The Fool on the Hill

Day 9: Sunday, March 27, 2016

Easter Sunday.  Today was not a great day.  It started off ok.  The bunny came, we looked for eggs, we found baskets, then everyone got dressed in their Easter best and we went for an Easter Hike up the mountain we are currently residing on and found a tiny herd of elk by a pond.  There were two playfully chasing each other around, in and out of the water and clearly having a great time.  Then there were two actually in the pond, drinking water and giving the others looks that I’m sure Mike and I have given to the boys.  We didn’t get closer because Tuck was afraid he’d get eaten, but it was a pleasant walk.  Later, however, things took a turn for the worse.  We have been on this vacation behaving as though everything is fine hunky-dory.  In reality, Mike’s Dad is gravely ill.  That’s actually a bit of an understatement.  He has late-stage pancreatic cancer.  The really bad kind.  We only found out about this in the few days before we were supposed to leave, and only had it confirmed while Mike was busy passing his actuary exam in the hours before our intended departure.  We talked to doctors, family, and friends, and finally decided to leave anyway.  There was nothing for us to do, and nothing was truly known.  His doctor herself gave her blessing.  When we returned in 3 weeks, there would be more to do and still plenty of time.  But today, it doesn’t appear that this is actually the case.  I had to send my husband home to his father and family while I put on my big-girl panties and stepped up to finish this thing without him.  I don’t really want to.  This is our family’s epic vacation.  It’s not much of a family vacation without the heart of our family.  But here I sit, alone in the mountains of Arizona, contemplating what to do with my children tomorrow to keep their minds off the fact that their father has flown away. We explained why, and I think they get it, but I’m getting a lot of attitude from Jack.  I don’t blame him.  The fun parent left. Still doesn’t change anything.

Gettin' our kicks on Route 66!

Day 8: Saturday, March 25, 2016

Today we visited the desert.  We’ve been in the desert for a little while, but today we came to appreciate it.  We started the day a little lazy, but we finally made our way to Oatman, AZ, the ghost town that just won't die.  Oatman is down the original Route 66 alignment.  It’s a crazy, twisty, turny road through some mountains, complete with the remains of an ancient car wreck where someone missed a switchback, and I was really glad I had my Lewis and Clark Bands.  (These, by the way, were the best investment of the whole trip.  I bought child-sized SeaBands for Jack, who also gets violently car sick, but I got these Lewis and Clark bands for myself because they have adjustable Velcro and I have tiny wrists. I have not been sick once this entire trip, and I should have been sick all day most every day.  I highly recommend them!) When we arrived there, Aunt Gale and Uncle Mikey in tow, we found the town was about a block long, but it was filled with enough people for at least 3 city blocks.  It was a lot of fun.  There was a (fake) shoot out in the street as the Wells Fargo was “robbed” by an outlaw.  There were wild burros roaming the streets looking for and receiving treats pretty much every 3 feet because there was always someone willing to feed them. And there were giant ice cream cones.  There’s no way to go wrong on a stop like that.



Our next stop was to London Bridge in Lake Havasu City.  This is something Jackson had learned about somewhere and just HAD to see. The real, actual, honest-to-god London Bridge currently resides in a city in the Arizona desert.  A businessman was building a town in the desert, and he wanted to convince people to go there.  So, when he heard that the London Bridge was for sale because it was sinking into the Thames, he went to London, bought the bridge, and had it taken apart brick by brick, numbered, loaded onto barges, sailed from London to California, and then had it brought to the desert by rail where it was meticulously reassembled using the number system devised in taking it apart.  Now it stands in the middle of the desert for tourists to marvel at and weird water-powered hover board riders to perform tricks under. Uncle Mikey even discovered the cache we were after, his first find!
Our last stop of the day was to visit some REAL desert at a piece of property Aunt Gale owns.  Driving by, the desert looks monotonous and dead.  Up close and personal, it is a completely different experience.  In the shade of a mountain, we found blooming cacti, giant Joshua Trees, soaring saguaros, and all sorts of life underfoot.  Her property is home to a matate, which ancient Native Americans used to grind corn and other grains into flour.  More interestingly, it is home to a military plane wreck from the 1960s.  Two planes were practicing some sort of maneuver over the desert when they collided.  I believe the story goes that one was able to limp back to the base, but the other spiraled out of control and broke apart in the air, half landing farther up the mountain where we were not prepared to climb and the rest landing farther down where we were able to inspect it.  Both the pilot and copilot were able to safely eject (though I wonder how safely they were able to land considering the landscape!) and there were no fatalities, but the wreckage remains and the boys had a really great time finding springs and wires and pieces of glass and melted metal. A little boy's dreamland! Of course, it was a mother's nightmare.

Everywhere you look, teddy bear cholla chunks littered the ground, and other cacti lurked around every corner, just waiting for an unsuspecting little boy to forget to watch where he was walking and run right into them. In fact, at one point, Tucker and Max both had cacti stuck to the bottom of their shoes and Tucker had spikes going clear through his shoes, and then while we were dealing with that situation, Jack took a bad step and slipped down a hill, ending up with cactus spines in him, as well! Never a dull moment! 

All in all, it was a really great day. We got to see some pretty cool stuff, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with Aunt Gale and Uncle Mikey.

Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...

Day 7: Friday, March 25, 2016

We woke up in the Cozy Cone Motel.  Well, not really.  We woke up in Wigwam Village #6.  There are actually 3 of these Wigwam Village motels in the country.  There were more, but most of them have closed down.  There’s the one we stayed in in Cave City, which I believe is the original, the one in Holbrook, and another in San Bernardino.  We aren’t going that far, so we won’t stay in all three, but the one in Holbrook was the inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel in the movie Cars and, for some reason, I just felt we should stay in as many as we could.  There’s even a Mater tow truck out front! The kids were all super-excited to wake up and find themselves in another wigwam.  Even Tucker, who originally was just NOT - no way, no how- sleeping in a triangle (to which Max helpfully responded that it was actually a cone) was happy about it.  And this wigwam was actually pretty nice. I would definitely stay there again.

We had breakfast at Joe and Aggie’s, another Route 66 iconic establishment.  The pancakes were delicious, but the real draw was the fact that the owners were turned into Cars characters for the movie.  They even have signed drawings of Lightning McQueen and Mater drawn by John Lasseter hanging on the walls.  It was a real Cars sort of morning!

Upon leaving Holbrook, we drove to Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park.  The boys really loved all the petrified wood, and there were lots of other things to check out.  We saw a 35 foot long petrified tree called Old Faithful.  There were weird rock formations called The teepees.  We were quite amazed at all the barren wasteland of desert.  It just goes on and on forever and ever.  Oh, and the petroglyphs! They were different from the rock carvings in Bandelier.  Those were just carved into the rock, but were difficult to see if you weren't looking for them.  These are scratched into the desert patina and stand out very well.  I always wonder why they don't get re-covered in the patina again, though.  I mean, right? Shouldn't that happen?  Someday, I'll remember to ask someone about that.  Anyway, the part I thought was cool was a an old section of Rte 66 that used to go through the park.  The road isn't there anymore, but you can see where it used to stand because the old telephone poles that used to line the road just stretch out along the reclaimed desert.  It wasn’t my favorite park, but definitely worthy of inclusion on the Rock Tour. 

 

My favorite stop of the day was last.  We stopped in Winslow, Arizona and went to Standing on a Corner Park.  There is an actual park in town, with a false storefront with “Winslow, Arizona” painted across it and a flatbed Ford parked out front, that people can visit.  There’s a statue of a guy (there is some question as to whether or not it was supposed to be Jackson Browne, but I only saw a passing resemblance) standing there with a guitar, and the song Take It Easy plays in the background.  It’s a cheesy and corny stop, but I was actually pretty shocked at the number of other people “standing on a corner” that day.  We met two brothers from Oklahoma and Texas driving the Mother Road in their restored old car.  We took pictures for another couple passing through town, and as we left, another 10 or so people crossed the street to take our place.  I had been hoping to have the corner to myself, but, apparently, I was deluded in my thinking that I was the only person weird enough to think this was a Must-Do pit stop.  Instead, we drove off into the sunset to meet up with Aunt Gale in Kingman and begin the second leg of our epic Family Rock Tour.

In the land of the Navajo

Day 6: Thursday, March 24, 2016

Wow!  What a day! We got up and got going a touch late, but our first stop was totally New Mexico true.  We went and found a real UFO crash site near Aztec, NM.  The crash happened on March 25, 1948, so we’re a day early for the anniversary, but that’s ok.  We had to drive down hard-packed sand BLM roads to get there, and then we totally took the wrong mountain bike trail, but a nearby geocache got us to the right place in the end.  It was on a sandy desert plateau with high, snowy peaks in the distance. I can see why aliens might have wanted to get a better view.  The story goes that a UFO crashed on the plateau in 1948.  It was 100 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall, and it took the military 2 weeks to remove the craft and the 16 dead aliens inside. There is some speculation that, instead of removing the craft, it was buried, but that’s an awfully big hole for that area. We had fun checking it out, though. 

 

Our next stop was Four Corners.  The monument, on Navajo land, isn’t really much.  I’m not sure it’s really a MUST do, but we had a lot of fun.  The kids had a great time jumping from state to state.  Jack kept trying to be in a state all by himself, but his brothers always wanted to join him.  We were trying to leave the kids in Utah while we took a break much-needed vacation in Colorado, but no such luck.  Oh well.  I guess they are cute enough to keep. We bought arrow-head necklaces and continued on our merry way.

Finally, we arrived at the thing I had been looking forward to for weeks.  Monument Valley!  And it did not disappoint.  It was just SO beautiful.  They say that it’s where the land meets the sky, and I buy that. The different mesas and buttes and spires just soar above the desert floor.  It is easy to see why the Navajo revere the land so much. Standing among these works of art, shaped by the wind and rains  and painted by the desert itself, it is hard to not feel the divine at work in the world. 

I think the boys really enjoyed themselves, too.  There were so many tumbleweeds to find, and rocks to turn over.  We even made a lizard friend! We ended our day with pizza in Chinle.  We had hoped to check out a little of Canyon de Chelly, but it was late.  As we drove into the darkness on deserted reservation roads, we wondered what sorts of creatures you had to look out for in the Arizona desert that might dart in front of your car at night.  There are deer and elk in Arizona, but do they live in the desert? Were coyotes the issue? As it turns out, the answer is horses. Wild horses are what you have to watch out for while driving through the Arizona desert at night. We were lucky enough to not hit any of them, but it was a real possibility.  There were several just hanging out on the side of the road that night, and they all had that wild eye that, time and time again, I have seen in the eye of a deer who is waiting until the last minute, calculating if there's time, trying to decide if another day in this cruel world really matters. In the end, we did not hit a horse. We did have one calamity that night, though.  My phone cord caught fire while it was charging.  Luckily, it didn’t cause any real damage, and hopefully that is the worst that happens, but, as it turns out, cockpit fires are not the most fun things to deal with while on a long road trip. Luckily, I had a spare!

We arrived at our hotel in Holbrook, AZ late and carried the boys in.  I can’t wait to see what they say when they wake up in the morning!

Is there anybody out there?

Day 5: Wednesday, March 23, 2016

 

Today was a long day. It started at the VLA, which stands for Very Large Array. (I've noticed that scientists are not super-creative in their naming of things.) The VLA is a huge radio telescope in the middle of the New Mexico desert, 50 miles from pretty much anything and everything. Twenty-seven antennas, which are each 82 feet in diameter, collect radio waves from space and translate them into data for scientists all over the world. It was really interesting.  They use different configurations to get different data, and when they are at their farthest apart configuration, they span 22 miles! They essentially work together to make one antenna that is 22 miles across.  That's huge! Today they were in C configuration, so they weren't as spaced out as they could be (ha!), but they were pretty far apart. It was also REALLY cold and windy.  We had to bundle up into our winter gear, which I didn’t expect to need until we got to Colorado.  The best part was the exhibit where you could whisper into one dish and hear it clear as day from a faraway dish, which was even more impressive today since it was so windy it was hard to hear what people were saying when they were standing next to you.  The kids loved it. I did, too. I didn’t even know my kids knew how to whisper! It's a new skill I'm trying to cultivate in them now that I know it's even possible.

Open this picture and look at all the rock carvings!

After cleaning out the gift shop, we headed to Bandelier National Monument two hours away.  Bandelier was a second choice stop after Mesa Verde’s Spruce Tree House was closed, but it turned out to be a first rate attraction. I'd never heard of Bandelier before seeing a picture in a New Mexico visitor's guide, but, with that one picture, I knew we had to go. There was some really cool rock art, the dwellings were really interesting, and there were ladders to climb to get you right into the little cavates (cave – ate) the ancient Native Americans lived in.  Ladders into little hole-in-the-wall caves?  Sign my boys up! Who wouldn't love that? And they did. They totally did! Climbing down proved a little tricky, and there was supposedly a bigger house with bigger ladders that we did not check out for many reasons, as it turns out, but if anyone ever goes and does do the bigger ladders, I'd like to hear about it. The whole places was just very fascinating. The boys mostly just liked the ladders and the little herd of 7 or so deer we saw at the end, who did not, by the way, care one little bit that Tucker had just somersaulted down the hill and was sobbing not 10 feet away. They were completely unfazed by this little intrusion into their dinner. I would definitely go back to Bandelier one day, though. I'd be surprised if we didn't. 

After leaving the park, we took the scenic route through the Jemez National Forest. It was beautiful country, with giant ponderosa pines, snow in the shady spots, and a huge meadow for watching elk.  Of course, there were no elk, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the view.  One thing that has struck us out here is that the ground is very flat.  That is, until it’s not.  There isn’t a lot of gradual incline or rolling hills.  It is just very flat until the ground runs up against a huge mountain, like in a child’s drawing.  It is so not like the east coast.

Anyway, tomorrow is a day I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.  I can’t wait to share it with you!

Attention! Attention! I'm just looking for a little attention...

I know we are supposed to be trip blogging, but I thought I'd take a second today to honor Jackson's Cub Scouting accomplishments.  Today he earned his Bear Badge, and he worked very hard for it.  We all, actually, worked very hard for it.  His Dad was his den leader, and I was the unofficial assistant.  It was a group effort. But I wanted to let him tell you a little bit about his year.

I am happy to have finished this year.  I had a lot of fun.  We whittled, we set up a carnival, we had a pancake breakfast, and a Pinewood Derby.  My Pinewood Derby car looked like my pocket knife I got for Christmas.  Now I have TWO pocketknives!  I also had lots of fun helping to run the Bear Carnival. I made my very own game called "Cup Wall Bounce." To play, you have to bounce a ball off a wall into a cup. At the pancake breakfast, we got to help put out pancakes and clear spots and act like a waiter.  But most of the time we were wrapping up forks and knives because there were so many people.  At the Pinewood Derby, I might not have won, but I still had very much fun, especially when I got to eat an edible car instead of just watching them.  My car was called "The Super Carver" because it looks like an official Cub Scout pocketknife.  At Christmastime, we made big gingerbread houses.  I had fun making them, but my most favorite part was eating the candy.  Finally, at the Blue and Gold dinner, it was very fun eating, telling jokes, and watching cool skits.  That is why I am happy to have finished this year.  Because I know that I can have that much fun again next year.  

This is the joke that I told at the Blue and Gold:
Q: How many Scouts does it take to screw in a light bulb? 
A: None! They already built a fire. 

-Jackson