We are in Taos, New Mexico tonight — an upscale artist’s town who’s central area is awash in galleries. Most of today was driving across Colorado from Durango. This meant some time in tree covered mountains as we crossed the continental divide. We got up to 10,000 feet before again dropping down into the desert.

I have some pictures from the last few days up — that part takes a while to upload. I also have many, many panoramas to put together when I get back home. I have included some of the individual pictures for the panoramas some of the time because some of the views are amazing. There are now pictures up for Natural Bridges National Monument, Newspaper Rock, Monument Valley, Four Corners and Mesa Verde National Park.

I’m missing everyone. Hope you are enjoying the progress and the pictures. Tomorrow, its off to Texas.

My last entry wasn’t very talkative. I’ll add a little more today.

The days in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park was a cool and cloudy day for this part of the world. That’s one reason the pictures of Zion National Park don’t do it justice — the bright, gray sky didn’t help my little digital camera. But try to imagine shear, red rock walls rising on each side of you for hundreds of feet. An amazing place even with the occasional rain.

Bryce Canyon National Park is mostly overlooks and hiking trails. The pictures are from the overlooks and show the unbelievable formations. Bryce is high enough that we enjoyed small snow flakes rather than rain drops. The temperature didn’t get below freezing but the wind was mighty cold.

After Bryce Canyon, we stayed at a Rudy’s Lodge and learned something about the tourists we were sharing the parks with. There are LOTS of Europeans here visiting the wild west. Bus loads (literally) as well as many cars of people speaking German and French and Italian and many other languages are everywhere. Those euros must be going a long way these days.

Today we drove from the national parks in the south west corner of Utah to the national parks in the south east corner of Utah. The weather is still being cool for this time of year so the temperature is in the 70s and the sky is full of clouds. We visited Arches National Park and took lots of pictures.

Driving around Utah enjoying the National Parks. We stopped at Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. There are pictures up of both (Zion and Bryce).

I didn’t mention them, but there are also pictures up of Lake Havasu City and Hoover Dam.

Time for an update — I don’t get to a computer and I seem to think
of Twittering a message when I am driving and that’s not a good
idea.

From Anaheim, we drove east amid 18 wheelers and large pickups
pulling boats. It rained on us while leaving LA and a few times
on the road. We didn’t see any of the tornadoes that happened that
day and we missed to flooding, but there is a lot of rain falling
on the desert down here and that’s usually good for at least one flood.

Like I said, there were lots of boats on the road. It seems that
the Spring is time for the annual migration of boats from LA driveways
to the wet recreation areas along the Colorado River. We spent the
night at one of these — Lake Havasu City. This town is on Lake
Havasu (of course) and is just a little south of Needles. I know that
town because it’s always in the weather news as the hottest city
in the country. Despite the summer heat, there are a lot of people
living down here with subdivisions spreading across the desert and
up the hillsides.

The main attraction in Lake Havasu City, besides the lake and water
activities, is the London Bridge. This is the London Bridge of
“falling down” fame that was carted from England to the deserts of
the US and now spans one end of a small bay. You can drive across it
and walk and boat under it. The development directly associated
with the bridge is a little sad, though. There are some flourishing
hotels and a few restaurants, but, around the visitor’s center
there are boarded up buildings and the ‘theater and pub’ is closed
and boarded. The ‘British and American Friendship Garden’ is dead
and long removed. Some of the buildings have ‘improvements coming’
signs on them but that’s the only sign of advancement.
The bridge itself looks good and seems to be in fine health.

Driving around we notice little differences between the states.
As I Twittered before, unlike in Oregon (where alcohol stronger than
wine is only sold in state licensed liquor stores) California
Costco’s sell hard liquor — think Costco sized bottles of vodka.
Maximum road speeds vary by state (75 in AZ, 70 in CA) and one
noticed coming from CA to AZ is gas prices — CA is consistently
over $4 per gallon while, just across the boarder in AZ, the prices
are in the $3.60 to $3.80 range. It’s not the state gas taxes –
I looked.
Utah, which has gas taxes 1.5 times the CA gas tax still has
$3.80 gas.

After Lake Havasu City, we drove north and stopped at Hoover Dam.
Impressive feat engineering. We took the tour and visited the
tunnels and generator room. The visitor’s center is very grand
and they keep reminding you that is wasn’t paid for by tax
dollars — the dam supports itself by selling power and charging
visitors fees.

It was threatening rain at the dam and we watched lightening
flicker in the skies overhead. Our drive from there north to
Zion National Park was a wet one. It rained and rained and rained
here in the desert so the hillsides are green with new growth.

We are finishing up with some last time in Disneyland and will head inland tomorrow. I’ll be glad to get out of this crowded park. The weather hasn’t been too bad and, by normal DLand standards, the crowds are actually light. It’s still a lot of people and a lot of lines. Tomorrow Arizona and some more outdoors.

There are some pictures for our drive through Big Sir and the visit to Hearst Castle and some more snaps of Disneyland.
I reversed the order of the trip pictures so the newer ones show up on the first page.

Dland


Originally uploaded by MisterBlue



Guess where we are.

As I mentioned in the Twitter to the left, we drove into LA last night. It was really LA as we experienced freeway traffic jams on a Sunday evening. Amazing. It’s in the 80’s and a little humid with not a cloud in the sky. At this very moment, I’m sitting beside the pool at our hotel while the laundry goes around — a necessity of travel.

After SF, we stopped in Monterey to visit the Aquarium and eat lunch in their touristy Fisherman’s Wharf. The aquarium had a lot of amazing displays of fish and plants but the activities were all geared to young children. So we came, we oggled, we exited.

The next day was a visit to Hearst Castle. When I have 200 million dollars to spend on a house, I hope mine is this magnificent.

The rest of the day was spent driving down the California coast — beautiful, beautiful, beautiful: the sea lions basking on the beaches, the white waves crashing against the rocks and the blue, blue ocean.

We just finished stomping around San Francisco. We left Reno Thursday morning thinking we’d drive down to Yosemite. It wasn’t long before we ran across and informational sign saying Highway 120 was still closed for the winter. Sigh. Rather than drive all the way around and spend many hours getting there, we decided to drive directly to the San Francisco bay area.

Driving from Tahoe to SF means driving on I-80. Besides the temp being 102, this entails driving at 75 MPH on an 8 lane highway with cars shoulder-to-shoulder and bumper-to-bumper. It’s insane! This went on all the way across the central valley. There must be millions of people in central California and they must all be in their cars.

We counteracted the highway experience by ending Thursday in Muir Woods National Monument. This is a small patch of redwoods that was saved in 1904 and it is one of the last samples of the gigantic trees that covered northern California when it was first settled. Beautiful, gigantic trees.

Friday we hiked around the Marin park which is across the bay from San Francisco. This afforded us wonderful views of the bay and SF. We also explored many of the bunkers and old military constructions that are scattered about. We finished off the day by diving into SF and having dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf before driving Lombard Street.

Pictures are now available at http://pics.misterblue.com/v/20080500-Trip/.

I really don’t know what is going on with gas prices — in two days here in California I’ve seen prices between $4.06 and $3.61. It can’t just be the price of oil.

Bridge over the bay


Originally uploaded by MisterBlue



It is 90 in San Francisco. Here doing the tourist thing.

The phoned entry for Reno didn’t work yesterday so today I’m using a sad Internet connection. We stopped in Reno because we can get $30/night rooms (casinos are good for something). Once hanging out close to cheap rooms and massive buffet’s, we can drive up to Tahoe and hike and photograph the high altitude lake beauty.

Reno is an odd town. Growing by leaps and bounds. There are clearly the very rich (Jags and Mercedes abound and there are houses on the hills that, from 10 miles away, are clearly massive) and the very poor. The people aren’t friendly in the saying ‘hi’ as they pass by way. But there is also an acceptance of the divides in money and people. It seems they keep the ‘inconsequential’ and ‘real’ separate. One is a show girl in the casino and a mom at home and those worlds are separate and everyone accepts that. That acceptance seems to go for money and position as well.

Another thing making Reno ‘ok’ is a temperature of 70 with white clouds in the blue sky. I’m sure it is a different town when it’s 100.

We drove up and around Lake Tahoe. I will have some pictures up when I get some bandwidth but it was beautiful as always. We visited several of the lookouts and we threw a few rocks into the lake. The Tahoe area is getting developed so t’s not like you’re out in the woods.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we will be driving to Yosemite for another day of nature before diving into San Francisco.

Out of Oregon


Originally uploaded by MisterBlue



Made it into California. We made a dash out of the local area and, at the moment, we are looking to be in Lake Tahoe tomorrow. The road has been clear and the temperature about 65.

Getting ready for the road


Originally uploaded by MisterBlue



I’m packing and getting ready for a road trip. After working for many years at one place, my work gives a sabbatical to spend refreshing and preparing for another many years of working. Over the next few weeks, I am packing my family and possessions into a van and driving around America. I will be using my phone to post daily notes from the road as well Twittering in the sidebar.

We did a similar trip 15 years ago. I found, on an old backup, the web pages I created to record that trip. Check out the original Trip Around America. That’s from 1995 so appreciate the hand wrought HTML. Hey, back then the drop shadow on the GIF of America at the top of the page was Hot Stuff.

Like I said, I will be posting more as we travel. We’ll see how far we get this time — now the boys are grown and they will have opinions on where we go and what we do.

05-03-08_1614.jpg


Originally uploaded by MisterBlue



Do you know there are stores that sell blocks of custom soap? Amazing. You can tell the store is close because of the soap perfume coming out the door.