I Traveled To California And Arizona! (Part 4)

Onto our last installment of our CA/AZ trip in May!  If you haven't read the last three parts and would like to, click HERE, here, and/or hErE.

Sunday

We woke up with the sun (one of my favorite things about camping) and after breakfast, we hit the road for the Grand Canyon!  Our campsite was in Williams, which is only about 30 minutes from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Very close, not a bad drive.  We got our permit to enter the park (by the way, it's a pass that lasts a full week, in case you're thinking of going.  It's a great deal) and then drove on through.

A really great time to arrive, at least at the South Rim, is around 9am.  There aren't a million people milling around and that makes it pretty quiet.  It was a lovely introduction to this masterpiece of nature.

 It was weird, Jack and I walked through the visitor's center and when we got to the first overlook... I don't know, it didn't feel real.  It felt like I was looking at a picture, but I was standing with my own two feet in this amazing place.

Jack and I thought about walking down into the canyon, but upon further inspection when we got to the visitor's center, we realized that the hikes took up a lot of the day and some of them required special equipment or extra supplies.  So for now, we stuck to the trail along the rim.  We'll have to return again after a bit more exercise.  That's something both of us would love to do.

There were a surprising number of things for us to see and visit as we were walking and enjoying the canyon.  We popped into a small geology museum that talked about the different layers of rock that can be found in the canyon and how the canyon was formed in the first place.  It was so cool to see how rocks can be used as clues to determine the age of the canyon in different areas.  It's like forensics with rocks.  How cool is that?

There was also a house that seemed to be balancing precariously on the side on the canyon where two brothers lived and had their photography studio.  They are responsible for photographing and filming some of the most hard-to-reach places of the canyon that people hadn't seen before.  I didn't expect that to be there but I was very happy it was there.

I think my favorite thing to do as we walked and explored was to follow the Trail of Time, where you basically time traveled as you walked.  There were little medallions on the sidewalk indicating years and at some points on the walk there were examples of rocks that were that old.  I made sure to poke every single one!

My other favorite thing was experiencing just a taste of Dine (DEE-nay... I don't have the accent mark on Blogger...), or Navajo, culture.  Once a month, there is a storyteller who comes to the Grand Canyon accompanied by 2-3 dancers.  He shared Navajo language through songs and he talked a little bit about their history and how he continues to teach Navajo children their language in the schools.  I thought that was amazing.  And their dancing and costumes (which, if I remember correctly, each person makes their own costume for powwow purposes) were absolutely beautiful.  I love that the speaker didn't make this about casually experiencing culture, but he turned this into a moment of education and had you really engage.  It was a real privilege to be there and the right time to see the dancers.

I think we spent about eight hours at the Grand Canyon.  By the end of the day, we were absolutely exhausted and were happy to start heading home... but we didn't go back to the camp site just yet.  Oh no, even though we were really tired, the adventures didn't end there.  So where did we go next?

Flintstones Bedrock City, located about ten minutes from our campsite.

I can't make this stuff up.

We had a late lunch here (it was... fine...) and then walked into this pretty much abandoned and run-down Flintstones theme park.  When we walked in, there was a small group also in the park, but they didn't last long.  Soon, we were the only two people in the park.  It was the single weirdest and most eerie experience on this trip.  Pictures below.

We went inside the homes of the Flintstones characters (super dusty, buggy at times... pretty damn creepy, if I'm honest).  We walked the track that goes through the volcano structure (also really creepy inside), took pictures with the different animals and characters, slid down the giant dinosaur slide... definitely a weird late afternoon, but also a really fun afternoon.  I think I enjoyed the 'goatasaurus' and feeding him the most!  We spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening reading books in the tent and Jack spent a while just staring up at the sky once the stars came out.  The universe is a very big place...

Monday

We packed up our campsite after a relatively slow morning.  We cooked up the rest of our food into a hobo dinner for breakfast and then we hit the road.  Like on our journey from LA to San Diego and from San Diego to Williams, we had a couple of stops we wanted to make before reaching Phoenix.  First stop, Flagstaff!

We wanted to visit the observatory where Pluto was first observed: Lowell observatory, named for Percival Lowell who worked there (although he concentrated primarily on Mars).  Pluto was observed by Clyde Tombaugh who was an intern at the observatory.  My favorite part is that after they established that Pluto was actually a thing, a eleven-year-old girl from Oxford, England, Venetia Burney.  She named the then planet Pluto after the Roman god of the underworld after learning that Pluto is likely a cold and dark planet.  I just thought that was awesome.  

I have much more respect for astrophysicists and astronomers who do this as a profession... heck, even as a hobby.  It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience as you look to the skies trying to find that one small difference that could indicate something is in orbit.  I could not do that.  In fact, I tried (in a game you could play there) and I got really frustrated in the 90 seconds I devoted to trying.  Seeing the observatory and the different telescopes (and even Percival Lowell's mausoleum... it was beautiful inside, I peeked through the bars like I do in any mausoleum I come across.  The ceiling was stained glass and meant to look like the night sky).  We spent several hours here and made the choice to skip some of the other stops we were considering making.  But that was okay.  

One other side trip to we did make was through Sedona.  Holy cow, I've never seen a place more beautiful.  Seriously, I would love to go back to this place.  Sedona was a place we drove through more than anything.  What I loved about this drive though is that you could see the landscape change from a more mountainous terrain to something more desert-like but still lush somehow.  Nature is so cool.  From Sedona (after going around NINE traffic circles!!), we continued on to Phoenix.  The closer we got to Phoenix, the more a dream of mine came true-- seeing Saguaro cacti in the wild :)  There were so many!!!

Our Phoenix adventure led us to another interesting place to stay.  This time, we stayed in a container home.  They're all over YouTube-- people creating houses out of these shipping containers.  They're super awesome!  I'll admit, when we were figuring out places to stay earlier this year, I saw this container home on AirBnB and kind of made the executive decision (telling Jack before I booked it) to stay here.  So I was rather looking forward to this place!  When we got to Phoenix, we were exhausted.  We got the key, went into the backyard of the property we were staying in, figured out which container home was ours, and then took a long nap.  

Tuesday

This was the last full day of our vacation.  Honestly, we were exhausted from all of the driving and all of the exploring we had done.  Phoenix for us on this trip was simply the city that housed the airport we would use to get home.  At least that's what we felt when we checked the weather and saw it was going to be sunny and 103 degrees, like, four days in a row.  Outside exploration did not sound like an attractive option, period.  So we decided to start the day really slow, repacking, reading, writing... that kind of thing.  But then we decided to get out and go see a movie so we could get out of that windowless container home (yeah, the container home wasn't as awesome as we had hoped... it was cozy, but a window would have really made the place.

In the afternoon, we saw Phoenix Rising, which is a movie about the Phoenix lights that were seen in the 80s... maybe the 90s... Jack really wanted to see it while we were physically in Phoenix.  That move scared the crap out of me.  You should see it while sitting in the middle of a dark room.

After the movie, we did a little bit of exploring of downtown Phoenix.  We found weird bug statues with tiny people walking on them.  We found a creative space for kids where they could come in and learn to work with cameras, 3D printers, electrical circuits... it was essentially a makerspace studio for young people.  I don't think Jack had seen anything like this before (and neither had I).  It was love at first sight.  

We returned to the container home and later ventured out once more for our second movie theater experience of the day.  This time, we saw Beauty and the Beast at a dine-in theater.  I had never been to one of those before, but it was pretty cool!  And the movie was gorgeous.  It was kind of an unconventional way to spend a vacation, but it was perfect for us.  And a really nice way to end an awesome vacation together.

This was a much-needed get away for us.  We were married August 19 and the next week, I started student teaching and Jack was preparing to start up his last year of college.  We hadn't been on our honeymoon yet (still haven't... that's still coming) and we were under a lot of stress.  But more importantly, we haven't had the chance to travel together just the two of us.  This was a great way to notice each other's strengths and where we needed to help each other.  It was a wonderful way to enjoy each other's company away from all of our responsibilities and stressors.  

With that, our trip is at an end!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

I Traveled To California And Arizona! (Part 3)

And so we continue with Part 3!  Click on the highlighted words to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you're just joining us.

Friday was our last full day in San Diego.  We decided from the start that this would be a relatively low-key day, especially since there were things we needed to do in order to get ready for the next leg of our trip.  Nevertheless, we didn't want to devote the entire day to preparations, so we headed out to a totally different part of San Diego than either of us have ever been and we headed out to the very first Franciscan mission in California.  It called the Basilica San Diego de Alcala, after the Alcala in Spain.  It's a relatively small place located at the top of a hill around 20 minutes from downtown San Diego, so it's not by the water at all.  We got there pretty much right when it opened.  We got a map and then walked through the bit of museum space there was and through the church that is there, which is still an active church to this day.  We were able to see what a Franciscan's monk's space might look like, look through the gardens, and then see the tools and items that have been dug up from the on-site archaeological dig (ongoing).  Even though I'm not a very religious person, I still found this to be a peaceful place and I loved the amount of care that went into restoring this place and becoming such an important place for many.

The monks who lived here (there were supposed to be two assigned here, but there was actually just one) were in charge not just of having a place to worship, but also educating (and ultimately converting) the native Californians.  I'm uncomfortable with that whole set up, but that's what happened.  The way the exhibit talked about it made it sound like the monks incentivized conversion to Christianity by providing education that was intended to help improve their lives.  Based on what I know about colonization and what happened to Native Americans all over North America, I'd be interested in hearing about this same span of time from the perspective of Native Californians.  I'd like to know what they thought and felt about this whole situation.


From there, we decided (because of my prodding) to return to the Whaley house, but this time during the day.  So we drove back to Old Town San Diego and grabbed some lunch at Casa Guadalajara first.  I wish I had a picture of this place.  It was pretty warm in San Diego at the time, but the outdoor eating space is where they put us and with all the shade, it was significantly cooler.  The whole restaurant is so colorful and the food there is incredible.  I'm not normally a guacamole person, but I had fantastic guac on my chicken quesadilla.  It was so yummy there.  I'd love to return.  Old Town has the reputation of being SUPER touristy (because it is... there's no way around it), but this restaurant is a little off the beaten path, so I think you escape some of that really cheesy, touristy atmosphere.  Anyway, eat here.

I wanted to return to the Whaley house because I wanted to take more pictures and also during the day, you're able to pay a cheaper entry fee and then you're able to walk around the house at your own pace.  So there are positives and negatives to both the day and the night tours.  I won't post more pictures of the Whaley house here though since I posted some in the previous blog post.

The rest of the day was spent preparing for the next leg of our trip-- driving to the Grand Canyon!  Or at least about half an hour away from the Grand Canyon.  We booked an AirBnB, but this place is a little bit different: it's basically a sandbox in the middle of a scrubby desert and you camp there.  So we had to get all of these provisions that we might not normally buy if we were staying in a solid structure.  We stocked up on veggies and s'mores supplies and more importantly, firewood.  We're camping after all.  If you don't have firewood, you don't eat.  And since we're in the desert, we brought four gallons of water for drinking and then when absolutely necessary, dousing fires and cleaning.  We packed all of this into our rental car (our trusty steed) and we already had our camping things packed and ready to go.  That was our one checked bag-- a giant suitcase with our tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and a tarp.  We packed up the suitcases we used as carry-ons and then went right to bed.  We had a big day ahead of us...

Saturday, we woke up and were somewhat on a time schedule.  We knew that if we drove straight through to the Grand Canyon, it would take us about eight hours to get there from San Diego.  But we weren't driving straight through.  We had a couple stops in mind (because it's the adventures you have that really makes the trip, right?) which would amount to around 10 hours of being on the road.


One of my favorite games to play is Fallout New Vegas.  In the game, you're supposed to walk around gaining skills and eventually make your way to Las Vegas (rechristened New Vegas, since it's a post-apocalyptic world).  In this game, you spend a lot of time in the Mojave Desert.  So that's where we passed through first!  We drove in a North-Easterly direction from San Diego and drove to the Mojave Preserve.  This was a quick pass-through, but I would love to come back here sometime to explore some more.  You can apparently camp here as well.  We stopped at an old train station which has turned into a rest stop and that's where I really started reading up on this place.  There are so many different types of environments in this small part of the world-- it's a scrubby desert, but there are also sand dunes and cinder cones as well.  I would love to spend more time here (maybe in the winter sometime?).

Our next stop was a couple hours away in Oatman, Arizona.  So at this point, we've crossed the length of California (although kind of a lengthy way).  My parents visited Arizona several months before we did and they highly recommended that we go.  Why?  Because there are wild burros walking everywhere!  For some reason, they really like Oatman.  Oatman itself is a ghost town, but it has been revitalized into a tiny touristy area in the middle of the scrub desert on Route 66.  So as far as I know, no one lives here except the burros.  And they're pretty darn adorable :)  I'll leave a mess of pictures around this and the next paragraph.

I'm really glad that we stopped here, even for a little while and even though it was getting late.  The burros were so cute and I even got to feed them!  There's a lady in one of the stores who packs up cubes of, I think, hay that the burros can eat and that is relatively good for them.  And they love those treats.  You just need to show them the bag and they know exactly what they're about to get!  And sometimes you'll have a crowd around you trying to get at the same hay bite.


What was even better about this place for me was trying to leave, because that's when you really get a sense of what life is like when you're surrounded by wild burros.  We turned the car around and were about to hop on Route 66 to continue on our way when a burro went to go receive a treat and stopped in the middle of the road.  I didn't want to honk, because that seemed mean and apparently it doesn't startle them, really.  So as the driver, I waited helplessly before the kind lady we got treats from tempted the burros with more treats and cleared the road for us.  Thank you, kind lady!  And with that, we headed for Williams.

Route 66 was interesting to drive on.  It was a very beautiful place to drive-- it's so unlike Minnesota in this area, so I was just in awe everywhere we went, every curve that we took (and believe me, there were about a million hairpin turns in this part).  At one point, I just had to pull over to the side of the road to snap a picture of these formations poised dramatically by the side of the road.  It's a glorious place to drive and it's a surprisingly well-kept road.  Like, if you think of Route 66 pictured in Cars when Lightning McQueen gets to Radiator Springs, I thought it would be dusty and broken down and all that.  But it's a very smooth road.  It feels like you're gliding.

Jack and I switched driving I think one more time before we reached our campsite.  At this point, we had been in the car so long that we just wanted to get there.  Our first road trip as a married couple: survived.  It was getting darker and darker the closer we got and we were getting hungry, but we didn't want to stop because we were planning to cook dinner once we set up camp.  When we got to Williams (which is where our campsite was located), it was completely dark outside.  But not to worry, because we had the directions punched into our GPS.  What can go wrong, right?

So many things.

We followed directions as per the GPS and when we stopped, we were in front of a small, dark cabin and across the street from an old Winnebago.  We were completely safe, but something was not right... we continued down the road that was in horrible condition.  Imagine with me a dirt road with tire divets several inches deep in some areas, then the road gets all crazy so your car is tipped to the side while you're driving and with every turn of the wheel, you go over a new bump.  It's a hot mess out there in Williams back country.  And then we're driving over this in the dark.  Finally, we had been driving for a while and decided that it was time to call our host for backup.  Jack's phone had absolutely no service, but luckily my phone had very minimal service.  I could kind of access the GPS map, but more importantly, I could make and receive calls.  So a few phone calls later and a zillion bumps, we made it to our campsite!  Hurray!

It should be noted that I feel absolutely fine telling you all of this now that we're long safe at home and have survived that trip :)

I don't know how I did it, but while Jack was working on getting things in the tent, I had managed to start our campfire and get dinner started in roughly two minutes.  I must have been operating on adrenaline or something.

That first night, we ate our hobo dinners (potatoes, meat, and veggies wrapped in tin foil and tossed directly on the fire) and pretty much went right to sleep.

Tune in next time for Part 4!  We're going to the Grand Canyon next!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

I Traveled to California and Arizona! (Part 2)

Welcome back!  Here's some more about my adventures I took with my husband!  Last month!  If you haven't read part 1, click HERE to read that first.

CW: Mentions of destroyed communities and suicide at the end of this post.

Wednesday morning, we got up relatively early (vacation early, so around 8) and on the recommendation of our AirBnB host, we walked to the Balboa Golf Course, because he said they had a really good breakfast there and a great view of Downtown San Diego.  So we did :)  And he wasn't lying...

After some pancakes and mimosas, we walked back to our tree house and made a plan for the day.  Turns out it was going to be a low-key day which, after doing so much museum hopping today, I was ready for.  We read in our tree house for a while and then made the drive out to Point Loma to see Cabrillo tidepools and generally see what all was out there (because we didn't really know).

Turns out there's quite a bit out there if you look hard enough.  One of the better-known places to visit there is the lighthouse, but before we made it up there, we found a bunker that was an old radio station during World War II.  I didn't know this before, but after Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, the Army (or whoever) thought that San Diego would be next.  So they really started preparing the area closest to the ocean for war, training in people to triangulate locations of ships out at sea, training them on how to use the guns, and training people in on the radio to communicate and assist with triangulating.  So we went in that bunker.  It's very small but worth visiting.  It's just down the hill from the lighthouse.  There was also another bunker slightly up the hill where they used to shoot the guns, but it was closed up tight.  I know, I jumped down in front of it to see if I could slide through the small window facing the ocean, but that was closed up with metal doors too.  I decided not to pursue it any further.  I probably would have gotten stuck in the bunker with a million spiders anyway.

The lighthouse was neat to see.  The stairway is cramped, but judging by the number of beds in the lighthouse, it could house a family of 4-5 people, which I thought was incredible.  I also didn't realize that keeping a lighthouse was a whole family affair.  It's wasn't super easy like changing out the enormous light bulb every once in a while, but you had to keep up the house itself.  Everything needed to be clean, the garden needed to be kept, and then on top of all your lighthouse responsibilities, you were also kept busy by making sure there was clean water available and other odd jobs around town.  The life of a lighthouse keeper is far from dull, I understand.

Once we finished looking around the lighthouse and grounds immediately beside it, we kept walking down a path and it turns out that we had stumbled along a really great path to observe the annual Grey Whale migration.  It's way too late in the season to see them migrating-- they're mostly up near Alaska now with their babies-- but I was excited because as some of you know (mostly if you're my immediate family), I have spent the past five spring semesters with this one fifth grade teacher and her class as a volunteer (and lately, as a substitute teacher).  One of the projects I have done with the kids is tracking the spring migration of different animals, and one of those animals has been the Grey Whale.  So to see where the whales swim by, even if I didn't actually see any whales, was super cool for me.  I'd love to return to this place in the spring (earlier this time) to see the whales swim by.  I think that would be just incredible.  I'll add that to my bucket list.

From there, we drove down to the tidepools.  There really weren't many walking paths out there, so it was just easier to drive.  Fun fact: once we got down to this low point, Jack got a message on his phone saying "Welcome to Mexico!"  Apparently, we were close enough, though we never set foot in Mexico on this trip.  Jack turned off the cellular capability on his phone at this time.  And really, it was for the best, because even though we arrived long after low tide, there were still some really interesting things to see in these tide pools.  Here are some pictures of what we saw and found:

Don't worry, it's dead.

I put a dead crab on Jack :)

Found a real crab hiding under this rock :)

Anemones cover themselves with pebbles to stay moist when they're uncovered during low tide.  How smart!

We had a card we were looking at that told us what kind of things we could find in the tidepools and we noticed that there was a lot we hadn't seen yet.  For example, we didn't see a starfish or many actual fish.  We decided that we would look up low tide for tomorrow and go to more tidepools bright and early tomorrow.

After heading "home" for a bit longer (napping, reading... it's vacation, we can do what we choose, right?), we got to meet with some family for dinner and catching up!  It was extra fun to catch up with them because they recently had a baby and she was wonderful to meet :)

Thursday was another great day.  Much like yesterday, we went to see the tidepools, but instead of driving to Point Loma again (you do have to pay to get into the park, which is kind of a drag), we drove to La Jolla to see the tidepools there.  We still didn't see a starfish, but since we got there at 9:30 AM (before low tide), we still saw a lot of really great things.  So many crabs, a lot of barnacles, limpets, and a surprising number of fish.  It was really cool.  And we were able to walk really far out into beds of seaweed that is normally covered by salt water.  That's not something we get to do every day, so that was very special.  And then of course, since we were back in La Jolla and on the beach, we just happened to be right by seal rock again, so paid the lovely neighborhood seals a second visit.  Morning time must be the optimal time to see animals.  I once visited the Minnesota Zoo in the morning with my mom and the animals were super active then.  It was the same thing here with the wild seals.  Yes, a lot were still sunbathing, but several were swimming around in the water.  One particularly sassy seal was just a kick to watch!

After we had had enough time with the seals, we decided to head over to Chicano Park.  On the day we visited Balboa Park, we were talking to someone from London who has lived in San Diego for the past few years and when she found out we were just visiting, she told us that Chicano Park was one of her favorite places to visit.  We'd never heard about this before, so we made the trip to go check it out.

The story behind Chicano Park is that this was once a big neighborhood where many people from Mexico and other parts of Central America made their homes.  One day the government decided they needed a highway that cut right through that neighborhood, so houses were torn down.  This once unified neighborhood was now split in two.  There were protests about the construction of this freeway (which now leads to Coronado, a wealthy island neighborhood near San Diego).   To help bring some semblance of a community to this place, murals have been created on the underpass itself, sharing the history and culture of the people who are here.  It was a really interesting and devastating part of the city at the same time.

Following a lunch of carnitas burritos (with pretty much the best rice ever... I can't even, you guys), we got back in the car and took the Coronado bridge to Coronado.  This bridge is extremely tall to allow ships to pass underneath it without it opening up.   So we got a great view of San Diego before driving into the fancy town of Coronado.  We didn't come for anything except the beach.  My mission was to find the Sand Castle Man, or at least his work that he left behind.  It took a while of wandering and walking in the water (which in and of itself was nice), but we did find his sand castles!  There were three of them in the same area that he completed for companies that must have been having meetings or something at Hotel Coronado (which is right on Coronado beach... I'm told that this place is rather famous, but I'd never heard of it before).  One cool thing about this beach is that there are flecks of mica in the sand which looks like gold.  It's a fancy beach.  From what I could tell, this was a great swimming beach and I could see why there were so many families there that day.  It's a really nice place to be.

In the evening, we headed into Old Town San Diego which is known for being extremely touristy, but it was good fun at the same time.  We ended up having ice cream for dinner like the healthy adults that we are and then walking up the hill to the Mormon Battalion site.  This wasn't something we expected to do, but that's part of the adventure, right?  It was an interesting museum.  I think the people working there (at least the younger people) were on their two-year mission.  They dressed up in pioneer dresses and took us through a surprisingly interactive tour.  Like, even the pictures moved and our tour guided pretended to interact with them.  It was goofy, but oddly I enjoyed it.  The whole museum was about how the Mormons came west through Westward expansion (you can't do it for free, apparently).  They had to volunteer for the U.S. Army and be prepared to fight, though they never actually fought a battle, which is good.  Still, the journey was tough and trying for everyone.  This was a free museum and the people working there are so nice.  You should pay them a visit next time you find yourself in San Diego :)

There was just one last thing that we did on this day, and it was something that I had been looking forward to for weeks when we initially found out about it: The Whaley House.  This is a house that claims to be the most haunted house in America.  I'm not sure about that, but I was so excited to go through the house.  Thomas Whaley, the patron of this house, moved here from New York and started a series of businesses throughout his life.  He was a very entrepreneurial spirit.  Anyway, he's the one who built this house (he didn't see a problem with building this house on the site where people were executed after committing crimes.  I mean, what could go wrong, right?).  The house would become a General Store and granary, a courthouse, a family home, and a small theater in its time.  He married and had children, many of whom died in the house.  His son died of scarlet fever at 18 months and I think the most famous death of his children is that of Violet.  She married in a double wedding and her marriage ended in divorce (which she had to be convinced to get).  She became so distraught that she had to be on suicide watch after her first attempt.  Her second attempt worked and she died after being brought into the house.  If you go on the evening tour, you are encouraged to take flash photography (several in any one place you stand) and look for figures and orbs of light as well as pay attention to the things you feel in your body.  I got several pictures where the lens of my camera is clean, but little lights can be seen in one picture and in a different location in the next several snapshots I take.  I swear a felt someone try to hold my hand.  You can believe or you don't have to, but this was such a fascinating experience for me and I'm really glad I got to go through the house at night.

I'll end this post here!  There are still more adventures to tell you about, so keep an eye out for that post in the next couple days!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude