Streams of Consciousness

Not surprisingly, given our busy day and late night the day before, we slept in on Tuesday!  I hate to waste vacation time sleeping, but if you have to do it, you might as well do it at a nice cabin in the woods in one of America's most beautiful national parks.  We wanted to see the famous Yosemite Valley and get our national parks passports stamped at the visitor center, so after poking around the lodge during the morning, we loaded up in the car and headed south around 1 PM, after dropping a few postcards in the mail.  It was around a 45 minute drive through more beautiful scenery to get to the valley.  We stopped at one of the parks leading into the valley so that we could walk up to the Merced River.  Standing there on the bank, I was reminded of an antidote I read about John Muir.  Some 19th century tourist came up to Muir and told him that he only had an hour in the park, and asked if Muir could recommend what he should do with his limited time. ...

The Evergreen Lodge is a privately-owned facility just outside the northwest border of Yosemite National Park.  While planning for the trip, I had originally looked at staying in one of the several lodges within the park itself.  I was particularly drawn to the posh Ahwahnee, which is located right in the heart of Yosemite Valley.  It turns out that most of the park's lodging is booked well in advance of the one month with which I was working.  I stumbled upon the Evergreen Lodge on TripAdvisor, and it looked perfect!  It had beautiful, relatively new, yet rustic looking cabins that were nestled among sugar pines.  Our cabin had two bedrooms and a common area.  The cabins did not have TVs by design, in keeping with their philosophy of enjoying a retreat away from electronics.  The boys weren't crazy about this, but I loved it!  There was a nice little deck outside our front door on which we could sit and drink morning coffee.  A system o...

Before leaving Las Vegas, Sharon wanted to try her luck with a slot machine.  While the boys and I waited for the valet to bring the car around for us to load up, Sharon popped back inside the casino to try her luck.  Unfortunately, she did not win. However, we still left Las Vegas as winners (at least if only count our net gambling proceeds).  On the way out of town, I took some pictures of 'Leaving Las Vegas' so that I could be like Sheryl Crow or Nicholas Cage.  Our destination this day was the Evergreen Lodge on the northwest side of Yosemite National Park.  Since it was a hot day in the middle of July, and we were on a quest to visit as many National Parks as possible, I thought it would be a great idea to drive straight through Death Valley!  We visited a drive-through for some lunch in Pahrump, NV, before heading into the arid valley of death!  Ever prepared, I even bought some bottled water to take along in case the car overheated. Sharon and I...

Immortality Enchained by flesh travels just begun, Green eyes widen to a vast unknown, Now forty-odd trips 'round the time-keeping sun, A one-way flight toward an unknown home. Near to ten years outliving the light, In vain his way striving to pursue, Yet before slipping into that last goodnight, There's so much left that I long to do. Charmed by bewitching fair tendrils curled, Passion erupts from hope that's fertile, Time melts to a stop when on top of the world, A fleeting glance becomes eternal. A teenage week would last forever, Eternal instant with subtle hope, Joy abounding, Satan angry, but clever, Greasing the clock gears with poison soap. When my corpus melts to ashen dust, And tomorrow is but distant past, Is there anyone anywhere I can trust, To save the piece of me that will last? Imagine a world that's stripped away, Of mere time, the soul's crude opponent, Heaven and Hell assume the form of to...

Saturday, July 20 would mark the first day since we began our trip that we would stay in the same hotel room for two nights in a row.  It was refreshing to not have to pack our bags up and load the car.  However, just because we weren't travelling anywhere didn't mean we wouldn't stay busy!  We managed to sleep in until around 10:00, but then it was up and at 'em.  Since I was having some strange dream about losing my job, I was thrilled to get up and moving.  For some strange reason, there was no coffee pot in our hotel room, so I went downstairs to get some Starbucks.  Dominic joined in the Uno fun this morning, and ended up beating Ben and I.  Sharon, great wife/mom that she is, walked out to get McDonald's for Ben, donuts for all of us and some odds and ends at Walgreens.  After lounging around the hotel room for a little bit, we all got dressed and headed down to the main floor of New York New York.  Ben got himself a souvenir blinking y...

Week 1 Week 1, Day 1 (Saturday, July 13, 2013) Week 1, Day 2 (Sunday, July 14, 2013) Week 1, Day 3 (Monday, July 15, 2013) Week 1, Day 4 (Tuesday, July 16, 2013) Week 1, Day 5 (Wednesday, July 17, 2013) Week 1, Day 6 (Thursday, July 18, 2013) Week 1, Day 7 (Friday, July 19, 2013)

Upon awakening at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel in Williams, AZ, once again, Ben thrashed me at Uno, 3-zip.  After cleaning up the room and loading the car, we made our last visit to the Grand Canyon Hotel buffet.  Since the boys had been extremely well behaved during the first week of our trip, I decided to get them each a special souvenir.  Dominic had his eye on the obsidian knife, so he chose one he liked, and Ben chose a toy train.  Upon checking out of the Grand Canyon Hotel, I asked if a National Park entry fee had been included in our package price (it had), and whether we could get a refund since we had the America the Beautiful pass (we could).  Score! It was time to leave the natural world behind for a few days, and head for Las Vegas, baby!  We departed Williams around 10:30 AM, taking a quick cruise down the main street.  It looked like the stereotypical Route 66 town, and I would have liked to spend some time walking the street, but it...

I woke up first Thursday morning.  I could tell Dominic was in the process of waking up, so I decided to have a little fun by getting my face about 2 inches from his, and staring straight at him with eyes wide open. Oh yeah, I scared the beejeebers out of him!  He let out a loud cry, and then everyone else was awake! While everyone was getting ready, I walked over to the post office at the Bright Angel Lodge to mail a postcard.  We checked out of Maswick Lodge around 11 AM.  One of my main priorities on this day was to get our National Park passports stamped at the visitor center, which was located on the opposite end of the park.  After checking out, we shuttled over to the visitor center, looking for some lunch and the passport station.  I wanted to look around the visitor center, which appeared at first glance to have some awesome exhibits, but the boys were hungry and cranky, so we looked around for a place to eat after stamping our passports.  Wel...

Wednesday morning, we found ourselves back at the Grand Canyon Buffet for breakfast.  After breakfast, we headed for the far end of the depot, where we had heard there was going to be a shootout.  Dominic and Ben found front row seats.  It was a good show....not too cheesy and not too long.  After the shootout, we boarded our dome car on the Grand Canyon Express!  The boys loved the dome car.  The trip from Williams to the Grand Canyon was comfortable, and I really enjoyed the views from the dome car.  The landscape is not quite what I expected leading into the Grand Canyon.  We were entertained on our trip by Clyde playing his banjo, who did a rendition of "I've Been Everywhere", along with some other standards.  Ben enjoyed walking up to the cafe car, where we were able to walk from car to car while the train was moving. He also enjoyed spending time in the bathroom.  The boys behaved really well on the trip, probably because they coul...

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 th...

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 ...

We awoke Sunday morning around 8:30 AM (not bad for staying up until 2 AM watching a movie).  Ben wanted to workout again, so I went down to the weight room with him, while Dominic caught some additional Zs.  On the way back to the room, we stopped at the gift shop (again).  Ben bought himself a carved porcupine that I haven't seen since, and I purchased some postcards. Sharon finally got in touch with her Aunt Velma, who, it turns out, was actually in Santa Fe, so we didn't get a chance to meet up with her.  Around noon, after a quick lunch at IHOP, we headed over to the Sandia Peak Tramway for a ride to the top of said peak.  I thought this was actually really cool!  There is a ski slope on the other side of the mountain that folks from Albuquerque used to have to drive around, taking about an hour and a half.  About 50 years ago, some rich guy that liked to ski decided he'd just build a tram that took people straight from Albuquerque to ...