Final Ingredient: Add Children

Done but Unfinished

We finished the treehouse construction last week.

The stairs required about half of the construction effort.

It has a ship's wheel for small pirates.

Lookout Mountain still needs some landscaping to absorb impacts.

There is a cargo net for bigger pirates.

It's a swing and phase two is well begun

What do you think it's going to be?

End of the Road

This historical marker caught my eye on the trip down and we took a picture on the way back up. Somewhere around Helper on US 6.
The loop through five states:

Road Trip Day 10

We left Williams after eating breakfast at the Pine Country Restaurant. We are tired and are now concentrating on getting home, heading out on US 40.

We could have checked out the Arizona Meteor Crater, but didn't.

We could have gone into Winslow Arizona, but didn't. But that didn't stop the Eagles "Take it easy, take it easy..." song from going through my head every time a Winslow Arizona sign came along.

We could have visited the Petrified Forest National Park, but didn't.

We turned north at Gallup, New Mexico. Driving up US 491 in New Mexico, one of the interesting features were these monuments rising out of the sandy desert here and there:
We met up with the bikers again on US 491 between Gallup and Farmington, coming the other direction. Apparently they went up to the Grand Canyon and came out the east entrance on US 64.
We drove through the corner of Colorado. The landscape turned green, with trees and farmland, almost as soon as we crossed the state line.

Here is an interesting formation that can be seen coming for many miles down US 191 from Monticello, Utah:
We are staying in Moab again for the night. We had excellent Mexican food at Fiesta Mexicana. If you are traveling all over Southern Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, you really need to do Mexican food at least once.

Grand Canyon National Park

We made it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. (The North Rim is still closed.) There was a "management fire" burning to the east of us:

We spent some time watching the condors and trying to catch them in flight. Here are four or five in one photo: (Two are on the ground.)

The views are impressive and I don't think that the photos can really do them justice.



We returned to Willams tonight and had dinner at Rod's Steak House. Best steak we've had in years.

There are now motorcycles everywhere, passing through for Run For The Wall.

Road Trip Day 8

We drove down I-15, past Las Vegas, then on to Hoover Dam:
They are building a dam bypass bridge that will be done in 2010:

View in the other direction is the bottom of Lake Meade:

We met up with Route 66 a couple of times. We had lunch at Mr. D'z Route 66 Diner in Kingman Arizona:

We are spending the night in Williams Arizona, just outside of Grand Canyon National Park. Williams is also on the old Route 66.

Zion National Park

We spent Sunday (yesterday) in St. George. We attended church in the home ward of Elder and Sister Edwards, a missionary couple who served for 18 months in Buffalo. (It turned out that we are staying just across the Interstate from there.) They have been back for just a week and they spoke in Sacrament Meeting. The ward's meetings start at 12:30, which was nice since we have been sleeping in late. It being Mother's Day, the ward gave a gift to each of the sisters, a copy of the Gospel Art Book. (I wish I had thought of that.) The Edwards talked us into having dinner with them after church and we had a good time.

It was hot in St. George and Zion NP today... in the 90's. Most of our sight seeing was from the shuttle bus stops.

Temple of Sinawava:

Riverside Walk:
Controlled burn between The Grotto and Zion Lodge:

We had lunch at the Zion Lodge. The Checkerboard Salad was generous enough that you couldn't hardly finish it all.

Court of the Patriarchs:
Tonight, we are spending our third night in the St. George Best Western Abbey Inn.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Rainbow Point:

Black Birch Canyon:

Ponderosa Canyon:

Agua Canyon:

Natural Bridge:

Farview Point:

Sunset Point:

A different kind of camper:

Road Trip Day Five

They finished the truck enhancement before lunch break, so we left Loa a little after noon. Heading south on Route 12, we went through Dixie National Forest:

In Boulder, we paid to go into the Anasazi State Park Museum. Excavations at the site have uncovered about a hundred rooms and structures used by ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians. ("Anasazi" is apparently a derogatory term used by the Navajo Indians to refer to the Ancestral Pueblo.)
The park has also created a six-room replica of part of the pueblo. I had to stoop down and turn sideways to get through the door, and the living space is about ten by ten, so it is small, even by modern motel standards. The people who lived here probably did not want to spend a lot of time and effort gathering building materials.

View out the back of the park:

The drive through Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument was amazing. There were parts of the highway where, just a couple of feet across the white line, the shoulder fell off a bluff six or seven hundred feet down. No guard rails or anything. This is another case where you couldn't stop and take photos of the most amazing parts, but here is a panoramic view from a pull off area:
View of Powell Point from a later viewpoint on Route 12:

We are now in the Elk Lodge of Ruby's Inn, just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.

Road Trip Day Four

No new photos today. Had a nice drive to Loa Utah in the cab of a AAA tow truck. The driver, Gary, was a nice guy and seemed to know everyone on the road. They waved to each other as they passed by in opposite directions. We have settled into the Snuggle Inn for the night.

Here is the view from the Rim Rock Inn where we stayed in Torrey last night, with some examples of the black lava rocks that show up everywhere:

Road Trip Day Three

Heading south from Moab on State Route 191, about half-way to Monticello, Wilson Arch was visible from the road. There were several hikers in the area and I tried to catch one under the arch waving his arms, but I wasn't quite fast enough: (Click the picture to see the guy.)
At Blanding, we turned off onto Route 95. This is another "Scenic Byway" and it billed itself as the Bicentenial Highway. (By the way, we also discovered that they have "Scenic Backways" that are another whole level of primitiveness.) There was not a lot of traffic... this guy on a bicycle is getting ready to cruise down a 10% grade at about 35 MPH:
Along the way, an interesting sight was Jacob's Chair sitting all alone on a mesa:
The road followed White Canyon for quite a while. It was pretty impressive, but we didn't get a good picture of it. Unless you are right on top of it, not much of it shows (as in the photo above). We finally crossed over it when it took a turn to connect into Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, but there was no place to stop on the road. Shortly after, we met up with the Colorado River again when Route 95 crossed over it on this bridge:
There were several recreational areas where you could approach the river, but most of the turn-offs didn't even look like roads, so even though you could see pit stops down there, you couldn't figure out how to get to them. This part of the river is probably the nothern-most limit of what you could call Lake Powell. (A "Uranium Rush" town called Hite is mostly under water here, having been flooded when Lake Powell was created.)
The nicest rest area was at a spot called Hog Spring. It had nice trees, a suspension footbridge over the spring, and shaded picnic tables placed up into the canyon.
After crossing through the San Rafael Desert, the landscape changed again as we reached Capitol Reef National Park, with water, trees, and strange black lava boulders that looked like gigantic rabbit droppings. One of the attractions in the park is a set of petroglyphs pecked into the cliff wall:
When we went to leave, the truck would not start, or even turn over, the temperature guage was pegged at the high end, and it seemed like the block had seized up. We waited and prayed for a while, and then tried again. Still nothing. After a lot of effort, we got the stuck hood open, and that attracted some helpers. We jump started it from another vehicle and went on our way. We are stopping in Torrey tonight (just outside of the park) and will check it out further in the morning.

Also... no good cell phone coverage here in Torrey, just "digital roam".