Gallup to Santa Fe, NM

Ethan & CC having lunch at The Balcony on the Plaza in Santa Fe.
Ethan at the Frank Howel Gallery.

Having fantastic desserts at The Terrace.

The two boys in a sitting area in La Fonda on the Plaza.

Ethan & Miles showing off outside the Terrace Restaurant, the main dining room at La Fonda.

The altar at Loretto Chapel.

The miraculous staircase at Loretto Chapel.

Back of Loretto Chapel.

New Mexico, 7/19/11 & 7/20/11

Our drive from Gallup was an easy one. We arrived in Santa Fe and found that our hotel that I booked was too far from the Plaza. This is the reason we stopped here. We didn't have time to do much touring so we wanted to get a good feel of the city and this was the area to be.

The staff at the Hilton called LaFonda and booked a suite for us and it was terrific! Ethan loved his small bedroom area.

We hit the Plaza as soon as we checked in and had our luggage delivered. Our first objective was to get some lunch. We found an outside dining area at The Balcony on the Plaza. It was the perfect place for us. Ethan got his quesadillas for lunch and was happy.

After lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon locating a new pair of mocassins with rubber soles for Ethan and in art galleries.

Dinner that night was at The Terrace in LaFonda. Ethan again had a great dinner. He even tried a taste of his PaPere's asparagus. He topped his meal off with two fudge brownies sandwiching a large scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream.

Miles and Ethan had fun before going back to the room searching for flamingos, prickly pair, and saguaro cactus throughout the hotel. That night we rented "Rio" and we all enjoyed it.

Wednesday morning came early. We were still trying to get accustom to the time change. We managed to have a great breakfast, pack up and get the bellman to get our luggage in the car before we hit the Plaza again. Our first mission was to see the Loretto Chapel's mysterious staircase. It was truly a marvelous structure.

The story goes that the Sisters of Loretto had the Chapel built in 1873. But the builder completed the project without a staircase leading to the choir loft. The sisters prayed a novena
to St. Joseph. On the evening of the ninth day a wandering carpenter appeared and offered to build the staircase for them.

The carpenter built the structure supposedly in one night without nails - only wooden pegs. The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. The design was innovative for the time and the design is considered still perplex by experts today.

We enjoyed our morning and ended it with a special turquoise dragonfly. Then headed out for home.

Wichita Falls, TX was the night's destination.

The next night, July21, we stayed in Shreveport. We arrived early enough that we found a little Italian restaurant then ended the evening at the movie theater seeing, "Mr. Popper's Penguins".

We were all looking forward to getting to Birmingham on Friday.

Last Day at Grand Canyon, 7/18/11

Ethan posing with Smokey the Bear.

Ethan fell in love the Remingtons' bronze sculptures.

One small panoramic view of the canyon

An Indian dancer showing off his moves.

Another Indian Dancer at Angel Bright.

Ethan at the Painted Desert

Monday, 7/18/2010

We ate breakfast, packed the car, and headed to the Grand Canyon and I'm not sure that we were ready to leave the Grand Canyon. There was still a lot more that we wanted to do.

We packed the car up after breakfast, checked out of our hotel, and headed for the Bright Angel Lodge. This area has great panoramic views of the canyon from the south rim. As you can tell from the picture above the storm clouds were rolling in. We got rained on a couple of times but we weren't ready to give up so easily. Ethan enjoyed wandering around the maze of walkways watching the small animals and large ravens. He also liked the Indians dancing and explaining the different dances of their people. At first he thought the storyteller was singing, "Aye yey yey yey". He didn't believe me when I told him he was speaking in his native tongue. Finally, when the storyteller explained what the dance was about, Ethan agreed.

As the storm clouds darkened we decided it was time for us to tear ourselves away and start our drive down to Gallup, New Mexico. On our way out of the national park we stopped to get Ethan's picture with Smokey the Bear. He had never heard of him before.

We managed to stay clear of any major rainfall and showing Ethan the Painted Desert was our next goal. The Petrified Forest was another stop we had planned to show him but we decided it was a little to far out of the way. Ethan told PaPere that he had already seen a Petrified Forrest, he was sitting in the front seat. He got the biggest kick out of that.

The Painted Desert was beautiful but windy. Ethan kept trying to get close to the edge. I was afraid a big gust would come along and wisk him away.

Gallup didn't seem to have changed much, but it did seem larger than both of us had remembered. El Rancho, the hotel we had stayed in before was exactly the same. I made the mistake of asking for a room on the first floor in order to avoid pulling luggage up the wide staircase. After I asked for a lower floor, the gentleman behind the counter informed me that did have an ancient elevator, but it did work. Too late we had already gotten our room key. The room was large and it was named the Jackie Cooper room, but it couldn't compare to our original suite dubbed the Tyrone Powers suite.

Dinner was good at the El Rancho restaurant. We all enjoyed our Mexican food. When we finished dinner we walked around the hotel, all three floors, then Ethan decided he wanted to investigate the upstairs lobby and all of the ways he could get out onto the balconies. After he exhausted all of the possibilities, we retired to our room where we watched "The Incredibles".

Grand Canyon & Sedona, AZ

Sunday, 7/17/11

Typical scenery of Sedona. The town is surrounded by a canyon of these beautiful rock formations.

Look towards the top to see Christian and Ethan after hiking up to the natural bridge.

This is the jeep we rented to get to the trails. I felt like we were in a Jeep commercial navigating through real mountain terrain.

Christian, Ethan, and me, hiking up to the natural bridge.

Christian & Ethan investigating the Van Deren Cabin.

Christian and Ethan reading the history about this historical cabin.

Ethan was always trying to find something to balance on. He ran in and out and all around things exploring and climbing.

PaPere and Ethan checking out the collapsed chimney.

Ethan standing by the carving of a Koshari Clown Dancer Kachina Doll. Their actions are humorous and are often shown with watermelons to show they are gluttons.

Ethan loved the bronze sculptures, which were prevalent throughout the southwest. This is a Native American Indian titled The Changing Woman.

The three of us having dinner at The Cowboy Club in Sedona. We dined outside on the sidewalk.

We struggled getting up and moving this morning. But we managed to get our breakfast before heading out to Sedona, Arizona. I love to say that.

The trip down to Sedona took longer than we anticipated. It seems to have doubled in size since we had been there and the traffic getting through that two lane highway was wild. By the time we reached the city we were all ready for lunch. We lunched at a brewery and grill called Oak Creek Brewery and Grill. There was a lot of action going on, many patrons were watching the World Cup.

After lunch we head to Barlow Jeep Rentals. Christian had reserved a Jeep for us to take literally to the top of a mountain. (A mountain with only trails no real roads.)

The Jeep we rented was terrific, much nicer than the one we took to the bottom of the canyon. The only problem I had was getting my leg high enough to climb in.

We had to acquire a permit in order to drive down the off-road trail that a lot of people hiked from. The jeep could only take us so far and then we had to hike the rest of the way to the natural bridge called the Devil's Bridge. At first Ethan struggled up the steep grade, but his second wind kicked in and he persevered.

I on the other hand did quite well about half way up, then suddenly struggled and succombed to the fact that I wasn't up to the grades. Miles stayed behind with me. We were at least rewarded with the picture of Christian and Ethan at the top of the trail.

As they came back down it began to rain. We hiked back to the Jeep in the rain and it felt good, nice and cool in contrast with the high temperature of earlier.

Our next stop was the Van Deren Cabin. Christian did a great job of negotiating around and over bolders and streams. There were a couple of spots that he stopped to get out to inspect the best way to tackle the obstacles. It got a little hair-raising, but he got us there.

Van Deren was the second to own the cabin. He purchased it from the original homesteader, Bill Fredericks, known locally for his good whiskey. You may notice in the picture that the cabin had two distinctive rooms. In 1930 Van Deren decided to get married and built the south cabin which was dubbed the "honeymoon cabin". The other side, in the picture Ethan looks like he is standing on a pile of rocks, was the kitchen and living area. The rocks were the original chimney. This cabin was used in a couple of movies in the 1940's. I couldn't image bringing up a camera crew this terrain.

After that trek we only had time on our rental to drive back down the mountain to return the Jeep.
Now it was time for a little shopping. Christian wanted to bring something special back to Kelley and Logan. We searched for a while, then fortuitously happened upon a great shop displaying some of the local artists items. We all bought something their. I found a great little teapot. (Can you believe I bought another one?) We found that place just in time, because Christian needed to get back to the Phoenix airport. He was flying out at midnight.

We said our good-byes and watched him drive off literally into the sunset.

Ethan, Miles and I then walked around the community looking at the various arts and crafts. I was trying to find a Kachina, Crow Mother. It seems that this one is difficult to find, one that is made by a Hopi artist. There are many made by Navajo artists.

Once we realized how late it was getting we made a bee-line for The Cowboy Club restaurant. We sat on the sidewalk in front and had a great time at dinner.

Ethan fell asleep in the car driving back to our hotel in the Grand Canyon. It took us a while to get back because our crazy GPS gave us a couple of conflicting routes. Thank goodness for iphones. After comparing the two different routes we managed to negotiate our way back to the Squire Inn.

More Grand Canyon Photos

Entering the Grand Canyon Caverns
Christian and Ethan in the Caverns

Christian & Ethan in the jeep riding.

Wild Donkeys looking for food.

Look closely, see if you can find the 3 longhorn sheep.

Miles by the Colorado River at the bottom of the Canyon.

Bottom of the Canyon, Ethan & Christian are standing by the river.

Bottom of the Canyon.

Christian & Ethan at the bottom.

Playing after lunch at the bottom.

Getting ready to reboard the jeep.

Jim feeding the donkey.

Waiting for our ride back to the Squire Inn Hotel in the Canyon.

Saturday, 7/16/11

These pictures were taken on Friday, I am just able to post them due to slow internet connection at the Squire Inn in the Grand Canyon.

Entering Arizona

Ethan and CC at Four Corners. Where we are standing in 4 states at one time.

Entering the Grand Canyon.

Christian arrived at the hotel about 3:30 a.m. from Phoenix. I had gotten up about 2:30 to wait for him and do some recording of our trip. We both went to bed as soon has he got in.

Our morning started early so we had to be down in the lobby of our hotel for the Inner Grand Canyon Jeep Tour by 7:30. We were the only passengers our guide, Jim, had to pick up from our hotel. The other passengers came from the KOA campsite and Williams, AZ. The family at the KOA site didn't show up the first time we went there, so we had to double back to pick them up. They were from Germany, so we think there might have been a language barrier that got them mixed up on pick up time.

Our first stop was the Grand Canyon Cavern, discovered by Walter Peck in 1927. This cavern was formed 345 million years ago. We descended around 450 feet to reach the bottom. At the bottom, the inn located at the caverns has a hotel room that can be rented by guests for a mere $700 per night. It was fairly large, accommodating 6 people. The guests can even have room service sent down. The only drawback is that the room has to be vacated by 9:00 a.m. when the tours begin. It was comfortable down there, a constant 56 degrees, which due to the lack of humidity feels more like 70 degrees.

The tour was interesting, but we've all seen more interesting caverns. The Grand Canyon caverns do not have stalactites or stalagmites, due to low humidity. One interesting fact was that in exploring the cavern some one discovered a prehistoric giant sloth, 15 feet tall. The University of Arizona now has the remains of the sloth, but they reproduced the giant and it's replica was in the cavern.

From the cavern we took our jeep, driven by our tour guide Jim, on down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. On our descension we encountered wild donkeys, elk, and longhorn sheelp. The donkeys would walk right up to our jeep where Jim would give them apples. The other animals were a lot more apprehensive towards us.

We picnicked at the bottom of the canyon, lunch was provided by the tour. It was very hot and I believe that we all each had about three bottles of water. After playing around at the bottom for a while, we traversed back up.

Ethan lost his Mesa Verde cap, it flew out of the window. But the jeep after us found it and brought it back to him. The drivers had fun squirting each other with water spray bottles. The water almost evaporated as soon as it hit a surface.

It was a real long day, we didn't get back to the hotel until around 7:30. We did quick showers and went to the hotel's restaurant for dinner. Ethan and Christian had a chance to play games in the game room. Our hotel had a bowling alley in it and Ethan thought that we should try that also. But we were all dead tired from all of the sun exposure so we all crawled into bed right after dinner.

Reaching the Grand Canyon, Friday, 7/15/2011

Today started out good. We got up around 8:00 am, had breakfast and packed the car by 10:30. We all piled into the car, buckled up, and Miles turned the key. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing happened.

So, while I called Sammy DeGeneres, Miles called the Lincoln hotline. Not long after I hung up with Sammy he called me back. He told me that he found a Lincoln dealer just down the street from our hotel and they could either come out to us or if the Lincoln hotline got the car started we could drive it over to them. The Keesee Lincoln Motor Company in Cortez, CO would be waiting to hear from us. Well to make a long story short -- the hotline sent someone over to start our car and the service department replaced our battery and had us on the road before 12:30 pm.

We had a long ride today getting to the Grand Canyon, about 5 hours, but we had a good time getting here.

Our first stop was Four Corners, AZ, CO, UT, NM in the Navajo Nation Reservation. We all stood on the spot where you are in all four states at one time. It was pretty awesome (you know how that kid in me just comes out). Ethan was even more excited than I was. Then we toured all of the Navajo artists displaying their wares around the monument. Some were the regular selling the regular tourist junk, but there were a few treasures admist the crowd. We spent time with one lady who described in detail the meaning of dream catchers. Several of them just wanted to stop us and ask us about where we were from.
One gentleman told us about his daughter who is attending college in Florida, and how he always loves to stop in New Orleans on the trips to and from Florida. He told us this coming semester he was planning to stop in Lafayette to experience the culture there. He loved south Louisiana.

However, I think all of our favorite was an artist who carved beautiful Navajo Kachina dolls from cottonwood roots. He was very interesting. First he explained the types of dolls and the spiritual meaning they have in his culture. Then he let Ethan go behind the counter where he did his work. He described the way he went about carving and detailing them. Ethan loved it -- he reminded me so much of Christian and Rae when they were young and we would talk to artists on trips. He gave us his card and his email address because Ethan wanted his Dad to have it.

After that we passed through several towns on the reservation before arriving at the Grand Canyon. We had fun looking at all of the rock formations in the desert trying to describe what the rocks resembled. There were several alligators, lizards, and churches.
Ethan also got a kick out of the little dust whirlwinds or dust devils that resembled little tornadoes. We drove through one and we could feel our car sway. Nothing dramatic, more like a gust of wind.

Finally we reached the Grand Canyon. Ethan has always like the gorges and canyons, but when he saw the tremendous size of these canyons he was amazed. He loved Miles explanation of how it was formed and how long it took.

All in all, even with our little mishap, this was a great day. Ethan did a few things he will remember all of his life. And on top of that, he enjoyed it while learning.
Now he is just really looking forward to seeing his dad tomorrow.

Mesa Verde, Thursday, July 14

Miles and Ethan at the entrance to Mesa Verde.

Miles is in the red shirt and Ethan is in the green shirt at the window of one of the pueblos. The park ranger is standing by the round room.

Everyone on the guys' tour. Miles and Ethan are in from of the middle round room that looks like a kiva.

Look closely. That green dot at the top of the ladder is Ethan, he's followed closely by his PaPere.




This is a picture Miles took from the Cliff Palace. I'm at the top watching them.

Great picture of my two fellows taken by another laggard, a young man from France.

This picture was taken by Ethan. This was one of the items he had to find to earn his Junior Ranger Badge.

Thursday, July 14

We left Durango today around 11:00 am. We weren't in a hurry to get going, so we had breakfast and packed up the car.

Driving to Mesa Verde took a little over an hour. We had to traverse 2 passes of around 9000 feet, with numerous switch-backs. It seems that the roads are smoother and have many more guard rails than it did 20 years ago. Ethan's learning many terms used in traveling in the mountains.

Ethan was excited about Mesa Verde. He remembered the Pueblos that we toured last year in Colorado Springs and looked forward to visiting the largest ruins in Colorado.

We stopped at the visitor's center before having lunch at the Spruce Tree Terrace Cafe. While purchasing our tickets for the Cliff Palace the park ranger asked Ethan if he would like to become a junior park ranger and earn an official badge. Ethan immediately said yes. The ranger gave him a booklet that he had to fill out that had many questions about the foliage, the Pueblo Indians, and the importance of preserving the ruins.

Ethan was so eager to get started on earning his badge. We spent our entire lunch time going through the book and looking for items native to the area. We had the whole booklet finished by the time we got to the museum. We we brought the completed book to the ranger in the museum he mad a big production out of his accomplishment. Finally he offered him the badge, but before he could get it, Ethan had to raise his right hand and take the ranger oath to always uphold the principles and beliefs of the Mesa Verde Park Rangers. I should have gotten a picture of it, but I was so surprised by the little ceremony and Ethan's sincerity that I missed that opportunity completely.

Once we arrived at the ruins of the Cliff Palace and Ethan actually saw the scale of it and the depth that he would have to climb he became a bit apprehensive, but he was determined to be a part of it. I had planned on going down again just as I had done with our children, but when the ranger started talking about the dangers of some of the paths I could see Miles become more worried. He didn't want me going down there even though we had climbed several mountains in Kentucky on paths that had narrow ledges in order to cross a natural bridge. So I decided to let the two guys enjoy it on their own. And they did. They were the very last to leave the ranger and climb the 30 foot ladders to get back up to the top.

We stopped a couple of times after to look at a few other cliff dwellings, but none were as impressive as the Cliff Palace.

We left Mesa Verde to drive to our hotel in Cortez, CO for the night. We were supposed to stay at a local hotel, the White Eagle, but when we got to it I had second thoughts. So here we are tonight at a Best Western in a two room suite. At least this time I didn't make Miles stop at every hotel on the strip. Cell phones are wonderful!