A 2-Foot Christmas?

I'm a thinker.  I'm a pre-planner.  I'm a six-P'er.  (Previous precise planning prevents poor production.)  I'm an imaginer.  It's usually pretty well set in my mind how things should go - but always with room for flexibility.

In my mind I imagined getting home and putting up our outside Christmas lights - a log cabin is really, really pretty with icicle lights hanging all around!

In my mind I imagined going to shop for our biggest tree ever because we haven't been home for Christmas in three years, and I told Granpa that this was NOT going to be a 2-foot Christmas!

In my mind I imagined going to the shed and pulling out all of our ornaments and decorating the tree with Christmases past...  Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men...

It's the day after Christmas and the lights never got put up -- but, ever the optimist -- we haven't left town yet!

We went tree shopping and the stores were all sold out of giant trees.  I was truly crushed.  It looked like it might be a two-foot Christmas after all.  When we got home I was lamenting this (almost in tears) to our daughter-in-law who lives on the land and cares for things while we do our Heritage Travels.  Suddenly her faced lit up.  She said, "I have one!  I have a huge one from when we lived in Dallas!"  She and our son went rummaging in their shed and, sure enough, in two enormous boxes, there's her tree!  Granpa loaded it in the tractor's front-end loader and, before I could finish thanking our kids, he had it set up in our great room!  Oh, joy to the Lord and Lori!!

Now for the ornaments.  Granpa rummaged and rummaged and rummaged.  They're nowhere to be found.  Into the house he went, upstairs to the sleeping loft.  Nope.  He looked on every shelf in the 10' tall closet in our bedroom.  Nope.  The best laid plans...


Once again Lori comes to our rescue - albeit a tiny one.  One of her gifts to us this year were two Christmas ornaments - a bear and a moose - and two Christmas stockings to match!  (Those stockings hung on the tree take up a lot of room!)

Then I remember that Granpa has been collecting Christmas ornaments as we traveled and is keeping them in his cabinet.  I raid the cabinet!

Tombstone, Mount Vernon,  Mount Rushmore, 

Chimney Rock, Blue Ridge Parkway...

 

There's some "slippas," a decorated palm tree and a lei-wearing turtle!

The Grand Canyon and Chimney Rock look great - along with some pine cones from the yard!

 
And then, thank you, Lord!  We happen upon some of my most treasured of ornaments...

It's not all of our grandchildren -- only about half -- but at least it's a few of those old family memories on the tree, and now we have new memories:  The ornaments from the "almost" two-foot Christmas!

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Merry Christmas To All !

Merry Christmas to all our Christian friends around the world from Jerusalem!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXEzFQzD9s

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig!

Twas a long drive - 20 hours in two days - but it was excellent.  We had a fabulous sunrise the first day. We were already on the road so I couldn't take a panorama photo.   Just make these two photos touch in the middle and you have an idea what it looked like - so mauvey on the left and so golden on the right.  Sunlight and atmosphere make for some pretty amazing combinations, huh?

I texted Granpa's mother every step of the way so that she could follow us on her road atlas.  She really likes that.  Says it makes it feel like she's on the trip with us, but she's at home in total comfort.

We listened to Christmas music a lot, had a Michael Crichton book on CD, "Next," and enjoyed each other and the drive immensely.  I took my first "selfie," and no, I'm not quite that fat.  My arms aren't long enough and I was trying to get "Marty" into the picture, so I had to tuck my chin in.  Marty is now my pet donkey.  I got him at the Grand Canyon because he reminds me of our donkey back home, and then I discovered that, if I put him between me and the seat belt he would keep the strap off of my neck.  So now he's a permanent fixture on our travels.  He was also keeping me warm!

By nightfall we were in Texas!  Wahoo!

We woke up in Amarillo to about 20 degrees and a howling wind, heavy overcast, but no precipitation.  It stayed cold until just about Dallas and we crossed the line of the cold front.  By the time we got to East Texas it was almost 70 and the humidity was so thick you could cut it right down the middle with a butter knife.  You could almost hear my Arizona-dry skin just sucking it up!  Yea!

Granpa had to stop at the Russell Stover Candy Outlet just outside of Terrell, Texas.  I tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined.  By the time we got to the cash register he was wishing he had listened to me.  Ol' Santa had bought so much stuff he qualified for a free Teddy Bear and a free box of Millionaires!

We got home by 4:30, but by the time Santa unloaded the van it was too dark to take pictures of the house.  Granpa has promised me new photos, but for now you'll just have to look at an old one.

Now to wrap up Christmas - literally!

If you like our blog, you can buy the book forms on Amazon under the “Heritage Travels” titles. 

You can also "subscribe" for free by clicking on the broadcast icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen.  I try to post every day - it'd be a shame for you to miss one!

 On your iPhone, you can create an app by "adding to home screen," bookmark it, or add it to your Reading List, share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Any way you do it, it's free!

 

Look Out, Santa! Here We Come!

We have our sleigh loaded with gifts and are headed home to Texas!  It may be a day or two before you hear from us again, but we are goin' home!!  Yea-a-a-a-a-a-a-!

More of Arizona

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the most prominent movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, were married on March 18, 1939, in Kingman, Arizona.

Rainfall averages for Arizona range from less than three inches in the deserts

 to more than 30 inches per year in the mountains.

Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits—more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).

There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire Midwest. 

Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, while the Midwest has 50.

  

Roadrunners are not just in cartoons! 

In Arizona, you’ll see them running up to 17-mph away from their enemies.

  

A saguaro cactus can store up to nine tons of water.

( Love the bridge on the left... )

Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with

 13,000 feet of passages, two rooms as long as football fields, 

and one of the world’s longest soda straw stalactites: measuring 21 feet 3 inches.

Pioneer filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille originally traveled to Flagstaff to make his first film but he arrived there in the middle of a storm and decided to move operations further west, to Hollywood. His film, The Squaw Man (1914), went on to be wildly successful, launching the fledgling movie industry and establishing Hollywood as the movie capital of the world.

If you like our blog, you can buy the book forms on Amazon under the “Heritage Travels” titles. 

You can also "subscribe" for free by clicking on the broadcast icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen. 

 I try to post every day - it'd be a shame for you to miss one!

 On your iPhone, you can create an app by "adding to home screen," bookmark it, or add it to your Reading List, share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Any way you do it, it's free!

 

Bright Angel Trail

This is such a special place for Granpa because his daddy was with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and this is one of the places Daddy John was sent.  The CCC was a public work relief program instituted through the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  It was active from 1933 to 1942, and was for unemployed, unmarried men, ages 18-25, from "relief" families.  The men were paid $30 a month (not bad money for back then), but they only got $5 because the rest was sent to their folks back home.  Granpa is 63 years old, and this is the first time he's gotten to come here.


It was a beautiful day in all ways.  We had no fantasy about going down the trail very far, but we did want to walk a bit of it. The first part is probably the neatest anyway (at least, that's what we told ourselves.)  This path was first traveled eons ago by the pre-written-history peoples.  When the white man showed up it was being used by the Havasupai Indians.  The prospectors of the late 1800's pretty quickly realized that the gold was in the pockets of tourists and so began to capitalize on that.  Ol' Ralph Cameron cleverly figured out that if he staked mining claims in a way that made the trail "his" property that he could charge a $1 toll per person.  (That would be a bit over $25 in today's money!)  That ended in 1928 when the National Park Service finally ended his quasi-legal claims that he was mining the rocks, not the tourists.  Now there is no charge to hike in the National Park.)


As usual, to get down the side of a steep incline, it's a switch-back trail.  This leads to a rock outcropping which the CCC dug a tunnel through.  (I wonder if folks crawled through that small opening on the right before the tunnel??)

When you come out of the tunnel the trail begins another swicth-back, and then it gets really, really steep.  A trained athlete might get down and back up the Bright Angel, but not Granpa and I.  If we had, we would have had to pack in our camping gear because it takes a full day to get to the bottom.  (I don't know how on earth one would be able to climb back to the top in one day!  Whew!)  There are warning signs that say, "Never try to hike from the rim to the river and back in one day.  Many who tried suffered serious illness or death."  And it's printed in four languages!!

  The Bright Angel Trail drops 4,500 feet in just under 8 miles.  Then you pick up the River Trail and in just under 2 more miles you reach Phantom Ranch.  But it's beautiful enough right where we stand.  If we'd been Daddy John's ripe young age of 16, it might have been a different story though!

 Arizona is absolutely gorgeous - every single day!

If you like our blog, you can "subscribe" for free by clicking on the broadcast icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen.  I try to post every day - it'd be a shame for you to miss one!  On your iPhone, you can create an app by "adding to home screen," bookmark it, or add it to your Reading List, share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Any way you do it, it's free!