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!

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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!

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Arizona Is Not All Waterless Desert

In this vicinity three underground rivers surface and flow into a single stream.  It's just outside of Sodona.  We saw a little picnic area with a potty and just happened to decide to stop for a few minutes.  I took a short walk and, ta-ta! 

Miles farther down the road we pull over for a little fall foliage photo op and the stream is now a river.

There's also Lake Havasu...  (reminds us of Hawaii - they even have paddle-boarders!)

and remember that the mines around Tombstone had to close because of flooding, and there's the Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon, and a little pond around Antelope Canyon called Lake Powell...  Lot's a water - just not lots of rain.

Nothing Escapes Granpa's Eye

Granpa and I are like the U.S. Postal Service:  Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night...

Outside of Sedona, Arizona

On the Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon, Arizona

The recruiters call and ask, "Would you consider a contract in..." (and you can fill in the blank.)  We always say yes, because there is not a city or town that we cannot find something of interest and beauty in or around.  The recruiters always seem to be amazed.  That makes me wonder about people.  No, really.  They signed up to find work - and they're gonna be picky about where the work is???

Well, anyway, Granpa finds beauty wherever we go.  (Maybe it's a choice?)

At the London Bridge, Lake Havasu City, Arizona

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!