This month's calendar                         Archives                            Our Google Calendar                   

March 31, 2006

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

I'm including links this week because we still have no way to get our pictures uploaded to the web page.

It's finally here! We've been waiting for this trip for months and on Monday we made our way up north to the Grand Canyon. On our drive up to Williams we stopped off at Flagstaff, Arizona to see what was there and had nice lunch at this old hotel called "The Weatherford" and ate lunch at "Charleys Bar" before we continued on. The entire building is made of red sandstone and the inside walls are made of old brick. The building has been there for a hundred years. We had a nice lunch but it was a good thing we weren't in a hurry because it took forever to get our order.

We arrived at Williams at the Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel where we had made our reservations. We checked into our room and collected our train tickets. The package included round trip tickets to the Canyon and two nights stay with breakfast and dinner. After a buffet dinner, we went to bed anxiously awaiting our train ride to the canyon the next morning. We got up to rainy weather and temps in the 40's. The rain was unusual, but we were at an elevation of 6,000 feet, so the temperature was pretty much average for March. After breakfast they had this cheesy Wild West show (I think mainly for the kids) and then the train left promptly at 10:00 a.m. The two-hour ride to the canyon was in a 1920's vintage Pullman railcar and the scenery was mostly high desert and timberline views. We didn't see much wildlife; just a couple of cows grazing along the way. I insulted the locals by asking what kind of bushes we were looking at and the corrected me by responding that those bushes were cedar trees! Excuse me, but back home we would call those things bushes! The train was full to capacity, and ranged from families with kids running up and down the aisles to people our age. The family in front of us sounded like they were from Australia and we had a couple of heavy drinkers across from us. We had our choice of soft drinks, coffee, hard liquor and there was a cafe car if you wanted to stand in line for other quick foods.

We finally arrived to our destination, the Grand Canyon, and guess what? We couldn't see anything! The Canyon was completely socked in by low clouds from the weather and it looked like a bowl full of marshmallows! I was so disappointed and thought to myself that I waited all this time and came all this way to see this? We took a free shuttle around the rim and just caught glimpses now and then of the view. We picked the Hermits Rest route, which travels eight miles west to Hermits Rest, stopping at several overlooks along the way. It would have been beautiful to be able to see the full realm of the Canyon but that was not to be. By the time we got back to catch our train, the weather was clearing up but we had to leave. We promised ourselves that we would come back though.

On our way back to Phoenix we drove through Sedona with it's beautiful red rocks. We called some friends that live there and they met us for lunch. We had a wonderful visit and after we left them we stopped off at Montezuma's Castle on the way home. These are ancient cliff dwellings of the first known Indians that lived here. No sooner did we get there and pay for our admission than we caught another torrential rain shower that was going through. This time we got drenched. We ran back to the information center and dripped all over everything. Why does it have to rain every time we go anywhere? Heaven knows we get enough of that at home!

After dinner, we picked up Stanley the Basset Hound from the dog sitter and came home. We were all glad to be back in our own beds once again. The next morning, we did some house chores, I cleaned the bathrooms, mowed the lawn and watered the plants. So far, we haven't done too much damage around here.

My sister called Wednesday night to check in to see how we were doing with everything. They are having a wonderful trip in Israel and their weather is great. We will pick them up at the airport Sunday evening.