I rearranged the posts so they are in order from oldest to most recent. Now, the most recent are at the bottom.

JUNE 26, 2006

Well, my first blog. Hmm, sounds sort of Newbie doesn't it?

Anyway, I'm going to use it this summer to document our BIG SUMMER TRIP that we have planned so well. This will also let the kids do some interesting stuff while we are travelling, y'know, like posting pictures, showing routes and telling stories, sort of like a diary. Hope it is fun for them, otherwise I'll be doing it all.

My contribution to the whole thing was to get a laptop computer (used) and a Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS (eBay). Kendra says we don't need this stuff and it is just "Boys and their toys." I look at it as an essential part of a safe and efficient trip.....

My wife is the real driving force behind the planning. She figures out when, where, how, why, and who. (Thankfully the "who" part includes me!)

So, here is our plan. It will be interesting to see how close we come to sticking to it. See, yet another reason to have a GPS, we can make lots of changes in our trip and always know where we were, where we are, and where we are going!

• July 1 thru 8 - Kids at camp (Whoopee!!)
• July 12 - Las Vegas - Circus, Circus
• July 13 - Kanab - Parry Lodge
• July 14 - Marble Canyon - Cliffdwellers Lodge
  
• July 15, 16 - Grand Canyon - Maswik Lodge
• July 17, 18, 19 - Sedona - Belle Rock Inn & Suites
• July 20 - Williams - Canyon Motel
• July 21 - Laughlin - Colorado Belle
• July 22 - Primm ('cause Ed told me to) - Buffalo Bill's
• July 23, 24, 25 - Vegas - MGM Grand
• July 26 - Home - Sweet Home

My wife is a whiz when it comes to getting deals on hotels, cars and airline flights. Within a couple of hours on the computer, she saved us about 50% on all those expensive things. It is amazing how different travel sites can give you totally different rates for absolutely the same hotel room or car. Sometimes the different car rental companies charge monumentally different rates for the same vehicle. It pay$ to search around. It also helps to pick the brains of your friends or relatives who have been there.


We are renting a Dodge Magnum. Whoopee!
This is another essential. The Mrs. thinks something like a Chevy Sprint would be OK. Little does she know!

JULY 3, 2006 KIDS + CAMP = FREEDOM!

Well, the kids are at camp now. It is a church camp near Hope. So, that leaves us with nothing much to do! Hah! The Boss has all these great ideas about doing all sorts of housework and stuff. I sorta figure why bother, it'll just get dirty and messy again, but that logic is simply lost on her. Really we should be doing lots of fun things.

They will be back next Sunday and we leave on the following Wednesday. That will give them just long enough to get bored and sick of the summer! Then off we go.

We are putting Kenny in a boarding kennel. He loves it. I think he views it as a holiday! Carmyn took Kenny for Agility lessons there too, so he is familiar with the place. Camrose Kennel

Kenny is already packed and ready to go!

July 6, 2006

Well, I am finally figuring out how to do this Blog stuff easily. I hope I'm not kidding myself when I think that the kids are going to be able to do this on our trip! I suspect one of two things will happen, either they will refuse to do it at all, or they will blow me out of the water with their abilities!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to publish the Streets and Trips stuff.

July 11, 2006 They Are Home!

The kids are home from camp . They had mixed feelings about the whole experiance. Carmyn thought it was good, really enjoyed herself and was altogether happy with it all. Kelsey, on the other hand.......well, suffice to say we had to promise her that we would never send her there again!
Different strokes for different folks!

We are almost ready to go on our Arizona Adventure! All we gotta do is , pack, get Kenny into the kennel, and about 300 other last minute things. Kendra will take care of it all though, she is so good at that last minute detail kind of stuff. I'll just sit on my butt and make suggestions! Yeah!

Looking forward to the whole thing though. The weather forecast for home looks like cloudy and dull for a couple of days, then getting HOT! The forecast for Arizona is way better. Some cloudy periods, hopefully some thunder storms, and hot, but hardly any hotter than what is forecast for here! Except Vegas...that will be hot, but we will be inside most of the time anyway.

Have you figured out my "secret code" for our names? Gets somewhat confusing when two of them have the same initial. Aw, who cares, figure it out.

July, 14 2006

Here we are again. Tonight we are in Kanab, Utah.

We left Vancouver in a torrential downpour on Wed. Got to the border and encountered the most unpleasant American border guard ever. I think they must have any shred of pleasant personality surgically removed at the same time they are given their guns!

Got to Bellingham airport in good time and flew Allegiant Air to Las Vegas. Wonderful airline, really friendly staff and tons of legroom. Got into the airport at 10:40 PM, found our luggage and stepped out into a 105 degree night! That is HOT! Caught a cab to our hotel. Asked the driver to take us past the MGM Grand and then down the strip so the girls could see the lights at night. He said that there was construction and it would be really slow, so he would take us to our hotel a different way. Hmmm thought I, an old cabbies trick is afoot, but no, as we drove past the road that we would have gone on, it was very obvious that there really was some serious construction and traffic was at a standstill! Well, this guy drove like a maniac and got us to our hotel in record time. The whole thing was great, because Vegas taxis charge for time and mileage, so being stuck in traffic would have done nothing but cost us. The guy really did us a favour.

Circus Circus checkin was a breeze, despite dire reviews on Trip Advisor. The room was perfectly fine as well, so I don’t know what people are complaining about. $55/night, can you really complain?

Checked out this morning and picked up our car. Super convenient, right in the hotel. The clerk was a super nice guy who upgraded us from our Magnum to a Pacifica. We went from a pimped looking station wagon to a three rows of seating, dvd player in the ceiling, all-wheel drive, leather seats, power everything classy SUV that Dianna Crall drives! And for no extra money! What a cool car this is.

Got outta Vegas and headed north. Drove along Lake Mead and watched as the temperatures climbed. Found a place for the girls to swim for a while. The lake was warm, the air warmer – now 110.

Carried on to Valley of Fire. AWESOME. Rock formations and colours that are unearthly. No wonder Star Trek filmed there. Hard to believe anything like that is real. .Hit 113 degrees. Now, that is really, really hot. Our really, really cool car stayed nice and cool though.

Next was Zion National Park. This is a cross between the Valley of Fire and the Highway to the Sky in Glacier Park. It is indescribable, and pictures just don’t cut it. Suffice to say, these two places are something you should se before you die. I had no idea how stunning it was going to be.

Now we are in Kanab, in the Perry Lodge. This is a place where zillions of movie stars stayed (and millions of movies made) over the past 50 years. It is really nice, clean and friendly. A pool for the kids and nice beds for us. Great all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet for $1.50/kids and $3.50/adults. Can it get better?

Off to pink sand dunes, the largest animal shelter in the US (1800 animals) and then on to some ghost towns and tonight in Marble Canyon.

More later.

July 15, 2006

Before we left Kanab, we checked out the Coral Sand Dunes which were pretty in pink. The sand was just like pink powdered sugar. As we were there pretty early we could still see lots of critter tracks. All sorts; things with tails, squiggly things, things that hopped, things that slithered. Wouldn’t want to sleep outside on a dune overnight. You’d never get any sleep, with the critters bustling around!

We then went to the Best Friend’s Animal Sanctuary for a tour. It’s like a high-class SPCA. It is the largest in North America with 1800 animals and some 20,000 acres of land. Lots of really cute animals, all in need of adoption. We didn’t adopt any…..it was hard though!

We then went to Frontier Movie Town back in Kanab. We walked through the actual set from the movie "The Outlaw Josie Wales" starring Clint Eastwood. We had lunch at an awesome 50’s diner…milkshakes like you remember them!

Then off to Marble Canyon, Arizona. We did see a ghost town on the way which was really cool but we couldn’t walk through it, just look at it from the locked gate. Half a dozen buildings and a gallows at the end of Main Street. Now THAT impressed the kids!

Found a park ranger who said it was OK not to pay the $15 to use Glen Canyon Park. We were only going into it for about an hour so we could dip our feet in the Colorado River. Man, that river is cold!! Might have had something to do with the 107 degree temperatures, but the ranger even said it was cold.

We left there and stopped at some weird rock formations that some people had actually lived in in the 30’s. Of course, Kelsey took off up the mountain like a mountain goat, and before we knew it she was about 150 meters up the cliff!

Had fun though!

We got to our motel, the Cliffdweller’s Lodge. This place

has a red rock cliff rising about 500 meters right behind the motel and the view out the front is just endless desert with a few buttes in the distance….eat your heart out Lynne! Even better, we found a live scorpion in our room! Hotel guy says it’s nothing to worry about, but I did notice he had a weird swelling on one side of his face and walked with a pronounced limp. We heard that the restaurant here was fantastic, so we just finished dinner there. Yup, really good, but $$$$. Kendra picked this place because of the restaurant. Good choice, even though it doesn’t have a pool (sorry kids).

We are off to the Grand Canyon tomorrow for 2 nights at a lodge right near the actual rim (no pool there either, kids).

July 15 & 16

Breakfast at Cliffdwellers (biscuits and gravy – a house specialty and I recommend it) then on the road again. Short driving day today, only about 4 hours of road time, but with all our side trips, I’m sure it will take us the better part of the day! Just before we left a Gecko ran up Kelsey’s leg and onto her head! She decided to call it "Geico the Gecko".

The cliffs, mesas and canyons around here are just too strange. This whole area is just lunar-looking. It is colourful too, reds, grays, greens, blues, blacks.

Went to Tuba City on our way to another of our legendary ghost town hunts. Disappointment prevailed when there were no tubas in sight. Never did figure out why it is called Tuba City, it’s not even a large town! Right next to it is Moenkopi. This is a little Hopi village that consists of lots of houses and buildings all made from local flat rocks stacked up to make walls. A sign at the entrance welcomes you, but asks that you respectfully refrain from filming, photographing, sketching, recording or taping anything. It is really interesting, but kind of depressing too, as are a lot of reservation towns. Lots of broken down cars, discarded furniture and dogs lying in the hot sun. Different attitudes towards landscaping I guess.

The ghost town we eventually found, Coal Mine Mesa, was behind locked fences again, and even more surprising was that it was probably younger than me. I’m not sure I like that. Couple of old trailers and a worn out gas station. NOT worth the drive at all, but keeping up our tradition of useless ghost towns!

We are in Cameron, Az right now, (105 deg, 4200 ft) headed west towards the Grand Canyon, our destination for two nights. Looking to the west and south there is a band of thunderheads! Bet we get a pretty good sound and light show tonight. (I’ll be sure to let you know, Lynne) Nope – they drifted off.

Stopped at a viewpoint (comes with the requisite tables full of mass-produced "authentic" Indian jewellery) and stood on the edge of an absolutely vertical 500 foot drop-off down to the Little Colorado river. The sun was high so there were no shadows, so it was hard to really appreciate the view, it all looked flat.

Little Colorado River

Made it to the Grand Canyon……I understand why they call it Grand. Sort of funny, I’ve seen pictures of it and film and read about it, but in real life it is beyond all that. Sort of like knowing all about Santa, but meeting him in real life would be extraordinary!

We checked out all the viewpoints, rode the tram to Hermits Rest viewpoint, ate dinner at the El Tovar Hotel (a B$G mistake) and generally enjoyed the two days there.

Grand Canyon

July 17

Left Grand Canyon and headed for Meteor Crater. Highways are boring, so we took Zelda’s advice (Zelda- our GPS guide) and went off on logging roads. It was a short cut too! It never ceases to amaze us that this GPS thing can guide you along every dirt road in creation. Even some that don’t exist as we found out later!

On the way we stopped off at the Indian ruins in Wapatki Park. Hot but interesting with stunning scenery: cinder cones, painted desert, lava fields, volcano, and cliffs.

Went looking for another Ghost town, this one called Two Guns. With a name like that, it was sure to be a real Wild West kind of place. Well, the only Wild West about it was the cartoon cowboy painted on a 30-foot high water tank! It was another abandoned gas station/campground on Route 66 in the middle of nowhere. I guess that it was a victim of the interstate passing it by. This one was sort of sad though, we drove through it and looked at the dead shade trees, empty swimming pool, abandoned office and ruined washrooms. With the background sky filled with thunderclouds and the wind blowing Tumbleweeds through it, it did have a ghostly feel, but a poignant one.

Could almost see the families camping there on their way along Route 66. Left there feeling kind of sad, someone’s dreams now just a place to laugh at and vandalize.

Meteor Crater was something I was looking forward to seeing. It lived up to my expectations.

As we left the crater, Zelda suggested that we head for Winslow (to stand on a corner) but avoid the highway and go along these well-marked country roads. Seemed like a good idea at the time…….

At first, the roads were good 1 ½ lane dirt and gravel and Zelda was constantly telling us we were “on route”. Then her demonic side began to show. “Turn left.” Guess what, no road there, just a dried up riverbed! So, we just kept going because we were headed in sort of the right direction. “Off route” – a voice we were to hear a lot from then on. The road was now just a rutted dirt path, but still headed sort of east, into the approaching thunderstorms. As we wandered around this absolutely flat, treeless desert, occasionally we would hear “On route, turn in 1/3 of a mile” as we zigg-zagged across where the road supposedly was! As the voice faded off I swear I could hear laughter over the sounds of the undercarriage smashing into another lump of hardened mud. At first I thought it was the kids laughing but soon realized it was Zelda.

The car rental agreement states that we can't go off "hard-surface" roads. I guess that the rocks we are hitting qualify as hard!

Following along this worn out wagon road we came around one of the numerous corners to discover an abandoned watering hole. A few scrawny trees circled a dried up mud hole that once had water pumped into it for the cattle. The windmill was now defunct and there were no cattle to be seen, except one. Unfortunately this one was deceased...fortunately long ago. Kind of interesting though, the cow obviously died with a full stomach, the remains of its last meal was lying on top of a bunch of ribs and other bones. Even more exciting, you can see the dead (or dying) cow on Google Earth at: 35 degrees 03' 17.72" N 110degrees 55' 18.81" W just west of Winslow, Az. Zoom way in.

After about 90 minutes of this, we were “back on route” again, still a cow-trail, and we could see the highway (our destination) about two miles ahead. The only problem was that there was a train track on a berm between us and the highway. Indeed, there was an underpass but it was a dry riverbed with huge rocks sitting in the mud. The only thing left was to turn around and head back, into the rapidly approaching thunderstorm. I finally began to get a bit stressed at this point, with the prospect of having to drive for miles and miles through a torrential downpour, getting dark, tracks turning to mud and flash floods! God really was looking after us though, the rain stayed about 5 minutes behind us and the lightning only hit the higher spots near us, not us! The only point that actually made me nervous was when I had to open and close a steel cattle gate….in a thunderstorm….at the top of a hill…..right beside the cow skeleton……with a 40mph wind….in hindsight, I should have made Kendra or one of the kids do it!

That was just as I remember the trips Dad used to take us on when I was younger!

Gave up heading for Winslow and started towards Sedona. GREAT thunderstorm on the way, lightning every 15 seconds and not far away at all. We could see the whole bolt from cloud to ground. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got to Oak Creek Canyon (5 miles from Sedona), and couldn’t see the scenery as we descended the switchbacks. It is supposed to be a great drive. Got into our hotel at about 10pm. Kind of late but we made it! We’ll be here for 3 nights.

July 18

Sedona and the surrounding area is right out of a picture book. It is sort of a cross between Whistler and Banff but with a southwestern style. The whole place is just one big tourist trap catering to the crystal/vortex/new age/Birkenstock set with a veneer of commercialism and big buck “yuppieism” laid over it. That being said, it is still a very interesting town and really pretty.

Our hotel, the Bell Rock Inn, is fantastic. A wonderful spot, luxurious toiletries from The Sedona Spa, two superb pools, absolutely special room and just a magnificient resort. Probably one of the nicest places I have ever stayed in!

The hotel (and Sedona) is right in the midst of some of the most unusual rock formations imaginable. Bell Rock actually looks sort of like a bell, and there are other spectacular hills/mountains all around. Sedona itself is all adobe/pueblo style buildings. The houses fit into the landscape rather than fitting the landscape to the housing. The lighting at night is really subdued, with very few streetlights and even those are low output. Signs on stores and businesses are subdued and almost invisible.

For example, the “Golden Arches” here are about 4 feet high, painted on a 6 foot adobe block wall beside a driveway and they are turquoise. No glaring yellow things that can be seen forblocks! I guess they want no light/sight pollution.

Out to Slide Rock this morning. It is a place

in the river that makes a long natural waterslide. The kids absolutely loved it. Kendra even participated! I was an old stick-in-the-mud and just watched. I value my back. Spent about 3 hours there.

Back to the hotel and the girls were inthe pool for the rest of the day and evening.

Wednesday, July19

Freaking awesome!!!!

Our ghost town hunting finally paid off! We went to see an old mining town called Jerome. This is the oldest town in Arizona. It also has the oldest English restaurant in Arizona as well. That figures I guess! Anyway, this town was an old copper mining town in the mid 1800s. The town was built on the side of a hill – a very steep hill. Sort of like building a town on the mountain at Hedley! Believe me, the picture does not give you a clue as to how steep it all is. The town has big buildings, winding streets, houses and a whole bunch of stores. These are all above 5000 feet and were built in the 1800s. They have been restored (mostly) and are the home to a lot of art galleries and souvenir stores and restaurants. The town had a population of 15,000 in its heyday. Some of the buildings are built with the front at street level and the back hanging out over a 100-foot drop-off. Understandable when you see that the cliff drops straight down from the side of the road! One of the most spectacular towns I have ever seen.

A short drive out of town is a mine and it’s ghost town! This is the area that the Hispanics lived in.,. The whole area was segregated. Anyway, this place has not been restored or updated, it has just been protected. It appears to be owned by one man (pic at right) and his wife. They are charging people to wander through it and boy, is it worth it. The guy who owns it travels around finding old trucks, like from the first half of the 20^th century. He has literally hundreds of old engines, truck frames, miscellaneous parts, old lawn mowers, antique tools and machines, mining equipment, hoses, fan belts, generators…..the list goes on. He even has a three-cylinder propane powered engine with a 14” bore and 22” stroke! He collects anything old and mechanical.

There are also animals; a couple of goats, a bell-ringing donkey, a bunch of weird looking chickens including one who just wants to be carried around. Kelsey did just that, for about an hour. She wanted to take the critter home with us!

The buildings are just as they were when the mine closed. Really interesting and well preserved. It was just an all-round great ghost town, not all that ghosty, but really old and authentic. I just realized that I was so overawed by all the machinery that I only took a couple of pictures of the town!

The next stop was “Out of Africa Game Farm”. Our timing was really good, we arrived just in time to watch them feed the lions, cougars, two bears, tigers, wolves, and hyenas. Then we jumped on a Unimog (a Mercedes off-road truck) and had a guided tour of the African animals. Lots of the usual critters, but this tour let you get up close, really up close, in fact the kids held carrots in their mouths and one of the giraffes took it from their mouths! It was one of the best tours I have ever been on. Makes the Vancouver Game Farm look pretty bad.

Back to the hotel and kids in pool for another 4 or 5 hours. Water rats.

Thursday, July 20

Goodbye Sedona. Sorry to leave the Bell Rock Inn. That place was really nice.

Went to Walnut Canyon National Park. This is a canyon that has old cliff dwellings. They are really interesting. The cliffs in the canyon have been undercut by water as the canyon was being formed. The Indians built homes in these semi-caves using flat rocks and mud. The structures were pretty interesting, and there were lots of them. There were hundreds of different buildings, housing hundreds of people. Everywhere you look in the canyon there were ruins.

The only thing wrong with this place was that you had to go down hundreds of stairs to go into the ruins and see them properly. Going down was one thing, climbing back up was something else again. Imagine an 18 storey building – yup that was how high we had to climb! To make it even more of a challenge is the fact that this place is at 7000 feet and the temperature was around 90. Needless to say, it was a workout! Worth it though.

Looked for another ghost town….nuttin.

Went to the Deer Farm, which is a big zoo sort of thing with deer, reindeer, goats, llamas, pigs, buffalo and probably a few other things. Hundreds of deer and you can just wander around among them. There is food you can buy to feed them so you are constantly surrounded by pushy deer. Kind of fun, but sad to see so many animals in such a small, unstimulating space. Not really a positive feeling about it all. At least there were llamas for Kelsey!

Arrived at Williams and checked into our hotel room – a rail car. Cute, but a few problems: free internet connection won’t work, ants in the room, small warm water tank, not hot, TV with no volume control, remote control didn’t work, gross swimming pool, a broken futon bed for the kids that acted like a hot dog bun with them as the weiner!. Not our best place so far, and expensive to boot!

Williams is a really cute old town. It is one of those on Route 66 that was bypassed by the interstate system. It is trying to recreate itself as a tourist attraction. It is the southern terminal of a train that goes to the Grand Canyon, and is really playing up the Wild West thing. We had steak dinner at Rod’s Steak House. Really good. A Civil War band came in and played a couple of old songs.

After dinner we went out and watched a gunfight skit in a western town set. Pretty well done. We drove around the town, (took all of 5 minutes) and saw the police had blocked off Main Street so there could be another gunfight. Hmm, something wrong with that picture!

Off along route 66 to Oatman and Laughlin tomorrow.

Friday, July 21

Pretty interesting day today. Got onto route 66 and went back in time. This road is what I remember from my childhood, not that I have ever been on it before, but it is the type of road that my family traveled on our summer vacations. It is two lane blacktop that just goes and goes. None of this multi-lane interstate stuff. 66 has places to pull over and look at the scenery, it slows you down as you go through little towns and it is not afraid of going uphill and around a corner at the same time!

We followed it to Seligman. This is the town that has the Snowcap burger joint in it. Came highly recommended by my friend Ed, and was more than worth the stop. The owners are hilarious, in a soup-nazi sort of way. It is a must stop. The rest of the town is another example of a dying small town fighting its demise tooth and nail. Somewhat successfully, due in large part to the Snowcap I think.

Found a cool ghost town, well at least an old town, courtesy of Zelda. Chloride City is an old mining town with no mine anymore. It is SO far off the beaten track yet has about 300 people still living there. Why is anyone’s guess, this place has nothing to keep anyone there. It has a cool old jail and at the top of a 10 mile very rough road there are “The Murals”. Some artist who used to be a miner worked decided to express himself by painting murals on a bunch of the rocks on a cliff in the middle of nowhere. Claims that it is to express himself. I think it is just a way to see how many dumb tourists will fall for his scam! Actually, the paintings are pretty wild. They are as much as 30 feet high and are not vandalized yet, so it looks pretty good.

On to Oatman along Route 66. Now, this is a terribly pretty part of this highway. The road winds along cliff edges and there are places that are super twisty and hilly. The pictures just don't show the dropoffs right at the side of the roads.

You come upon Oatman rather unexpectedly, and there are wild donkeys all over the streets. Oatman is an old mining town with a hotel where Clark Gable and Carol Lombard spent their honeymoon. Saw the room.

The donkeys are great, you can pet them and feed them. A bag of carrots are available in the stores for $1.00 each and the kids get a real kick out of feeding them. The donkeys do get a bit aggressive about it all though, and will almost climb in the car with you. Try explaining that damage to the rental company!

Finally got to Laughlin. 121 degrees!!!!!!!!! That is the hottest that I have ever experienced. It actually hurts to hold your hand against the car window. 121 is HOT. Really, really hot. The hotel is very nice, not hot. Went for a walk along the Colorado river and saw dozens of carp. Did I mention it was hot?

Primm is the destination tomorrow.