Vajentic Family Western Odyssey: Week 1, Day 4 (Tuesday, July 16)

Ben and I woke first, so we went to eat breakfast at the Little America Inn buffet.  Ben had a hankerin' for biscuits and gravy.  At this point of the vacation, I was still going through the motions of eating healthy, so I had oatmeal.  After breakfast, Ben went back to the room, and Eric took a 2-mile hike through the pines behind the Little America Inn.  There was a great trail right behind the hotel that wound its way through the pines and provided some gorgeous views of the surrounding area.

In the pines in Flagstaff, AZ

The boys got in another swim in the morning before we left.  We checked out and headed toward Sunset Crater Volcano National Park.  On the way, we stopped at a Wendy's drivethrough for Sharon and the boys.  We should have gone in, since Sharon spilled ketchup all over her seat belt!  It took about 45 minutes to drive to the park north of Flagstaff.  We stopped at the visitor center and used our shiny new America the Beautiful pass to get in free!  We also picked up some National Park passports to keep track of our journey, and a new ranger hat for Ben.  The Lava Trail at Sunset Crater was something to behold.  It felt like we were walking on a different planet.  The boys enjoyed this hike, and Ben even made a video on his iPod.


Creepy looking tree at Sunset Crater Ntl. Park
Dominic holding some old lava


Benny skipping and a jumpin'

After we got done with the hike, we drove through the rest of the park, which took about an hour, and then headed toward Williams, AZ. It was cloudy and rainy during most of the rest of the day. We arrived at the Grand Canyon Railroad Hotel in Williams around 3:30 PM.   As per our developing tradition, Ben and I went to check-in, while Sharon and Dominic waited in the car. After settling into our room (our 4th hotel room in 4 nights!), we went over to eat at the Grand Canyon Hotel Buffet. It was a great buffet! There was lots to choose from, and good, quality food. After dinner, we bought some souvenirs from the gift shop, including some expensive, fancy coke bottles that the clerk said some people make into salt and pepper shakers. Dominic was salivating over some obsidian knives in a display case. The boys wanted to swim, so we headed to the pool, which was way on the other side of the large hotel. The pool was quite crowded, and not very appealing. However, I did take a quick dip in the hot tub. Back in the room, I caught some of the M.L.B. All-Star game. Ben wanted to go to the arcade, which was by the pool, so back went Ben and I, all the way to the other end again (have I mentioned that my foot was hurting?!) We played some old-school Ms. Pacman, Galaga, Bowling and Hunting. A little later, Ben wanted to go back up to the vending machine for some snacks. Fortunately, Sharon decided to accompany him on this trip! Interestingly, I caught a little bit of the news, and they were talking about a flash flood in Flagstaff that I remembered driving past earlier in the day. Good thing Ben didn't get wind of this, because he was already freaking out about the rain. Before bed, Ben enjoyed writing in his new National Park passport journal. Dominic....well, he didn't care so much for the journal. Eric transferred over 400 pictures from our first four days onto the computer, and tried to log onto the Internet to post some Facebook updates, but the connection was super slow!   Day 4 was in the books.

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