California, Las Vegas and More!

After Moab, we stopped in Wendover, Nevada on our way to California.  

Here's a photo of big old Wendover Will.  I thought he was cute enough to include in my blog.


We made it to California.  My brother-in-law Dick Siemon, lives near San Francisco with his lovely wife, Margrit Rinderkinecht. They took us on a great hike at Bean Hollow State Beach - one where their dog, Lucky, was allowed.  It was a lovely walk, and there were SEALS on the rocks!  I could have stayed there for hours just watching the seals.  I took LOTS of photos, but they are all quite similar.

See all those seal looking at me!  There were LOTS more.  This is just one...

Margrit and Chris spent a lot of time identifying flowers.

Dick and Lucky, the Labradoodle.  What a great dog.

I was afraid it was going to be a walk on the BEACH, and I wasn't looking forward to trudging in the sand, but this was a gorgeous path ABOVE the beach - wildflowers and scenery and fun! A perfect day.



After spending a couple of days with Dick and Margrit, we went on to Davis, California, where my "daughter", Amanda Hodson was getting married.  It was SO nice to see her again, and she did my heart good when she told me how important it was that we had made it.  It was a lovely potluck wedding in the backyard of some friends.  Everyone either brought a dish or helped with the set-up, or helped with the clean-up, or donated a tablecloth, etc.  It was such a great feeling of community to help Amanda and Fernando Ferraro, who is from  Chile.


It was a Buddhist wedding, so here is the altar.  There was a mirror set up so the guests could see the faces of the bride and groom as they gave their offerings and said their vows.  Here, Chris & I are reflected in the mirror before the ceremony as we sat in the second row.

Fernando & Amanda

Just had to add this photo
of the cute
 flower girls!

Amanda's Family - Her Mom,Christine, and her sisters, Sarah, Emily & Alicia

After the wedding, we decided to spend a couple of days in Las Vegas.  On the road we went through more dry desert - and we saw this surreal landscape of thousands of wind generators.  

There were miles and miles of this!

We got a GREAT suite at the Rio in Las Vegas - a four-star hotel - for $40 a night!  Chris has turned into SUCH a good hotel finder!  

Our room was HUGE and beautiful!

The Rio in the Daytime stands out
 because it's so colorful!

We spent a LOT of time at Bill's - because there was afree hotel shuttle from the Rio to the strip and because it had the least expensive Texas Hold-em Poker games!  

We went to the Venetian, which is a fascinating trip all by itself, with Rococo decorations,  real  gondolas in the canals with singing gondaliers, and an indoor courtyard with a sky ceiling so you feel as if you are al fresco!  Maggie Mitchell is my dear friend who just recently died of cancer, and we were thrilled to see her daughter, Joan Dukore, perform some of her magic in a courtyard show.

Overall, we came out just a little under - and you can count that as entertainment costs, because we had a LOT of fun.  I actually did much better on the slot machines than I did in the poker games.  My favorite machine was Ghostbusters - which is the kind that has the noises and vibrations built right into your seat.  It had videos and prize selections on the screen - it was very interactive and VERY fun!

One more day of long traveling and I've just included one photo of the Joshua trees, which I like a lot. Not a bad photo considering the car was traveling at 70 mph at the time!


Now we're in New Mexico again and I have to do some bragging on my great nephews.  First of all, they are 12 years old, and today they were swimming to qualify for the city championship swim meet.  This is their FIRST swim team year.  They chose to swim in EVERY event - which is six.  50 backstroke, 50 freestyle, 50 breaststroke, 50 butterfly, 100 free and 100 individual medley. There were about 40 kids in each event.   Forest came in  6th once, 5th twice, 4th once and 2nd twice.  Sky came in 4th twice, 3rd three times, and 2nd once!  We haven't heard the "real" result, but we imagine they qualified in every event.  The meet is next Saturday.


Secondly, they are both in a Shakespeare Play, "As You Like It"  at the Vortex Theatre in Albuquerque. It is being presented by teen Theatre-in-the-Making students, as part of the Vortex's inagural Youth Summer Shakespeare Intensive.  They are not QUITE teenagers, as they are only 12.  They play the dukes, who are brothers.  They are never in the same scene, but here are a couple of scenes of them in their play "in the park" as part of the Albuquerque "Will Power" festival.  They did a GREAT job!  They knew all their lines, they were easy to understand, their acting was fine and again, this was the FIRST play they have ever been in!  

Sky is the powerful Duke in charge - standing in Blue

Forest is the banished brother Duke, with the brown cap.

I'm so proud.  AND...I get to see another performance tonight!


THERE!  I'm all caught up now.  I THINK I've remembered to put in all the fun stuff we've done so far...can't be sure I haven't forgotten something here and there, though.  Next week we'll head to Los Alamos and I'll get to see Jonathan again.  Then back to half-home.  And THEN...in September (on the first!) I'll be HOME!

Half-home and off again!

After Canada, we pretty much headed straight home.  I got a cold or an infection or something for three days (I THINK from a wonky hotel air con).  Sore throat, stuffed head, fever, headaches, runny nose, coughing.  Bleah. 

 I told Chris, "I'm dying."  He answered, "Well, you might as well die in the car.  Let's go."  So we skipped out on seeing Mount Rushmore THIS time and headed straight home.

We crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Michigan and just kept right on going.

We had a little trouble with the car seat one day - it wouldn't go backwards so Chris' long legs wouldn't fit.  That meant that I would have to do all the driving, and I was dying, so that wouldn't do.  Chris had to get in there and fix it.  And he did.  What a man!

One of the "Mystery Hotels" we got (from Hotwire.com) turned out to be a riverboat casino in Davenport, Iowa, on the Mississippi.  It was a lovely room, a great view of the river, and you had to traipse throughout all those long hallways to get from the North Tower (way at the back of the photo) to get onto the riverboat where the gambling was.  BUT, I was sick enough that I didn't even play ONE slot machine, and even though Chris said we could try out the Texas Hold-em in the poker room, I declined!  Those who know me will understand that I must have REALLY been miserable.

Chris did his good Samaritan thing and stopped for three guys who were walking along the highway.  They had run out of gas - they ALMOST made it to the next exit - and were walking to the gas station.  We crammed them into our little car, throwing all our gear in the way back - piled to the roof, waited while they got some gas and then took them back to their car (including a slightly illegal U-turn across the median strip!) where the wife and sister were also waiting.   Nice people, they may even come visit us in Australia.

We made it back to half-home in Colorado and we were there about five whole days before we took off again! Everybody in Colorado was perfectly happy to see us.  Amber and Gaby we happy we were home for a short bit.  

The littlies were happy to have us around: 

Happy Jude

Gorgeous Lily

Big-eyed Owen

Our lovely cat Inara was VERY happy to have the extra attention.  Here she is playing "Craft Cat".

And, by the way, speaking of  crafts, I finished the stitchery on my blackwork picture. I just have to frame it. 

It's only about twice as big as this photo  but I think it's pretty neat.

So.  Five days is not much, but it is a lovely breather to have a "home base" where we don't have to live out of a suitcase.  Then we were off again!  First to Moab to visit our dear friends, Larry & Connie Witt.They have a GREAT house in Moab in a gorgeous setting!  I could just FILL this blog with gorgeous scenery from Moab, but I'll confine it to our hike to what is locally called "Left Hand" - a nice walk (sometimes though water) with a swimming hole at the end.

First view of the dam

Chris with the petroglyph rock - both ancient and modern! Don't know if you can zoom in on that rock or not.

Larry with the beaver dam

Chris and Kathy at the swimming hole where we had lunch - just the four of us - even though it was a weekend in Moab!

And now...California here we come!  More later.  Love to all!

Ohio, Erie Canal and the FALLS!

We spent two nights and a day with Bill and Carole Harter. Chris and Bill talked and talked - mostly about physics.  Carole chatted some and left me alone a lot, and I did practically nothing.  It was glorious.  Well, I DID get caught up on my blog, so I'm sure you all appreciate them!We took off towards New York with the idea of heading to the Erie Canal and also Niagara Falls.  We saw a sign for the falls information while we were still in Pennsylvania! We thought that was amusing, but decided to pop in and see what they had to offer.  Chris says, "But I'm not buying anything."  We walked out with two tickets to a shuttle tour of Niagara Falls area, including the big observation tower, a trip on the Maid of the Mist, a journey to the Cave of the Winds and other sights!  However, it was Saturday, and Canada Day was on Sunday, and 4th of July was on Wednesday, so things were getting mighty crowded.  We chose to do our Niagara experience on Monday, and we still had Sunday to fill.  Also, all of the hotels in the Niagara area were booked out, so we stayed at a little podunk hotel in North East, Pennsylvania.  That's not the direction, that's the name of the town!  It's just on the border before New York.  But there was a tiny park nearby and we went swimming in Lake Erie just so we could say we had done it! 

On Monday, we took a little tour of the Erie Canal.  Many of you have probably heard that Chris wants to buy a little trailer/sailer boat so we can "cruise" through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes.  We thought we should check out our new "neighborhood."  

"Low Bridge - everybody down!"  This bridge is only 12 feet above the water when in it's down position.

But it raises straight upwards to let small boats through.  They decided NOT to have drawbridge type bridges, because they wanted to limit the size of the boats on the canal.

The water works by gravity - both filling and draining, but the draining process seems much faster.

On Monday, we caught a little bus for our shuttle tour, and had a WONDERFUL day at Niagara Falls!  I had been there once before, about 35 years ago, and in the WINTER (when Jim LeDuc interviewed for a church job in Buffalo) and I remembered that it was beautiful, but I didn't really absorb how MAGNIFICENT it is!  

We're about to go down to the Cave of the Winds - they give you a yellow raincoat, and they also even give you some sandals!  So the plastic bag is Chris carrying his tennies.  We are standing right in front of the Bridal Veils Falls, and the American Falls is further behind us with the Rainbow Bridge in the background.

Here are the levels of walkways for the Cave of the Winds.  The Upper Level - right under the Bridal Veil Falls, is called  the "Hurricane Deck".

The sun was so beautiful - it was a lovely day.

You can tell it's me on the "Hurricane Deck" - look at the HAT!

On this trip we got BLUE raincoats - but no sandals.

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Then we rode on the Maid of the Mist RIGHT up into the center of Horseshoe Falls FANTASTIC!

This photo was taken the next day on the Canadian Side, but I wanted to show you where the boat goes - it gets even closer than this one!  It was SO awesome!  

Aren't they gorgeous?  You like the gull I caught in this photo?

If you look carefully, you can see little blue people walking up towards the American Falls.  After the boat ride, you can climb up there.  

This was taken from the top of the observation tower, after the Maid of the Mist trip and after the blue raincoats came off.

We enjoyed it SO much that the next day we decided to view the falls from the Canada side!  

We took a chance on the "Behind the Falls" walk.  We went down in an elevator and through some Looooong  tunnels to the two bright spots you see on this poster behind the horseshoe falls.

But this is all you could see - a portal full of falling water!  It's just like you took a photo of your shower  - haha.  It was noisy, but not lovely.

However, we COULD walk outside, and get pretty close to behind the falls.

See?  This is where we were.  On the Canadian Side of the Horseshoe Falls.

We had a great time exploring the falls, and we were REALLY glad we took the time to do it.  We can count that as our second honeymoon, as our 15th anniversary is on August 6th.  Close enough!