Category: P.J.

Mile 8852 – Colorado Springs (local miles since September 16).  Monday we visited the site of the house where P.J’s mother used to live before she passed away.  The Waldo Canyon fire of this past June has completely destroyed it, nothing left but a foundation and, surprisingly, a scorched tree at the driveway.  P.J. took pictures.

Tuesday afternoon I went on a hike with Johanne Guenette who, while I’m in the Springs, I can always count on as hiking companion and for good conversation over good food (until they sometimes chase us out of a restaurant).  We went up the Pancake Rocks trail, on the back-side of Pikes Peak.  It goes up to 11,100 feet.  It was a beautiful day.  The Aspens were starting their fall-bloom, but were not yet in full bloom.

Otherwise we did more laundry, read more mail forwarded from home, handled more administration, all while enjoying the hospitality and home cooking of the Gardner gang (P.J’s brother, Dave, and sister in law, Karen, and their daughter’s family and the grandchildren).  And a little more hiking for me.  Colorado Springs is a city with many parks that offer good hiking opportunities.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile  8726 – Colorado Springs.  We woke up in a nice Bed and Breakfast in Del Norte, Colorado.  One of the other couples was from— where else— the Boston area.  After a good breakfast and conversation, we drove through the remaining Rockies to Colorado Springs to visit P.J’s family, and friends.  We drove past the Royal Gorge.  The gorge itself was impressive, but the amusement park around it was not, so we decided to skip that.

While we are staying in the Springs, I will take a break from daily posts, but P.J. will try to upload more pictures.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 8500 – Del Norte, Colorado.  We spent a half day in a National Park that requires at least a full day.  This country has too much to see, even if you travel for two months.  After leaving the park, we crossed the continental divide over Wolf Creek Pass.  We saw the first hints of fall foliage with some very colorful aspen trees on the east side of the pass.  The weather has been beautiful the last three days.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 8282 – Cortez, Colorado.  We started out with a tour of Upper Antelope Canyon, near Page, Arizona.  Whereas Grand Canyon is truly grand and impossible to capture in pictures, Antelope Canyon is very small and intimate— and equally impossible to capture in pictures.  The canyon is a “wash” that drilled through a sandstone ridge, creating a cave without a ceiling.  The periodic floods carved out amazing patterns in sandstone, as if conceived by an abstact artist.

Then we went to Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah border.  There is a visitor center now, run by the Navajo nation.  We later passed by Four Corners, the only point where four US states meet.  I was at both places years ago and do not remember any fees.

It is with hesitation that I criticize the Navajo for doing this.  We drove through dreadfully poor and depressing Navajo villages— a bunch of shacks made of cheap building materials.  White man put them on reservations, and made them dependent and addicted to western amenities without the means of obtaining them.  Now we are “enlightened” and teach them capitalism, or more accurately: Greed.  So, I can’t begrudge them casinos and high-fee parks, but I don’t like it.  Culturally, this is a raw deal for both.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 14: Shiprock, New Mexico

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 7798 – Back in Williams, Arizona, because accommodations near the Grand Canyon are overpriced and mediocre.  Last night we dined in Tusayan, a town set up just outside the park entrance for the express purpose of ripping off tourists.   I got that hint when the special drink of the day was a $150 glass of cognac.  Most restaurant customers were of the Las Vegas, surf-and-turf variety, people who chose Grand Canyon as a side-trip while losing money in Las Vegas and when at home eat in Mafia-owned restaurants with musical entertainment.

Today the sky cleared hesitantly.  We went to the IMAX Grand Canyon movie while the sun was getting organized outside.  We arrived at the Canyon around noon and were greeted by light sprinkles, but after that, weather improved dramatically and we had gorgeous weather, with scenic skies and clear visibility the rest of the day.

Don’t come to Grand Canyon for solitude.  Crowded parking lots and shuttle buses.  We took the Hermit Road shuttle bus and hiked part of the way.  P.J. ran into an elk.  I spent time at a promontory watching birds of prey circling around looking for dead tourists.  People spoke French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.  English was rare, except for British.  Americans don’t have time to visit their own parks, except for extinguished, retired people.  Wait!  I am retired!  That’s why I was here!

Vintage Postcard Project: September 12: Grand Canyon

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 7725 – Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, South Rim.  Leave it to us to run into almost nothing but sun in the Alaska Inside Passage and the Pacific Northwest, both famous for rain and bad weather, only to get to the Arizona high desert and get soaked.  Ever since we arrived in Southern California, the weather has turned on us, but today was the first day we had to alter our plans because of bad weather.

Instead of going to the Grand Canyon, which we heard was invisible, we went to the Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, because it can be viewed in not-so-good weather and it has a visitor center that we could spend time in while it rained.  On the entrance road was a sign: “Speed limit 50 mph for motor vehicles, 26,000 mph for meteors”.  A meteorite slammed into the high Arizona plain here 50,000 years ago, and the crater is very well preserved.  It is a privately held attraction because when the family offered it to the Park Service, back in the thirties, they declined.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 11: Meteor Crater, Arizona

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 7530 – Williams, Arizona, gateway to Grand Canyon National Park.  We started off in Barstow, a town that has seen better days and even those days were probably not that good.  We had one of our worst meals of the trip last night.  The hotel was nestled in between I-40 and a very busy train track.  The air conditioner was at least as useful overpowering the noise from outside as in cooling our room.  But Barstow is mentioned in the song “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”.

Quiz of the Day: Who wrote that song?  You can easily look it up on the Internet (I did), but if anyone actually knows that without cheating, put in a comment.  Your reward will be that we will approve your comment.  If we later find out you cheated, you will get a dishonorable mention in our posts.

We drove through the Mojave desert in the morning.  It was not as hot as the day before.  By the time we got to Kingman, we discovered from the local visitor center that we had just whizzed by another Aunt Esther postcard scene, so we backtracked on the old Route 66 from Kingman towards Oatman and back.  It was well worth it.  P.J. will have the pictures to prove it.

Back on I-40 from Kingman, the road went up-and-up-and-up and the temperature went down-and-down from the nineties to the sixties.  We had rain and sun with spectacular scenic thunderstorm skies.  We are now in Williams on Route 66.  Williams is not mentioned in the song, but it is a lot nicer than Barstow.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 10: Route 66, Arizona

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

[group photo by Geena Jackson]

Mile 7137 – Barstow, California, jumping off point towards Arizona tomorrow.  We’re in the desert.  When P.J. got out of our air conditioned car today, she said it felt like getting into a car that’s been sitting in the sun in the summer.  The reverse of what you expect.

We had a nice breakfast with Wayne Jackson and his family, then went to Mira Loma to spend the afternoon with Fay Champion.  The common thread here is Ruth Jackson, my friend from Cambridge, Mass, who later moved to California and married Wayne and befriended Fay, and who died four years ago this month.

~ posted by Arjan

I really enjoyed taking the time today to visit old friends before we got back in the car to continue our trip. The landscapes and cloudscapes continued to unfold throughout the afternoon as we turned north and then east. I am looking forward to new territory (for me) over the next couple of days as we drive through the desert.

The temperature hit 104 degrees today. In Alpine, California, where we had breakfast, it was not only hot, but also humid. The skies were a little threatening all day, and it even rained a little. Because of the weather, I had to give up on the idea of taking more vintage postcard pictures around San Diego (I only got one). I hope I can take the rest when we return to California in October. I took all my photographs today out of the car window at 70+ miles an hour.

~ posted by P.J.

[Scenery Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6912 – Alpine, California.  After two days in Los Angeles, we drove down to the San Diego area to meet an old friend, Wayne Jackson.

At the point where I-5 and I-405 merge into 11 lanes (2 feeder lanes, 2 commuter lanes, and 7 regular lanes), we ran into traffic delays.  Apparently 11 lanes is not enough.

After driving over the Ortega Highway, we decended to Lake Elsinore, where the thermometer reached 102 F (39 C), the highest temperature of our trip so far. In San Diego, the temperature was comfy again.

We had dinner with Wayne, overlooking San Diego harbor and recounting old memories, and then bagged another postcard at the Hotel del Coronado at night.

This is the end of our trip down the west coast.  Tomorrow we’ll start heading back east on the return phase of our trip.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 8: San Diego, California

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]