Day Seven: North Hollywood, California

Pleasantly restful day, excepting the homicidal intensity of Los Angeles freeway transit. We galloped, galavanted, and generally gallopvanted off to a place of my youth, "Travel Town" in Griffith Park. Basically, a train museum.

Here I am assuring her it will be more fun than she is at the time thinking:



Off and running!



Up in the locomotive:



And one of the empty passenger cars was fun:



...because you can run around like mad in it.



Racing to catch up to mommy and grandma:



But the highlight of the trip was of course getting the plastic toy train whistle, which was mastered within SECONDS! This child is a train whistle prodigy!



Then it was off to North Hollywood, to visit with Gretchen's great-grandad. Fine old chap and a gentleman. I raise my icewater to his health and long[er] life! The girls out front:

Day Five: Disneyland

So Day Four is missing, you say. No, in case your mind is swirling with all sorts of improbable astrophysical explanations for a missing day, I must ask you to apply the Razor that that bloke Ockham bunged about the place. No need to overcomplicate, the simplest explanation is that we simply didn't blog about it. Due to some great fun at the Grand Canyon involving sleep, or particularly, the inability of our daughter to get to the same, we ended up leaving quite early in the morning, about 3:30AM, and made an early start to our trip to Los Angeles. I would say that the scenery is beautiful in Western Arizona, and indeed I remember it to be, but the pitch black night did not favour me with a refreshment of the memory. Breakfast in Kingman, AZ, with a LOT of coffee, and we were in Diamond Bar by midday. The rest of the day was spent recuperating and spending time with family, and I've got no further pictures. Bit of an adventure, and the stars finally aligned that night for Gretchen to get a full amount of good sleep. And us as well!

The next day, of course, was our long-awaited Disneyland trip, Gretchen's first. Debra has been excited for this for ages. Gretchen too, although she scarcely understood the meaning...she'll happily prattle about Dih-Nee-LAND! but I think she assumed we were going somewhere to watch Disney movies.

And...we're there! Disney frigging Land!



Gretchen in line for the Peter Pan ride:



She's excited!



Blowing kisses to her fans (her old man, and grandma) from the carousel:



A look of boredom while waiting for it to commence...



Followed by some growing panic as it moved a bit faster than carousels of her previous acquaintance!



The horticulture here is incredible.



Looking out on the Casey Jr's train ride:



And sacked out after a morning of lines and rides.



She did snag one of the requisite mouse ear hats, embroidered with her name.



Waiting in line for a million psychotic, probably murderous dolls to shriek repetitive platitudes at us...in air conditioning...at the "It's a Small World" ride. Replete with CHURROS!!!



Gretchen, Mom (in keeping with her independent streak, Mommy is now "Mom" now often), and Grandma on the way out. Good times had by all. Bed time was no problem.

Day Three: Grand Canyon, Arizona

This morning, we left Gallup, and rather shortly, New Mexico, around 8AM. Right at the Arizona border is one of those kitschy "Indian Settlements" that sell blankets, jewelry, and a lot of other classic southwest gift shop things with lots of gaudy signs, so we stopped and visited the "Largest Teepee in the Southwest" which actually was a nice little shop, but as mentioned, completely the same as all of these genre of souvenir shops. Got a decent price for some turquoise jewelry.



Another hour or so and we were at the Petrified Forest National Park. We bought our annual park pass and intended only to make a cursory run around part of the park (Gretchen was asleep anyway). But the northern "Painted Desert" section was stunning in person. Now that we're in a cabin on the rim of the Grand Canyon, these pictures make it look a bit weak and uninteresting but after driving through KansasTexhomamexico flatness it was quite cool.



Further south in the park were the "Teepees", strange cones of rock. Here were a few of the whiter ones, most of them were a dark grey, almost black.



In the far south of the park is the actual petrified forest section:



There was an entire field of these logs:



Up close:



Here's some more of the somewhat lunar scenery on the way out:



Back on the road, we approached what is the city of our eventual intended dwelling, Flagstaff. Located quite high in altitude with a generally mild climate, I just need to be offered a good CIO position there or become independently wealthy. We'll see what happens first. Once through Flagstaff and driving north, the Cococino Forest was quite beautiful, but we only really found out that when we frantically pulled over believing Gretchen to be in the initial throes of carsickness. We took a walk.



Lovely crisp clean air, pine trees, I think I'm love. Mountain just behind us:



But we got back in the car and hurtled on towards the south rim. You'd never guess, well, you might, or you might know from actual experience, but the mass of humanity clustered round this particular tourist attraction is particularly diverse, in the sense of being made up of mostly non-Americans. The sheer ubiquity of Germans would have been sufficient, one would think, to make the also-prevalent Frenchies a bit nervous in a way reminiscent of 1940. It took rather a long time to sort out where to park; it really was packed out. But we reserved a nice little cabin room about 50 feet from the rim, perhaps. Here is Gretchen in front of it as we're preparing to go see the canyon:



Don't fall in!



Pictures are a rather lame way of showing this:



Towards the canyon floor...



To prove she was there!



The canyon just after sunset.

Day Two: Gallup, New Mexico

Slightly longer day today, started out with an actually quite decent "continental" breakfast. Continental in what sense? The European sense, as in prone to smelly cheeses and world wars? Or as in the Continental US? Do they serve these cold free breakfasts in Alaska and Hawaii?

But anyway, it stormed fairly heavily out of Liberal and most the way through the OK panhandle, but that didn't deter us from a quick stop for this photograph in Hooker, OK:



I'm not sure but it seems like they are playing off of some kind of double meaning here, or something like that. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Crossing into Texas, the enormous windmills. Texas pretending to be green by putting windmills right on their borders. Sort of like a meat market putting soy chicken substitute in its front window.



One of the things I have noticed is that the comic fodder on this trip has been significantly picked over...amusing, I hope, observations I would otherwise be prone to make have already yet been made, the last time we traversed this particular path three years ago. Ah well. The road signs are still amusing. In New Mexico:



Lights On For Safety! It's a fantastic little motto, like Hats Off For Cancer Awareness, or Knees Bent For Organic Farming.

As we sowed McNuggets, so did we reap. The semi-mountainous roads just outside Albequerque were a bit much for Gretchen and the poor girl offered up her stomach contents in oblation. So we had to stop in Albequerque and figure out how to clean up our daughter and our vehicle. Again, this is all part of the challenge that makes this "fun"! We're settled in Gallup, NM, on the other side of the state, and tomorrow should be a bit more fun with the Petrified Forest National Park and then the Grand Canyon.

Pretty country though!

Road Trip

Day One: Liberal, Kansas

So we're off on another roadtrip. We like roadtrips...they are expensive, sometimes monotonous, and challenging, and who doesn't like such things? We decided to increase the challenge a bit and take along a 2 1/2 year old.

Oh, and I also decided to invoke a beardomorphosis. Purely temporary, mind you, but you can see the varied stages below. I am fond of the "ear-tethered fu manchu" but Debra was not.


A road trip would be bland and pedestrian without last minute car troubles! First, we remembered at 10:30PM on Friday that the gas cap was reported stuck, so I went out to see...turns out it was cross threaded, and a locking wrench was necessary to get it free. One challenge past, we got some sleep, got up at 5AM and got off on our way, only to find our tire pressure low. Then we found out that a nail had damaged the valve stem and low pressure sensor, so we had to postpone departure and get this little bugger, pictured below, replaced at Walmart. After a healthy round of shaking my fist in futile rage at whatever goddam sumbitches conspired to lay nails across the road, we got off a couple hours later.


We had planned to have breakfast at the Matfield Green reststop McDonalds on the Turnpike, but we had lunch instead.


Gretchen discovered the virtue of ketchup used in concert with chicken nuggets.




Knute Rockne! ....died here apparently. Sad, that. Ah well. Knute! Knute! Knute!


Stopped for gas in Greensburg, Kansas, made famous by the movie "Twister". Some still-damaged trees around.


The Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas:


This was an interesting exhibit of rubble from the Twin Towers. One could examine it up close. Nothing special, of course, but it almost has the feel of sacred relics or something.


An F-104 Starfighter:


One of the choppers they show on the intro to M*A*S*H, but they couldn't afford to actually record on set in the actual show.


Family in the HueyCobra:


Gretchen was not as impressed as I hoped but then again, she is a submariner at heart.


Actually she is a "doggie" at heart. Barking and crawling around in front of the SBD Avenger.


It's a fantastic museum.


One of the side effects of bringing along a small one is that bed times are rather soon in arrival, so I'd best wrap this up. Cheers, and shall likely post again tomorrow.

haikus are easy
in poetry they are the
special olympics

I'm all hepped up and crunked out on diphenhydramine right now, so you'll have to excuse the flagging quality of today's post. I have an old Army survival field manual. I thought I'd share a couple pictures.

The first speaks (volumes!) for itself:


And the second:


Thank God our brave men of the US armed forces are equipped with inflating pants.

So, to "Don't Ask" and "Don't Tell" it appears we might need to add "Don't Broadcast Around the Globe Via Viral Internet Video":