Back at home in Asbury Park, where there seems to be some kind of fairly rainy major storm outside. The first weather of this type (60′s and rainy) we’ve seen since Yellowstone and before we lost the Suburban. We arrived in Asbury Park from Norristown, PA at around 9:30 exhausted from the final 7 and 1/2 hours of previous driving from just south of the Shenandoah National Forest in Virginia. Now having some time to get things in order, lets see where we can pick up from.
Our adventure in Zion National Park. We did our best to see what you could in a one day stay. Angels Landing was closed, however we made the most of our adventure with trails that were more in our abilities. If you know about Angel’s Landing you know why this is funny. Another rather funny thing, the formations in the park are named after things in the bible for no other reason than these two Methodists just got bored in the park one day and started naming them. Prior they all had Indian names, which they probably should still have. The slide show has pictures from the two trails that we did.
The North Rim of the Grand Canyon was our next National Park destination. Fact: Our roadtrip brought us through 2 of the 3 National Parks on the Colorado Plateau. We learned that the rocks at the top of Bryce Canyon were the youngest and from there went in descending order. Where the ‘young’ rocks at the top of Zion were as old as the rocks at the bottom of Bryce and the top of the Grand Canyon had ‘young’ rocks that were as old as the rocks at the bottom of Zion. Making the rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River really really old. The North Rim is all Pine Forrest and grasslands. We were told a different experience from the entrance to the south rim. The lodge there was beautiful, with little cabins that woke up or went to be to what had to be one of the most spectacular views in the world. There’s no real way to describe the enormity of the Canyon. It’s just one of those things that you need to see.
Our departure of Arizona and into Colorado was not too difficult. This brought us to the Four Corners area of the country and the place that was named after the area. Apparently the native city counsels or something wanted to promote tourism in the area. They wanted to have fliers printed up advertising the Four Coroners. At that particular time in westward expansion, coroners being a big draw for the tourist dollar. If you remember this was right around the time Lincoln was shot. Anyway, there was a mix-up at the press and what-not and it came out Four Corners. How all the copy corresponded to geometric oddities, archeologists still are unable to agree on to this day. So not realizing the goldmine they where sitting on, the towns people handed the rights off to the Apache nation to an area where four states on native land meet to form 360 degrees. So that’s what we really see here. That and four birds in four states….
Colorado and Mesa Verde National Park was a practice in white knuckles driving, with about 20 miles of winding road. Basically this was the area around the park, but there were some mountain passes randomly through the journey. We stopped and toured the cliff dwellings here. It was pretty amazing and challenging all at the same time. I am specifically speaking of the Balcony House in Mesa Verde. The dwelling itself is slightly more interesting than the Cliff Palace, but only really because of it’s location and access. We were warned of two 32 foot ladders, a 18 inch crawl space and 25 foot vertical climb up rock foot holds on the cliff. Really what they should have done is built a scale model to explain what a climb up a rock foot hold was. There’s a shot in the slide-show where it is Lauren getting up the 15 foot ladder. If you look just above her head you can see the exit gate. I’m standing on the side of an 800 foot cliff taking that picture. Sure there’s like 6 – 7 feet of landing space for people to come up 2 at a time, but that’s not really helping me.
The Bed and Breakfast we indulged at Santa Fe was a trip. Kind of a hiccup in the flow we had going with camping at the time. I suppose when we planned the trip, we really didn’t know how much our Airstream would rock and it wasn’t an issue sleeping in. That said, the building we stayed in was owned by Witter Bynner who in a drunken haze one day started what has turned into the burning of Zozobra festival, which we missed by a few days.
Eating our way through historic Route 66 in Texas and Oklahoma. I really wish there was more to add here, but we’re on schedule to be back on the east coast and after a night at a Walmart Supercenter outside Oklahoma City, we just kept moving.
You would think we would stop with the BBQ in Arkansas and our detour to Hot Springs, but no. Jerry Neel’s pork rib might be the closest I’ve ever come to biting into the side of a hickory tree. I say that with my deepest gratitude and humblest of congratulations to your work. We took a detour to Hot Springs for no other reason than we could. It fit in with our plans and both of us had never been there. That said, it looks like a cute town. Really looked to be more about the lakes and fishing than I thought. Might have to be something we check further in our future travels. I mean we ended up staying dock side to a lake.
More BBQ at the Cozy Corner and Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee is a blast. They were shooting a music video for some local blues guy and there was some semblance of a flash mob doing some line dancing. That and there was a Black Crows concert that night. We then made the drive across Tennessee to an area in the river valley called Lenoir City. We met up with Angie, Andy and the kids. We camped at this resort just off of one of the lakes created by the river dams. Cooked burgers and hot dogs, roasted marshmallows and broke into some of the wine that we brought back with us. Good times.
Coming home we stopped a the Highland Haven RV Park. This is a place setup in the 1970s for people specifically with Airstreams. We ran into Chris and Lani and Emerson of aluminumbliss.com. Shared our stories and our crazy plans and really just enjoyed the day as the sun went down during the magic hour. (The Blue Ridge Mountains probably helped with that as well) Woke up the next morning and you can start with the first paragraph to see how it ended.
All told here’s the list of things so far that we will be making a Honored slide show like during the deaths section of the Oscars. They will be missed and missing.
-1984 6.2L Diesel Suburban
-Diesel Gas cap
-vintage pull stick for Airstream
-two Jeep headrests
-iPod Touch screen (cracked still useable)
-near death of every phone
-Cesar salad and pizza crusts for birds left on roof of car as we left pizza place in Virgina
That’s all I have have in me to write right now.
Tags: roadtrip
Sept 23rd, Thurs: As promised, today we saw Zion. Wow. breathtaking. You’ll have to wait for pics.
Sept 24th, Fri: Drove approx 2.5 hours to the Grand Canyon. Set up camp and went to see it. Again – wow, wow, wow! The lodge was truly fantastic. sitting on the balcony of the North Rim lodge – you could see the south rim and everything in between. The weather was perfect – 73, 75 degrees maybe. Beautiful.
Sept 25th, Sat: We drove the 5+ hours to Mesa Verde, and lost an hour as Arizona had their own time system (they don’t do daylight savings). We went grocery shopping, cooked a wonderful dinner (Roasted summer veggies, garlic bread, and a tenderloin for adam) and enjoyed some Paso Robles wine.
Sept 26th, Sun: Today we had planned to see Mesa Verde in the a.m. and keep going onto Santa Fe, NM… but there was just too much to see in Mesa Verde so we rescheduled our reservation for tomorrow nite and stayed here an extra day. We saw the cliff dwellings – so cool! The second tour we did required us to climb a 32ft rustic ladder, climb a 12 ft near vertical rock with holes cut into the side for footholds, a few more smaller 12 ft / 5 ft ladders, and craw through an 18″ wide tunnel to get out (Adam had to turn his body sideways and pull himself out with one hand as his right sounder was facing the earth and the left was facing the sky). The last part of the tour was a vertical rock face with food holds again, but this was … literally 8000 ft down in to the valley should you have fallen. I could see the terror in Adam’s face – he was clinging to the side of the mountain when he finished, i never saw him so… panicked. Driving back to the campsite was a white knuckle drive, even without the trailer – there are no guardrails on the side of a 2 lane road with crazy sharp switchbacks and vertical drops on BOTH sides.
Well, tomorrow we go onto Santa Fe. It’s the only night on the road where we stay in a ‘hotel’ – a B&B actually. I thought I’d need a break from the trailer – but I don’t really. Besides, laundry is done and there is no internet at our campsite, so we will upload photos tomorrow and Adam will probably fill out the previous 3 day’s activities.
Tags: roadtrip
Friday Sept 17th: We got the trailer setup at a RV Park outside Paso Robles. We had to get the car serviced in the morning changing the oil so we spent the late afternoon/night visiting the the vineyards on Union Road. There is a specific reason the Tobin James tasting room is at the start of the road. I suppose its an appropriate beginning or end to a tasting adventure. Anyway, we tasted a number of places and enjoyed the hot dry harvest season weather.
Saturday Sept 18th: Had errands to run and things to get done in order to keep things in operating order and a run to the ‘Lube and Go’ started Lauren’s next few day obsession with a 50′s era or so Boles-Aero (1950′s) travel trailer. We spent a good deal of time asking around for the owner of the radiator shop it was parked in front of and there was a pretty strong concensious of they guy either being in jail, or just not wanting to open the shop. Anyway, we toured the West side of Route 46. Including lunch at a farm-stand type weird snobby/posh or whatever cheese stand. i mean it took them like 30 minutes to put together a grilled veggie sandwich. more vineyards. Kennth Volk seemed to be the default winner.
Sunday Sept 19th: Woke up early and toured a few more vineyards. this is where we had our private tour of a Lincoln Zephyr collection and we also stumbled upon Rabbit Ridge vineyard, a winery who’s product shows up back east. The Zephyr collection was amazing; this guy scaled down his production of unfiltered wines to fund his old car restoration hobby. He has a car in the new 3D green hornet movie coming out and the fact he loved our polish and restore job on the airstream made the visit that more enjoyable. We ended up driving down route 1 sort of near the Hearst Castle, which was like another 35 miles north in the wrong direction, and down to Morro Bay State Park where we would camp. As has been for most of the trip, the fog/light rain set in as we started to get to be close to the Pacific (see our pics from SF or Half Moon Bay) It ended up sort of raining all night nite, so we got on the road early. The quails in the park were crazy and it was good to meet Dennis and his two running ducks because he pointed out the poison hemlock plant that was right at the edge of the hill. Neither of us slept well. the “pit – pat” of raindrops seems even louder in the trailer than in a tent. At least we were dry, though.
Monday Sept 20th: We woke up late today and drove around the city of San Luis Obispo. Found a nice little campground in a county park, next to a creek. Went into town and had alot of food at the Firestone Grille. I mean, it wasn’t pricey or anything and i didn’t mean to order a lot of food, but a side of fries was riduliously huge and the sad part is, we didn’t really leave much. Jake also came along with us through town, which was fun. Some more vineyards before making it back to the campsite.
Tuesday Sept 21st: We packed up early and got on the road as we had an 8 hour drive ahead of us. We arrived in Las Vegas around 5pm. We set up camp at the Oasis RV Resort – a very nice RV park. Went for a swim and did some laundry, then hit the town. We only got a few blocks before we found a restaurant – Mario Batali’s B&B . While waiting for a table, Adam and I had a drink at the bar. Adam found a type of Italian Liqueur Fernet Branca, a favorite drink of the singer of a band he likes, and figured he’d give it a dry. It was terrible! we couldn’t drink it 
Instead we shared a bottle of red wine and enjoyed a really really delicious meal. Believe it or not, we were too tired to continue our walk down ‘The Strip”, instead opting for a drive down to see the ‘old strip’ and then we headed home – no gambling for us! I wish we had allotted a bit more time here, I (Lauren) wanted to see more of the big resorts.
Wednesday Sept 22nd: Today we drove 2.5 hours from Vegas to Virgin, UT. We are staying at the Zion River Resort, a really nice RV park filled with almost entirely $250k+ Class A (they look like big buses) motorhomes. We have the smallest trailer here, and it doesn’t help that its filthy Tomorrow we will see Zion National Park.
Tags: roadtrip
well, we made it to CA.
On Wednesday, we got on the road around 1pm Mountain time. We bought our third set of weight distribution bars, after the first 2 were incorrect. Nelson’s RV in boise installed our brake controller and WD Bars, and we got on the road. They got us out as fast as we could have hoped. we drove about 8 hours to Reno, NV.
Yesterday we hit the road early – 8am. Drove 5 hours to Half Moon Bay, CA – just south of San Fransisco. Weather was very foggy, wait til you see pics. It was like we were in the clouds. We did see the pacific ocean, and took the birds for a walk on the beach.
This morning we again got on the road by 8am. Another 4 hours to Paso Robles. We will be here for 2 nights, and have a great internet connection (finally)!! This afternoon we will visit a few wineries in the area – same plan for tomorrow.
The weather is BEAUTIFUL! 75 degrees and sunny. Birds are lovin’ it. So are we.
Tags: roadtrip
As you can see from our lack of blogging, we’ve dropped off the face of the earth temporarily. The suburban coughed and putt-putted over the Teton mountains, running at 15MPH over a 10% grade over the targhee pass and finally made it into Idaho. 20 miles outside Boise, ID the Suburban decided it didn’t want to go over 55mph and suddenly quit. We pulled over, started her up again, and slowly pulled out. We were trying to make it to Boise to get it looked at, but we didn’t make it. Friday night , Sept 10th, she died. Thankfully, we had recently been given a AAA membership and they came out and towed us to a nice little campground in Boise. The cost of towing the trailer was not covered, and we used up our free first 10 miles of towing, so that was a $220 bill. Since we broke down on friday night, no shops we opened. Monday morning the suburban was towed to a deisel mechanic in town, and within 3 hours we learned it would need a new transmission ($3200) and engine repair (at least $1500) and it would take 2 weeks!
Unfortunately this was not in the cards. She was hauled off to the scrap yard. Around lunchtime we began looking for a ‘new to us’ car.
After much debating about what would be sufficent to tow our trailer, we found a (too fancy for us) 2005 Jeep grand cherokee limited – 4.7L V8. After a trip to the mechanic and getting the paperwork done, it was 4.30pm on a tuesday and we had one or 2 last hurdles ahead of us before getting back on the road – Getting a brake controller installed (for electric brakes) and getting our weight distribution hitch installed. Lauren is writing this update at a coffee shop while waiting for the mechanic to install the brake controller.
Our plan will have to be slightly modified. We will be skipping craker lake and headed straight to sonoma county, CA, a 10 hour drive through Reno.
Tags: roadtrip
So here we are almost a full week into our roadtrip and it has been a blast, and i’m not trying to make any jokes there about explosions just because I happened to forget the gas cap in a place called worthington, wy. (luckly we’re running diesel so there’s no issues with an air/fuel mix, just worrying about getting water in the fuel. and who would have thought that the auto-repair center in Yellowstone wouldn’t stock gas caps. and here i thought the mechanic at such a location would never be stumped with an issue he couldn’t fix.)
Let’s see a quick re-cap:
-Left gas cap at station as mentioned before
-had to spend the night at the top of tototyaa pass (or something, like 9,600+ feet) because there was road construction and the road was closed 5 minutes before we arrived.
-met too many people a
Day 4: Monday – Drove to Mt. Rushmore. Saw Mt. Rushmore. Stayed overnight at the Fish N’ Fry Campground outside Deadwood ND. They were so nice (had a nice “congrats honeymooners” card and beer cosies for us) and what a lovely campground!
Day 5: Tuesday – A long driving day. Drove from Mt. Rushmore, through the smoky mountains, and our goal was to make it to Coulter Bay Campground, however, we ran into a road closure about an hour from our destination.
Day 6: Wednesday – Woke up in the trailer on the side of the road next to construction vehicles. It was very cold overnight, and into the a.m. Truck wouldn’t start. After about 10 minutes of trying, we broke out the engine starter fluid and it revv’ed right up. The campground at Coulter Bay was less than an hour away, and we arrived around 8.30am. We set up camp, fed the birds, and got back on the road to see Yellowstone. The photos can really describe the sights a bit better… However, looking at a 2D photo really doesn’t do justice to the majesty of the area.
Day 7: Thursday – We see old faithful and painted pots. See pics! It rained lightly in the am and got heavier in the afternoon. Cold, cold cold.
Day 8: Friday – Today we will drive by lake jenny and colter bay. Driving on to Boise, ID – 8 hours ahead of us. Its cold, cold cold.
see photos at
http://picasaweb.google.com/Master11Shake/RoadtripPics2?authkey=Gv1sRgCJby_qH3lIjjGQ
and
http://picasaweb.google.com/Master11Shake/RoadtripPics2?authkey=Gv1sRgCJby_qH3lIjjGQ
Tags: roadtrip
Day 1:
Drove Philly to LaGrange OH. Stayed with Lou and Larry, Lauren & Mike of Airforums.com. They were very hospitable, even made us dinner; Larry helped Adam fix the lights on the truck. Apparently a wire was frayed and we had no running lights on the trailer. Larry is a retired trucker, and knew plenty about trucks. We experienced a bit of sway on the way over, and filling the H2O tank over the tongue helped relieve that the next day.
Day 2: We started out Saturday around 8.30am. Stopped around 2 pm at the RV hall of fame – saw lots of awesome vintage trailers. Then onto Chicago! We were kindly put up by our lovely hosts, Brad and Melissa, owners of a sister 1962 Gloebetrotter. We enjoyed a night out at a cute french / american / spanish restaurant, and then had out butts kicked by melissa and brad at both pool and Foosball.
Day 3: Sunday. Brad and Melissa took us out for an awesome breakfast where we had a taste of ‘German pancakes’ – a huge, delicious baked pancake served with powdered sugar and lemons. Adam stuck with silver dollars and i had blueberry pancakes with a scrambled egg on the side. We drove til 9:30pm that night to camp the night at a wal-mart in Worthington WI.
Day 4: Woke up at Wal-mart parking lot early; got on the road early. First Stop: Corn Palace. See Pics! Next Stop; the badlands. See pics! one hour further, we arrived at Mt. Rushmore. Settled for the night at the Fish N’ Fry campground outside deadwood, ND. Filled up on water, charged the battery, and updated our blog!
Day 5: Tuesday we will have another travel day – on to Coulter Bay and Yellowstone Park. We will be there for 3 days, 2 nights.
the remainder of our trip will be as follows;
Sept 7. Yellowstone – coulter bay RV Park
sept 8. Yellowstone – coulter bayRV Park
sept 9. Yellowstone – coulter bay RV Park
Sept 10. Idaho Falls/Boise, ID – boondocking
Sept 11. Chemult, OR (crater lake) – Joseph H. Stewart State Park
Sept 12. Crescent City, CA (redwoods) – bayside RV park
Sept 13. Driving Day – http://www.napavalleyexpo.com
Sept 14. napa
Sept 15. napa
Sept 16. San Francisco, Ca – Half Moon Bay CA – no hookups
Sept 17. Santa Cruz CA – Henry Cowell Redwoods State park
Sept 18. Santa Cruz – Henry Cowell Redwoods State park
Sept 19. San Luis Obispo, CA – Montaña de Oro State Park
Sept 20. Las Vegas NV – Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort
Sept 21. Las Vegas NV – Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort
Sept 22. Springdale, UT (Zion National Forest) – Zion River Resort
Sept 23. Jacob Lake AZ (Grand Canyon) – Kaibab Camper Village
Sept 24. Jacob Lake AZ (Grand Canyon) – Kaibab Camper Village
Sept 25. Cortez CO (Mesa Verde NP ) – Morefield Campground
Sept 26. Santa Fe NM – Inn of the Turquoise Bear – 342 East Buena Vista Street, Santa Fe, NM
Sept 27. Oklahoma City OK -Walmart / boondocking
Sept 28. Memphis TN – T.O. Fuller state park – 1500 Mitchell Rd. Memphis, TN
Sept 29. Nashville TN – Cedars of Lebanon SP
Sept 30. See cousin Angie!
Oct 1. Highland Heaven Airstream Park 6517 Highland Haven Run Northeast Copper Hill, VA 24079-2419.
Oct 2. Homeward Bound!
Tags: roadtrip
Some pictures from a hike threw the Shark River Park and our trip to look at some land in Whiteville, NC (pronounced why-ville..all one sill-a-bell)
oh there’s also a shot of our new baby Chip.
Tags: NJ
so these are some pictures to show what it was like of hurricane bill.
i didn’t go out on saturday, but was out friday and twice on sunday… and fatty over here broke his leash in the process and had a 1/2 mile swim back into shore to get the board and go in for lunch.
i wasn’t paying attention to the camera setting when i took the picture in the morning with the backlit sunrise, which is why it’s dark.
Tags: Asbury Park, hurricane bill, new jersey surf
Here are some pics from our trip to Cheryl’s BBQ and Longwood Gardens.
Learn more about Longwood Garden’s here
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/
Don’t forget to check other albums at
http://picasaweb.google.com/Master11Shake
Tags: Asbury Park Parrot
