Vajentic Family Western Odyssey: Week 1, Day 3 (Monday, July 15)

Being a weekday, Monday was the official beginning of my sabbatical.  We awoke Monday morning and went to our gourmet breakfast at Los Poblanos Inn.  I had some type of Moroccan tomato based egg soup called shakshuka, and Sharon had a sweet omelet.  After breakfast, which was delicious, we relaxed in the courtyard by the fountain.  I hauled all of our ever-growing luggage from the room to the car on my injured ankle.  After checking out, we stopped by the Los Poblanos store to check out all of the lavender based products.  There was a small petting farm outside the store, and Ben really enjoyed feeding the goats.

Ben was the goats best friend!
After grabbing some goodies from the store, along with a few cokes in real glass bottles, we made our way out of Albuquerque and on toward Arizona.  Our plan for the day was to drive from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, AZ, stopping at the Petrified Forest along the way.  This was the first long drive of the vacation.  For the state being in a drought and on fire for half the summer, we evidently attracted rain to Arizona, because it down-poured on us for nearly the entire drive.  We finally made it to the Petrified Forest, after stopping by some rural store to go to the bathroom, where we ran across a wild looking dog.


Ferocious beast that almost ate me

We stopped in briefly at the Petrified National Forest/Painted Desert visitor center, picked up a few souvenirs, and were on our way into the park.  Since I knew we would be stopping at several National Parks on our trip, I bought the America the Beautiful pass, which gets us into any National Park or Historic Site for the next year.  We first came to the Painted Desert, which was a bright, glimmering orange-red in the afternoon sun.  It reminded me a lot of the badlands in South Dakota.  We stopped at a few overlooks.  Dominic, I think, was impressed with the natural beauty, and he enjoyed taking some pictures and looking at some of the wildlife, particularly many lizards.  Ben, on the other hand, was hot, tired and mostly unimpressed with this leg of the trip.  But, we did bribe him to pose for a picture!

Painted Desert in Arizona
After leaving the Painted Desert, we went through the rest of the park fairly quickly, stopping only at one turnout to view some petrified logs.

Looking at some petrified stuff
We had told the boys that they were not allowed to take any rocks from inside the national park, and I reminded them of the time that pap pap Giz and grandma Judy almost got busted by park rangers for collecting rocks in this very park!  As we neared the park exit, I read out loud a sign that said to prepare to stop ahead and be searched.  All of the sudden, I heard the window roll down from the back seat, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Dominic throwing something out the window.  I guess he wasn't ready to spend the rest of his life in an Arizona prison!  Outside the park, we stopped at a souvenir store run by Native Americans, where we could buy all the petrified wood we wanted!  We left the shop and headed back toward civilization, but ended up getting stuck in a huge road construction mess before we could make it back to the Interstate.  I felt like we were in the middle of the movie Rango. 

We finally got back onto I-40, and headed west toward Flagstaff.  On the way, we stopped in Winslow, AZ for a photo-op and some tacky souvenirs.

Takin' it easy in Winslow, AZ

Around 8 PM, we reached Flagstaff and checked into the Little America Inn.  My foot felt like it was on fire by this time, so we ordered help from the valet for our luggage.  After settling into our room, I took the boys up to the pool, and Sharon stayed back in the room enjoying some peace and quiet.  Ben, Dominic and I got in some hot tub time, even though it felt like it was a thousand degrees in the water!  The pool/hot tub area was nice, nestled in among ponderosa pine trees.  Ben and Dominic swam in the pool, but it was too cold for me!  They each found some friends to play with in the pool, and then, when their friends left, they played well with each other.  Dominic was even helping Ben learn how to dive.  They swam until well after dark.  Ben wanted to go over and check out the playground, so I went over to swing with him for awhile, while Dominic continued to swim.  Finally, the boys were waterlogged, and we went back to the room, where we ordered Pizza Hut and watched American Pickers.  All in all, it was another great day (even though Dominic lost his goggles at the pool!)  This was our third hotel in three nights, and it was another good one.  For some odd reason, Dominic chose to sleep on the floor.

Unidentified Arizona wildlife

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The agony of victory....a.k.a. picking my jaw up off the floor

Allright. I've now had nearly 24 hours (although its taken me a couple of days to complete this post) to calm down, reflect upon and digest the improbable gut wrenching game yesterday in which the heavily favored Colts lost to the Steelers 21-18. I wrote last year of not being as emotionally attached to the Steelers as I have been in the past. I wrote last week of how I thought that I might be spending too much valuable time following the Steelers, especially since I have absolutely no control over the outcome of their games. Let me just say this: yesterday's game was probably in the top five emotionally draining, and ultimately gratifying, experiences of my life. Ouside of my wedding and the birth of my two sons, I can't remember being as nervous, deflated, joyful, stunned and exhilirated as I was yesterday----all withing about a ten minute stretch of seemingly neverending time! What could have been a devestating loss to live with in the offseason (and, forever, for Jerome...
Read more

"The Axis of Evil and the Doctrine of Preemption Three Years On"

Jerod and I attended a lecture by Brookings Institution fellow Michael O'Hanlon last night at Park University in Parkville, MO. The lecture was part of the Jerzy Hauptmann Distinguished Guest Lecture series. As a Park University M.B.A. alum, I received an invitation to the 13th annual lecture in the series. I like going to events like this, especially since I was interested in the content of this particular lecture, of which the title was the title of this post. Dr. O'Hanlon described himself as a Sam Nunn Democrat at the beginning of the lecture. It's always difficult to prevent political feeling from entering into objective analysis, and I don't know how you measure the "objectiveness" of analysis, but I feel that most Brookings scholars are at least "fair", and Dr. O'Hanlon was no exception. His analysis of the doctrine of preemption was focused on the effectiveness of the doctrine, as opposed to any moral righteousness or implications of the...
Read more

Removing a password that was created in a previous version from an Access 2007 database

Earlier this week I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to remove a password from an Access 2007 database (file extension .accdb). The database was created in a previous version of access and subsequently "upgraded" to the Access 2007 format. I believe some type of a wizard was used to perform the "upgrade." The security model is evidently different in Access 2007 than in previous versions. It doesn't appear that you can set/unset database passwords. Instead, in Access 2007, there is an option to Encrypt with Password. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be logically similar to the earlier version password architecture, but there was no way that I could find to easily remove the password that had been created in the earlier version when using the Access 2007 interface. Access security has always been confusing to me, and I need to take the time someday to understand how the security model is supposed to work in Access 2007. An...
Read more