Second Post Today

"What the hell did I do to deserve this?"
Socks is currently wandering aimlessly, knocking things over with his collar. I tried to make him comfortable with the pillow, but that didn't last long. He had his problem claw out today.

Some Favorites

Mr. C's favorite part of vacation, apart from coming home, was the Lizzie Cow. This cow sat outside an old closed-down restaurant and Mr. C made us pull over and take a picture of it. Then he would laugh every time he saw the picture in the camera. He thinks the cow looks like Lizzie (our cat) because it is fat and has short legs.

Hubby said his favorite part of vacation was Arches National Park. He got lots of great pictures with his new point and shoot camera, like the one above.

He also took lots of pictures of me taking pictures.

And this is what I was seeing.

You'd think all the arches would be the same, but they aren't. Some are tiny holes. Others are several feet tall. This is a double arch. There are lots of tiny people hanging out in the shadow, but they are hard to see.

The Last Day

We actually won't be home for a couple of days, but today is the last day for sightseeing. I'm skipping yesterday. Some days need to be skipped.

Today we went to Zion National Park. It is very nice, but in my mind I kept comparing it to Yosemite. The problem is that nothing can compare to Yosemite. Still, I'm glad we went and saw it.

I tried to post daily, so the girls could check in and feel like they were part of our vacation. It was a lot of work and I don't think I'll be doing the same thing when I head to England next month. Hopefully any of you who followed along enjoyed our trip!

Now just because we were on vacation doesn't mean that life stopped. We received an offer on our house while in Mesa Verde, countered at the Arches, and faxed the signed contract today from St. George, UT. So we've been working double duty. By this time next month our Alabama house will just be a memory!!!

Arches

Today we saw a few arches. Probably not as many as we could have, but I'm running out of steam and needed to lay around and read and sleep a bit.

Mr. C had a blast and said he wished we could spend the whole time in Moab. Of course he wanted to go kayaking, rafting, sky diving, mountain biking, etc. We let him climb on rocks while we took pictures. If you look at the white dot in the above photo that is Hubby. The black dot way up the rock is Mr. C.

Here he is inside an arch.

And so ends another day.

Cliff Dwellers are Awesome

Today was my choice. I let Hubby plan the whole vacation, but insisted we see Mesa Verde. Hands down, this was the best part of our trip so far.

This is a view of Cliff Palace. We took a guided tour through this site and another one. Cliff Palace was built between 1100 and 1300. The people who lived here farmed the mesa above and lived in the shelter of the alcove. Around 1300 the Cliff Dwellers moved south and their descendents are the Hopi and Pueblo Indians. In this part of the country I have found they are called "Indians" not "Native Americans".

This is a closer view from Balcony House.

This is a shot of one of the balconies from which Balcony House gets its name. The balconies were made from logs and juniper bark covered in mortar. The balconies allowed the ancient Indians to use one ladder to enter multiple upstairs rooms, instead of having a ladder for each room.

There were several ladders to climb to see these sites. The biggest one was 32 feet.

There was also an 18 inch by 2 feet tunnel that we had to crawl 12 feet through to get out of Balcony House. We all made it!

Now we are in Moab, UT.

Driving

After one last awesome view of the Grand Canyon from Desert View Tower, we headed east.

I do not recommend visiting Four Corners. It was not very impressive and it cost $3 a person. We drove in and snapped a shot of the marker and drove out about 5 minutes later. I think they've tried to make some improvements with the area right around here, but compared to National Parks it is very basic.

Mostly today we saw a lot of this out of our bug smeared windshield.

Photo credit: Hubby

We finally made it to Mesa Verde National Park and were very impressed. We drove out to Park Point where the fire watch tower is to watch the sunset. Ironically, we spotted a fire (left of sun) from there. Hopefully it isn't a bad one.

A Good Day For a Hike

M says Thursdays are a good day for a row, but today was a good day for a hike. At least for those of us at the Grand Canyon.

We made it through a 3 mile round-trip hike down the South Kaibab Trail. It is listed as moderate-difficult. And yes, it is. This is Mr. C at Ooh Aah Point which is halfway down.

This is a look back at how far we came. We started in the trees at the top right.

The Grand Canyon has banned selling water by the bottle, but has put in free water filling stations. The water tastes great, even the elk think so!

Ahhhh! Aren't we cute?

This is basically the uncut view from any rim view. Some of these people made me very uncomfortable. Shortly after I took this picture, the guy standing behind the pink scarf had his friend take his picture while he jumped up in the air, right on the edge of this rock!

A Big Day

We saw a Big Bridge over a Big Dam.

Then we saw a Big Canyon.

Yep. Today was much better than yesterday.

Westward, Ho!

That title seems especially appropriate, considering where we landed today. Day One of our vacation brings us to my least favorite city in the world. Is there anything more disgusting than Las Vegas? However, they offer the cheapest airport in this part of the world and our hotel is only about $30 tonight. I tried to get Mr. C to stand with some "fancy ladies" for a picture, but he wouldn't, not even for $5. I did get him in front of the Las Vegas sign.

Wedding anyone?

Tomorrow will be much better!

Link to Finals, While it Lasts

I can't get the embedding to work, so here is a link to the video of US Rowing finals.

***Go to 5:49:38 in video for M's race.

I'm not sure if this will be up indefinitely or not. I won't tell you the end. I will tell you that M was in the C final, based on the prior heats on Friday and Saturday. The A final had the top 6 boats, then the B final had the next 6, and then the C final had the next 6. If you look at the final times, some of the boats were faster in their finals than boats in the higher final. But rankings go by the finals, not the times. So the highest rank M could get was 13th in the country.

Here is a video the girls put together of their training. I think it should work for you. :)

On Their Way

I dropped M off at the boathouse this morning. They are on the way to Oak Ridge. This will be a whirlwind of a weekend as we travel back and forth, meet and host out-of-town guests, and cheer on our girls.

Speaking realistically, M doesn't expect to do very well at this competition. It is an accomplishment in and of itself to be one of the top 18 crews in her division (in the country!!!) to be invited to come. When M was sizing up the competition she said there was an incredibly fast boat from New York that she hoped wouldn't be in her time trial. Guess what, they're in the same time trial. That's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm so proud of everything she's accomplished in the past year, no matter how things turn out this weekend.

Check out this link Saturday and Sunday to watch all the semis/finals live on Youtube. M's event is  the Women's Lightweight Youth 4+.