JoeBlog

Today marks the last day of the trip.   We are happy that we are going to be home tonight but sad as well.   Its been a great time and we saw alot of America.

Today we start off from RockFord, IL, meet up with an old friend and his wife for lunch, then do the last 3 hour leg to home. 

Howdy all!

We made it to Sheridan, WY and bunked up for the night.  The drive through Montana was a long one and we didn’t even go through the whole state.   The last couple of hours, from Billings, MT to Sheridan were pretty barren.   It reminded us a lot of the desert.   This leg went through Indian country and had no development what so ever.  

Today we are getting ready to head out to see Devils Tower National Monument, the Crazy Horse memorial and Mount Rushmore.    These will encompass the last of our planned out destinations and we begin our mad dash home to recover.

We start our swing to the east today.  We start off out of Portland (after grabbing some more vegan donuts) and heading east along the Columbia River.   At Kennewick, Oregon we catch I-90 and head northeast to Spokane, Washington, continue on through Coer D’Alene and drive into Montana. 

This part of the trip we start losing time as we head east.  Its been pretty nice being 3 hours behind home.  

We made it to North of San Francisco and pulled over to find a hotel in Weed, CA to make a reservation for tonight.   I’ll have more later .. until then here is Day 5 in pictures:

I’m trying to catch up a bit here.   On Day 5, we traveled from Kingman, AZ to Las Vegas.    There really wasn’t any breakfast place that served anything for Sarah that we could find so i took the opportunity to try out a Route 66 diner type place.  I found just a place .. Mr D’s Route 66 Diner where i had the Denver Omelet. 

It was quite tasty and with my protein fix i head back to get Sarah and our things.   We stayed at the Best Western Kings Inn and they were nice enough to show us the temperature at 9am:

Kingman AZ is has a pretty strong Route 66 heritage and they play it up quite a bit.  I noticed more Route 66 stuff in Kingman than anywhere else, tho references to Route 66 were all over the place along our route:

and

Once we got out of the Grand Canyon area, we hit the real desert.  Since we made the Grand Canyon to Kingman journey at night, the day 5 morning was our first real look at the southwest desert:

This is our first sighting of the Colorado river since the Grand Canyon.   This is below the Hoover Dam which were were approaching:

The blue really stands out in contrast to the grey and browns of the desert.

Here is our first sighting of the Hoover Dam.   We stopped at an oversee at the top before you started weaving your way down to it:

At this point we notice it was rather hot so we’d thought it was time to bring out a visual aid:

This was taken at around 10:30 in the morning.   Its turning into a hot day!

From this you can see how low the Lake Mead is compared to where it traditionally is (where the water has marked the canyon walls with white).  To emphasize the point, its that low and the lake spans 150 miles at its farthest points.   Thats alot of water!

They are building a road to bypass the Hoover Dam because of the security concerns of a vehicle damaging it in a fatal way while driving across it.   They don’t allow truck traffic over it any more.  Tho there were a few trucks that crossed.  My guess is they were associated with the bridge construction (or submitted to heavy inspection).

One of the things that surprised me was you get a much stronger feeling of vertigo looking over the side of this thing than we did at the Grand Canyon.   Not sure why, maybe because of the straight drop factor but it was a very weird vertigo-ish feeling looking over the edge. 

I stuck the camera over the edge and pushed the button while looking straight down:

We take the tour which leads us way down into the guts of the dam.  The first half of it takes us to a room that is above one of the intake pipes that brings water to the power generation turbines.   I didn’t think to put a person in the picture to give an indication of size so let me just say .. this was a big pipe!

Next stop was to one of the power generation rooms.  As you can see there are 8 turbines being turned by the water (on this side … another 9 on the other side).    An interesting tidbit was that the power generation was added as an after thought.  The dam was conceived of and built for flood control purposes.   It was after they were building the thing that they decided to harness the power of the water that would be flowing through it.   You could feel a low level vibration from the sheer power of the water flowing through the system.

Here’s another couple of shots before we leave:

Now off to Vegas.   We got there a little early to check in so we had lunch.  I don’t remember what Sarah had but here’s a picture:

I had sweet & sour chicken:

This is this place doesn’t serve any meat so the chicken was out a meat substitute.  It actually was pretty good.   The key to sweet and sour is the crust on the meat and they did that correctly.  A crisp shell with a meaty, soft interior.  It worked and i really didn’t notice that it wasn’t real chicken.    Lunch didn’t take long enough so we thought we’d cheat and go ahead and sample the real reason we came on this trip.   Getting Sarah real donuts, vegan donuts.   See, there’s this guy named Ronald that makes vegan donuts, and they are supposed to be identical to milk and egg laced donuts that are normally available.

So we take a look:

They look normal enough .. but how do they taste?  Sarah volunteers to answer that question.  Here’s Sarah eating, for the first time in 7 years, a real donut:

This was a creme filled one and it passes the test.  I try out a glazed donut … perfect.    This man is a donut genius:

Once last set of photos to share.  We were lucky enough that the hotel ran out of the suite (the A suites, the cheap ones) that we reserved so they upgraded us to the B suites for the same cost.   It was a ton cooler .. it was as big as some peoples apartments.  It had 2 rooms, a stand-up shower, whirlpool bath, a bar (not stocked!) and a big screen TV. 

And an extra piece of hardware in the water closet (I’ll let you guys figure it out):

That was day 5 in review!  

The first full day of the road trip, we had lunch at Isadora’s Wonderful Things in Joplin, Missouri.

This place is a combination bead shop and coffee bar. 

This place was full of wonderful things: the awesome food, great people and pretty beads, pendants and crystals.  I couldn’t resist a beautiful chakra pendant I found.

The restaurant portion of this shop is all vegan (plus honey), unless you request milk in your drink.  The menu is not super large, and the food is not prepared super fast.  They focus on quality.  The owners and locals are very friendly, and we chatted quite a bit with them.  It was a great experience.

Joe had Gazpacho and an Orange Banana Shake

 I had a Waffle and an Almond Date Shake

The gazpacho was garlicky and chunky and fresh. It came with a side of bread and olive oil.  The waffle was topped with cashew butter, lots of blueberries, flaxseeds and maple syrup.  Joe’s shake tasted like orange sherbet, and mine tasted very almondy.

I definitely recommend this place.  It’s worth driving to Joplin just to eat here.

*Restaurants reviewed offer vegan food.  They are not necessarily all-vegan.

Presenting The Grand Canyon

Sarah gets the good seat in the helicopter – co-pilot!

The colors really pop when the sun shines down on the canyon.   Unfortunately it was pretty much overcast the whole day for us so we only got glimpses of the sun on the canyon.

The thing that takes your breath away is the size of the Grand Canyon.  Its huge!   The Colorado river has been very very busy for millions of years.   The statistic we got was that the river would dig out 6 inches every 100 years.  Considering how deep the canyon is its been working a loooonnng time.

One of the fascinating things i observed was there were people that were having ‘zen-like’ moments.  Just staring off into the gorge with that distant look.   This is one of my favorites of the day.

It’s hard to see in this little picture but we scored a rainbow over the canyon!

Sarah up front!

I can see for miles!   In this one you can see the rain coming down off in the distance.  We got rained on a little at the beginning of the day while we were on the east side of the park (we came in from the east entrance) but other than that we stayed pretty dry.    The Canyon is so large that it was a lot of miles to drive between the set up look out locations.

On this one i was trying to get a picture of that guy but Sarah decided to make the picture ‘all about her’

Sarah has her zen moment.  Oddly enough the guy hasn’t moved an inch.  Now that i think back it might have been a cardboard cutout of a guy in case you need a person in the shot.

Sarah contemplates the edge

So thats a look a the canyon!

For more pictures you can go over to our Picasa Web Gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/joeluc/RoadTrip2007Day4GrandCanyon 

And we are off!  I had serious doubts we’d be awake enough but so far so good.  I’ve found you tend to sleep a lot deeper (and therefore wake more refreshed) if you are exhausted when you go to bed.  Imagine that!

Today’s plan is:

Get some real donuts that both Sarah and I can eat.  Ronald is the man! 

Hopefully, if we are ahead of time enough stop at the Mad Greek Restaurant located in Baker, CA in the middle of the desert.  I hear they have awesome strawberry shakes.

Tour the NASA Goldstone Deep Space Communication facility.  Out geek out part of the trip

Hook up with my friend Brett who lives in Southern California, north of San Diego.  Visiting Brett before he transfers back to the Midwest was the inspiration for this trip.

The day started out with a really yummy breakfast for both of us compliments of Macy’s European Coffee house & Bakery.  Sarah had the vegan waffles with fruit topping and I, the biscuits & gravy.   My biscuits were nice and crunchy like they should be and the gravy, with i don’t think had any real meat in it, had a great sausage gravy taste.  Very stick to the ribs meal:

We liked Flagstaff alot.  It had a very cosy small mountain town feel to it.   There were a ton of people using bikes to get around.  Sarah said it seemed to be a very ‘green’ town:

Our first stop was the Sunset Crater National National Monument.  The crater means volcano so this was part of the volcano system (i think the last one that erupted) that created all the mountains in this area.   The park featured places where lava had flowed and solidified into a jumbled area of twisted rock.   This photo is at the base of one of the volcanos.   It looks inviting.  Only a 1/2 mile to see the crater.   What i found out was that this was a 200 ft 1/2 mile climb up a very steep grade.  We don’t have steep grades in Indiana (at least in Camby).  I did make it to the top.  Sarah got pretty winded too.   The high altitudes kept us breathing pretty heavy and the old ticker was going a mile a minute.   I think i got enough exercise to hold me for a couple of months:

So far so good

At the top, you can see where the remains of the crater still, after hundreds of years, has kept things from growing:

We weren’t the only ones to make it up to the top:

What was pretty neat was you could see the results of the eruption as the sides of the surrounding landscape still has the marks of the blast on everything that faced the blast.  Very cool to think about it but i wouldn’t wanted to have been there at the time.

I’m going to have to cut this short as it’s time to leave.    I’ll post up some grand canyon pictures once we get settled in Vegas (maybe .. I’m thinking now that the hotel may not have internet access).

So on tap for today .. Hoover Dam and perusing Las Vegas.   We won’t be out too late as we have a real real early morning tomorrow to make our appointment at the Goldstone facility.

What a day!    On Day 3, Monday, we visited the Petrified Forest National Park and Meteor Crater putting about 260 miles on the odometer (including the walking at the park).   We had Walnut Creek National Monument on the todo list but they were closed by the time we got there (missed it by 30 minutes).   We ended up spending the vast majority of the day at the Petrified Forest.  And wow, what a place for this Indiana boy.

Our day started with a breakfast for Sarah (which is really hard to find) at the Flying Star Cafe. 

Sarah had the Vegacado which is described as

Breakfast casserole with scrambled tofu, green chile, onions, red peppers, black beans, organic brown rice.  Smothered in your choice of chile & melted cheddar jack cheese.   Of course she left out the cheese to make it diet compatible

With full belly, we head out towards Flagstaff.

You just don’t get this view in Indiana

Here we are entering Arizona where that daylight savings time junk is summarily rejected like it should be

Here are a couple of Petrified Forest Park pictures (that in no way do justice to the visuals of standing on the rim of the canyon):

I found this charming and touching.   There was this really nice guy out looking at the park with his dog.  Kind of a guy and his pal kinda thing:

This guy blew on a motorcycle, in motorcycle overalls, and we think was from Quebec:

Later in the day, as we were leaving Meteor Crater we saw him driving in.  He was on the same tour we were

Sarah is really on me to leave for breakfast.  On tap today is the Sunset Crater, Wupatki National Monument, the Grand Canyon and our helicopter tour.

We made it to Albuquerque.  Lot less of a drive than yesterday.   In fact we got here too early to check into the hotel.   To kill time we had a late lunch at El Patio, a Mexican restaurant that was on the Sarah-compatible list.   After that we got checked in and headed out to ‘Old Town’ to do some shopping.  Sarah did the shopping, i did the waiting.   Oh yea .. it rained pretty hard, tho quick, while we were there.  Apparently that doesn’t happen very often.  We’ve been in awe of the landscape with is just a bit different than the home stomping grounds of Indiana.   Some amazing views … i just hope some of the pictures turn out.

Of course we have pictures to post but my computer is being a little stingy about connecting up to the internet so that’ll have to wait till i can get a good connection.  Sarah’s laptop is working just fine so i hope its not going to be an ongoing issue.

Tomorrow we have quite the todo list.  We’ll bail out of here early, drive through the Petrified Forest National Park, visit Meteor Crater, and Walnut Canyon National Monument and end up in Flagstaff, AZ for the night.

We rolled out about 3 pm EST.   We ended up traveling 371 miles for the day.   As i mentioned before it was pretty smooth sailing until we approached St Louis from the east.  Traffic just stopped,  most of the time going 0 MPH (which doesn’t get you much anywhere).  According to the GPS markers i put down (yes, I’m that dorky)  we stopped at 6:18 and finally got out of it at 7:47, traveling about 4.3 miles between those times.   This was our first glimpse of the arch, just a bit before we hit traffic:

Once we got close to the Mississippi we saw an exit for another bridge across (the MLK bridge) so we took that.  We figured we could navigate to the diner we were headed to for dinner.   Here’s that sweet non-crowded bridge and a shot up the Mississippi (looking North):

As we got across, we had to travel north a bit before we could go south and Sarah took this picture of the arch that she thought turned out pretty good:

Once we got turned around we drove thru downtown St Louis (which wasn’t crowded at all) towards our food destination.  We weren’t expecting this at all but we drove by a huge brewery:

With this little guy guarding the corner (or maybe he was just drunk):

A couple minutes later we made it to the Shangri La Diner where we had scoped out Sarah compatible food.   She was especially interested in the Vegan Pulled Pork Sandwich.    We’ll have a review of the diner in a later post!

Got to go!    Time to head out for Day 1 which will take use from central Missouri,  thru Tulsa and Oklahoma City, to almost the Texas border.

I think we are done packing.   I’m sure there will be all kinds of last minute stuff that crops up tomorrow.

I’m pretty tired.  Its been a busy week finishing up the floor tiling so that we didn’t come back to a complete mess.  

Here’s a snapshot of the current gas prices out there in the US:

So now we go to bed, wake up, do the half day at work thing and then hit the road!