Squishy Anvil

Newfoundland 2010!

2010-08-05T19:53:00.002-04:00

110,000 Sq. Km., 16 Days, 2 bikes, a bunch of camping gear and some maps.....

Dance Recital 2010

2010-05-25T22:03:00.009-04:00

Click for a larger image.

What did you do this summer?

2009-08-26T22:07:00.014-04:00

We had a busy summer. Lots of play, lots of 'visiting', lots of swimming and lots of mending, improving & maintenance. We finished most of the construction of the screen porch addition. One big project was painting the house. It was last painted over 16 years ago!

We worked off 6 lifts of staging to paint parts of the house, it was very exciting.

If you don't look at the East or North side of the house...it looks GREAT!

Some of us did a good amount of hiking this spring and summer.

We hiked with friends.

And family

Chairback Mountain on the A.T.

We spent the night on a dock in a lake.

We sat around the campfire and thought 'deep' thoughts.

Even flew a kite on top of a mountain!
We stayed with friends at their camp.

We 'did' fireworks on the lake.
Ivo wears a smile.

We participated in a summer technology institute for teachers.

We visited some wicked cool architecture at M.I.T. in Cambridge. We went to a family reunion on the Cape.

We spend a great week on Ocean Point in East Boothbay Harbor, Maine with family.We watched a new ship get launched at Washburn & Doughty.

Mom and Dad even had a few 'dates'.Fishin' and chillin' with Mr. H.
Swimming with friends at the lake.
SAR & swiftwater rescue training on the Rapid River.

Teaching tie-dye at the summer recreation program in Stratton.
Happy hour with family and friends on Ocean Point.
Hiking Big Moose Mountain in Greenville.
Swiftwater rescue training.
Entertaining on the screen porch with friends.
When the sun came out, we painted like crazy.
Our friend Steve, mired in the mud while making improvements at Maine Sugarworks.
Steve digs a drainage pond in our field.

Dance Recital Weekend

2009-05-24T13:02:00.005-04:00

It's been nearly a year since we left on our epic summer-long American West trip. We created 'SquishyAnvil' to document the journey. For those who are interested, I thought I'd create an occasional post of what the crew is currently doing.

This is Ivo's dance recital weekend. There were some amazing dance numbers and performances. Thanks to the parents for making the trek from Ct. to be here for the event.

Final Trip Statistics

2008-08-18T13:29:00.002-04:00

We compiled the following statistics to wrap up our trip blog. Thanks to all who kept up with our travels, your comments & emails during the trip helped us remain connected.

Total Days of trip 56 days (8 weeks exactly)

Total Miles traveled door to door : 12,900 miles

Average MPG 28.5 MPG

Gallons of gas used: 450 gallons

$ spent on gasoline $1850

Books read: Ivo: 2 S: 1 Xi: 8 Q: 3

Highest gas price $ 4.59 Beverly Hills CA (middle of trip)

Lowest gas price $ 3.59 Columbia, MO (near end of trip)

Highest temperature 114˚F in Las Vegas (but it was a dry heat!)

Lowest temperature 25˚F in Silverton, CO

Days of rain: Only ½ a day!

Photographs taken: 12, 200 images (54 GB)

Steepest grade driven 16% for 5.5 miles at Black Canyon of the Gunnison in CO

Scariest drives: From Durango, Co. to Ouray Co, the Mesa Verde National
Park access road, and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison campground access road with its 16% grade.

Scariest hikes: Angel’s Landing hike in Zion Natl. Park because of sheer steepness and narrow trails and Glacier National Park because of the constant threat of grizzlies

Highest elevation hiked: 12,100 ft. at Spencer Basin near Silverton, CO.

Nastiest shower : Sequoia National Park showers (being demolished this fall because they are over 100 years old!)

Nastiest restroom: Weed, CA at the Chevron gas station

Coolest swim

Xi: Pacific Palisades Beach in CA
S: Jackson Lake at the Grand Tetons in WY
Q: Malibu Beach, Ca. Amarillo TX Best Western, Nephi, Ut. Best Western
Ivo: Rob & Suzie’s lap pool Indianapolis, Moab UT Best Western, Snake River while white water rafting in WY,Pacific Palisades Beach, SanFrancisco Best Western (guess who likes to swim?)

Miles hiked: 90.5 miles

Longest day in the car: 30 hours from Rawlins, WY to Cincinnati, Ohio (technically more
than one day, but it was one drive!)

Average hours driving when traveling to new location: 4.5 hrs.

DVDs movies watched in car while driving S: 4 Xi: 0 Q: 10 Ivo: 11

Longest it took to break camp and load car: 3 hours the Shortest: 1 ¾ hours

Average time it takes to load the car when all bags/gear is sitting ready next to car: 15 min.

Accuracy of Lupe’ our Honda GPS navigation system : 95%

Number of blisters Xi-2, S-0, Ivo- 3, and Q: 3

Number of packages sent back home during trip: 11

Favorite meal (s) S: Mexican food in Socorro, NM & Delphi Greek L.A. XI: Frank & Lupes’ Big Sombrero in Socorro, NM (Mexican) & our meal at Claudia and Ted’s in Silverton, CO. Ivo: Pancakes & bacon at the Sequoia campsite, Natalia’s restaurant in Silverton Co. after a big hike. Q: C.J.’s diner in Durango Co.

Scariest car traffic: SM’s-San Diego to L.A. between 9-11 p.m. on a Saturday night Xi’s-5 a.m. rush hour in St. Louis, MO during a thunderstorm.

Thanks again for following along!

S, Q, Xi, Ivo

2008-08-11T21:32:00.000-04:00

Yellowstone National Park for the Day
Along with a few thousand other tourists, we are here waiting for the Old Faithful geyser to erupt! This was great fun as we had 2 pints of Hagen Daas ice cream to eat while waiting.After Old Faithful did its thing for 90 seconds and fizzled away, Q said,
"I think I like the fountain at the Bellagio casino better!"

Adjacent to the visitor's center and boardwalk is the Old Faithful Inn. This 100+ year old log building has a fantastic light and airy almost cathedral-like feel, yet it also seems like a wildly cool tree house. We discovered a bar on a second floor balcony where we all enjoyed a fancy 'umbrella drink' while watching people assemble for the next Old Faithful show. I shot this photo of the crowds at one of Yellowstone's waterfall attractions. Because of our tight schedule, we hit this park on a Saturday, something we have been good at avoiding on the trip until now. Because we only had one day here, we did not do any hiking. We found that if you are willing to hike a little, you will encounter very few other tourists. We would like to go back to this park in the off season. They say you can have the park to yourself at other times of the year.

Crowds aside, this was still a wonderfully strange and 'other worldly' place. The geothermal activity and mineral deposits are wild.

We all agreed that being at Yellowstone was like being on another planet. You had to stay on the boardwalks, so you didn't wander into a hidden hot spring and get scalded. It definitely felt alien!

While this looks like snow, it is some type of residue left by the hot springs. The area smells strongly of sulfur.

The beautiful turquoise colors are due to the different microscopic organisms that can live in these extreme environments.

Grand Teton National Park

Neighboring Grand Teton National Park was next on the itinerary. We camped for 2 nights here on Jackson Lake and it was spectacular. The grandeur of the Teton mountains is the result of having no foothills, they just blast-off to the sky.

The Continental Divide has always intrigued me. This is the line or ridge that separates the watersheds of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Call me weird, but I have always wanted to pee on the divide! Half of the contents of my bladder ending up in the Atlantic the other half in the Pacific. When we came across the divide, I slammed on the brakes and the kids & I scampered off into the woods to leave our our mark. Xi just rolled her eyes!

Cedar Point or Bust!!!

On the way home, we hit an Amusement Park in Ohio. When planning the trip, we all wanted to visit a world class 'roller coaster park.' After doing significant Internet research, we discovered that our old favorite, Cedar Point, was the best ride park in America.
We completely agree!

Ivo checks out the 'Wicked Twister' ride from the line. She found these big sunglasses next to a stream in Glacier National Park a few weeks earlier!

Another happy camper in line at Cedar point.

I shot thousands of pictures from the car window on this trip. The west is packed with amazingly wild geological feature. Because they were shot from a moving vehicle they are not clear enough to print but will make great reference material for paintings. I have decided to do some oil paint abstractions based on some of the images I have collected on this trip.

Q was the grand master of spotting wind farms on the horizon before anyone else.
We passed dozens of these green power plants in many states. We thought they looked elegant.

Celestial Seasonings Factory Tour in Boulder, Colorado

Celestial Seasonings tea company is located in Boulder Co and we hit their tour on the way home. We had read about the world famous 'mint room' in books and decided it was something we had to see for ourselves. Peppermint, spearmint, and wintergreen are tea ingredients, but because the aromas are so overpowering they cannot be stored near any other tea herbs. So the company build a 30' X 30' 'vault' to keep them isolated. Pallets of bagged mint are stacked 20' high in this room. You are allowed to enter the room for as long as you want, but most people only stay for about 30 seconds. Your eyes immediately start watering and automatically begin closing and your lungs feel like someone has poured Vick's Vapor-rub in them. We lasted about 3 minutes, it was great!

Not another hotel...

We decided to do a 30 hour marathon drive to save on lodging costs and to speed our return journey. Doing 2 hour shifts and drinking a number of energy drinks and mocha cappuccinos got us from Wyoming to Ohio via Boulder.

Arriving at my sister's home in Cincinnati was a relaxing and recuperative 2 day stop. G did our laundry for us while we crashed and chilled out; thanks sis!

Along the way we encountered this forest fire. You could see it 200 mile away! We are still about 30 miles away at this point. On the great plains the scale of objects and vast open spaces is so alien to us New Englanders.
We drove past an airport where this giant helicopter picked up a load of fire retardant to
drop on the forest fire; it flew right over our car!

Note: Our next post will be the final one for the trip. We are compiling some trip statistics that you may find interesting. Check back in a few days.

2008-08-02T01:33:00.000-04:00

The Columbia River Gorge
The Columbia river gorge was beautiful. Dozens of waterfalls flow into this beautiful valley between Oregon and Washington. Can you see Quincy cautiously walking closer to the water?
Ivo writes:
"This picture was taken at the Oregon columbia gorge on our 'unexpected hike' that was a loop that went out to some famous waterfalls. This black thing that I am pointing to is a huge slug that was creeping along the trail infront of us."

A Day in Seattle, Washington

The photos above and below are both from the Pike Street Market in Seattle. Walking through this market, the air was filled with the aroma of flowers from numerous flower stands. We wanted to buy a bouquet just because we'd never such gorgeous flower arrangements for so little money. You could get a bouquet like this one for $10!

At the fish stalls, we watched the workers throw fish to be weighed as people ordered them.

One of the best ways to see Seattle and the Puget Sound is from the water!
The next 4 pictures are shot from the ferry going from Seattle to Bainbridge Island.

Here you can see the bicyclists heading off the ferry. We had a great pizza dinner followed by a bowl of Moira's ice cream (indescribable).

As the ferry traveled back to Seattle we could see Mount Rainier glowing in the distance.
Our friend Marco climbed this mountain earlier in the summer!

We visited the Space Needle in the morning and again at night (day/night ticket).
Above we look out at the Seattle skyline at night. Below, Q and Ivo are posing next to one of the bolts that anchors the Space Needle.

Time to head to Glacier National Park

We found the plans for this camping box on the Internet. It holds all the tools for the camp kitchen. The ‘chuck box,’ as we call it, was built with the help of my father and J.C. (thanks guys) during that last crazy week before we left. This container allows us to setup the kitchen, ready to prepare meals, in literally 3 minutes.
We spent 4 nights at Glacier National Park in Montana. The first 2 were spent car camping at the Avalanche Campground.
The first day, we explored the park by car, driving the length of the Going to the Sun Highway. To call that road windy would be putting it mildly. As the switchbacks wound around the mountainsides, new mountain peaks were constantly revealed.
Here we are at the beginning of a 3-day backpacking trip into the backcountry wilds of Glacier. The packs were heavy but as we consumed the food each day, they became lighter. Every ounce counts when backpacking, we even cut the handles off our toothbrushes to save weight. At bedtime during the first night Ivo burst out laughing, she had discovered her (heavy) beanbag stuffed animal ‘cow’ hiding at the bottom of her sleeping bag! We let her keep him!
When backpacking, weight matters. Xi has to rip her book in half; she couldn't survive without a book!!
The first thing you have to do when you arrive at a primitive campsite is stop at the food preparation area and hang all of your food on the bear pole. Glacier has both grizzlies and black bears, so food storage is taken extremely seriously!

The ladies relaxing on the beach in front of our tent playing cards. When the sun came out, they went in for a refreshing dip!

We met a crew from Appleton, WI and discovered that R knew and worked with Xi's college roommate...truly a small world! After dinner, we played the game Mafia.

In over 7 weeks of travel, we only encountered a 1/2 day of rain! Unfortunately, it was while backbacking, but the sun came out later in the day. We hear this has been a very wet summer in New England.
Ivo poses next to a fresh bear scraped tree. We were well armed with (2) bear pepper spray cans, made lots of noise along the trail, and all knew what to do if we encountered a grizzly. The park service requires all backcountry hikers to watch a 20 minute video on how to avoid/deal with bears and mountain lions before they will issue hiking permits.

On the trail in the near Quartz lake in Glacier.

The backpacking experience was completely different from car camping. In the back country at Glacier, all cooking and food storage is required to be done in a small bench-enclosed area in order to isolate the food smells for wildlife (grizzlies). Because of this requirement, you get to know your fellow backpackers quite well (there are 3 or 4 tent sites in each backcountry campground).

The minerals in the glacial run off make the water a beautiful turquoise color.

We stopped and spent the night with cousin David and family. It has been over 20 years since we last saw each other in Deleware. It was great to take the first shower in 5 days and hang out drinking beer and catching up!

Ivo shows off the delicious bacon-blue cheese burger she got at a little diner in the town of Babb.

The Family poses next to our growing collection of bumper stickers. We have enjoyed hunting down good additions at each major stop on our trip.

SF & OR

2008-07-25T01:18:00.000-04:00

Our travels took us to San Francisco for a day. We hooked up with an old family friend, Brother Robert. We were given a first class tour of the city viewing it from high points on both sides of the bay. I was great to spend some time with him, and to introduce him to our kids. The day started off foggy, but cleared enough for some great views. Here we are at the golden gate bridge....As Brother Robert was directing my driving, he said "Now, just wait for this car ahead of us to go and then it will be our turn." I did as he said, and all of a sudden I was on Lombard Street, the famous very, very, steep zig-zag street!

We explored 'Fisherman's Wharf' and had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl along with a sandwich on sourdough bread. We all love sourdough bread!
Heading for the Oregon border, we went through a 100 mile section of thick smoke. This was from the forest fires that were burning a few ridges west of us. Some of these fires have been burning for months.
In preparation for this trip, we purchased the book Watch It made in the USA. It lists and describes some popular factory tours by region in the U.S. One of these is the Jelly Belly tour in Fairfield, CA. We had a blast watching from the catwalk above the plant floor as millions (billions?!) of jelly beans were being produced . Here we are at the 'tasting bar' where you can get a sample of every flavor they make!After we left California, we headed to the Oregon coast. We had a rare, sunny seaside day and were practically alone on the beach to explore and play in the cold surf. Below Q explores a 'tidal pool' that has tons of little brine shrimp-type creatures.

Ivo says: Here I am walking along Oregon’s Pacific coast. The water was numbingly cold, but it also was addicting. The more you went in, the more you wanted to get out yet the more you stood out of the water, the more you wanted to go back in! The waves rolled in one after another splashing our legs, creating cool patterns and leaving interesting things for us to discover. The whole beach combing was amazing.

Here I am again holding the jelly of a dead jellyfish that was clear and had a cool pattern on it. Mom is feeling it here.

Q and Xi inspect the lens of a lighthouse on Cape Meares. In the 1800's it cost $ 60,000! The glass pieces for the lens was created in Paris and shipped to Oregon in barrels of molasses for protection. It had to cross the Atlantic and then round South America before it could be hauled up this cliff and installed.
Every morning of a travel-day includes packing the car. The 'anchors' of the trunk are the cooler, the camping 'chuck box,' and the 6-man L.L. Bean tent stored behind them. Everything else gets packed around those three items. When everything is packed in its container (duffles, stuff sacks, etc.) and sitting next to the car, it takes about 10 minutes to load the vehicle as everything now has its place. This is a great improvement from the 45 + minute ordeal it took back in June. Regular shipments back home of acquired trinkets and gear we no longer need helps to keep the car load down to 'absolute necessity size'.
Tillamook, OR is home to the regional favorite, the Tillamook Cheese Company. We toured this amazing factory and saw the processing of cheddar. The aging warehouse can hold 5 million pounds of cheddar at once! The blocks below are large blocks of cheddar that have been aged and are ready to be cut and packaged.

2008-07-21T00:56:00.000-04:00

Hi all, It has been great to hear from so many of our friends and family who are periodically checking up on our travels via this blog. The emails, calls and posts here are a great connection to you, thanks. Below is the end paper from my sketchbook/journal; it graphically shows our trail, each dot being someplace we have spent the night. When we were visiting Xi's cousin in San Diego, we were the farthest we will be on this trip from our home. We have begun to head north and toward the end of this week, we'll turn east. As I write this, it is a balmy 62 degrees just outside San Fransisco which we will be tomorrow.

We spent 6 days house sitting (house mooching?!) at the beautiful L.A. home of our friends Fred and Jo. It was a great home base while we explored the area. Here we are sitting in our favorite room, the patio. The weather here was beautiful and sunny with daytime temps in the 70s.

"you can't miss it, it's the only house with a ginat cactus next to the garage!"

We spent a day at Malibu Beach, one of the most famous surfing beaches in America. We watched the surfers, spent hours body surfing, listened to the many different languages being spoken by the tourists, and watched these para-surfers. They had a controllable parachute-kite attached to their belts and would zoom across the surf at high speed doing tricks.
After paying a fortune at a parking ramp, we decided to park our car on the side street. We set the alarms on our watches and loaded up with quarters for the meter. S was the first one to go add quarters to the meter. When he got there he found a ticket for $50 under the wiper blade. It stated that it was illegal to park on this side of the street between 12 and 3 on Tuesdays! Here is the sign that was suppose to let us know this important information, think it's worth fighting?!

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art or LACMA was awesome. Here Xi bathes in one of her favorite artists' works, David Hockney!

Somewhere in Utah, we took a rock in the windshield. Fortunately our time in LA allowed for a relatively painless (except the deductable!) replacement.

We are seeing some wonderful things being transported on the roads and rails of the country. Here, a double trailer of lemons heads to market or a processing plant in central CA. We have seen similar loads of plum tomatoes, almonds and garlic.

Q is most happy when he has a jar of pickles in front of him!

Somewhere it is written 'thou shall not covet the Viking convection/range of thy neighbor,' but I do anyway! I have loved cooking on this baby, especially after cooking so many of the summer's meals on a 2 burner LLBean propane camp stove!
Ivo suffers the natural consequences of her actions after putting a handful of sour skittles in her mouth on a day hike.
Words cannot describe what it was like to spend a day hiking in Sequoia National Park among hundreds of these beautiful giants.
We did a 6 mile loop through the largest grove of giant sequoias in the world. We have found that in nearly all parks, once you leave the paved trails behind and hit the back country, you nearly have the park to yourself. We saw a black bear on this trail too.
Many of these healthy trees have hollowed out bases that you can walk into. Here we stand inside a tree looking out!
OK a bit corny but we did it anyway
I know this shot is a bit washed out but it shows the scale of some of these trees, the family is in the center.

'A little a dis a little O dat'

2008-07-17T10:36:00.000-04:00

While doing a driving tour of L.A.'s Hollywood/Bel Air area, we came across a fellah selling maps identifying the 'homes of the movie stars.' We spent the $10 and off we went. The event basically consisted of driving slowly along winding, twisting streets seeing bushes, gates, and security alarm signs. Here is a picture of our favorite set of bushes and wall, because it belongs to one of our favorite stars, Steve Martin. We felt especially connected to his place because we also saw a patio umbrella poking up from above the bushes. After about a half-hour of this tour of seeing more of the same (J-Lo's, Barry Mantilow's, & Danny Devito's), we canned it and went to a museum.

We visited the Four Corners marker for MB. This brass plaque identifies the convergence of four states: Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. The funny thing is, it is just a point on a map that has no meaning beyond that, but it is the only place in the US where this happens. It is a total tourist trap, but Ivy can now say that she sat on four states at the same time, in 110 degree sun, while eating a blue snow cone! MB, you really didn't miss much.

Back in Colorado, we rode the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge steam railroad. This railroad was built 130 years ago to serve the mines (tons of mines!) in and around the Silverton mountains. Because it costs $75 for a round trip ticket and takes 7 hours, we decided to divide the journey between us. The boys rode the train up from Durango and the girls rode it back from Silverton. We highly recommend doing this. From the train, we saw some spectacular scenery and the spot where they filmed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jumping off the cliff.

One of the highlights of the trip for all of us was getting a chance to meet a whole branch of Xi's family, one that none of us had ever met before. We had looked forward to meeting C & T at their place in Silverton, but as a major bonus, we got to meet C's siblings/family from Pagosa Springs, CO and Hawaii! We had the best time eating, touring rock collections, and sitting around the fire in the backyard learning about each other.

While staying in Las Vegas, S and the kids visited the Hoover Dam. Here we are walking in the ventilation tunnels in the middle of the dam itself. At the end of the tunnel, we reached a vent in the center of the face of the dam where we looked out over the turbine buildings and the lower Colorado River. Xi opted to wait in line for theater tickets for the evening, and then she went and visited the Bally's spa where she got to soak in a hot tub, get a 50 minute Swedish massage, and was treated like she was 'Queen for a Day.' It was GREAT!

We spent a day in San Diego with Xi's cousin and her family. We hadn't seen J in 12 years, and had never met her family. What a great crew, what great parents they are, and what a great time we had together. We visited the San Diego Zoo and had a Mexican feast for dinner.

Here we are enjoying the feast!

Mesa Verde National Park

2008-07-16T20:23:00.001-04:00

This site is called the 'Spruce Tree House'.

We hiked to a remote location in the park to see some pertoglyphs carved by ancient locals. I put my hand next the hands of the long gone artist (not touching) for scale. Interpretations of the images have been made by experts, but I mostly think the artist was expressing him/herself in this work. I love spirals and this artist did too!

We went on a tour of the Balcony House. This photo shows the 32' ladder we had to climb to get there.

Here is the tunnel we had to crawl through to get to another series of dwellings.

Stone footholds have been cut into the rock by the park service to allow us to get out of the dwelling. We had chains to help us too. The orignal residents had a 100+ foot climb using much smaller foot holds (no ladders, chains or ropes), everyone got into the house this way, the very young and very old included!

Ivo writes, "Here I am standing in an Anasazi cliff dwelling that they built using their handmade stone tools and bare hands. This tour to the Balcony House required us to climb a 32 foot wooden ladder (see photo above) to get up into their dwelling. Then from there, after a full tour of their space, we had to crawl through a narrow 15 foot tunnel leading to two more 10 foot ladders, and finally ended with us climbing up foot and handholds carved into the cliff's face. "

Zion N. P. Angel's Landing Hiking Trail

2008-07-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

The hike that we have been most nervious about and most excited about is the Angel's Landing trail in Zion National Park. We first heard about it on a hiking website who labled it 'Americas scaryiest day hike'! Set smack dab in the center of Zion canyon, this 5 hour hike was the most exciting one we've ever done.
Here we are at the beginning of the hike. The innocent looking peak is in the background.

We pause for a breath and look down at the valley. At this point, we've only just begun.

What you see here is a section of the Angel's Landing hike called Walter's Wiggles. If you look closely beyond Q, you can see the trail contains a series of tight switchbacks.

Until this point the trail was a steady steep assent, like most mountains we hike. Here is where it begins to get scary. Actually, many people end their hike here before starting the final 1/2 mile. Here is an apt description of the hike we found online. "Hikers will navigate the next half-mile along a narrow sandstone isthmus with sheer cliffs on both sides. The narrow and arduous trail drops 1200' on one side and 800' on the other."
Q heads onto the final mile of trail.
Q & S are ahead looking back at Ivo & Xi's progress. The images don't begin to capture the sheer drop-offs on both sides. We all had psychological moments of fear/panic during this part of the hike, but worked through them on our own.
The park service has mounted chains to aid climbers in the most dangerous and tricky places. After we completed it, we looked online, only 6 people have died on this trail since 1986, amazing really.

As you can see from this picture, we made it to the summit! Here we are looking out at the spectacular view of the canyon from the summit after a hair-raising climb to the top.

A view from the top.

The decent was much easier, no fear of the unknown. Here, in one of the narrowest parts of the trail, Ivo and Xi put their arms out over the 800' and 1200' cliffs at the same time!

Following our Angel's Landing hike, Ivo & Xi soak in the Virgin River which carved this amazing canyon.

Camp Life

2008-07-13T13:34:00.000-04:00

JC asked for some shots of our campsites. This amazing site was on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. 20 miles from the nearest paved road, we had this 5 site primitive campground completely to ourselves for our entire 48 hour stay! Here you see our tent pitched 15' from the rim of the canyon, what a view!

We purchased a 'backpacking guitar' that Q and Xi have really enjoyed. We had to leave our folding chairs behing in New England and these little folding stools are most coveted around the campfire.

Xi stands on a rock at the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplates oral hygiene and her place in the universe while brushing her teeth at the end of the day.

As mesmerizing at TV, an evening around the campfire is a great end (and sometimes beginning) to the day. Silverton, CO was in the upper 20s each morning making a warm fire and hot chocolate a must.

Our Campground at Mesa Verde was our 'shakedown site' where we baptized the new equipment. This was our official first campsite.

Ivo and Xi were still asleep one morning when I caught these cool branch reflections on the tent wall. On our midnight trips to the bushes, we have seen some spectacular starry skies. I think it is due to both remote locations and the very dry air.

Xi blows on the campfire to get it started one morning in CO.

True to his pre-trip goals, Q has set his backpacking tent up independently of our big LLBean condo at each campsite. Here in the Rockies, he chose a site (about a 5 minute hike from the main site) in a meadow surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Spam and eggs has been the breakfast of choice before our day hikes. Each person is either part of the cooking or cleaning crew for each meal.

Arches

2008-07-10T20:12:00.000-04:00

Arches National Park in Southern Utah was fantastic. We were on the trail by 7 a.m. for a 5 mile hike to see 6 amazing stone arches. The further we hiked the fewer people we saw, until we were basically alone on the trail. The arches were amazing, the sky startlingly blue and the temps were near 100. Our sun block clothing, hats, hydration systems and pre-trip physical conditioning helped, but by the end of 5 miles we were all dragging.
The Partition Arch was our favorite; you were able to climb all over the formation, and it had a great view.

We hiked through a fin canyon, an unusual rock formation.

This is the Double-O Arch, we call it the Bond Arch. Double OO-Q is seen standing on the arch. It was not a simple feat to get up there! IVO is in the lower arch.

Again, we really like reading your comments. You will need to create a username and password before you can leave us a message.

We hope you are having a great summer.

Q,S,Xi, I

Another day in paradise

2008-07-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

Canyon De Chelly on the Navajo reservation in NW Arizona remains one of our favorite hikes. We woke up at 5 a.m. packed the car and were on the trail by 7. The rock walls of the canyon were a deep red against a bright blue sky. Over eons, water smoothly carved the sandstone of this canyon creating overhangs, caves, hollowed out ovals, and swirling patterns. On the floor of the canyon, was a small farm with sheep and gardens. The trees and plants were like finding an oasis in the middle of a desert.

Here Q photographs the canyon in the awesome early morning light.

Ivo and Xi have reached the canyon floor and are headed toward the trees. Beyond lies the Anasazi dwelling called the White House.

Here is the Anasazi cliff dwelling, called the White House. This cliff dwelling, compared to the ones we saw at Mesa Verde, was much lower to the ground. I believe these people farmed the bottom of the canyon rather than the top of the mesa. You can see how smooth and steep the cliff above the dwelling is; we couldn't capture it all in one picture. -Xi

One of the things I was most excited about seeing on this trip was the desert.

After driving through, hiking in and experiencing a number of different types of desert environments, I'd use many contradictory adjectives to describe this remarkable part of the planet; beautiful, dangerous, hot, calm, comfortable, full of life, void of life, dry, unforgiving, and more. Yesterday we dug fossils in a very remote part of Utah, 50 miles from the closest town. It was 101 degrees F. bone dry and at the end of 20 miles of dirt road. This was the most vulnerable and worried I have been in the desert. However, our car performed beautifully and despite the dust storm we encountered on the way out, we had a great time and found well over 100 good trilobite fossils. -S

from the road..

2008-07-04T23:27:00.000-04:00

At the education center at the VLA near Magdalena, New Mexico, Ivo speaks into a parabolic antenna. The education center was wonderful and included a self guided walking tour of the facility.

The Very Large Array (VLA) is the largest radio telescope in America. I have always wanted to see it in person since I saw it featured in Carl Sagan's movie, Contact with Jodi Foster. I got up before dawn to make the 45 minute drive from our little motel in the middle of the arid and remote, but beautiful New Mexico outback. I shot many photos of the sunrise on the antennas and the surrounding landscape. Later in the day, we all went back to visit the facility together.

Q eats "the best taco in the world" in a great Mexican restaurant in Socorro, NM. Frank and Lupe's Big Sombrero restaurant was one of the best meals we have had on this trip to date.

When driving through the panhandle of Texas, we passed this sign. I hit the breaks and made the exit in time to get out for a potty break and a brief photo shoot. The weird thing is that exit 15 leads to nothing! The ramps went to a dead end barricade on both sides of the highway. Beyond that was desert, very strange.

2008-07-03T22:53:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Xi took this photo of the crew at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park a few days ago. We hiked along the rim of this amazing canyon that drops off over 2000 feet below our feet here! We were able to camp right down inside the canyon. To get to our campsite, we had to drive down a 16% grade for 5.5 miles! This was the first place we camped without a shower. After 2 days with temps in the 90's, we were ready for a motel and a good soak.

We are drawn to places that have signs like this!

At Mesa Verde, we hiked along the edge of the cliffs weaving in and out of boulders, under rock overhangs and unusual rock formations. This is 'I' coming down through a natural tunnel.

Q took this image of some wild flowers in the rockies above Silverton, Colorado. This was an amazing hike to over 12,000 feet. The altitude was very difficult to acclimate to. We camped in Silverton for 4 nights at 10,500 feet! There was frost on the ground in the mornings, yet just a few days later we had temps pushing 100 degrees in Utah! This is a wild and wonderful place. We are seeing some incredible landscapes.

This is the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo Texas. This installation sculpture was created in the 70's by a group of San Francisco artists.

It has been in many movies and is in most art textbooks. I have always wanted to visit it. We had a great time here shooting photos and spray painting our names on the cars (encouraged).

We took the narrow gauge railway from Durango to Silverton, Colorado, a 3 1/2 hr. ride. On the train ride 'I' met a horse loving girl from Hawaii. They kept each other entertained walking the train and eating Twizzlers.

Day 6 Amarillo TX

2008-06-24T12:04:00.000-04:00

Day 6:

Began the day driving to Oklahoma City. We stopped to visit the National Memorial; it was very moving. If you ever have an opportunity to visit it, we highly recommend it. It is filled with beauty and symbolism tied to the event and the people who died.

Next, we drove a stretch of historic Route 66. We stopped at Lucille’s, a ‘diner’ that looks like it has popped up out of the past. We had deep-fried pickles, onion rings, corn dogs, milk shakes, and icy cold Cokes. It was delicious and fun!

We arrived in Amarillo, Texas and stayed in a Best Western with a warm indoor swimming pool and a HOT, hot tub. We had the pool to ourselves for an hour and a half. Then a chauffeured limousine arrived to take us to dinner, I kid you not! Harold arrived in a Buick limousine, complete with a longhorn rack on the hood, and drove us to the most incredible local restaurant The Big Texan. At this restaurant, if you can eat a 72 oz. steak in 1 hour, you get it for free. You should see the size of that steak. Two people tried the challenge while we were there; both failed…costing them $72.

For being a big travel day, this one was rated highly!

Photos will follow..

St. Louis and 13+ hours driving!

2008-06-24T11:54:00.001-04:00

Looking down at the flood waters and the shadow of the arch from the top.

Looking up at the arch, I found this structure/sculpture amazingly beautiful and took well over a hundred shots of it alone. -S

Flooded walkway!

Day 5: We decided to stop and visit the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. What an amazing experience! It is huge…indescribably tall and elegant! The stainless steel structure set against a clear blue sky seemed to stretch upward forever. To ascend the arch, you travel in elevator pods shaped like eggs with 5 seats each. As you travel up the arch, the pod shifts so you are always vertical, even as the elevator moves diagonally. From the top, you look down through tiny windows. The people seriously look like ants!

We just happened to be there on the day the floodwaters from the Iowa region were at their maximum in St. Louis. We could see the streetlights poking out of the river on the street below us. The river was cloudy brown and you could see floating debris.

This was a serious driving day…we spent 13 ½ hours on the road.

We love the comments you leave, please jot us a note!

Fun with Family in Cincinnati, Ohio

2008-06-20T22:59:00.001-04:00

Cincinnati, OH

Time for good food, conversation and final shopping for the trip. The challenge, now that we have 'I', can we fit her in the car??? The C family generously offer to keep her. But after tightening a few sleeping pads, some serious rearranging, and sending some non-essentials home by mail, we squeeze her in. It's good to be all together again.

Our next stop is just north of Indianapolis, Carmel (pronounced like the candy), Indiana. We had a great time visiting our old friends from our camp Akiba counselor days back in 1985! Great conversations, food , music room, lap pool and a good night's sleep! Good luck on your driving test B and in college S!

Strawberries & Falling Water

2008-06-18T22:21:00.000-04:00

Day 2: We had a great visit with B.C.E.A. in PA yesterday. It included, catching up, pigging out on strawberries and an evening at Hershey Park (thanks for the passes guys!). It was hard to believe we were in school only yesterday! The new rollercoaster Fahrenheit 97 is awesome as were the classics: the Bear and the Lightning Racer. We do love rollercoasters!

Day 3: We drove to Cincinnati today to visit PGAP and to pick up 'I'. On a whim we decided to detour to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's house, 'Falling Water'. It was amazing! We've successfully connected with 'I', now we need to figure out how to fit her and her bag in the car...I'm not kidding!

Limmerick Day 1 of Epic Journey (By Xi)

2008-06-17T07:58:00.000-04:00

There once was a family from Maine
Who packed up their ride in the rain;
They jumped in the car
To travel quite far,
And by Hartford, they began to feel sane!

Individual Goals for this Summer’s Trip

2008-06-04T19:40:00.000-04:00

Q's Goals:

Be completely independent in my camping
Meet new people
Keep an extremely awesome photo journal of things that I see, interesting signs & the sword
See an Airstream

I's Goals:

Take pictures of everyscenic view we go by
I want to swim at least 3 times in every swimming pool we visit
I'd like to send postcards twice each week
I'd like to take up drawing
I'd like to make my journal interesting and fun, so I can keep the memories of the trip
Leave something (non-destructive) at everyplace we go that lets people know we've been there

Xi's Goals

Escape normal day-to-day life and master the camping life
Take time to read (&share books), write, draw and relax
Do fun and spontaneous things with my family
See new sights
Share with my family some favorite places & people from childhood

S's Goals:

Learn to juggle 5 balls
Shooting top quality images of what I see
Create memories with my family
Hike in and to amazing places
Draw everyday
Meet interesting people
Be a sponge and soak it all up

The Journey begins…

2008-06-03T21:07:00.000-04:00

The Journey begins…

Actually it began about a year ago when we were in the depths of graduate school, working full time jobs, parenting, running a small business, and trying to not go crazy. One of us suggested a big road trip to celebrate our graduation. Now, just weeks after receiving official notification of the acceptance of our final portfolios, we are nearly ready to roll. We plan to follow the last buses out of the school yard and begin our 9 week long American west road trip.

The 4 of us intend to use this blog to chronicle our journey. We will post thoughts, images, ideas and anything else that moves us. Keep visiting this site to see what we are up to.

-S