Welcome to Santa Fe

Rebekah:

On a whim Elijah suggested we get a hotel in Santa Fe and hole up for a couple of nights. He found a hotel that looked nice about 15 minutes out of town and had an unusually affordable rate for the area. I decided to give it a try. It turns out to be a Hilton casino and hotel. The casino is very inconspicuous though we can still smell it even from the other side of the very large hotel. The boys and I think that it is likely the hotel was affordable because the really fancy out door pool is closed for repairs.

The first thing I did after putting the kids to bed was to take a long hot shower. Due to random circumstances I hadn't managed to get a shower since Sacramento. It was one of the best showers I've ever had in my life. The huge walk in tiled shower made the experience extra luxurious. It's now the second night of our stay and I've already had three showers, guess I'm making up for the previous lack.

The kids and I roamed the hotel to see what there was. The entire hotel is decorated in very nice contemporary Native American art. We discovered a woman named Roxanne Swentzell whose sculptures made us laugh. Making Oneself was my favorite piece. We also found the indoor pool which was fun, but not as fancy as the outdoor one.

At the end of the day when Elijah finished his work we drove into Santa Fe and checked out the Santa Fe Plaza. There were people playing really good music for free and lots of people sitting around the plaza listening or dancing.

Sleeping in the Plaza While We Listen To a Band Play "Summertime" in Spanish

We ate at a nice little diner right next to the plaza that says it's been open since 1905. The food was really good and the service was very nice. Hannah decided it would be the perfect time to have a horrible tantrum. We actually had to take her out of the restaurant and give her a talking to. After everything calmed down we ate our really good southwestern style Mexican food. It was just as good as Los Arroyos, but Eli said it tasted very different.

Both Boys Are Working On the Same Word Puzzle

Elijah's Tired, He Almost Rejected Ice Cream Afterwards

Eli Was Getting Mad At Me For Taking His Picture

Hannah Swears She Ordered French Fries With Her Quesadilla

Tomorrow we are going to go back to that part of town and check out some of the museums.

Grand Canyon Impressions

Rebekah:
It took two days but I got all of our stuff ship shape. One of the beauties of organizing it all is that there is less stuff to have to deal with and what's there is easier to get in and out of the car. Elijah and I kept imagining that the Grand Canyon was really the first stop on our journey. So even though it took us a week of driving to get there it feels like we have finally just begun.

Eli:
For the last 3 days we have been at the Grand Canyon. We now are now in a hotel in New Mexico. The Grand Canyon is the largest canyon in the world. It was awesome we went on a rim trail called the trail of time. There were a bunch of things on the ground that had numbers on them they went up to 2 billion. There were also stones on pedestals every single known type of rock in the canyon.

Rebekah:
While we were exploring the rim trail, on our way back to the car, we looked up and saw a huge bird fly by overhead. It was a California condor. Later we talked about why there would be a California condor in Arizona. We decided that for condors there isn't really state boundaries. To them it's all just land.

Izzy:
The Grand Canyon is the biggest canyon in the world. I got a raven finger puppet at the Grand Canyon, because there are lots of ravens at the Grand Canyon. I was looking at it and liking it for three days. I like the finger puppet because he is cute and cuddly.

Rebekah:
On our second day roaming around the rim trail we came across Kolb Studio. It housed a little museum about the Kolb brothers who spent a good chunk of the early part of the 20th Century photographing the canyon. One of the brothers was very adventurous and the other was very dependable and practical. They worked together for many years, but then they began to fight a lot, so they flipped a coin to see who got to keep the photography business they had built together. The one who lost moved to California.

The Grand Canyon

Rebekah:

Driving through the Arizona desert during the rainy season, what they call monsoon season, was quite a surprise.

Desert Rock Formations

The desert has so much green. In some places it was almost lush. At one point we drove off the highway to get a snack on route 66. It seems that many of the little towns still survive by keeping the nostalgia of route 66 alive.

All the Stores and Businesses in This Town Were Scrawled With Route 66 Nostalgia Images

We rolled into our camp site at 8pm, just after dark. We had to set up the trailer tent for the first time in the dark. All the kids helped out as we read the instructions for set up. We were all in bed by 10:30, which is pretty good considering that we still hadn't organized any of our gear. It's a nice little trailer and I think we were all pleased to be in it. We had only made a reservation for one night, but after days of driving we really wanted to stick around longer, so Elijah got us a second camp site in the morning. We broke camp quickly and moved over to this second site. A much greener and nicer site. We were all pretty happy about it. Izzy even climbed a tree in his excitement.

Izzy Found a Great Climbing Tree

Eli:
We are at the Grand Canyon, last night we slept in our new tent trailer.
 

Eli Working On His Blog Entry While the Other Two Played At Our New Camp Site

Rebekah:

I spent most of the day trying to figure out all our gear and get everything ship shape. By the end I really wanted a shower. It turned out they clean the showers between 3 and 4 everyday. So we headed out to see the actual canyon without bathing.

The Grand Canyon is spectacular. The experience of being that close to such a big hole in the earth is giddy feeling.

Elijah had to do a meeting in the parking lot, so the kids and I went on ahead. The crowds were thick and there were a lot of French people milling about and acting blase about the big hole. Hannah kept trying to climb the railing so I finally had to carry her to keep from having a heart attack. The boys and I felt sad about the signs saying a breeding California condor died after ingesting some of the change people throw on the rocks near the look out. Finally Elijah found us at point Mather, and then we walked along the rim trail. Soon after we started, the wind picked up and it began to rain. A perfect way to walk the rim trail on a hot afternoon! The cold rain dried quickly as it fell on us, so we were refreshed but never totally wet.

When we got to Grand Canyon Village we found a nice restaurant, El Tovar, in a hotel with an old stone porch and rocking chairs.

The Rainbow That Appeared Just As We Arrived At the Restaurant

We ate a great meal (well, all but Hannah, who no longer eats any meal served during meal time) and then we had dessert.

Sunset From the Porch of El Tovar Hotel, Originally a Harvey Co. Railway Stop

A great way to end a 2.5 mile hike along the edge of the Grand Canyon.

It's A Long Way Down

Driving Through Nevada

Eli:

We went to Las Vegas, and a place called the Strip there were huge shiny casinos.

Rebekah:

Driving through Nevada is a surreal experience. We drove through the entire state from Carson City to the Hoover Dam. We spent much of our time on highway 95. We passed Walker Lake which was beautiful but had no one recreating on it in the middle of the summer. Wondering why, we looked it up and discovered that the water line had dropped drastically in the last few years and as a result the water had become increasingly salty and the fish were dying. They used to have loons come every year, but this year they had to cancel the annual loon festival. At the bottom of Walker Lake is the largest munitions depot in the United States. I'm not completely sure what this all entails, but it sure looks like something creepy and isolated and strangely powerful. I kept having fantasies that it was really some secret location for containing and torturing large masses of people. I've never been more aware of how many military industrial complex type structures there are, and how likely it is that the conspiracy theorists are all correct. We stopped to eat in the town that supports the munitions depot. We waited an hour and half for our food, watched a man almost choke to death at the next table, and then when the food came it was so awful none of us actually ate, except Elijah who had ordered fried eggs. You really have to work to mess up fried eggs. 

Through most of the night as we were driving in near pitch black there was an amazing electrical storm in the distance. At one point it started to rain huge drops. We had been just then wondering what the small strange square of lights in the distance was. Then two things happened, the highway changed to a larger four lane smooth road and we passed a sign that said "Mercury." Turns out it is a town in the middle of Nevada where the people in charge of nuclear testing used to live, and it has a marked air strip, but the rest of the town is unmarked. Only authorized people are allowed to go there. This pretty much epitomizes our Nevada experience.

Finally we rolled into Vegas at 2am. We got a hotel at the north end of town so that we could drive in and drive out without getting too caught up in Vegas proper. We did drive down the strip on our way out of town, so that we could show the kids all the big shiny casinos. The boys spent most of the time picking out the ancient culture they liked best. They both agreed that we should stay at the Luxor next time.

 

Old Town Sacramento

Eli:

We went to a museum full of trains in Sacramento. It was huge! There was a room full of toy trains. Here are some pictures of the museum.

We Went Inside a Mail Train

They Are Just Like Post Offices But On a Train

All the Trains There Actually Ran At One Time, This One Was From the 1930s

That's A Dining Car

Getting On a Sleeping Car

Driving Thomas Trains After Walking Through All the Big Ones

Rebekah:

Sacramento was really hot but we found a hotel right next to the river and the Golden Bridge, and a couple blocks from Old Town Sac. The kids and I had fun wandering around Old Sacramento while Elijah scoured the rest of the town looking for our new trailer, getting a hitch put on the minivan and generally having a hectic time. We ended up staying in Sacramento a day longer than we expected, but we got to go to dinner on a river boat as a special treat, and we bought candy at a candy store that seemed to have every kind of candy known to man. The guy was really irritated that I would only let the kids have 3 pieces of candy each, so he gave us all free candy necklaces. 

Master Criminals

Looking at the Boats on the River

Really Hot, Even in the Shade

We Could See This From Our Hotel

Just Down That Pier is the River Boat Where We Had Dinner

Our New Minivan and Trailer, Ready To Head Out on the Highway