Travels with Kris

So I got into Kingman last night.  It was late but that was fine, everything I wanted to do in Kingman was closed on Sunday, which is why I planned on getting to Kingman late on Sunday, and I could hit the road with both feet on Monday. Turns out Monday is a holiday, Presidents Day.  And all government museums, along with the library, are closed. I did the first museum on my list Mohave Museum of History and Arts, where I got my coupon for the Powerhouse Route 66 Museum...which is closed because of the holiday.  I also get to tour the Bonelli House at a reduced price...but not today, because its a holiday. The Mohave Museum of History was really well put together.  Its very similar to other small town history museums, but this one was well displayed.  They talked about the indigenous people that lived in the area, the Europeans that moved in and the mining that both built multiple towns in the area and (when the mines closed) ended t...

Goodbye Flagstaff! I hung out and played at the library again and waited for the girl from work to contact me regarding a meetup.  She blew me off last week and I gave her the benefit of the doubt and offered her this weekend, but I've come to the conclusion that she is deliberate blowing me off.  It makes me sad, but such is the life of a girl on the road.  There were still a few more things I was thinking of doing today, such as laundry, but I can do that anywhere with a laundromat.  Honestly, I have enough clean laundry to get me to Lancaster when I'll be staying with family.  That might be the best way to do it, as I'll be in a place where I can do real organization, which I'm in desperately in need of.  I really need to do my sheets again.  I ate crusty bread in bed last night and now I have crumbs all over my sheets.  It isn't bad, but does need to be taken care of. After two weeks of showering with my purple shampoo, my hair...

I <3 Pluto festival! Ok, its the whole reason I came back to Flagstaff.  They had all there regular presentations scheduled but they also had a bunch of special Pluto centric events and presentations.  I did watched a number of them, including going behind the scenes and walking through Clyde Tombaughs apartment (the guy that discovered Pluto as a 24 year old unpaid intern).  Some of the other presentations were modified to put more emphasas on Pluto.  And at 5pm were snacks and beer.  A local brewery made a specialty Pluto Porter beer.   There was Pluto/Charon art in the gift shop and they did a pretty nice job of putting together this little shindig.  At 7pm, the party moved to the Cline Library at Northern Arizona University and we listen to a bunch of special guest speakers.  The son of Clyde Tombaugh, Allen Tombaugh.  Jim and Char Christy, Jim discovered the moon of Pluto and name it Char-on after his wi...

Decided to head back to the Observatory this afternoon.  The morning presentation repeat in the afternoon, so I knew I didn't have to rush.  The evening presentation don't repeat and there are two sets of presentations that run at the same time.  So I wanted to be there early enough to catch the 2nd set of evening presentations and I wanted daylight hours to be able to walk the property and read the signs and historical markers.  I decide to leave me camera in the car, as I took a number of photos the previous weekend and the telescopes wouldn't really change. I'm in through the Visitors Center for less than 5 minutes and I find these cute little birds that were posing nicely for me...if I'd had a camera.  I sigh and move on...and what do I see?  Acorn Woodpecker.  Yep.  I haven't seen good birds in months as they've mostly all migrated for the winter.  I've got ravens everywhere, but my fascination with those got old somewhere around New M...

Back in Flagstaff and I woke up lazy so I ended up at the movie theater bright and early.  Watched the new Birds of Prey movie, which was ok.  And the new Guy Richie movie called The Gentleman, which was classic Guy Richie and I enjoyed both. Moved onto the library where I emptied my SD card, did the proper sorting and posting and got my external hard drive updated, as I hadn't done that for awhile.   Sometimes its good to have lazy days.

The Grand Canyon day 2.  I parked at the main visitors center pretty close to the entrance of the park.  It also contains a large parking lot, access to the canyon and the south rim trail and its a stop for the shuttle buses.  Only two of the three shuttle buses function during the winter: the orange and the blue lines.  The Blue line was a longer line but catered mostly to people moving between the main visitors center and the Village.  I'd walked a good portion of that already, so I jumped on the Orange Line.  This take you to three scenic viewpoints in one direction, then back to the Visitors Center, then three scenic viewpoints in the other direction.  That works for me.  I got some great views, great photos and got to see some elk.  Also did a walkthrough of the Geological Museum and got in a lot of steps.  I looked at the stops that the Blue Line went to and decided to skip it, most I'd already seen.  Got in my car and drove a...

After a pretty crappy night sleep, I arrived at the train station at the requested time and loaded myself into the Coach A train car.  Turns out there are two Coach cars, one with kids and one with adults only.  Each car has an attendant that provided a lot of information about the canyon, the train, the landscape we were seeing etc.  She was very informative and very funny and kept us entertained along the way.  On both legs of the train ride, there are also musical acts and on the way home our train got robbed by three guys on horseback.  I expect the kids loved that.  I honestly thought it was a big cheesy and I kept wondering how much it cost to hire guys to drive out into the middle of no where to fake rob a train.  They have to bring horses and arrange for the horses to be returned etc.  It was weird.  I expect during the summer months when there are double or triple the amount of people on the train, it goes over a little b...

I'd meant to make another trip to Williams.  I'd drove through it on Route 66 when I went to Kingman for the first time.  My Route 66 app pretty much ignored all of the downtown area of William and it is clearly a town that loves its association with Route 66.  Once I got there, I realized there really wasn't that much to do.  You can drive the Historic Route 66 loop, check out the historical marker, eat at a dozen different Route 66 restaurants, shop the historic downtown area and that's about it. I had some nice BBQ for lunch and then found the Visitors Center.  The Visitors Center attendant pointed out a few other things William has, including a few animal attractions outside of town.  They look nice, but after Africa I'm not really enjoying the animal attractions like I used to. I still support them, if they are run well and the animals are treated well.  I support them even more if they contribute to education or conservation efforts...

Today was a very dull day.  I should have used the time to update my blog, but instead I sat in my car and watched tv and played on my phone and did nothing.  I had tentative plans to have lunch/dinner with someone I had worked with here, but she canceled, so I did nothing. Ok, I didn't do nothing.  I made a half ass attempt to put a little organization into my car.  I have too much stuff.  Next time, I will be doing this so much simpler.

Back in Flagstaff for the weekend.  The plan is to do a Home Depot workshop on drywall patching and the Lowell Observatory and one last meeting with one of the girls from work.  The Home Depot workshop went really well and I spent a couple hours there.   Went to the Obaervatory and I'd looked at the event schedule online and I knew they had a lot of activities.   A new one every hour.  I was there from 2pm until after 10pm.  Every hour on the hour is another event or lecture.  In the evening they are running two activities at a time, so I missed some.  I ended up returning to the front desk and buying a membership.  The day pass is $22 and the membership is $45 and includes free visits along with admission to around 300 other science museums around the country.  I'll be close to a number in California, and there are 3 in Tuscon alone.  I figured I'd catch a few more on I-10 on the way back to Florida.  Tot...

This Friday was going to be an easy day.  Drive from Page to Flagstaff with a detour to the Vermillion National Monument.   I hadn't done too much research, but it was on the way and I could check it out.  It turned out to be really beautiful and I was able to spend some time watching the condors fly over the cliffs.  Even with my zoom lenses I wasnt able to get great photos but considering the distance I was probably lucky to get any photos at all.   Between the road to Flagstaff and Vermilluon Cliffs is Lee's Ferry, a segment of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and I spent some time exploring there.  There is still a number of buildings there along with the orchard and cemetery of early explorers.  Lee from the name Lee's Ferry settled here while running from the law.  He was part of the infamous Mountain Meadow Maascre in southern Utah and participated in the  slaught of wagon trains on the way to California....

I had originally planned on doing Page on the 6th, but ended up finishing up Navajo National Monument before noon on the 5th, so I was able to combine the activities I wanted to do in Page on the same day. When I first started doing research I had found 3 other National Monuments in the area but because of time and weather decided to exclude them   Now I had a full day to blow and I looked to add teo of them back on:   Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah just over the state line and Pipe Spring National Monument in Arizona.  The day ended up being a lot of driving and not a lot of adventuring, but that's ok, sometimes it's good to slow down. Pipe Springs is most well known for the conflict between a Mormon group that relocated to the area and the local Native Americans that lived there for generations  the Mormons took all the water and just waited for the Native Americans to die.  No water meant no crops, no anim...

Slept in a bit after I finally got back to sleep the night before.  Grabbed a 2 for 4 sandwich deal at Burger King and headed to Navajo National Monument.  The weather was good with the exception of it being really cold.  There was only one trail that I wanted to do there and that lead to the overlook of the ruins.  I delayed the hike but hanging out at the visitors center and watching some educational films and exploring the exhibits.  Finally put on my hat and coat and headed out.  I was glad I saw the ruins but I was also glad to get back inside.  1.3 miles isnt much unless its below freezing. It was only 12:30pm by then and I figured I'd head over to Page and make reservations for tomorrow's Antelope Canyon Tour.  Made it to Page by 2pm and drove around the Glen Canyon Recrational area a little while debating on which tour i should do, upper or lower.  Lower is cheaper but has 85 stairs going down.  And eventually coming ...

Back on the road and it feels good.  I miss the casual drives and nearly unlimited time to listen to books, podcasts or heavy dialog Netflix.  I spent the night at my favorite Flying J in Winslow and started north first thing in the morning.  It was a two hour drive and I finally arrived at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument around 11:30am.  Talked to park rangers to get the lay of the land and a map.  There is both the north rim and the south rim of the canyon to explore.  Kost of the driving is off the NM but side roads pull you back onto property at a number of scenic spots. The canyon itself is beautiful, but the draw is the Ancient Publoen ruins spotted throughout the canyon.  I was able to see them all except the White House Ruins, which disappointed me.  The photos show a really unique photo spot, but the hike was 1.5 miles downhill followed by 1.5 miles back up and I wasnt sure my knees could pull it off.  I miss havin...

Originally I thought I'd go on an adventure as soon as I was released from my assignment.  But I've been working on photo books (3 this year) for the last 8 weeks and I was halfway finished with the third book when the assignment ended.  The 2019 yearbook was going to be 80 pages this year and was taking up a lot of time.  I think I'm going to take notes this year and maybe start collecting "yearbook" photos in a separate file so 2020 will be easier.  I've done something similar in the past, a little half-assed and it does help.  I think the real problem is trying to put the books together with a small travel laptop.  I did some of the first two books at work during down time, and having a good computer with a large 20 inch screen was a major help.  I kicked though the books in very little time.  Unfortuately, the website eventually triggered some time of security red flag and the site was blocked.  Just at the end of the second book, so I ...

My last working week in Flagstaff.  I ended the week with drinks and dinner with a couple of the ladies from work and it ended well.  I'm going to miss work as I actually like work, if its good work.  But I won't miss the constant anxiety of not knowing for sure if I'm doing things correctly as the training was nearly non-existent and the daily correction of things I wasn't aware of drove me crazy.  I also won't miss waking up early.  I can start liquidating the extras in my car and make more space.  Much of what I've purchased is cold weather gear, so I won't be getting rid of everything, but some. I've starting cutting back on the spending again, which is tough.  I really like sit down meals with hot food and cocktails, but I'm back to PBJ and no more energy drinks.  I've missed my Diet Coke and if I buy it on sale or buy generic, I can continue that.  Water would be both cheaper and healthier, but I can't go 100% water...just can't d...