young and funny, he reminded us of Jim Carrey a bit and he was passionate. He had a book for everything and answered any question asked of him. If you wanted to know if the native Indians used the animal for something, he would look it up. If you wanted to know what wildflower you were looking at - he had a book for that. His poor backpack was filled with lots of books for sure. And he was patient, as our five kids were up front the entire tour and he answered all their questions. Here is a pic of the kids prior to taking off, and the exciting buffaloes we saw before we even left who delayed our start quite a bit, as they were being aggressive with one another.<br />
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We saw some beautiful flowers on the tour, and thanks to the presence of a nice older gentleman from NY, whose hobby was botany, we found out what each one was...because he asked. Our tour was supposed to be 2 hours, but we went almost 2.5 hours...lots of questions ,but it was beautiful out and well worth it. Here are some pics of the flowers.<br />
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We hiked up to the point and had a wonderful view of the lake. What it also was, is the home of a colony of yellow bellied marmots. There was poop everywhere, or scat as they call it. Here are come great pics of us and the Coldiron's at the overlook.<br />
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Yellowstone lake itself is HUGE. I think about 28 x 16 miles, quite large and lots of little fingers/thumbs that extend out of it. On a good day you can see down to the Grand Tetons which are about 65 miles south of the lake. You can rent a boat to go out on the lake or take a scenic tour. You can also kayak on it. We heard about a big issue they are having with the lake. I am going to get it wrong ,but essentially they introduced some sort of new trout about 15 years ago, and unfortunately have found out that it kills off the native trout in the lake, as well as forces it to deeper areas of the lake. This means the eagles and osprey that used to feed on it, no longer can get food...so they have all but nearly left Yellowstone. This doesn't make the rangers happy, so they are now getting rid of the new trout. They have hired a contractor to get rid of them, so far they have pulled out and killed 136,000 of them. They pull them out in a net, pop their 'air bubble" to kill them, and throw them back in, so other animals in the lake (crustaceans) can feed on them (or you can bring it home to cook it). They think this is only about 10% of the total fish in the lake...it will take a while...but if you like to fish you can go out and volunteer to help them accomplish this task. Here are some pics of the beautiful lake.<br />
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At the end of the walk we went through a forest, with lots of dead trees left from the big fire in 1988. This fire was a big debate, as 36% of the park burned during it. It was constantly on the national news and many people wondered why they let it burn. The forest service has learned over time that fires are actually very good for the land and natural, and it is better to let them burn. Dead forest feed different animals than live forests, so it keeps the eco-system in balance. You can still see the remnants of the fire today, but nothing like it was in 1999 when we were there, now you have millions of 8-15 foot lodge pole pines everywhere, with larger dead trunks sticking out of them.<br />
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Next we headed back to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to show the Coldiron's the falls. This time we would do the North Rim where you can get right next to the top of the lower falls. The lower falls are twice as high as Niagara (I don't believe it but that is what they say) and quite powerful. It was really cool to be that close and see how much water goes over that thing. What was even neater was there was still snow on the canyon just next to it, while it is high 70's out and a rainbow is shining across it, surreal. This view also gave us a spectacular look at the canyon, it was worth the very steep hike back up (that seemed like nothing after crater lake).<br />
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Our last stop for the day was the Mud Pot areas. We were a bit disappointed by this area, we thought it would be more "mud like" - like the little one we found on our bike ride. We learned a ton from Ranger Patrick, who was great, but the smell was awful and it was quite hot, so the girls went back to the car early feeling a bit queasy. Here are some pics, the best part was the great names they gave them like Dragon's mouth and others.<br />
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Back to the RV park we headed, all tired but happy with our great day. Brats, hot dogs, salad, soup and mac n cheese for dinner. The kids met tons of other kids in the RV park and had a massive game of capture the flag before we all played left/right/center in the RV (thanks Marcia Hunt and family for introducing this to us). Tomorrow is our last day in Yellowstone, should be a good one.
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-16321078684577268542013-07-12T09:08:00.000-07:002013-07-12T09:08:09.749-07:00Yellowstone Day 2 - The Geysers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When most people think of Yellowstone they think of one thing - Old Faithful. When the last explosion happened, it created a lot of interesting "piping" under the ground that created hot springs, geysers and mud pots. Depending on what the soil is underneath and if there is "an obstruction" it determines if it is a geyser or hot spring (you need an obstruction that creates pressure for a geyser), or if it is a mud pot or hot spring (the type of soil and how much silica, etc).</div>
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We decided to start our tour at nearly the south end of the Geyser area at Old Faithful (West Thumb is true south end but we would do that on Day 4). There was an 8:30 tour with a ranger so we headed for that. Given it was a 30 minute drive, we started to drive while the kids were still waking up a bit. I had 2 of them dressed but we were still in our morning routine, which meant I had to make breakfast on the way. The menu was frozen waffles, toast or bagels, so nothing could spill (like milk in cereal) while the RV was moving. I had the toaster out and was doing well...until...Arnie screams "BISON" at the top of his lungs and slams on the breaks. The toaster went flying (thankfully I had just started so no plates around...but they are plastic of course), I went flying and the kids loved every minute of it. Here is a pic of our nice friend that nearly ended our life by being in the middle of the road before 8am when my husband is still waking up.</div>
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We made it just in time to the walk. The boardwalk was very full, as Old Faithful was due to go off around 9am and it is 8:35 at this point. O.F. as we will call it goes off every 88 minutes give or take 10 minutes is what they say. No other geyser in the entire park is that reliable, hence the name. Others are bigger, louder, higher, etc but you don't know exactly when they will blow. About 15 of them throughout the park have signs in front of them that says "we think this will go off between x and y" and that interval is usually at least one hour if not more. Our ranger this time was Brenda, and it was her first time giving the tour. <br />
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She was very good. We learned that the 300K gallons of water that comes out of OF has to fit through the equivalent of a 4 inch pipe...now that is pressure. That the bee hive is the tallest geyser in the park. That lion, lioness and family are called so because they roar when they burst. We learned more about the silica (found in glass) is what gives the white color around it and hardens forming the rings and what looked like stairs at Mammoth. The colors around it are from the bacteria that can grow and which ones grow depends on the heat of the hot spring or geyser. The hotter they are, less colors.</div>
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We got around the boardwalk into good viewing area to see O.F. The kids thought it was great. Here is a pic of her at her highest while blowing.<br />
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But the best part was when we were watching it Brenda turned towards Bee Hive which was about 5 yards away and said "oh, the indicator is going, that means it might blow." And sure enough it did, so we got to see OF and Bee Hive, which is taller than OF (and I think she said the tallest) blow at the same time, which like never happens. And we were so close we got the mist of it, it was beautiful, even saw a rainbow. I guess it was first timers luck for Brenda. Here are Bee Hive pics.<br />
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We walked the entire boardwalk at this basin and took some pics of other ones, I can't remember all the names but here are some good pics.<br />
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We did a quick stop at the Old Faithful Inn, the oldest inn in the park. Most of the villages have some sort of non-camping accommodations. Usually a lodge in the main villages of each park, but also cabins, and other places as well. I think there were 3-4 in OF area alone. The lodge was quite pretty but old for sure, really dark wood, and fun to walk up the very crooked stairs, you had to lean heavily to not loose your balance. Here are some pics from the lobby area.</div>
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Next we went to Middle Geyser basin to see the Grand Prismatic spring, which is often in pictures of Yellowstone because it looks like a rainbow. This area was HOT and the steam was hotter. You got chills the minute the wind changed directions (even though it was 78 degrees out) because no longer was a pool over 200 degrees blowing on you. The kids loved being in the steam. The Prismatic basin was beautiful, you don't get the full effect from the ground ,but it is still really cool. Check out the pics.</div>
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We stopped by a lake to have lunch and the kids swam a bit. Then we decided to take a bike ride up to Goose Lake so we got all the bikes ready and headed off. Along the road there were some small hot springs and mud pots that we discovered. As we walked up to the Mud Pots it burped a bit and got some on Claire's foot, and it was HOT...she jumped around a bit but was ok after a little while. It sure was cool seeing one up close though. <br />
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The lake was very pretty, and had these beautiful little blue insects all over the grass. I hope you can see them in the picture. Of course lots of birds too. It was a nice place to rest and head back. We didn't see the grizzly and cubs the entrance sign warned us about but we did see a coyote (but he was too quick for me to get a picture) and these cool looking birds, almost like a crane of some sort.<br />
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Off we headed to Norris geyser basin, our last stop. On the way up we had another "animal traffic jam" where we were dead stopped for 25 minutes. It ended up being for three bison. Not sure why we were stopped that long, I hope they just sat in the road, because THEY ARE EVERYWHERE and you don't have to stop for them! The leader of the pack of 3 is pictured above, a nice big male. On we went, now behind schedule as we wanted to be at the campground by 6:30 which is when we expected the Coldiron's. We got another few miles and another stop, but this time worth it - three bull elk grazing just across the same river we swam in. These guys were beautiful to watch. Our viewing was ruined a bit by a crazy man who crossed the river and got too close, very selfish of him, and the entire audience tried to tell him, but I don't think he spoke English. He was within 5 yards of them, totally disturbing them.<br />
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So, we got Elk but skipped Norris basin as it was late. We pulled into the campground just before 7pm. Given the poor cell service, we had not heard from the Coldiron's and vice versa despite sending texts. But it all worked out. As I sat in the RV waiting for Arnie to come out of the office, I see Travis walking up to the building, they pulled in about 15 minutes after us. The kids were so excited, and we looked forward to catching up over a Pasta dinner. Until tomorrow.</div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-20040428382571325942013-07-11T21:33:00.000-07:002013-07-11T21:33:07.813-07:00Yellowstone National Park Day 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We are now officially 33 days into our journey and have finally made it to the first ever National Park in America- Yellowstone. Arnie and I have been to Yellowstone once before, the summer of 1999. Many of you have heard me refer to this trip as the "prove yourself worthy trip" as Arnie made me backcountry camp with him in Glacier and Yellowstone. I always joke that before he would propose, he needed proof I could hang with him. It was a great trip, so I was anxious to show the kids. Like our last visit we would be entering from the North entrance, the only entrance open year round, in the town of Gardiner, MT where we stayed the night before.<br />
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We got up early as we were going to do the 9am Ranger led hike/tour of Mammoth hot springs. On the way in we passed a female elk eating in the median right at Mammoth village, so we knew we would have a great few days here. Our ranger tour, with Ranger David, was awesome. I don't know why we didn't do more of these in other parks (besides Mesa Verde and Crater Lake where you have to), you learn so much more than doing it on your own, and frankly they don't take any longer. It was a 90 minute tour and we saw the entire area. The amazing thing is it is TOTALLY different in 14 years, the boardwalk, how big it is, new hot springs and more. </div>
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As we went back to the car, I told Arnie that I really felt we should do the North area today, as I was afraid we would not make it back. We have 3.5 days in Yellowstone. The first two by ourselves and the last 1.5 with our friends the Coldiron's. We have a reservation at Madison campground tonight, which is center of park on West side, and then Fishing Bridge for next two nights which is center of park on East side. My gut just told me to stay up North vs. driving down towards the geysers on West side. We had done that drive the last time, lots of fly fishers in the river is what I remember. Thankfully I convinced him, as the next half-day was AMAZING!!!<br />
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We didn't get 15 minutes into our drive and someone rolled down their window to tell us there was a bear about a mile up the road, they were turning around to go see it. If you have never been to Yellowstone, let me explain how animal sighting works. RARE is it that you just happen to see a wild animal in the forest or meadow that no one else has. Instead, you are driving and all the sudden cars are parked everywhere, and people are running/fast walking with cameras, and those are your clues that an animal is around. In this case the crazy people were stopped EVERYWHERE, including in the middle of the road, no joke! It kills me. The park clearly lays out some guidance to follow on animals - like how much distance to keep and so forth, but no one follows it. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfRiTgz5GzjJwk6CQzC-P3g8-iBCdV1EFqTjcv7wzAmjE8bXZOWeNCezis_hwkkBgUm4HVUADVQ9nIj9w9Pq5q_lPT_OjzdfFQ75ZOuFB9fSeKOg2W0-6bkyKydYz2xOjd59LyLJCKEPM/s1600/IMG_8054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" nya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfRiTgz5GzjJwk6CQzC-P3g8-iBCdV1EFqTjcv7wzAmjE8bXZOWeNCezis_hwkkBgUm4HVUADVQ9nIj9w9Pq5q_lPT_OjzdfFQ75ZOuFB9fSeKOg2W0-6bkyKydYz2xOjd59LyLJCKEPM/s320/IMG_8054.JPG" width="320" /></a>This bear was down the hill from the road, in what appeared to be perhaps a creek bed for snow run-off or heavy rain, so there was lots of grass to graze on. I saw him from the RV, so let Arnie and the kids get closer, as the traffic was nuts and I had to maneuver around it. Here are some picks of Bear #1 sighting - a black bear.</div>
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We kept driving down the road, and not 3-4 miles further down we see a ton of people at a turn-around that sits above a valley. There again is another bear. What amazing luck for us. The even better part was someone was pulling out of a spot that I could maneuver the RV into. We sat and watched bear #2 for a good 45 minutes. He was quite adventuresome, going from meadow, to the logs and would walk on them. Then he went towards the road and crazy people got WAY TOO CLOSE (that was before the ranger showed up and yelled at them). The bear actually got very hostile and we thought it was because of the people, but it ends up he found an animal in the trees and attacked it, killed it and proceeded to sit down and have lunch. We got some really up close views through a nice gentleman's telescope he had set up. This bear was very different from the first, his coat was quite matted, and had brown and black fur, quite unusual looking.</div>
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So we are feeling good and decide to head up to Lamar valley to try to see some more animals. We didn't expect to see wolves, as they are nocturnal, but were hoping for others. As we pull up to the intersection at Roosevelt Tower we see our first bison, a few female and a new calf. It ends up they are walking towards the road we are turning onto. Just as we turn and get alongside them (they are opposite side of the road) they start to run alongside us, it was unreal. I hope you can get a sense from the pic below they are trotting. We we so scared, as we were coming up to a bridge and there was an older couple walking on it, with no where to go. I rolled down my window and screamed to them and they tried to get out of the way, but thankfully the bison crossed the street about 10 feet before them. The kids could not believe how close they get.</div>
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We then went up to the Lamar valley and pulled over to have lunch. We saw a ton of female bison and their young up in the valley from afar - probably about 500 of them. We also saw three antelope running, deer of course and come cool birds. Now it was about 2pm and we wanted to head down towards Canyon village to catch a 3:30 ranger hike along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The kids all took naps the ride down which took about an hour and we were excited for Ranger Michael's talk. He was really great, explained the different trees in Yellowstone, where animals like to hang out, how Yellowstone was formed (three different explosions, the last 640K years ago, and the soot/ash covered 1/3 of the US, and left it dark for 10 years, let's hope the next one is really far away. On the hike we saw a tree with bear claw marks in it, pretty high up, and they were deep. The pic is below with Ben playing the bear. We got some good views of the canyon and also took another one of Arnie and I at Artist's Point so we can compare it to the one we took 14 years ago and see how old we look.</div>
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We were all tired from a great first day and headed for Canyon visitor center to get our passports stamped. While inside it started to rain, which we expected as the clouds rolled in. But then it started to downpour, and within about 10 minutes it was hailing. It was very funny to see all the Chinese tourist running outside with the hands cupped to catch it and then eat it, I guess they never saw hail before. After waiting it out we escaped to the RV and headed to the campground. Well it poured the entire night, so we ate inside and played some cards. We were so grateful to have the RV and not be some of the poor souls in tents. </div>
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Tomorrow we head for the geysers, starting off with a Ranger geyser walk at Old Faithful at 8:30. </div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-81692563304614365192013-07-10T10:17:00.001-07:002013-07-10T10:17:14.985-07:00Couer D'Alene Page 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;">I have been having tons of problems this morning with the blog, not sure what is going on, so I apologize if things look formatted oddly.</span></div>
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Let's get back to Couer D'Alene. I had wanted to add to the last page that Ben also enjoyed some tubing on his own. The plus of that was he could face forward and we could see his smiling face while he was tubing - priceless. Dan and Wendy have one grandchild who is 4 and not quite tubing yet, so they just loved seeing the smiles and hearing the joyful screams of our kids.</div>
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The other adventure of Day 1 was for some odd reason I decided to try water skiing for the first time. I guess being away from corporate America for 5 weeks makes all your rationale thinking go away :)</div>
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I am a so-so downhill skier, so I really didn't know how I would do. Dan gave me the basic instructions and everyone kept saying, just don't go up to quick, gradually do it. I actually got the hard part quite easily, or so they tell me. I sat back and got myself out of the water smoothly, the issue was I could not stand up, just couldn't pull myself out of the water completely. We realized afterwards that we forgot to put gloves on me, so maybe that didn't help, who knows. I did "get out of the water" as you can see from the picture below - which to me means I did it, just didn't get that sense of being pulled by a very quick boat over water. But knowing my lack of adrenaline in my body, that is probably a good thing, and I think the kids were proud of mom.</div>
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The kids also lounged around the "beach" area by the house, did some sun bathing, snorkeling to look at the fish and fishing of their own. This area is shared by 10 houses who sit up on the hillside, so they all share a beach area where the boats are docked and you can safely swim and so forth. We met some really great people who are their neighbors, everyone was so friendly and their dogs welcomed Henry too.<br />
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As you can see, Ben is as white as his mommy, and thank god for sunscreen on that one! That evening we boated over to one of the bays on the South end of the lake for dinner, before heading to another bay for fireworks the evening of the 3rd. It was cool to see all those boat lights at night on the lake, a bit scary but I knew Dan would get us home safely. Here are some pics of the fireworks.</div>
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It was quite an impressive fireworks display for a bay in a lake, I am guessing all the homeowners pitch in and it was the equivalent to a township in cincinnati for sure!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIKADUk1vTLVkzrRPe0ICpl88iL_3mdOMRPpG6kz3xElpBqeOwgrOvkM5R631oe5rsWP6VDXTh6xVXJgggbJYyTXQ1k-3IUFh7OtGR36-pSEdiKj0VTqe0kZE5VCuL799K1mfdUjXZIWU/s1600/IMG_7926.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" nya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIKADUk1vTLVkzrRPe0ICpl88iL_3mdOMRPpG6kz3xElpBqeOwgrOvkM5R631oe5rsWP6VDXTh6xVXJgggbJYyTXQ1k-3IUFh7OtGR36-pSEdiKj0VTqe0kZE5VCuL799K1mfdUjXZIWU/s320/IMG_7926.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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That evening Wendy's son Jake and his girlfriend arrived, so the kids were even more excited. On the 4th we lounged around a bit and then decided to take a tour of the lake, heading to the North end which is where the city of Coeur D'Alene sits. There is a very large hotel/resort, famous golf club and one of the bays close to downtown is where the "celebs" live. Dan knows who owns many, but not all of the houses. Some of these thing were UNREAL! I took pics of John Elways place (he was there playing that game where you toss rope with beanbags on it), and Dennis Franz (NYPD fans out there) house. I liked his the best, you can tell he lives there year round vs. only as get-away place like Elway's. Downtown was great, very cute and we had our first Pita Pit experience, I think I want to bring the franchise to Cincy. The kids posed with their town mascot the moose.<br />
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This is Elways above, and Franz's below<br />
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That night we sat down by the lake and just watched all the fireworks being set off by homes, it was unreal how many there were, no need to go to town for sure. It was a fantastic 3 days and we were sad to go but very excited for our next stop- Yellowstone. Arnie and I had been to Yellowstone in 1999 and loved it and we couldn't wait to show the kids. We will have 4 days there, including two with our friends the Coldiron's, so the kids can't wait to see familiar friendly faces from Cincinnati.</div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-49569523259312473252013-07-10T07:08:00.000-07:002013-07-10T07:08:47.778-07:00R&R in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I feel like I should be singing that TV show theme show "Welcome Back...."<br />
The beauty of Yellowstone national park is that you get to see wildlife in the wild.<br />
The downside of that, is not alot of cell towers, so even when you have enough reception to make a phone call to say "we're alive and well" it is not enough to upload a picture for sure.<br />
So, I am trying to catch up a bit from Cody, Wyoming this morning and tell you about our three fantastic days prior to Yellowstone, visiting friends Dan and Wendy Jones at their place in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.<br />
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Dan grew up in Spokane, Washington, which is right across the state line from Coeur D'Alene, about a 30 minute drive to downtown. So he grew up at the lake, they had a family cabin that they would go to. He started with P&G in Spokane, and eventually ended up in Portland with Arnie. While he was in Portland he was a single guy, like Arnie, so they were biking, skiing and any other physical activity buddy and get really close. Dan and Wendy got married in 2004, and when Dan decided to retire in 2009 from P&G they knew they would move to Coeur D'Alene on the lake. They had Dan's old cabin but looked for something else and bought it. THey essentially gutted it and built their dream house on the lake. Last year they also built in Arizona and winter there, so another fun place we will have to go.<br />
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They were so kind to open it up to us for three days around the 4th holiday. We were looking forward to just relaxing with friends and seeing a beautiful part of the country we have not been to before. We were also looking forward to experiencing that type of retirement lifestyle, as that is the type of location we believe we want to be in (in mountains, on water).<br />
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We arrived around 5pm on Tuesday July 2nd, after a long drive through Washington. Western Washington is not very pretty, very dry, almost dessert looking conditions. I think everyone thinks of Seattle and rainy, but is is far from it once you cross the Cascade mountain range. The cool thing is the farmers or state for about 15 miles had a sign in front of every farm telling you what crop it was, how fun for us to learn that - of course corn and potatoes, but tons of alphapha, different types of hay and of course others I have already forgot. <br />
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After backing the RV down into their driveway it was parked for 3 days and really only acted as our "closet" for the next 3 days. Here is a picture of the front of the house, and all of us on the deck with the lake behind us.<br />
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Of course the highlight for the kids was tubing on the lake which we did a bunch of. The love doing this and Dan loves towing them around. The cutest part was the girls were a bit gun shy to go alone, as they always are on bigger tubes, so Ben would go with them, and as you will see, it was not a very comfortable position for him, but he was the awesome big brother. I think his "core" was certainly stronger from all that weight (well not a lot really) on top of him.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-66982310535176750672013-07-04T20:52:00.001-07:002013-07-04T20:52:29.973-07:00June 30- July 1, Olympic National Park, Washington<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We had a wonderful evening in Hoqium, Washington on Saturday night. We used our Woodall's book to find the camp site and it was beautiful, right on the river. The other good news is it had a very nice laundry room - as we had A LOT to do. We didn't pull in until 7:30 so I was on a mission, we had to get laundry started and have dinner ready in our first 30 minutes. The good news about doing laundry during this trip is all the laundry rooms have 2 or more washers and dryers, so you can actually get the laundry done really quick. I got four loads done in about an hour and forty-five minutes. My friend Kim Yates, who is doing an assignment with P and G in NYC, recently blogged about that very fact. That while you may hate not having a washer and dryer in your apartment, there is actually something really nice and productive about doing multiple loads at once.<br />
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Our dinner was great, and not a ton of bugs so we were able to eat outside which was great. You could smell the ocean we were so close. Then of course some Wizard for the family before we retired. We got up the next morning and took nice hot showers after breakfast and headed North up the 101 to Olympic. <br />
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We stopped at a little ranger station to get a map, as the South entrance on 101 did not have any ranger stations where they charged you admission. I was quite surprised by this, but I guess most of their visitors come from the East/North entrance closer to Seattle. The ranger was super nice and we even were able to get our Passports stamped and buy our National Park sticker. We decided our first stop would be Ruby Beach. As you go north they are Beach 1, 2, etc and then their is Ruby. We asked the ranger where there would be tide pools during low tide and she recommended Ruby.<br />
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We were able to park the RV fairly easily which was nice, a very large parking lot and we headed off. I did not put the kids in bathing suits, as for sure I expected the Pacific to be cold this far north, but of course, it wasn't. So the kids jumped in with their clothes on (after asking permission) and had a blast. Here are some great pics of them.<br />
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The beach was so nice and rugged. Logs laying on the beach, little tide pools, really rough rocks. Just exactly as you would imagine in the Pacific Northwest, or really any Northern beach. Being low tide we had a blast walking around and it really was warm. As many of you know, I am not a water person, and certainly not a cold water person, but this was quite pleasant.<br />
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It was a great time at the beach, and the kids would have stayed all day, but we had to eat some lunch and still had a ton of the park to see. After lunch we headed towards the Hoh Rain forest. The rain forest is a special place, it gets over 120 inches of rain a year, Seattle gets 34 inches (for all those people in Cincy who thinks it rains so much in the Pacific NW, we actually get about the same amount. Due to the amount of rain, needless to say it is wet, and there is tons of moss that grows. I can't remember the term, but it is an environment where one plant species grows on another, so moss on a tree and so forth. Here are some of the pics from our "moss lane" hike.<br />
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We were all very tired from our two activities and needed a nap, for sure mommy did. Thankfully daddy had enough energy for the 90 minute drive North/Northwest up Rt 101 up to Sol Duc hot springs. Here we would pull in for the night and have dinner. Tomorrow we would head to the Sol Duc hot spring resort. They pump the water from the natural springs into pools. The hottest pool is 103 degrees, and the cool "kiddie" pool is 97 degrees. They also have a normal pool that feels really cold after sitting in the hot springs.<br />
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The resort was started almost 100 years ago, this is the 3rd building they had, the first one burned down after only four years. Here is a picture of the old one and the current one. The old one was a full hotel, even with brothels during prohibition. Now they have 33 cabins you can rent across the parking lot. We also saw this beautiful old truck, with a full coca-cola cooler in the cab, check it out.<br />
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Our day there felt like we were at the united nations. All of the lifeguard were speaking Russian and there was a group of about 20 boys from a Ukrainian church there speaking Russian as well. Then we met a man from Korea who moved to Seattle 4 years ago to join his son who had been in America and be close to his grandkids who were with him. Then we met another man who was German but had lived in Seattle for 20 years, and there were Italians as well. I guess they like the hot springs, reminds them of the springs in the Ardenne forest in Belgium maybe. Here are pics from the pools.<br />
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We had a blast there and loved the hot water and just relaxing. About 4pm we decided it was time to begin our journey. It was very odd as this was the first time we would head East during our trip. Ruby beach marked the furthest place from Cincinnati we would be, and for the next two weeks we would gradually make our way East towards home. Tonight we will head about 3 hour to just before the Cascade mountain pass. We treated ourselves to dinner out and DQ for dessert (yes again) before stopping around 9pm. This was our worst RV experience - not that it was bad. But it was primarily seasonal or permanent renters, so the bathrooms were locked at night...bummer, as we had hoped to shower when we got there. So we waited until the morning and hunted down the maintenance guy to find them. In the end we got a so-so shower and hit the road, next stop Coeur D'Alene, Idaho to visit our friends Dan and Wendy at their place on the lake.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-1188367403425684222013-07-03T12:44:00.000-07:002013-07-03T12:44:30.685-07:00Portland and Mt. St. Helen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So after a wonderful 2 days at Crater Lake we headed North up Route 5 to Portland. For those of you who don't know Arnie lived in Portland from 1999-2000, not even two years. Before he met me he had been asking for an assignment in the Pacific NW for a few years. As luck would have it, we started dating and about 6 months later they found his assignment. We talked about it and decided he should take it and it was the right decision. Truly absence made the heart grow fonder. <br />
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Anyway, he moved to Portland January 1999 to work on the Fred Meyer customer team as their finance manager. He loved his two years there, as a tri-athlete he just loved that he could run, bike, swim, ski just about anywhere, anytime he wanted. He did crazy things like the "hood to coast" bike marathon (from Mt. Hood to the Pacific coast), "tour de blast" up to Mt St. Helen and back down (yes straight up hill), and STP (Seattle to Portland) bike road, and then the Pole, Peddle, Paddle in Bend which is downhill skiing, cross country skiing, road biking, 10K run, canoeing and a sprint at the end (you do it with three people as a marathon). He worked with a great group of guys that he has remained in touch with since he left 12 years ago and we were excited to see one of them - Tim Zweber. <br />
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Our night at the Zweber's was fantastic, despite them being in the middle of a kitchen renovation, and not having a stove, we had a fabulous dinner and breakfast - done camping style. They joked they were training for their camping trip at the Seashore in a few weeks. Of course they kids took advantage of every entertainment option they had in the 18 hours were were there - pool table, basketball, lacrosse and they found and old croquet set and we all did croquet relay race. Here are some pics, including our photo with the Zwebers.<br />
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After our yummy breakfast we had all the energy we needed to drive up to Mt. St. Helen and show the kids the amazing sight. It was strange driving through downtown Portland, like Cincinnati the downtown has just sprouted up with residential buildings, it was great. And downtown Portland was already amazing, so I am sure it is just fantastic now. The drive up to Mt. St. Helen was great, Arnie was a bit jealous of all the bikers we passed, me of course not...I think they are nuts if I am honest.<br />
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We enjoyed our couple of ours on the mountain. We watched the video which does a great job of illustrating what it would have been like that day. Unfortunately 57 people were killed the day it blasted, as the "zone" they thought it would stretch too was only about 1/3 of what it did. The good news is all the hard work those people did that day, and the days after have helped predict many future blasts and the impact they will have. We also listened to a couple of great ranger talks and learned about how it happened, and then how it began to 'come back" and how it started to regrow (hint- thank the elk, they came down from the meadow and their poop had lots of "plant" seeds in them).<br />
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Here are some of the pics.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxtJ8CdDANAtuRwjw_VcOSfxwxX3kmXbvVmAaLZ2f3LSeCbYVkjEiNvrKNWSRP7HuIE08fUDVkXSgO1AOH_JuySA3fo5_uZ6pDwn73MhIWa63VEB7P1bjlVSy2IvcoNp8bJtRVY7uzd5r/s1600/IMG_7736.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxtJ8CdDANAtuRwjw_VcOSfxwxX3kmXbvVmAaLZ2f3LSeCbYVkjEiNvrKNWSRP7HuIE08fUDVkXSgO1AOH_JuySA3fo5_uZ6pDwn73MhIWa63VEB7P1bjlVSy2IvcoNp8bJtRVY7uzd5r/s320/IMG_7736.JPG" width="320" /></a>Say Cheese!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjSVT2oNyXXtnxSRI6HiXaL7TpXJ50psNADOxafLXds_EgGljyyvmbbxZUpIXKXHhRFG3_IqURoRQSm4PynIEc9lD8EO17N610K_V_Juku3o-z5bsVhBJzh3mlVnvN-y-_x14zIjTRz8oy/s1600/IMG_7730.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjSVT2oNyXXtnxSRI6HiXaL7TpXJ50psNADOxafLXds_EgGljyyvmbbxZUpIXKXHhRFG3_IqURoRQSm4PynIEc9lD8EO17N610K_V_Juku3o-z5bsVhBJzh3mlVnvN-y-_x14zIjTRz8oy/s320/IMG_7730.JPG" width="320" /></a>this Ranger was awesome, we loved his talks</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3lonZM-bCONR-M_GcqsWcuWTNgzhL1wKxIB-qUQzB1IEFXOPFoiKyI9WJRG8V9LQkILtfrhQaG8gUKPi1EXnNCoRUgGlwPPfISeedRuCmIIVPtwQTM1IeIangb86KYWOvIE8zOhEXu9TZ/s1600/IMG_7729.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3lonZM-bCONR-M_GcqsWcuWTNgzhL1wKxIB-qUQzB1IEFXOPFoiKyI9WJRG8V9LQkILtfrhQaG8gUKPi1EXnNCoRUgGlwPPfISeedRuCmIIVPtwQTM1IeIangb86KYWOvIE8zOhEXu9TZ/s320/IMG_7729.JPG" width="320" /></a>the natural wild flowers have begun to come back in the ash.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-zfXZ_DGO2SiUETDqmzLIXW2wVkxvL-URasCdCC784zMNeHXBMAfGP1MsiZoannmgFhVpqlqElzPhQsY0r_kxWhn39P3FGY-1f5HHuP7YD09H0rfXic7-IwnUi-Z70Ffq4HlynremsRIu/s1600/IMG_7728.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-zfXZ_DGO2SiUETDqmzLIXW2wVkxvL-URasCdCC784zMNeHXBMAfGP1MsiZoannmgFhVpqlqElzPhQsY0r_kxWhn39P3FGY-1f5HHuP7YD09H0rfXic7-IwnUi-Z70Ffq4HlynremsRIu/s320/IMG_7728.JPG" width="320" /></a>this is what "phase 2" of the devastation looked like, dead trees laying on their side. Phase 1 is just the bottle trunks, they were seared off from the heat, and phase 3 which is trees still standing up but all burnt.</div>
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Now we head up North and towards the coast to Olympic. We will stay in Hoquim just north of Aberdeen.</div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-22088413737481250792013-07-02T07:57:00.000-07:002013-07-02T07:57:22.641-07:00Crater Lake National Park - 'oh wow" is all we can say!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It is now Thursday June 27th, and we are very excited to be heading to Crater Lake National Park. We were less than 10 miles from the entrance station, but knew it would be about 45 minutes to get up to the Visitor Center on the rim. Our first stop was Steel Visitor center where we got our Passports stamped and the general lay of the land on the park. This is where we learned our first facts on Crater Lake.<br />
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-the Crater was created over 7,700 years ago, when Mt Masama erupted and it was such a huge blast that it caused the mountain to collapse on itself due to the huge surface area the magma had taken up<br />
- The huge amount of precipitation each year created the lake over time<br />
- on average it gets 502 inches or over 44 feet of snow per year<br />
- 2011 set recent records for snowfall, and when the summer rangers came in April there was still snow over 30 feet high at the ranger station<br />
- this year was a very LIGHT year as they only got 355 inches, so they consider themselves in a draught (even though there was still snow on the ground)<br />
- their summer season doesn't start until July, and the full rim road usually doesn't open until mid-July. <br />
- the North access to the park is closed all Winter due to snow<br />
- it is considered to be the purest water in America if not the world as all of it comes from snow/rain and there are no creeks/rivers flowing into or out of it<br />
- it is somewhere between the 5th and 8th in the world for deepest lakes, it's deepest point is 1,950 feet<br />
- because of this it's BLUE color is something I have never seen before, it absorbs the Red and Yellow rays from the sun and reflects back out the Blue<br />
- It is one of the oldest National Parks in the country, established in 1903<br />
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Our 2nd stop was the visitor center, as we read in the newspaper they gave us when we arrived (you always get a paper and a map) that the boat tours start TOMORROW on June 28th. Everything online said not until July, so we were BEYOND excited and rushing to the lodge to see if we could get on the first boat at 9:30 AM as this would still allow us to be in Portland on time for dinner with friends. Good news for us is daddy was successful and we were all set for tomorrow. The other good news is we were playing our stop for the night by ear and the RV park at the park had room for us, so we are all set.<br />
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We decided to walk from the visitor center to the first viewing point along the "rim" as they call it. Similar to the Grand Canyon you view from the top. Not similar is you can easily hike down to the bottom in one place here (though the walk up is not quite as easy, over 65 stories in less than a mile...yikes). I think all five of us in unison said "oh wow" when we saw the lake for the first time. That color is just unreal. Here are some pics from our first view of the lake.<br />
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We continued North/Northwest around the lake and hit the side of the rim where the sun does not hit, as there was snow everywhere. Our first observation was a group of three guys snowboarding/skiing down one of the hills, priceless, it is June 27th people. The kids just loved this and decided we had to play in the snow, so they did. They had snowball fights, went sliding down the hill - first on their rear ends, then on a garbage bag mom gave them. Henry had the most fun just galloping around and eating all the snow. We had a grand ole time as evidenced in these photos.<br />
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We continued around the rim. We could only go about 17 miles total, the rest was closed due to snow. It ends up it opened right after we left, but we still saw a ton. Here is a good view of Wizard island (named because it looks like a wizard hat in form, like a cone, think of Harry Potter's sorting hat). There are two islands in the lake, this and the 'phantom ship" which we got lots of pics on the boat ride of. The lake is 5 miles across in most places, and about a mile down from the rim. It can look small given you can see all around, but when you get close and particularly down in the boat, you see how big it is. The boat tour will be 2 hours to get around each side of the lake, never getting out of the boat.<br />
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At around 5pm we decided to head towards the campground. I figured it was a good time to call my parents as I had not checked in. I wanted to get an update on how my niece's high school graduation went on Tuesday night, and how my sister's mother-in-law was doing. She was recently diagnosed with a very rare disease where you can't process protein and it begins to attack your organs. She was in the hospital and they were trying to figure out the course of action. I got my dad on the phone and his voice was very down, which scared me. I thought for sure it was about Ginny (my sister's mother-in-law) so I asked about her first. I got the update, then we talked about Emily's graduation. I asked what else was new and he said "we got some bad news from you mom's scan today." I had totally forgot my mom's scan was that day. You just lose track of time when you are away this much, and the official date of the scan never registered. I felt so bad. My mom's cancer was back. Our connection was horrible, so I kept only hearing a portion of what he said. I got three small tumors, around the aorta, won't do surgery, next appointment on July 9 before losing him.</div>
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So now I am upset, have tons of questions, and we have no service. But we need to get to the campground as it is first come first serve, and we have to stay there. So we head out of the slim cell service down to the campground. Good news is they have room. I ask some workers near registration if there is any good cell areas down here, they point me behind the grocery store, and I get some signal. So I call my sister. After a few times I get her, and it takes a few more to get the entire update. But I now know more and have a clearer picture. We still know very little, but these likely came from some bad cells left behind that they didn't get, that is why so fast. Will do chemo because they are so close to aorta and want to try to shrink it. Clinical trial, as in past chemo has not worked, but they are making advancements. So feeling a little better we go find a site for the night. We ate dinner inside as the mosquitoes here are the worst we have had (and Ben, Sarah and I get eaten alive) and then played some games. We finally taught the kids Wizard our favorite card game. It is quite hard, but they have been bugging us for quite some time so we took the time and did it, and they did pretty well.</div>
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We had to get up and be on the road by 7:45 as it is about a 45 drive to the starting point of the hike down, and you have to start the hike 45 minutes early to ensure you are there on time. With this in mind we slept with the slides in, those are the two areas of the RV that "slide out" to make it bigger. One is in the bedroom (creates space between the closets and bed) and one is in the "living room" to create more space between table and couch which folds down to a bed. This meant a tough walk for Ben to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but also that we could drive while the kids were still sleeping if need be.</div>
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We got to the hike just fine, packed up drinks, snacks, rain coats and heading off. It was cool so we had the kids in long pants and long sleeves, they quickly told us that was a bad idea. Oh well, they said it would be cooler on the boat ride so we wanted to be prepared. Of course we forgot sunscreen, a recurring thing for Arnie and I, and he and I got the worst of it (my nose as usual and the top of his head, the kids fared ok for once). </div>
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Here are some pics from our hike down to the lake. The trip down only took about 20 minutes, we were anticipating at least 45 to hike back up as it was pretty steep for sure. Our boat driver was Steve - he grew up in Michigan and played hockey at Michigan and in minors for Red Wings. His brother works for the Wings. He lives in Florida for Winter and drives boats at Crater Lake in Summer. Our Ranger guide was Emily, this is her fourth year as a Ranger at crater Lake.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc2w76I1kgfefSeqatBMT_yOiCPVCt8W8OEkFgyalPqjgVZlVEXt9lW7RbCX4I5yzlGybHgvjdXl4oq92D2QGkn-y4imMoK7-NO_8UNXF2_ZLfZFPw3xzPfV6UdzoK6JMA1Go1tpquvJLi/s1600/IMG_7626.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc2w76I1kgfefSeqatBMT_yOiCPVCt8W8OEkFgyalPqjgVZlVEXt9lW7RbCX4I5yzlGybHgvjdXl4oq92D2QGkn-y4imMoK7-NO_8UNXF2_ZLfZFPw3xzPfV6UdzoK6JMA1Go1tpquvJLi/s320/IMG_7626.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vIjhYu6g0pRvNvR1iHM1HnUSyXtUHkv43veFFFDrw5lYOoyXs7NScAx-TwIoVpikZbNxhMarpfGrNoikj0wAhEZ48GzjQYbvzpmGy0e9nIaAkUV0_dPlNp90-TvlS4sHVyyboo6dNYhy/s1600/IMG_7625.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vIjhYu6g0pRvNvR1iHM1HnUSyXtUHkv43veFFFDrw5lYOoyXs7NScAx-TwIoVpikZbNxhMarpfGrNoikj0wAhEZ48GzjQYbvzpmGy0e9nIaAkUV0_dPlNp90-TvlS4sHVyyboo6dNYhy/s320/IMG_7625.JPG" width="213" /></a>this is the kids below me on a switchback while hiking down</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzQOhTCA8ciT7uNEglKMclukVQFL8VTdAPyFJm_R2yWuuRwow0lxEIFRU5_WumdFLVPpIk3Ug3BPZcFRkdkV-CjeJ1nPo2tccRj98uzHKnF0fymoofc1TB4vHg8DU70dG9UDXpdoU1Lgva/s1600/IMG_7628.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzQOhTCA8ciT7uNEglKMclukVQFL8VTdAPyFJm_R2yWuuRwow0lxEIFRU5_WumdFLVPpIk3Ug3BPZcFRkdkV-CjeJ1nPo2tccRj98uzHKnF0fymoofc1TB4vHg8DU70dG9UDXpdoU1Lgva/s320/IMG_7628.JPG" width="213" /></a>views of the boats at the dock</div>
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The boat ride was amazing, first one of the year, and just learned a TON about the lake. Here are some cool facts</div>
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- the had to helicopter the boats in, these we bought 10 years ago and probably seat 30 people</div>
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- The lake clarity varies but is usually at least 100 feet deep, the measure it every day, deepest was 142 feet down you could see</div>
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- two types of fish in it - salmon and trout, that they introduced a while back</div>
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- you can get off at Wizard island and hike for a few hours on one of the boat tours</div>
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- swimming is only allowed at Wizard island and by the boat launch</div>
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-the lake doesn't get deeper as there is now a seepage point close to the top where it seeps out one side, and also some natural evaporation</div>
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- our boat driver played hockey at Michigan...what a small world</div>
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Our first stop was to see "the old man in the lake" which is a cedar log that floats vertical upright in the lake sometimes and we got lucky and this day was one of them. In one photo you can see the "roots" of it down in the water, pretty cool.</div>
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Next we saw the side of the lake where the magma was the hottest, and likely flowed out the ash, as the side is the most "ashy" of all the sides, and this is the side with the snow on it and miles and miles down of ashy ground, just like at St. Helens.<br />
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Next was Wizard island up close. It is amazing to see the huge boulders left behind and just odd how they stayed this high, yet a few miles away the lake is 1,950 feet deep. Truly nature's marvel. They store the boats on the island in the winter so that is what you see when you see some structures in the pics (by the way, I let the kids take most of these pics, so I don't always know what they are). We did see an Osprey (sp?) siting atop and old tree, that pic is below. </div>
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We got a good view of the Lodge from below, and some cool pics of waterfalls that are created by the melting snow, again how the lake gets fed each year.</div>
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Our next step was the Phantom ship. Back in the old days they used to let you picnic on the ship, not sure how as it is pretty rocky and sharp edges, but they did, probably would have been really cool. They are doing a ton of biological research around the ship, so there were hoses and different traps (trying to catch crayfish which were also introduced) under the rock. You could see the water so clearly here so some pics are of the lake bottom.</div>
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Our last stop was the Pinnacles, this odd rock formation on the side of the mountain. What is most odd about it is the color, it has a red color to it, almost like we are back in Utah for a minute. <br />
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So that was it, we had a great tour and would now head North towards Portland. Tonight we are spending the night with Tim Zweber and his family. He has four kids, but three are grown and out of the house. So it will be his wife Julie and their youngest Ben who is 15. Tim and Arnie worked together when Arnie lived in Portland, so it should be a great night. Ironically Tim was in Cincy all week for P&G meetings (he still works in sales) so he was flying back on Friday and we would arrive around 6pm.<br />
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Farewell from Crater Lake, definitely the most majestic places we have gone so far.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-86542384289253715522013-06-30T10:26:00.001-07:002013-06-30T10:26:35.593-07:00Heading up to the Pacific NW - but some stops along the way<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We wanted to take advantage of the drive up to Crater lake to see some nice spots, stop along the coast and then along the Rogue River. Our stop tonight would be in Prospect, Oregon about 45 minutes south of the south entrance.<br />
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Our first stop was just a few miles North of Klamath along the CA coast, at Wilsons creek. This is where the creek comes into the Pacific ocean. We were told we could see starfish there so we were excited- wildlife of some sort. The spot was quite nice, only about 30 feet from the parking lots but lots of rocks to explore and then the flowing creek into the pacific. The kids had a blast. We had our rain coats on, even though it wasn't really raining because the fog and frankly to keep them dry. Here are some pics of the adventure.<br />
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Right after our stop we crossed into Oregon. We love Oregon. Arnie lived there while we were dating/engaged from 1998-2000. He was the finance manager on the Fred Meyer team. When he moved out there they had FM, plus Ralph's, Smith's, Smitty's. Then Kroger bought Fred Meyer and it became Kroger West. We enjoyed traveling the state and seeing things - Mt. Hood, Bend, The coast, but we never made it to the South an Crater Lake. We looked forward to finally seeing that part of the state.<br />
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About and hour and a half North we landed in Prospect, our destination for the night. This RV campground was VERY nice, wooded and had a very friendly staff for sure. They gave us tons of hiking trails, points of interest and maps to direct us to everything. We decided to head out on our bikes to go see some of the local waterfalls from the Rogue River. The daring part of this adventure was that we would take Henry with us and he would run along Arnie biking. For the most part this worked, at times he got distracted by some lizard or something, but no major spills by anyone. Here is a pick of him leading the way, sort of like the dogs in Alaska pulling the sleds. The Rogue was a very heavy flow river, getting all the snow run-off from many of the Southern cascades. The waterfalls were great.<br />
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We headed back home to make dinner and have a campfire. Here are some pics from our site. We had a great time. Only downfall is mosquitoes they are in Oregon for sure! So the citronella candles came out along with the OFF. Mommy made double chocolate cookies for the gang the night before and we still had some so tonight the marshmallows would be in between the chocolate cookies for Claire and daddy for sure.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3r54sS5RhdHsyYHpVDZShk6pTWP7ZxD06E7r6pwZBOPS2qnzChF-9y9LQIqsieMj7L6hiyrda2tUD-b5AF_oE0LE3bI0kyLxxYnHzTunkd0rA3ui5-xvdhYj5lBFbi8SLcZEkDgXC0CJX/s1600/IMG_7535.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3r54sS5RhdHsyYHpVDZShk6pTWP7ZxD06E7r6pwZBOPS2qnzChF-9y9LQIqsieMj7L6hiyrda2tUD-b5AF_oE0LE3bI0kyLxxYnHzTunkd0rA3ui5-xvdhYj5lBFbi8SLcZEkDgXC0CJX/s320/IMG_7535.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>The rig pulled in for the night</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijKgu7jb5rN7s8AhPVpQMd6PcczeJyfeimcljPcxhQUDulSXt0NsgLf2MKhWY1l0a43weSgpZAv9nrTrwnhXAzTsvKEbq0csvfjw0MaHjdn6-CV2Aao0vjbuGtFnOx8RREMhTOdbeF0Tbk/s1600/IMG_7529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijKgu7jb5rN7s8AhPVpQMd6PcczeJyfeimcljPcxhQUDulSXt0NsgLf2MKhWY1l0a43weSgpZAv9nrTrwnhXAzTsvKEbq0csvfjw0MaHjdn6-CV2Aao0vjbuGtFnOx8RREMhTOdbeF0Tbk/s320/IMG_7529.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Ben by the campfire</div>
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On Thursday morning we got up and planned to go see a natural bridge, but this would be very different from the ones we saw in Utah. It was actually right above the river, lava had carved out the rocks thousands of years ago creating an underground tunnel for the river to flow through for a about 25 feet, it was pretty cool.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRB0k6_LLBzNmWDE1oHLwac1nUc-GCWxJUZyyj5eLHv_5OYr1uwSFB5nfrBjYaCNjpT3jIDOmp4anf5VStPktdXBTxUO0t3iOEAfhJetho0kn3GVXT_Fpri41PDPB306ktE4O-EKNFbH3h/s1600/IMG_7538.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRB0k6_LLBzNmWDE1oHLwac1nUc-GCWxJUZyyj5eLHv_5OYr1uwSFB5nfrBjYaCNjpT3jIDOmp4anf5VStPktdXBTxUO0t3iOEAfhJetho0kn3GVXT_Fpri41PDPB306ktE4O-EKNFbH3h/s320/IMG_7538.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>here is a pic of the river flowing beneath the bridge</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvZHNMoDSLhqlGl1bhM8mWong0QCrn4Jh8qiKaQimHr-IXYAF7__7D_Y930w-fyiaichVfHfBgh9BC1NjlHbCc7EuJF9ofqmpLRkCbiXpZypkng9GYaoo8HLadADuesYeWRuh9oSWyVxGY/s1600/IMG_7544.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvZHNMoDSLhqlGl1bhM8mWong0QCrn4Jh8qiKaQimHr-IXYAF7__7D_Y930w-fyiaichVfHfBgh9BC1NjlHbCc7EuJF9ofqmpLRkCbiXpZypkng9GYaoo8HLadADuesYeWRuh9oSWyVxGY/s320/IMG_7544.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>this is the water right before it dips under that rock which is the bridge.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8ZDjG-fmjXvAJp473kYOjqsyf28RENY0GDesslQPJaBBCHbBVRiy36iowKSY3JpyqctfEukhhfHL5iArVeEXo6loiaGq3YbAt5Qj02Kg4h8ZW-zbgVsgjMjmIq-NvFN9sfUaJp0JoZTo/s1600/IMG_7543.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8ZDjG-fmjXvAJp473kYOjqsyf28RENY0GDesslQPJaBBCHbBVRiy36iowKSY3JpyqctfEukhhfHL5iArVeEXo6loiaGq3YbAt5Qj02Kg4h8ZW-zbgVsgjMjmIq-NvFN9sfUaJp0JoZTo/s320/IMG_7543.JPG" width="213" xya="true" /></a>the bridge from the top and then the water coming out after it.</div>
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So a great day seeing some local Oregon sights. We are now off to Crater lake and so excited. Yesterday it was 49 degrees there, but today summer has arrived and it will be a high of 69 and sunny. We have been SO LUCKY with the weather, we bring the sun wherever us and our "Sunseeker" which is the name of our RV go.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-50348330460505254932013-06-29T23:08:00.000-07:002013-06-29T23:22:10.002-07:00Random observations after 5,000 miles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today we surpassed the 5,000 mile mark of our trip. Tomorrow marks 4 weeks that we have been away, 28 days, hard to believe. Time does fly when you are having fun. After being on the road for that long, and having passed through no less than 10 states so far (and that does not count Ohio), I think it is about time to give you some of my observations. I have shared most of these with Arnie during our drive time, so I guess you can say they are "ours" but just in case he does not fully agree, I will say "my". These are in no particular order, just some random thoughts<br />
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- Subways...they are everywhere! I heard on the radio sometime this spring that Subway had just surpassed McDonald's in terms of number of locations/stores. That fact must have been based on global stores, because in the US there must be twice as many and that is being conservative. There are literally everywhere. Stand alone stores, in gas stations, you name it, from a big city to a town of 2,000 people, there is a Subway. This of course makes my family happy, but not me, I am not a huge fan. When you grow up on NY subs, and for me from an Italian pizzeria, they just don't cut it, in particular the bread, I hate it.<br />
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- Oregon is the Dairy Queen capital of the world. And as a result, it has become a favorite state of mine. My first job where I paid taxes was at DQ, and I have been their biggest fan ever since. So when they are literally at every exit in a state, like it seems they are in Oregon, and even better they make the highway sign, the Zucker family is very happy. There are so many I was convinced they must be headquartered here, but they are not...in fact in Illinois, go figure. I guess they just have the best franchisees ever, as for sure it is not the sunny, warm weather that drives people to want more ice cream.<br />
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we will stay on the food angle with the next one<br />
- Chipotle; we are investing in their stock when we get home. Our family consumes a ton of Chipotle, we have now even turned my parents onto it. So we agreed with the kids that the "treat" while in the RVwould be to go to Chipotle. The issue had is they DID NOT exist after Ohio, literally didn't see them, not in St. Louis, not in Colorado (and yes I know they are headquartered in Denver, but in southern Colorado didn't find them), not in Utah (or at least Moab). It was not until we got to California that we saw them again. Folks that is a LOT of land, which means a ton of expansion opportunity, which means, we are investing in the stock.<br />
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staying with retail channels, let's go to food, drug, mass as we call it in CPG land<br />
- Dollar Stores. Now I know why they are the fastest growing channel in America for the past 15 years. It is not because of the poor economy, it is because if a town is too small for a WalMart, they get a Dollar Store. We have not passed through a town of more than 250 people where they main shopping is not a Dollar Store. Not a grocery store, not even a IGA, but either Family Dollar or Dollar General. It is unreal. We have also seen a TON of their distribution centers, which must rival WalMart for the most sophisitcated and networked in the country for sure.<br />
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- Grocery stores and shopping has truly been a tour of the retail landscape so far... from Krogerville in KY and Indiana, to Schnuck's in Illinois and Missouri, to Albertson's in Colorado, then we hit a ton of City Markets in CO and Utah, on to Ralph's and Safeway in California and now Fred Meyer in the pacific NW. I am a very loyal Meijer shopper so I have been in sticker shock FOR A LONG TIME. I didn't think anything could be more expensive than Kroger, until we discovered City Market. Come to find out, it is owned by Kroger, that explains the pricing. So if you can imagine Kroger, but in high tourist spots (like Moab), high income spots (like Durango) and hard to get to spots (like around national parks) you can pretty much figure they will charge you whatever they want, and they do!<br />
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- WiFi or not. So, in case you don't know how WiFi work, you need cell lines for it to get a signal from. I have now figured that out. But the good news is we have a Verizon WiFi and Versizon cell plan, so we shoudl be fine because Versizon covers everywhere. Isn't that what their commercials say, that the cover like 96% of the US, well let me tell you, I am calling their BULL&*@*#*@ for sure. No way man, unless their asterisk at the bottom says "not including any land owned by the US Gov't." We have not had ANY coverage at all, outside of major cities, for the past 2 weeks, NONE. In Yosemite village you get it, but that is about it. It is SO frustrating I can't even tell you, and I literally want to call them out on it. I don't know what people in rural areas do, it is very tough.<br />
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- Our biggest surprise so far has been the general lack of wildlife. When you set off on an adventure to go to national parks, you kind of think you are going to see some wildlife - NOT! We have seen NOTHING. I honestly think we see more in our own backyard in one week than we have seen in 4 weeks - more deer, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, raccoons and so forth. Arnie saw a bit on his early morning runs, but that is it. It has sort of been a downer if I am being honest. We still have Yellowstone, which last time we went we saw a ton, so I am holding up hope, but so far it has been a bust. I guess the animals have smartened up and realized suburbia is a better gig than the wilderness, vegetable gardens and food galore beats grass and grubs.<br />
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- Best license plates. We have seen about 40 of them so far, just missing some east coast ones, but am sure we will see them in Yellowstone, but given that I know what they all look like, here are my top five with pics below.<br />
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1) Utah - <img height="150" id="il_fi" src="http://www.netstate.com/states/links/images/ut_license_plate.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="300" /><br />
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2) Arizona <img height="160" id="il_fi" src="http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/files/2008/12/l104826-100.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /><br />
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3) Oregon <img height="150" id="il_fi" src="http://www.netstate.com/states/links/images/or_license_plate.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="300" /><br />
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4) Colorado <img height="130" id="il_fi" src="http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1235627271574&ssbinary=true" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="246" /><br />
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5) California (I love the simplicity and script of the name)<img height="160" id="il_fi" src="http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/California2/ca2011-2.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /><br />
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Finally, my favorite state highway signs - the state of Washington, aren't these cool<br />
<img alt="" class="rg_hi uh_hi" data-height="192" data-width="144" height="400" id="rg_hi" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRHM0Cv9ZbRzq2ksGigtp8eOjiJyRk8BVbkv688ec-57Tudfyg" style="height: 192px; width: 144px;" width="300" /><br />
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I hope you have enjoyed my random observations, tell me if you did (you can comment) and that may encourage me to do some at the end of our trip.</div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-72748804946467369002013-06-29T21:27:00.000-07:002013-06-29T21:27:02.732-07:00Day 22 - heading up to Redwoods<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Welcome to Day 22 and 23 of our adventure. Off we headed to Sacramento, we got to the oil change place - Specialty RV around 11:30. You should have seen some of the rigs there, the one that pulled in behind us had to be close to $200K. It was gorgeous. These guys were unbelievable, we didn't even have to pull the RV inside the garage/building, they just got under the engine and did their work, maybe 30 minutes total. Part of me was longing for Jiffy Lube so they would clean our windows, but at least they were fast.</div>
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Speaking of windows, the RV outside is FILTHY, with a capital F. It was brand new when we got it, so I feel so bad, but when you travel 4,500 miles in three weeks through the dessert in particular it is hard to keep it clean. The girls are very upset with how dirty their bikes are. I am hoping and praying Mr. Clean magic eraser will work its magic when we get back. The bike rack marks them up pretty good so we will need a lot of help for sure.<br />
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We had promised the kids Chipotle and we found one within a mile of the oil change so we headed there for lunch. As Arnie would say we had to plan our "exit' strategy. Exit strategies become very important when you are driving a 32 foot RV. You can't just whip into any parking lot, gas station or other enterprise, do what you need to do, and leave. You have to assess how many entrances they have, can we clear the roof at gas stations and so forth. We got a tip from the guy at Specialty RV to go in the McDonald's lot which was next to Chipotle and that worked just fine. It was very long and was next to a park in the back and we could just parallel the RV to the park for the 10 minutes we would be inside. We managed to get out, of course scraped ground with the bike rack on the way out, but we are used to that sound by now. Off we went on Rt 5 heading North a bit before cutting across to the coast. This route, like the central valley was filled with agriculture. It is AMAZING how much there is, we are further north here so we added Olives to the mix, as well as Nuts and fruit. We stopped at another fruit stand to stock up, this had vegetables as well so we got tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, plums. peaches, grapes and more. Here is a pick of the farm where we stopped (if they even call these mega properties farms), we liked the sunflowers, but they were sad with the clouds.</div>
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On we went heading towards Redcrest. Today was a driving day, no park touring, so our goal was to get up there prior to dinner so I could just cook dinner in the park to make life a bit easier vs. while driving prepare this (which is possible as the oven and stove work from propane, I could even turn the generator on while driving to run the microwave if needed. This would be a full hook-up site, it was quite nice, flat paved spots with some grass, no trees. Often the RV parks are like this, someone just bought a piece of land and turned it into an RV park. While not the most picturesque of locations, they are flat, pull through sites that make the exit strategy very easy, and they have really nice and clean amenities. We had a nice relaxing night, and refreshing shower before heading out on Tuesday for Redwoods.</div>
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Here is a view of the Northern CA coast on our way up, very foggy morning.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7J9nKiwtmK8Clu0fqHx86utZDSrxFXZeA5d3pB5vFugbl8Yf2_15IVVdk742kkIouNwjRWVpq7xFVPyWXZTDHVGwTIoZQGj9L1yhLGj-KjjzZB2VWeUBYy8CA6irMMGxSz52JcqFGk6XF/s1600/IMG_7435.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7J9nKiwtmK8Clu0fqHx86utZDSrxFXZeA5d3pB5vFugbl8Yf2_15IVVdk742kkIouNwjRWVpq7xFVPyWXZTDHVGwTIoZQGj9L1yhLGj-KjjzZB2VWeUBYy8CA6irMMGxSz52JcqFGk6XF/s320/IMG_7435.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNeV2Zqk2jjqObffbi7qgyA__GOBZD1Pbd0eRxhtzP6YQMVl8enCJV_eyAQQSbXj3h0gKt-8R5v15m0nB2op0YiGX6_ORfkPli-lIP5DGKaU_kvREXv5enxGF0zv48vwdH-25COszHlvME/s1600/IMG_7439.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNeV2Zqk2jjqObffbi7qgyA__GOBZD1Pbd0eRxhtzP6YQMVl8enCJV_eyAQQSbXj3h0gKt-8R5v15m0nB2op0YiGX6_ORfkPli-lIP5DGKaU_kvREXv5enxGF0zv48vwdH-25COszHlvME/s320/IMG_7439.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Redwoods by far has been the most confusing park we visited. Because the country and state have both protected various areas of the Redwoods over time, it is like a maze and you go from State to National park without even knowing it. They also stretch probably 200 miles on and off up the coast. We were on the far north section, in Humboldt county. I was totally surprised by where we were. My mom and I did the Redwoods 18 years ago, and this was not at all what I remember. I remember driving through a tree, paved roads, etc. This was not the case. I am hoping I documented where we went and assume it was further south, as these looked so different (not as red). We decided to hike to the tallest tree, it is some 304 feet tall, almost as tall as the highest building in Cincinnati. We ended up on a much longer trail than we thought, so probably hiked about 6-7 miles in total before making our way back to the RV. Here are some picks. It was still drizzling at times and quite misty/foggy but this seemed very appropriates for being in the Redwoods.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqIBXPXSFT3UbnIZSfLZN2ygN1RZzK8wOMWLPAD_SLWNsuLGbKTaOz4usiFjU6ZA3I-zuRBCRWQPzIocgayVNQSmqJ14Es21X08VGpaTtSiXK7oYosU94WyDfpsIv7788MX440Ax8FhPa8/s1600/IMG_7447.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqIBXPXSFT3UbnIZSfLZN2ygN1RZzK8wOMWLPAD_SLWNsuLGbKTaOz4usiFjU6ZA3I-zuRBCRWQPzIocgayVNQSmqJ14Es21X08VGpaTtSiXK7oYosU94WyDfpsIv7788MX440Ax8FhPa8/s320/IMG_7447.JPG" width="213" xya="true" /></a></div>
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The highlight for the kids was climbing into the trees. Many of them were hollowed out in some way, so the kids could literally get into them. You can get a sense of how massive these trees where when you see these little faces peering out from the crack or opening. They had a blast doing this, would have stayed all day if we let them. Below are some pics of each of the three kids doing the same pose in the trees. I had a hard time positioning them, so they are a bit scrambled, and of course this was the day they are all in similar colors, so may be hard to tell who is who.</div>
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Sarah in tree<br />
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Ben and Claire climbing, my two monkeys on this trip<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnxf0WQggVs6CbaRPKwOKb9wbu5VmXR7NJigu7mW5d5HIQDbLWyv1GGDr7kgf9jiTPKWiXPp0kxKneud3sptTBEwTf0jXvZouYQuEpAEGIJJcxpVC2mQ9YQqzLlqFJk3mop7y0M5Kfqs5/s1600/IMG_7473.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnxf0WQggVs6CbaRPKwOKb9wbu5VmXR7NJigu7mW5d5HIQDbLWyv1GGDr7kgf9jiTPKWiXPp0kxKneud3sptTBEwTf0jXvZouYQuEpAEGIJJcxpVC2mQ9YQqzLlqFJk3mop7y0M5Kfqs5/s320/IMG_7473.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Moss accumulating on a knocked over tree</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp1w_a3pIlzOOLTfvMZLGsNyibofLBeNnmLOS6uVTi44Gjljb8oxYSC3AYLZNSgLEcL4eVOwCHPsMpGQ70fjWh8Tr1M7FZXKtGo9coWsvC1GZcgTDh2knXxpYd52NOpD7Q1bYQvJ5iGUp2/s1600/IMG_7474.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp1w_a3pIlzOOLTfvMZLGsNyibofLBeNnmLOS6uVTi44Gjljb8oxYSC3AYLZNSgLEcL4eVOwCHPsMpGQ70fjWh8Tr1M7FZXKtGo9coWsvC1GZcgTDh2knXxpYd52NOpD7Q1bYQvJ5iGUp2/s320/IMG_7474.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Literally acting as Monkeys on a branch that had fallen across the hiking trail</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBUWILG0m6YW_RhIm63x7uDemIgEn5-2nlcAP9t4cgcDhEZFCXSaSYucnxVlt5BDr1sSgwxF0fQMwobterMx1nVzA-P2F5jARbr_OcEWt12GPAHqt2pAfWg9zeObz6y8gKGcUX0rOb_9p5/s1600/IMG_7475.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBUWILG0m6YW_RhIm63x7uDemIgEn5-2nlcAP9t4cgcDhEZFCXSaSYucnxVlt5BDr1sSgwxF0fQMwobterMx1nVzA-P2F5jARbr_OcEWt12GPAHqt2pAfWg9zeObz6y8gKGcUX0rOb_9p5/s320/IMG_7475.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Somehow we got into a game of skipping, even Ben has the hip moves needed for a good skip (yes, he somehow has rhythm, thanks to mom not dad of course).
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From the pic above you can tell these trees aren't quite as wide at the bottom as the Sequoias, but still pretty darn big as you can see, and SO TALL, hard to believe they can grow that tall.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_bdIUvRrpGD8kF5Ktfv72k_ZfRZEGEDIRnB2Nvex_ofUihCgH3riEZmkG_6qF_vHjI1rvyhHbkmF3MM6q9mglcBIyVMWYYRJx4n4500_ZxUl28OxUGc64ohBSIclDDaDkVdUpF0jDqf7/s1600/IMG_7492.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_bdIUvRrpGD8kF5Ktfv72k_ZfRZEGEDIRnB2Nvex_ofUihCgH3riEZmkG_6qF_vHjI1rvyhHbkmF3MM6q9mglcBIyVMWYYRJx4n4500_ZxUl28OxUGc64ohBSIclDDaDkVdUpF0jDqf7/s320/IMG_7492.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>Here is the nature we saw, a banana slug. Mom spotted it, and it was quite easy as the yellow literally jumps out at you when you are surrounded by brown and green the entire time, for miles and miles.</div>
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All an all it was a great day. The Redwoods are priceless and sad to know they are a fraction of what they once were. The Redwoods used to dominate the CA Western coast, today's forest is only a mere 3% of what it once was. Before the ice ages, there were three types of Redwood, and after the ice melt, they were pushed to CA and China where they exit today, Sequoias are one of the three Redwood families in case you were wondering.</div>
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<br />Tonight we are headed to Klamath, CA just below Crescent City to stay for the night right on the river. Too bad it is still hazy as it would be a beautiful location for sure.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-31388359996293238082013-06-29T08:35:00.001-07:002013-06-29T08:35:47.961-07:00The Shields House - Tahoe National Forest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzJdjW95lC4k4edXPo9b_KgfFCkWIO7KSDOQahKh0m9b7dA0vbph6Eo-IxwS8iqHwpJ-4xlpRT-kuWTAY0atJfZ1-0nHkMvZZ3Cx5VVC5GcAGNds8yDJqVPNeJ0X8VYycbVUz1QSY5NHH/s1600/IMG_7408.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzJdjW95lC4k4edXPo9b_KgfFCkWIO7KSDOQahKh0m9b7dA0vbph6Eo-IxwS8iqHwpJ-4xlpRT-kuWTAY0atJfZ1-0nHkMvZZ3Cx5VVC5GcAGNds8yDJqVPNeJ0X8VYycbVUz1QSY5NHH/s320/IMG_7408.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>We arrived at the Shield's place a bit before 9pm on Friday night. We called Jack the caretaker about 10 minutes out and he met us at the house to turn all the lights on, etc as it was dark already. Thankfully we have been here before so the review of how things work wasn't too long. The kids were thrilled and just ran around like crazy. The house is pretty large, and they loved just getting lost in it. The playroom was the hit - with pool table, ping pong, pop-a-shot, a puppet theatre and more. We finally got them to settle down and go to bed, as it had been a long day. Here is a pic of the house from the outside - from the front and back. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0k9thAFkwrZo6T73xF6_Im8bOG29ogxzyMH5MIK6xuoyALljcfBFsXJxmGPLY3O1OFv_rJZxPtYvDmX29qMcJuNwt8Wa3fZsnZHWWRCZjz1o-VyTvGbc_15SKAwDFrTCviC6wMu-NIsvs/s1600/IMG_3161.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0k9thAFkwrZo6T73xF6_Im8bOG29ogxzyMH5MIK6xuoyALljcfBFsXJxmGPLY3O1OFv_rJZxPtYvDmX29qMcJuNwt8Wa3fZsnZHWWRCZjz1o-VyTvGbc_15SKAwDFrTCviC6wMu-NIsvs/s320/IMG_3161.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcywiXRU8wPLxsvBDEh0JrUqefpiaMqKBC1FoW62VPRcl6dg6GigpfUeLMeJq6FFRRz_iVXRyYvLX3jS6uqSK0y1oAb75g92bwDf8gFUrjhH7XOb-Kbx5G3uKqAwjGxKx8OmJmFc7rxnJm/s1600/IMG_3150.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcywiXRU8wPLxsvBDEh0JrUqefpiaMqKBC1FoW62VPRcl6dg6GigpfUeLMeJq6FFRRz_iVXRyYvLX3jS6uqSK0y1oAb75g92bwDf8gFUrjhH7XOb-Kbx5G3uKqAwjGxKx8OmJmFc7rxnJm/s320/IMG_3150.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>The inside is great because it has a gigantic great room that you can really spend all your time in. The funniest part is we have been there twice and never used a TV - you just hang out, sit by the fire, play games and more. All day you just want to be outside by the lake and enjoying nature, but the house is large and can accommodate a big group so it is nice to be with friends. Our friend Marcia Hunt was coming up on Saturday with her twins KK (Caitlyn) and Matthew to spend the weekend with us. Like Louisa, Marcia interned at P and G with me. Her and Loud both went to Chicago for their MBA's. Unlike Lou Marcia stayed in CPG for a while- stating at Kraft and most recently at Petsmart. She was in our wedding 12 years ago, and Arnie had not seen here since here wedding 8 years ago in Phoenix. I saw her at our girls weekend in February, but was still so excited as I finally get to meet her 5 year old twins.</div>
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Before Marcia and the kids arrived, my kids found the dress up playchest and went hog wild. I hat to take pictures, because I can probably bribe Ben in a few years and they were really cute. THe decided to combine "two outfits" in one - so Sarah was a Clown Chef, Ben was a Cowboy Ballerina, and Claire was Fireman princess. Check out this pic. Sarah took her chef theme even further and wanted to pose while cooking. Of course she saw a bottle of wine and being our comedian picked it up and posed for the camera.</div>
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When the guests arrived the outdoor fun began. Our first stop was the hot tub. My kids, and frankly me love hot tubs. I would get one at home, but Arnie says no way. Often our kids will describe a vacation and lead with "remember the place we went with the hot tub." All we have to do is mention the presence of a hot tub and they get really excited. So we definitely used this one quite a bit. Here is a cute pic of the kids enjoying it.</div>
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After the hot tub it was time for a different kind of water, the lake. The water temperature was quite cool, but the kids waded in it a little bit. They really wanted to take a boat ride with dad. As we prepared for the boat ride we discovered a new fact about our dog Henry, he can swim. We know Henry is part Lab, and part something else (or a bunch of something else) but not sure which. We are not surprised he swims, but we never saw him do it before so it was a surprise. The bad news is every time a boat took off, he wanted to go with it. The lake is pretty big so we were afraid he would get too far out and then have trouble, you know it is hard to do the doggy paddle for too long. The kids played around a bit with him, but then Papa came to the rescue and he got him on a chained leash so the boat could take off. In the pics below you will see him in the water trying to follow the boat.</div>
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But the entertainment didn't stop there, we have five kids under 10, you know their attention span. We then had puppet shows, ping pong tournaments and basketball. The Shield's have a tennis court with a basketball hoop, so Ben was very happy. We worked hard on his left hand, tons of dribbling and trying left lay-ups, which are tough to get the hang of, especially when your left hand doesn't have the strength like your right. He would get mad at me for putting this pic on here, but I took some to show him what he is doing right and wrong, this one he did pretty well.</div>
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This is beautiful KK when we taught her how to wrap her hair in a towel, my girls love it and she did too, so cute with mom smiling in the background<br />
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Papa made us a great dinner - steak, baked potatoes, some pasta, green beans and more. It was very yummy and we all had fun chatting away. And of course we topped it off with smores on the fire outside. It was SUPERMOON night, we had some a gorgeous view of the lake as we sat outside roasting marshmallows, priceless for sure. We were all beat so it was an early evening after some games of Uno by all, we retired to bed.</div>
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Sunday wasn't as great of a weather day as Saturday. It was still warm, but a bit overcast. We would take it thought, as the last time we were here in June is SNOWED! You just never know what you are going to get in the mountains (which is why we love them). Lots would happen today, we would lose Grandma and Papa, they had a red-eye flight back to NY, to be back in time for my niece's high school graduation on Tuesday. Marcia and the kids would also leave late afternoon to get back to Sacramento as they were headed to Southern California on Monday morning. But we still had lots of exploring to do, a big hike was first on the list. There is tons of exploring to do here, my dad leaves for hours and finds the trail markings, and more. Here are some pics from our hike, you see the Indian art on the rocks, and views back to the house (look for the beach around the lake) from afar.</div>
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We were all a bit sad when 4:30 when the last car pulled away. Lots of sad goodbyes, but it was so great to spend three full weeks with Grandma and Papa, just creating priceless memories. The kids were quite sad as were Arnie and I. Of course we just love seeing my parents, but they were so helpful too. My dad did most of the cooking and just was a workhorse like he always is. So Arnie had a ton of help and got educated on how everything works. Grandma was laundry lady and child entertainer. So it would be a huge shift when they would no longer be around. The good news is we had a bit of a transition in California as we rented a car for "the state" so my parents could take it to the airport, and to make getting to the parks easier. Yes we broke the law and had 7 people in a sedan, but it worked for the short drives. Due to this, Arnie and I knew what it was like to not have them in the RV while driving, which was hard. This meant we both had to be up front for the most part, so the kids didn't have someone to play games with besides each other :)<br />
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We did spend Sunday night at the house as planned, we debated leaving and heading towards Lassen Volcanic national park about 3 hours North. I had not heard of it so didn't plan it in, and tried to convince Arnie we could pull it off, but he didn't bite. He liked the plan of another night of relaxation. This also gave us time to clean the house, re-organize the RV clothing storage since some opened up based on my parents leaving, and so forth. So we slept in heaven one more night and headed out Monday morning, of course not as early as planned, but it worked. It was raining today, but we were ok with it, we thought it was a message from God that we were sad that Grandma and Papa were no longer on our trip with us. The first order of business was getting an oil change, Neff Brothers (who we rented from) found a place in Sacramento and they were waiting for us.<br />
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Here is a pic of Sarah, this is what happened about 6:30 on Sunday night after all of our adventures. Believe it or not, she never woke up, slept through dinner and made it until Monday morning. That is a barometer for how much fun she had. While she slept, dad, Ben and Claire tried some fishing, got some bites but couldn't real them in, but another fun thing to do.<br />
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We are off to Redwoods now, about a 4.5 hour drive but that is after the oil change and lunch. We are staying in Redcrest, CA on the "avenue of the giants" our first night, looking forward to it.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-49278220151692976222013-06-28T22:39:00.000-07:002013-06-28T22:39:08.005-07:00Yosemite Day 2- Tioga Road<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After our not so fun ride into the West side of Yosemite, we decided we would exit the East side and drive up to Tahoe from the East. Frankly the thought of going down the road we came in with just made us all sick to our stomach. Arnie was a bit nervous as the Tioga Pass write-up said you would climb to 9,000 feet and that is alot when driving a 32 foot RV, but I was up for it and I would be doing the driving. After getting some gas at our RV park store, just to be case given the altitude we would climb, we hit the road. </div>
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Tioga Pass is described as such in our National Geographic book: "Tioga road, which climbs into an alpine world of snowy peaks, crystal lakes, wind-tousled meadows, and relatively few people." Doesn't that just sound divine, I was so excited. We stopped at many of the look-outs and little lakes along the road. We saw signs for the White Wolf lodge and it was the first day it was open for the season, as it was June 21st, the first day of summer, so we thought we would stop to see it. I don't know about you but when it says "lodge" I think it is going to be a rather large building with hotel like rooms. Well lodges at Yosemite are a but different. They have these "rooms" that are part cement walls, and then have heavy duty tarps, like the types of tents you rent for an outdoor wedding, as the roof and walls. There are tons of them, and this is what they call a lodge. So we quickly turned around and headed out again.</div>
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The first place we stopped was a cute little lake surrounded by great trees. It was just a picturesque point and we were just warming up.<br />
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The second main stop was Olmsted Point. A few things were magnificent about this place; 1) it had the most amazing long-distance view of Half-Dome, through a valley; 2) it was steep rock cliffs the kids of course loved to play on; and 3) a group of about 20 park ranger fireman stopped to take a picture :) (bummer for you all I was too shy to take one of them, I am guessing they were either in training or coming back from fighting the wildfire, based on their ages, I think the former).<br />
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Our next stop was right around the corner at Tenaya Lake. Gosh this place was beautiful. We took lots of photos and just walked around. Henry loved getting his paws wet in the ice cold water. Speaking of water, there was a mom and her two older daughters there, I am guessing around 16 and 20. She dared the older daughter to jump in the water like the polar bear club. I never thought she would do it, but she did, and then they made her stay in a minute to get whatever prize she would get. I had to clap for her, that was above and beyond. The water was so clear and blue, but definitely alpine in temperature. Henry is actually in the photo below with Arnie and I, but his black fur blends in so well with our fleeces it is hard to see.<br />
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Our last stop was Toulumne Meadows. This is what gets written up on Tioga Road, it is also where the visitor center is, camping and the most activity in general (i.e. post office). We were a bit early for the summer flowers that normally cover the meadow but it was still really beautiful. We had a nice picnic lunch and then headed off on the Soda Springs trail. It is names so as it has a natural spring at the end of it. Along the way we meandered a bit and stopped by the flowing river, definitely a bit like "a river runs through it" film. We even ran into some rangers on horseback on the way back.<br />
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Coming out of the park was a bit tough, remember that 9,000 feet we climbed (well really only about 3,000 as we were already high), we now had to come down most of it in less than 5 minutes. The RV has a button you push when ascending or descending a bunch, it is the "haul/tow" function and it lets the engine slow you down vs. the brakes. We despite this being on and me using the breaks, the RV smelled like it would explode. But...pulling off isn't quite easy either, remember NO GUARDRAILS anywhere near this place. I finally found a place to pull off and rest the engine, it took a good 5 minutes for the smell to go away.</div>
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An unexpected highlight was the drive up to Tahoe. We were driving on Route 395 North, another scenic </div>
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byway, and boy was this one. Having done Route 101 down the Coast, and now Route 128 in Moab through the canyons, this was right up there with it. It started with Mono Basin, which is a MASSIVE lake filled by all the run-off of the snow. The funny thing is it doesn't go anywhere, so over time it has become salt-water like as it evaporates away. It was so beautiful, blue like the Mediterranean, almost unreal looking. Because of it's properties, it has become the "stopping point" for over 2 million migrant birds each year.</div>
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All of my pics from the RV don't give the drive it's justice in terms of beauty, so I am not posting any. But we did stop to take pics of the sunsetting over Tahoe- just beautiful.</div>
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A bit about the Shield's lake house. Louisa and Tom Shields are friends of ours, I met Lou when she interned at P and G with me. She did not come back but we remained friends since. They live in San Fran, just south, she works at Apple now and he owns his own company after many years in Venture Capital. They bought this place about 10 years ago. They own 200 acres in the Tahoe National Forest, about 45 minutes from the lake, heading West on Route 80, Yuba gap area. The cool thing is their property is on the Emmigrant Pass, you can see the historical markings, Indian markings on stone, stagecoach tracks on rocks and more. They have a 7 acre lake so we can go boating and canoeing and it is just a magical place. Last time we came I was pregnant with Sarah, so 8 years ago so we were anxious to go back and just relax for three nights (and sleep on real beds).</div>
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Joanna</div>
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ps - I am now a week behind again, we are realizing that it is impossible to upload any photos when we are not in a city. I try to catch up at friends places, as the MiFi still needs a cell tower to pick up from, and essentially once we are in national forest or national parks, which has been all non-city stops for the last 2.5 weeks, it just won't upload. So now we are in Portland and I am trying to catch up.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-86390040742917108162013-06-24T07:53:00.000-07:002013-06-24T07:53:13.123-07:00Yosemite Day 1 - The valley, June 20th<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After our great trip to Sequoia and Kings Canyon we are very excited to go to Yosemite. We were a bit nervous when I saw online that there was now a wildfire in the park, but when I asked the Rangers in Yosemite they said it was in the far SW corner, not close at all to the valley (there are only two roads to travel on in Yosemite, and the Valley is the main one).<br />
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A bit about the wildfires. The West is in a major drought right now, and June is producing conditions they normally don't have until August. They just didn't get the spring rain they normally do, so fires are popping up everywhere. I am sure you have all seen, heard about the huge one in Colorado Springs, it started a few days after we drove through on our way to National Sand Dunes. Now Yosemite, which was caused by a campfire embers. Due to this you are only allowed campfires in metal fire pits in the campgrounds, none in the backcountry, but some people don't listen.<br />
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We put our destination into Google Maps and decided to choose route 3. We were on the road prior heading up to Sequoia and thought we would take it. For all your Yosemite experts, were we staying off Rt 120, not 41 and would enter up North vs. in the South. We had a bit of a detour in Fresno trying to find something who could do an oil change on an RV - not easy task at all and we failed (so today we are finally getting one). We have put over 4,000 miles on it already and need to get it done. So we head up North, first through Visalia (which was funny to me as that was one of IRI's BehaviorScan markets when I used to work there and run all the tests, and now I am there) and the central valley farms. They are huge, tons of mega-farms with oranges, plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes and more. <br />
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But then for our last road we turn onto Rt. 49 (I believe, don't have the map in front of me). Instead of going to the South entrance we have to go North. First we missed the turn and have a road we have to go on that was like the Mars rover, bumps everywhere. But we make it to the highway and as my dad said "that was worse than driving the Amalfi coast"....hairpin turns, dropping thousands of feet or climbing in minutes, and just up and down, round and round for about an hour. NOT FUN!!! At All. Arnie was driving (thank god) and it was nerve racking, but we made it to Grovedale the location of our RV park. We were so exhausted by the trip (as remember my parents are behind us in the rental car, so they had to drive it too and be fearful of us falling off at each turn, as there were NO guardrails), we ran into a grocery store and went to a cafe for dinner, as the thought of cooking was too much.<br />
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We did have views of the smoke from the fire, and passed tons of fires trucks leaving (I am guessing to get more supplies, rest), it was very sad. But thankfully it is contained now. After a nice dinner we drive another 18 miles closer to the park where Yosemite Lakes RV park was. It was now dark but we found it and settled in to our full-hookup site, but with horrible cell coverage, again we were in the dark connection wise.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj27WIgC3xKjhrPeYq5R0TzTZZFbvD6QJFgwnIrGDDdov73a0wAaRh4mygWIRcj4nl8zJsbpp5A09iR9MsCK2lA_KYdbrDUwWeCuxLWXRBrunZ9AqOUvZeq_6JAJOeGMghLs_NHZaQPtZNO/s1600/IMG_7176.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj27WIgC3xKjhrPeYq5R0TzTZZFbvD6QJFgwnIrGDDdov73a0wAaRh4mygWIRcj4nl8zJsbpp5A09iR9MsCK2lA_KYdbrDUwWeCuxLWXRBrunZ9AqOUvZeq_6JAJOeGMghLs_NHZaQPtZNO/s320/IMG_7176.JPG" width="320" xya="true" /></a>We met great neighbors at this park, a recently retired couple from Vermont who were doing a cross-country trip, they had left May 3rd, with their golden retriever in tow. Was nice chatting with them and sharing tips. After breakfast we headed into the park, the gate was 4 miles away, but then you have a 20+ mile trip into the Valley. The drive was picturesque for sure, among pines and rock cliffs fairly quickly as you enter. Before you even get into the Valley and visitor center you come across El Capitan, the massive rock cliff that is very intimidating as you come upon it. You know because suddenly cars and RV's are parked on the sides of the one-way road you travel in on. Here are some pics of that and Bridalveil falls.</div>
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We continued on the Valley road into the visitor center area. This was the first park where parking and traveling is really an issue. The Grand Canyon because many people stay at lodges in the park or campgrounds, and their bus system is amazing (and easy to follow) you just don't see cars. But in Yosemite they were everywhere, and they beg you to park and take the buses to help with pollution, etc which is what we did. After much looking we found a parking spot and took the bus. A quick trip to the visitor center for our postcards, passport stamps and my dad's t-shirt (he got one everywhere) and we were off to go hike to the river/meadow to have some lunch.<br />
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We stopped on the river to have a picnic lunch and it was great. All of the tubers and rafters come down, it is a leisurely ride and looked like fun. There were these beautiful birds, some type of Jays in the park too and the kids would joke they followed us, as we had one with us it seemed the entire day.<br />
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So we now had our energy and were off to the Falls. The Yosemite Lower Falls. You can hike to the Upper but it is about 2 miles straight up, so we would go to the lower. We all made it to the picture/viewing area, and then the five of us climbed up the rocks to get close to the falls and cool off in the mist coming off the falls. Of course Ben had to go even farther and I didn't feel comfortable with the girls so we split up and the boys went, some great pics of our little adventure rock climbing.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQhkPbNKcpVIG0sJ1faWSIIY75XbIkThMhnBxGQ1LQKFmIPNcjTa7xwNyn5S7Zu3_HtTxVW7urY3vNAMJF76qFSZT_vUxbD0SjQX45JY8WuFZ3Mn5b7AQiMQ8ulvE21FHDxKe7RTbr16/s1600/IMG_7250.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWQhkPbNKcpVIG0sJ1faWSIIY75XbIkThMhnBxGQ1LQKFmIPNcjTa7xwNyn5S7Zu3_HtTxVW7urY3vNAMJF76qFSZT_vUxbD0SjQX45JY8WuFZ3Mn5b7AQiMQ8ulvE21FHDxKe7RTbr16/s320/IMG_7250.JPG" width="213" xya="true" /></a>That's Ben in this last one, gives you a sense of how big the rocks where that we had to climb.</div>
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So we are tired now for sure, but Mom really wants to hike down to Mirror Lake where you can see Half Dome, they other big rock cliff famous in Yosemite. The hike was recommended by many guides, and in our National Geographic book on National Parks. We hop on the bus again and off we go. But first a detour, we got one stop and Claire announced she left her walking stick at the last stop where we began. After asking more questions we realized two water bottles were left too...it is a one-way loop,, so would take forever to get back there. So good ole dad runs the 1.2 miles back to the stop to get everything and hops on the bus again. 20 minutes later we are back on the bus heading East. The hike isn't bad, a bit uphill at the end, but no mirror lake, with the lack of rain fall it is barely a puddle. The good news, an amazing view of half-dome, the bad news, no reflection in the water. For some reason I didn't take good pics of half-dome here, but you will see some amazing ones tomorrow.</div>
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We are now all exhausted, as it has been a long, great day. And we have a bus ride to the car, and then a 45 minute drive home, so we call it a day. The bus was easy, only downside was some very smelly hikers next to us, but we survived, definitely not Old Spice or any other deodorant user. We were back home by 6:30 and ready for a great dinner - hamburgers, brats, corn on the cob and some pasta on the side...yummy by chef Papa. <br />
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Tomorrow we will head to Tioga Pass, which is the "other" road through Yosemite. A gross fraction of the cars go on this road, it leads to most back-country hikes and actually goes entirely through the park, so we will exit on the East side and take scenic byway Rt 395 through the Sierra Nevadas up to Tahoe. Looking forward to it.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-76635925934541505882013-06-23T16:38:00.001-07:002013-06-23T16:38:41.813-07:00Kings Canyon and Sequoia - those are some big trees.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So after two and a half great days with Andrea and Bob it was time to say goodbye to city living and head back to nature in the RV. The kids were going to miss the dogs and the pool ,but the parks were calling. The first order of business was getting the RV out of the driveway. I didn't tell you all about getting the RV into the driveway. I drove into Pasadena on the freeway, which has essentially been the routine. Here is how I would describe who got what driving<br />
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1) Joanna- fastest roads, inside the national parks<br />
2) Dad (my father) - tight corners (like in cities), storms, tough conditions<br />
3) Arnie - the easy stuff :)<br />
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So after getting to us to the front of Andrea and Bob's place, I parked on the street and handed my dad the keys to get it into the back-lot on their property. Once safely in it just sat there for the entire time, as we rented a car for the week to have with us. But now it was time to not only get it out, but to turn it around. We guestimated it was going to be something between a 7 and 10 point turn (it took 8). Here are some great pics of the guys directing traffic and the "close" call on how wide the RV was relative to their fences/walls.<br />
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The good news is we got it out without ruining the fence or running over the sprinkler system, but it was a close call for sure. Off we went heading north on the 5 to get up to Sequoia. You actually get two parks for in one when you head up there, they are right next to each other and the two largest trees in the world are split between them. At Bob's suggestion we stays in Grant's Pass which is actually in KingsCanyon. The one fun thing we are doing is we got National Park Passports and we have been getting them stamped at every park, and then buying the national park sticker to put in with its. So we got Kings Canyon at the visitor center and then went to set up shop in the RV park. </div>
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National park RV parks vary quite widely. From having to make reservations months in advance, to this one where you simply filled out a piece of paper and dropped some cash in a box, honor system only here. We actually paid double as Arnie did see the fine print that said 50% off for annual pass holders...think of it as a $9 donation to the parks, they could use it given the sequester (sp?). After getting the RV balanced and all set we headed off in the rental car to go see General Grant's tree, the 2nd largest. We hiked up to the tree and it is a sight, and huge. The stat is done on volume, vs. height, width, etc. Having seen the Redwoods it was really hard for me to believe these were bigger, but I will trust it. Here are some photos from #2 (at bottom) and other very large trees both still standing and those who have fallen already.</div>
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Perhaps you took note of our dress, which clearly shows we have left the dessert and headed to the mountains. It definitely got much colder at night and we had to dig out the long pants, fleeces and sweatshirts for our evening hike. But as you can also see, blue skies all around. We have been blessed with the weather so far for sure, but also knew we had to sleep with socks on that evening. The kids had marshmallows on the fire that evening and we settled in for the night, as Sequoia and General Sherman awaited us.</div>
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We got up early to try to get to Sequoia early as we were going to drive to Yosemite in the afternoon. The hike down to General Sherman was all downhill so we knew it would be tough coming back up. This park was also more crowded than Kings Canyon. We did find it ironic that they named the world's largest tree after a General who's strategy was to burn down things to fight off the enemy, but we will leave that in history. The smell of Sequoia/KC was just unreal, no matter how good Febreze and Yankee Candle are you just can't bottle it. As my mom said "I wish I could just capture this and take it with me." Here are some pics of the great trees. The one of the patio looking thing is actually the shape of the bottom of the tree.</div>
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It is so hard to see the scale of these things, so I am now adding some pics with humans in them so you can get a sense of how gigantic they truly are. There was a whole path we didn't go to called "congress path" they name them after Presidents, senators, etc. But this was all part of the Giant Forest area of the park, and you felt like you were amongst giants for sure. Truly spectacular the immensity of it all.<br />
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So a great day and a half and off we head to Yosemite. I must say we are all very excited for Yosemite. None of us have been there, and of course we have seen all the amazing Ansel Adams pics of it, so looking forward to seeing it for ourselves. Off we go...<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-309674124307520202013-06-22T17:03:00.000-07:002013-06-22T17:03:15.720-07:00The GRAND Canyon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOeq6PweWvDyDu5TS_x16WMXfhq-lM5VYdF66QaC0yBsio69f9WNRBksKhybHg94S4gGbFo3vRs9uR0wA-StpG2sA3Zd2LLDK5NR3iHexNN3l3irTx4Zij_Y_xiedyywSwu-5uEw6N6fS0/s1600/IMG_6970.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOeq6PweWvDyDu5TS_x16WMXfhq-lM5VYdF66QaC0yBsio69f9WNRBksKhybHg94S4gGbFo3vRs9uR0wA-StpG2sA3Zd2LLDK5NR3iHexNN3l3irTx4Zij_Y_xiedyywSwu-5uEw6N6fS0/s320/IMG_6970.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>Friday June 14th, our full day in the canyon.</div>
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For those of you who have not seen the Grand Canyon in person, there is definately a reason it is;</div>
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1) one of the natural wonders of the world;</div>
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2) it is on average 1 mile deep (though not the deepest, that goes to a canyon in the Himalayas)</div>
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3) you can see it from outer space, one of a few objects on earth visible (so is the great wall).</div>
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It is hard to describe the canyon, as it changes with every viewpoint. It is massive in size, just goes on and on, it would take 251 miles to drive around it, 21 walking miles to get across it...just huge. It is not very wide at some points (as little as 600 feet) but then 18 miles apart at another point, so it changes a great deal. It is carved it two by the Colorado river, but that seems hard to believe when you see the river so low as it is today. You can raft down the canyon, we thought about doing that for a spring break, but now that I have seen it 3 times, say goodbye to that, you know Arnie and I, never see the same place twice, let alone 4 times.</div>
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We started our day biking to the Eastern viewpoints from Grand Canyon village. We stayed in the RV park in the center of the village, not far from the grocery store. We only have 5 bikes with us, so none for Grandma and Papa, so the plan was they would take the bus and we would meet them. We should have figured it out that the map doesn't quite due it justice how far away things are. I think we thought it would be a couple of miles, but it was more like 4-5 miles down, and VERY close to the edge, and at times VERY windy. I can't say I was a nervous wreck as I was riding close to Claire who is the clutsy one of our children, and she was being cautious. But I think Arnie was pretty nervous, he had Sarah in the rear. We actually couldn't get to the lookout point at the end without riding on the road with the buses, so we passed on that. We ended up meeting Grandma and Papa at another viewpoint to take some pictures. </div>
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For those of you who have not met our son Ben let me tell you a bit about him. He is our oldest, but as FAR from the stereotypical first child as you can get. He is NOT a rule follower, does not stay close to mom or dad and in general likes to push the elements. He is a very talented athlete and too smart for his gown good, and worst of all (for a 10 year old, will be great later) he thinks he is the best at EVERYTHING!. So he was zooming around the curves, wanted to walk to the edge of every lookout and on and on. I thought either Arnie or I would have a heart attack at some point. 90% of the time he was right when he pointed out, it is "not the edge mom and dad" but as you look from a few yards back it looks like it goes straight down. Anyway, we had our moments for sure. Here are some pics of the kids "near the edge" that they had to take for their friends and post on Instagram (which seems to dictate our photo shots these days).</div>
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As you have probably figured out we are trying to take group shots wherever we can. This is truly a priceless trip for me and the kids to be able to spend the time not only together as a nuclear family but to have my mom and dad with us for the journey. Having lost a parent very unexpetedly (Arn's mom) I never want to have the feeling we had wondering what was the last event we spent with her, last conversation, last photo, did we spend enough time together and so forth. I am making every moment a Kodak moment and documenting the heck out of this trip...as you all can tell with this bloody blog, which we will print out for the kids to have in their keepsake, so when I am old maybe they will thank me and their dad for the trip.</div>
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This next photo is special for a different reason. Many of you know I grew up in a very close knit, largely Italian (I am 75%, my mom 100%, my dad 50%) family in NY, about an hour north of the city. My mom and dad both came from blue collar working class families. They met when my mom was a Freshman and my dad a Senior in High School at a CYO basketball game (my mom was playing with my dad's younger sister). My mom graduated high school in June and married my dad in August, 47 years ago this year. My dad went to work for his dad in their sheet metal business, which was a Union business, and my mom was the bookkeeper up until today really. While they are both retired, they still go in and do what needs to be done, while my Uncle Al runs the day to day business. Here they are, 51 years later from when they met, still in love. <br />
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Anyway, prior to the age of 9, our lives sort of revolved around my dad's boy scout work. My dad was an eagle scout growing up and after he graduated from high school he had what is called an "Explorer Post" (I hope I get this all right). It is a uni-sex group of high school, post high school kids who do scout work. What I remember as a 4-8 year old was; a) going to the scout camp up in the Catskills what seemed like every other weekend; b) going to the Jersey shore on an annual camping trip with the all every summer; and c) their weekly meeting where they would make their costumes and practice performing. THey were the Wuliso (sp?) dancers, they did native American Indian dances at performances, they even went to California for a trip. We loved hanging out with all these teenagers, and it was REALLY ODD when threee of them were my junior high and high school teachers later in life! THey are all still very close to my parents, they call them mom and pop and I get to see them every now and then, for good times (like a wedding) and bad (like when they all came to my cousins wake a month ago). So, when we got to the canyon and saw that there was a performance by native Navajo indians we had to watch it. Unfortunately we only got to see a little bit, but for sure brought out great memories for my dad, mom and me.<br />
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I have to say, my dad's costumes were so much better, he had a head to toe headpiece hand-ade with feather the entire way down. They would spend hours on them, hand beading everything. That was a precious time in our lives. <br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-58234824369842276742013-06-22T09:04:00.000-07:002013-06-22T15:51:01.298-07:00We're going behind the scenes to see how Hollywood works<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
June 17th - Monday- Day 15<br />
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So after an amazing Sunday of seeing old friends, great food and some sightseeing we work up Monday to start all over again :) Bob would be our tour guide today, as Andrea had to go back to Reality and work at Naked brands (a division of Pepsi that owns Naked Juice, Izze soda and ONE coconut water). To start things off Bob made pancakes and sausage for everyone, so nice, the kids were so happy of course. Mom decided to sleep in giving how comfy the bed was, and the fact it is virtually impossible to do in the RV. This gave the kids plenty of time to cuddle with Zane and Diamond. Despite the fact that Zane weighs 85 pounds and Diamond 65, they are lap dogs and love to cuddle. And of course my kids love to do this, and don't get to often as Henry is not allowed on beds or couches. Check out these adorable pics.<br />
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We decided we would do the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Warner Brothers VIP backlot tour. I booked our tour for 3:30 to go until 6pm so we would be home to have dinner with Andrea. The walk of Fame is not quite as glamorous as they make it seem on TV. Think of putting it in the cheesiest tourist area of town and that is what you have. We did enjoy some of the shopping, we purchased</div>
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- the Oscar for Best Nanny to give to Pat</div>
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- Sarah purchased the Oscar for best friend to give to Emma</div>
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- Some I heart LA t-shirts for the girls</div>
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- And M&D got some stuff for my nieces</div>
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The kid didn't know many of the names which was sort of depressing and brings me back to another funny story. We had stopped at a rest stop somewhere in Kansas to have dinner and were sitting at a picnic table. Out of an RV comes a beautiful collie and my dad says "look guys he looks just like Lassie" and of course the response was "who's Lassie?" My dad was so upset it was all he could talk about. He was at least happy they knew who Benjie was. Then I rattled off to him all the things/people they have no idea who they are and it sort of sank in - The Brady Bunch, Fonzie, Black Beauty, Laverne and Shirley....never seen any of them. We did take some pics of the ones the recognize, hopefully they will make you chuckle.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOn-6LvI9mtOCQ5YPKjI1Z8KdD9JtGww2kzfoiRrCjxOEQYojigSiY1G_F3Ndf5qh3wrn78RKdugHeUOEjvc1rN9out_w0mGlmk2qGJdHPySv01xiHc0gVpwY-QQ5JUuhZ3Q60YBAeLx6/s1600/IMG_7049.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOn-6LvI9mtOCQ5YPKjI1Z8KdD9JtGww2kzfoiRrCjxOEQYojigSiY1G_F3Ndf5qh3wrn78RKdugHeUOEjvc1rN9out_w0mGlmk2qGJdHPySv01xiHc0gVpwY-QQ5JUuhZ3Q60YBAeLx6/s320/IMG_7049.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>Well at least Mom and Dad have educated them on the Beatles and what good music is! Most of the people they recognized where either because:</div>
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a) they had been on Dancing with the Stars (Kirstie Alley, Florence Henderson)</div>
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b) They had been a mentor on American Idol (Stevie Wonder)</div>
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c) they were the voice in an animated movie (Mike Meyers) and so forth...very funny!</div>
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The other highlight was the fact that Hollywood boulevard was closed for the Monsters University premiere that night. Of course the kids wanted to go, and perhaps we could have figured out how to get tickets, but it was my last night with Andrea and that was way more important. So we just too some pics and told them it was for the people in the movie only.</div>
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From there we headed towards Burbank home of many of the TV and Movie studios. Thanks to Yelp we found a great Italian deli/restaurant to have lunch at. Mario's Deli and Pinocchio restaurant (I hope that is right). The food was pretty good, huge portions like a good Italian, but very authentic look - it must have been there for 50+ years, reminded me a lot of NY. We were all way too full after lunch, but of course made room for the Gelato, which has become a favorite on this trip for sure. Bob even found Andrea's favorite olive oil, which ironically is from Spain in their little store. Off we went to the Warner Brothers studio.</div>
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I was not fully aware of what WB produced. Of course they did all the cartoons from when I grew up that you can't forget - Bugs Bunnny, Daffy Duck, Roadrunner and so forth. In fact that is who greeted us when we arrived on the campus.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcyWoimNOw80Tgk07Mp7zGo1mBTHu7-sQw19OjQqEWSn5IgathflhsngeF19sSO_b0qz0VKOSj1hlQp9fVowyXx_1f4g_XioYwJOrp19vwUqd4zGaUivzINpgi57xNqL6FbN73PwP5rOa/s1600/IMG_7060.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcyWoimNOw80Tgk07Mp7zGo1mBTHu7-sQw19OjQqEWSn5IgathflhsngeF19sSO_b0qz0VKOSj1hlQp9fVowyXx_1f4g_XioYwJOrp19vwUqd4zGaUivzINpgi57xNqL6FbN73PwP5rOa/s320/IMG_7060.JPG" width="213" wya="true" /></a>We learned a ton about Warner Brothers in our 2.5 hours. I didn't know much about it prior. First it was started by 4 brothers. Their first huge hit that paid a ton of bills was Rin Tin Tin. The lot and it's back lots can be used by any production house, not just WB. So there are always people on sight scouting out the locations. They showed us how they do the fake facades, truly amazing, pressed bricks, etc that look so real. When someone uses the lot they can do anything they want to it including blow it up, they just have to replace it and put it back to close to normal (it can change that is ok). Their biggest TV hit was Friends, right now they make $1B per year in syndication....I guess they were all worth the $1MM (that millions within P&G) per episode they got paid in the end. The only show that was in production right now was Pretty Little Liars, they were filming when we were there. WB is also home to Chuck Lorre productions (you know the guy Charlie Sheen went off on), he was there when we were, as evidenced by his very BIG Mercedes sedan, quite nice. All of his shows are filmed there, they call his part of the lot Lorre-land, he has 4 of the stages (I think 24-27) for Big Bang Theory (we got to go into the stage, but all the sets were covered with plastic so it doesn't get dusty), Mike & Molly, 2 1/2 Men and 2 Broke Girls. Every stage lot has a sign on the outside that list every show that was filmed there, it is pretty cool. </div>
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There current shows are PLL, Heart of Dixie, Game of Thrones, Ellen, all the Lorre shows and just finished Gossip Girl. The big movie they are promoting now is Superman coming out. We got to see the suit he wears in the museum, each one costs $1.2 million and he ripped through two of them because he worked out and got bigger as production went on, so they needed 3 to film the entire movie. They also produced all the Harry Potter films and we got to see an amazing amount of costumes and props in the museum, the entire second floor. I believe they have won around 8 best picture Oscars for things like Casablanca. We also got to see all the great cars from movies like Batman, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter, Austin Powers movies and so forth. Here are some of the favorite pics.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDXD3ws1KPuNVTqURCKUq-Ztc7ccET5d7vvePH2t_F1c4fCkn9H1er1a0ymW7NiLUMeDntAMw0GRNyJmZFWlDJrogCkVUHFCAOAX_JZk2y9N7um1Y-mKd0Kku2-MdP0XFx6oMRNxteIMfu/s1600/IMG_7071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDXD3ws1KPuNVTqURCKUq-Ztc7ccET5d7vvePH2t_F1c4fCkn9H1er1a0ymW7NiLUMeDntAMw0GRNyJmZFWlDJrogCkVUHFCAOAX_JZk2y9N7um1Y-mKd0Kku2-MdP0XFx6oMRNxteIMfu/s320/IMG_7071.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>the Grand Turino from the same-named movie with Clint Eastwood - one of arnie and my favorites, I cried my eyes out. That is his actual real car that they used in the movie. He lets them keep it in the museum there, but will come and take it out when he wants it. They said he just drove it off the lot last month :)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA8f8kfued7B7Xq5kSEjgjpMmIbbwtYJUa5FbJygRVT_dPtkQz6LK6AAZjkdS55Q54Jg-bkiAvbPxh83Cala2l52rganwM8cUobSVvGyzsSUTRh2nTPImlhco3aWThhPHeoDPHD7EYu185/s1600/IMG_7072.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA8f8kfued7B7Xq5kSEjgjpMmIbbwtYJUa5FbJygRVT_dPtkQz6LK6AAZjkdS55Q54Jg-bkiAvbPxh83Cala2l52rganwM8cUobSVvGyzsSUTRh2nTPImlhco3aWThhPHeoDPHD7EYu185/s320/IMG_7072.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>Ben and one of the four batmobiles they had there, they all drive and work and were so cool!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0l1Cu4hU_l_2RaHv356RqI046u8ai6hrxM-ueZFFjP7Lw2PRqu99oR__HUJ4MjCB-Nzs4JuZxjcM2Y89RrnyjBjmcM2ljp5_4ql3QHn6dVCbHUuR30pBNEvV2gZCq3XxkIXrRHmgzcVx-/s1600/IMG_7076.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0l1Cu4hU_l_2RaHv356RqI046u8ai6hrxM-ueZFFjP7Lw2PRqu99oR__HUJ4MjCB-Nzs4JuZxjcM2Y89RrnyjBjmcM2ljp5_4ql3QHn6dVCbHUuR30pBNEvV2gZCq3XxkIXrRHmgzcVx-/s320/IMG_7076.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>Yes, this is us on the actual Central Perk set that they re-built on sight and will have forever!</div>
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So we had a great time in LA and it was hard to leave, but nature was calling again and we were ready. Next we would head to three national parks - Kings Canyon and Sequoia which border one another, and then up to Yosemite. These are all new to Arnie and I as well as the kids, so we were all looking forward to it. As we said goodbye to LA I will leave you with one last photo of Claire and her best buddy that she misses so much from Cincy.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-2771888843137301252013-06-21T20:57:00.001-07:002013-06-23T15:59:43.516-07:00We're going to HOLLYWOOD Baby!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Welcome to the land of the stars as they say - Los Angeles. After a long and uneventful drive (except the horrible bumpy roads in Arizona) we arrived in sunny LA on Saturday around 4:45. Actually in Pasadena, where our friends Andrea and Bob live, right up the hill from the Rose Bowl. Hard to believe they are there, last time I was in Pasadena was to see Michigan win the Rose Bowl in 1998 and win the National Championship, now I can walk there from their house. <br />
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They were so kind to have a bar-bq waiting for us when we arrived. Andrea surprised me and invited Mary Heil and old friend from P&G who now lives in Redonda Beach. Also cousin Renee was there, one of Andrea's two first cousins who I know all about. I had not seen Renee in over 10 years so it was nice to see her. Andrea and Bob are amazing cooks so we had GREAT homecooked food a true feast. The kids immediately jumped in the pool and we had to drag them out for dinner. Here are some great pics of the swimming fun. As you can see with Ben, every thing turns into a sport of some kind...and to him "swimming" is not a sport, so he had to do basketball moves for three straight days! Thanks to Thea Andrea and Uncle Bob for buying all the great pools toys to entertain them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxsiqh-A5ZCgor4WdC3U5dWe0DLFagvgiQUvpIksBWe07_IGj_B62uinC8zFnK5gTMgE7NTwQL1vp_khidigpw6h2n1ECPhy5gH8sRyovZv9gYhwIikC72-JoV9WUsfXhK_RFqidZ2XRF/s1600/IMG_6999.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxsiqh-A5ZCgor4WdC3U5dWe0DLFagvgiQUvpIksBWe07_IGj_B62uinC8zFnK5gTMgE7NTwQL1vp_khidigpw6h2n1ECPhy5gH8sRyovZv9gYhwIikC72-JoV9WUsfXhK_RFqidZ2XRF/s320/IMG_6999.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9XIDcXrxV9c0xXRQRS_UCgg-AjFbuicmgDYKhEQK7VPxZLZYLqO6aXmqQiwTd3B9w0E1ogDyk09xV2dCKqvheOwD2Cwn7gEjsfxXRkgX0gI-ySHFqVBnHPwOKDZBQiepJxJkvb975K4G8/s1600/IMG_7085.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9XIDcXrxV9c0xXRQRS_UCgg-AjFbuicmgDYKhEQK7VPxZLZYLqO6aXmqQiwTd3B9w0E1ogDyk09xV2dCKqvheOwD2Cwn7gEjsfxXRkgX0gI-ySHFqVBnHPwOKDZBQiepJxJkvb975K4G8/s320/IMG_7085.JPG" width="320" wya="true" /></a>The other big part of our first night was introducing Henry to Zane and Diamond who are A&B's two Dobermans, also known as their babies. They were a bit worried about Zane as he can at times not be very good with other dogs. It took a little while, and some barking, growls, etc but by the end of the night they were all good buddies for sure. We did have Henry sleep in the RV just to be sure, but all was well in doggy-land.</div>
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On Sunday the plan was to have breakfast in Pasadena with my friend Joan and her family and then do some sightseeing. The day would end with Dinner with the Hand family. Breakfast was a great way to start off Father's Day for sure. We met the Rhoa family and it was delightful. Brad, Joan's husband was awesome - so nice and you could tell amazing with the boys. They have three boys, which is so funny given Joan was the middle of three girls. Jude is 8, Ben is 6 and Lucas is 4. I think Brad won the gene pool, but I did see Joan in Jude for sure. It was so great to catch up again with Joan and meet the entire family, just wish we had more time, but next time for sure we will. Here is a pic of the Rhoa's, Zucker's and my parents.</div>
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After a swimming break (remember they went whenever they could) we headed down to the Santa Monica pier. As many times as I have been to LA for business and pleasure, and even to Santa Monica I never went to the pier. So off we went. While it doesn't hold a candle to Kings Island, or even Coney Island, it was fun to do. The best part was on our way Ben got pulled into a street show. Normally he volunteers for everything, so he often gets pulled onstage (like in Gatlinburg, on Disney cruise, etc) but this time they just pulled him from the crowd. They gave him the name of White Chocolate (it was two african americans and a mexican american). Theyr show was part comedy, part acrobat and part dancing. With Ben they had him dance, and do Michael Jackson like moves. He did very well, I think better than they expected. He was even shocked when Ben could do a kartwheel. The kicker is they paid him for his performance - $10! Here are some pics of Ben, and then the grand finale which was the guy flipping over 6 people (including Ben who you can't see).<br />
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After the great show we hit the pier. We only had about an hour and the lines were long, so two rides each was all we had time for. Thanks to some crafty line-waiting (thanks grandma and papa) we were able to hit the roller-coaster (Ben & Claire), Scrambler (Sarah) and the Ferris Wheel (all three). Sarah even met a new friend, Sierra, who was so kind to go with her on the ride as she was not tall enough to ride alone. Sierra even introduced her to all her friends afterwards which made Sarah's day, as she thinks she is a teenage already. Ben & Claire are in the last seat, they waited special for that seat.<br />
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Claire was very upset we didn't have more time in Santa Barbara, as she could just not get enough of the fact that there was an entire street just for shopping and no CARS were allowed. She loved the promenade and was counting down to LA to finally do some shopping. The gift shops in the national parks were just not cutting it for her, especially after mom banned any purchase of a plush toy.<br />
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From Santa Barbara we headed up the 101 to Malibu. It was quite funny driving up there. As we were driving my dad said "I have been on this road before" - he just saw something and it queue'd something in his mind. After questioning him on where it was in CA he went with the explorer post a really long time ago we realized we had as they performed at Disneyland and then went to Santa Barbara to stay at the college dorms and that was how they drove. I would love to know what image in his mind brought him back over 40 years to that road. We met Chrissie and her family at Cynde Crawford's restaurant Havana Cafe. We ate out on the patio as it was a beautiful day and had a great meal, especially their corn appetizer which is coated in Mexican cheese, it was to die for. Here is a pic of the adults, as the kids had escaped to the playground by the time we took this. Andrea and Bob are on the right with Arnie and I, my mom is on the left with Chrissie and Adam (thanks Dad for taking the pic).</div>
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That's all for our first 1.5 days in LA, off to Hollywood and Warner Brothers tour tomorrow.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-24392215505481369882013-06-18T15:51:00.003-07:002013-06-18T15:51:50.742-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
AZ Post #3 June 18<br />
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Joanna is now primarily in charge of blogging but I want to add my own personal perspective sometimes. As Paul Harvey said, here is "The Rest of the Story."<br />
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As a person who likes to bike, I thought it was pretty cool to see the Ride Across America riders come by us. We saw almost all of the 41 crazy people who entered the race on their 3rd day of racing. At the point we saw them, they were already spread out over about 130 miles. But that still means even the slowest rider is really crazy! A long time ago I rode 155 miles in one day, had a good night sleep and still thought I was going to die when on got back on the bike the next morning to go the last 55 miles of the Seattle to Portland ride. The support needed for the RAAM ride is immense.<br />
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After a wonderful time in Utah playing in the canyons, I thought the Grand Canyon would be totally a let down. I have to say though that it was quite impressive and very beautiful. Every different vantage point provided something a little different - colors, views of the river, depth, etc. I did like it. However, was glad we basically only had 1+ days there as it is not really ver accessible and you only look at it unless you really plan ahead to get down into it somehow. Utah on the other hand might not have the massive size of the Grand Canyon but it is much more accessible and provides so many great opportunities for fun activities. I certainly prefer the fun of Utah.<br />
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While I prefer Utah, after about 10 days in the desert, I am not sure I would really want to live in the desert. I found the colors and dry air to be interesting but I would prefer a little more green and a little bit of humidity - maybe not Cincinnati summer humidity but some. My lips definitely did not like the dry air. Luckily we had some lip balm with us or they might have peeled right off. <br />
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I have been enjoying my early morning runs with Henry. We have only missed 2 days so far. We are generally heading out around 6:30 before it gets hot and before everyone gets up. We run for about 3 miles and generally get to see the scenery in a different light as the sun rises with us. Very cool. We also get to see some animals. I already talked about the Antelope running with us in Great Sand Dunes. In the Grand Canyon, we very nearly ran into a giant Elk twice. We came around the corner and looked up and there was a giant male right in front of us, not even 20 yards away. Luckily Henry is not a big game hunter and he just sat down and watched the big guy. Henry likes small birds, rabbits and squirrels! He did not even bother with the giant ravens in Moab. <br />
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Lastly, I have to share some funny RV exploits. They are more funny after they are done and I can look back at them because I was not laughing generally at the time. My first blunder was in Arches at the Fiery furnace parking lot. It was a small circlular lot with no real parking for RV's. I tried to park along a curved wooden fence but got too close to the fence and got a little pinned against it. Luckily only a few small pieces got knocked off the RV and and no real body damage was done but still a screw up on my part. My next challenge came in Grand Canyon. We dumped out the grey (sink) and black (toilet) water in the campground dump. Next to the dump was a hose. I did not really pay attention and started filling up the fresh water tank. After nearly filling the tank one of the kids asked if it matter that the sign said that the water was not potable (for drinking). Duh! I had just polluted my fresh water tank with whoo knows what. We then decide we had to empty the entire tank and refill it with potable water along with some bleach to clean it out and kill some germs. I probably put too much bleach in and put the bleach in first rather than last and it made the tank all foamy and the water smell like bleach. Oh well, at least it was good for cleaning dishes! The last one is the worst and funniest for all of you Robin Williams RV fans. We were emptying the tanks for the black and grey water and somehow in the process, the valve for the black water came open at the wrong time and sprayed out all over the place. Unfortunately, it mostly got on John but he was very good about it. Wow was that nasty. Hope that one does not happen anymore to us or at all to anyone else for that matter.<br />
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And that is "The Rest of the Story" for now. </div>
Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-13689015622925935102013-06-17T22:44:00.003-07:002013-06-17T22:44:26.405-07:00Thursday June 13th - Grand Canyon here we come<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What a night that was. I loved sleeping truly in our own paradise, it was beautiful. And seeing Arnie and Henry return from their morning routine in the midst of the canyon was priceless.<br />
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After a quick (cold cereal) breakfast, we headed towards Natural Bridges national monument. I am not quite sure what determines a national park vs. national monument. There were plenty of acres at Natural Bridges, and even camping, but it is a monument. There are three bridges there to view/hike to. It was very picturesque and a nice little hike down to the final bridge.<br />
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After a nice break from driving we headed South towards Arizona. We treated ourselves to lunch in Bluff, Utah. It is a little town founded by Mormons quite some time ago, stagecoaches and all to prove it. As we pulled into the Twin Rock cafe, there was an RV with "MEDIA" signs on it. It was the Media truck for the Race Across America. Yes, believe it or not, there are crazy men out there who literally race from coast to coast...in less than 10 DAYS!!!! Seriously, they sleep very little and bike a ton. We were blessed to be on a road with them, a couple of days into the race. We talked to the media guys a bit, they were exhausted as they have to follow the bikers and film non-stop, and they never stop. We probably saw/passed about 20 of the riders before we got on another road, but it was great while it lasted. Nothing like the tour de France and the parade that goes along with it, but still unbelievable.<br />
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The ride into the Grand Canyon was not fun. I was tired as I had driven a lot the day before and was trying to sleep. But it is official, the worst roads in all of N. America are in Arizona, seriously HORRIBLE!!! I don't know if being Indian territory has something to do with it or not, but just really bumpy, beyond uncomfortable in the RV. We pulled into the East entrance of the park around 4pm. We did a quick stop at one of the look-out areas and headed to the RV park to set-up and take showers before it got dark. Here are the pics, but trust me, they get 500% better tomorrow!<br />
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So we settled into our site for the night. Grandpa made us Chili which was great. It was nice to be among trees again, and cool evenings to sleep in. Tomorrow we will do some biking to the various lookouts, check out the visitor center and take part in Constellation night.<br />
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7080401699837567714.post-60326484463332880592013-06-17T22:10:00.000-07:002013-06-17T22:10:03.098-07:00Wed June 12th - Goblin Valley and 'the middle of no where"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After three wonderful days in Moab, we were off to Goblin Valley a state park due West of Canyonlands, but about a 2-2.5 hour drive as like many things in Utah, you have to "go up and around" vs. directly to it. Last time we came to Utah back in 2009, we visited Bryce and Zion national parks (and for those who are interested in our opinion, they are better than Arches and Canyonlands, but the town of Moab was better). While there we visited Coral Sand Dunes and Kodak chromocolor state parks and they were great. So when Arnie said "we have to do Goblin valley" based on his past experience, combined with my recollection of HOW GOOD the state parks were on our last visit, off we went.<br />
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It is hard to explain Goblin valley. I think the pics will do best. It is a little land of "figures" that look more like mushrooms than goblins, but they are everywhere. Very easy to climb for the kids which they loved. We headed "into" the valley and just explored. We took Henry with us and he was a trooper, as the sand was HOT. We would try to find him shade and he would dig deep to get to cooler sand, but I eventually walked/slow ran with him out of the canyon to cool off his very hot paws. The only downside of Henry is he is black, so he gets hot easier than most. </div>
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The highlight was we had the best game of hide and seek ever. First the kids hid and I looked for them, Claire won that round. Then me and the kids hid and Dad looked for us...he never found Claire and I that is how great this place is.<br />
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After a couple of hours in the canyon we headed to the RV for lunch and to cool down. Thank god for the Generator, it can run at any time and give us air conditioning. For those non-RVers, today's RV's are very sophisticated. You can go up to three days without a "hook-up" as the lingo goes. There are full hookups - Electric, Water, Sewer, just electric, electric and water. For the most part I tried to get full hookups, as it is just easier. It also would cause me less stress. But in many of the national parks, they have VERY LIMITED full hookups, and they go years in advance literally. We have not had a full hook-up since Moab. Now, we are not "using" the RV in LA. It is parked in Andrea and Bob's drive-way. So it will be 6 nights without a hookup - which now makes me nervous on how cold the refrigerator will be!!<br />
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Arnie also wanted to do the Wild Horse slot canyon which was 2 miles down the road, still in Goblin Valley. The hike was ranked really high and recommended by some friends. Well the women in the group were WIPED out, I mean spent from the time in the valley. I am guessing real temperature was 105, but with the hot sand felt hotter. I have never sweat so much so quickly. My girls said "no way" to this and I knew my mom would want to sleep, so I stayed in the RV too. Well the boys LOVED the hike, and it was EASY! Bummer, but still glad that we got some rest.<br />
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So off we headed south towards the Grand Canyon. Our goal was to get a few hours of driving in to make Thursday's drive to Arizona a bit shorter. We didn't know where we would stop, but felt OK with no hook-ups, so it would be an adventure and it was. Around 7:00 I started to think ok let's find someplace (and I was driving, so took control of the situation), so we can have dinner and get everything set up before sunset (remember...no electricity hookup). We were in Southern Eastern Utah, north of Lake Powell, entering the Glen Canyon recreation area. This is a very large canyon that sits on the northern edge of Lake Powell. Lake Powell is the huge lake the Colorado feeds before going into the Grand Canyon, like Lake Mead is coming out of Grand Canyon. The odd thing is we stopped in the Hite area. It had a HUGE boat launch, literally 150 yards long, 25 yards wide, but the river was dry. Rainy season is July- August, so I am guessing it is BUSTLING then, but we were the only people here, in this massive canyon, with our own rest area and clean bathrooms and it was FREE.<br />
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I thought this was awesome. The kids and my dad were a bit spooked by it all. We had a great dinner, played on the boat launch (Ben brought a basketball and is trying to dribble 1,000 times a day, so this made that task easier). We even broke out the sparklers for the first time. Henry loved exploring the lake bed with Arnie and it was a night I won't forget for a long time. </div>
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Off to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.</div>
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Millennium Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11594604503605446597noreply@blogger.com0