The Traveling Londons

Pictures!

If anybody is still around you can see the vacation album on the left. The photos from our Summer 2002 trip are also up.

We're Home

We rolled into Pleasanton around 2:30 p.m. today. Adam was beside himself with joy. He kept saying, "This place looks familiar. I remember this street! I remember that McDonalds!" We had to remind him that we were only gone 2 and a half weeks and he's lived here all his life! Adam and Daniel are really glad to be home. Matthew's ready to hit the road again.

We stayed over last night in a cottage on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe (in Tahoe Vista). It was one of those cottage places where people come back every year and stay the entire summer. We were really wishing that we could stay longer than one night. Jay jokingly (?) tried to talk me into driving back home by myself, going to my doctor's appointment tomorrow, and then driving back up and continuing our vacation. Since that wasn't a real possibility, we enjoyed the place while we could. Jay took the boys swimming and I went grocery shopping. I went a bit wild in Safeway as I was so excited to be back in civilization!

So, we're back home and tending to the back-at-home duties. The laundry is going, things are being put away and the kids are re-discovering their toys. I'm trying to get myself back into the being-at-home mode and will soon, I'm sure, get up the energy to look at my list of things I need to do. We had a great time but I'm also glad I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight.

We Complete Our Circle

As we passed through Wells, NV this afternoon, we completed the big circle we started 15 days ago. Just over two weeks ago, we headed north from Wells towards Idaho and today we returned through Wells from the East via Utah. We are now backtracking our original route through Nevada and eventually back into California. We may make it home tomorrow or we may stop in Tahoe for the night and come home Wednesday as planned.

Yesterday we left CO and crossed over into Utah. We headed off the main highway for a side trip into Moab, UT. After going up and down downtown Moab four times (again in need of that GPS), we gave up on finding the new, cool resort by the river and ate lunch at Pizza Hut in order to stop the rebellion going on in the back of the car.

After lunch we headed into Arches National Park. What a cool place! There are unbelievable rock formations (arches, windows, balancing rocks) in amazing colors. You look up at these huge, ancient rocks and feel so small and insignificant. It's very similar to Monument Valley and since I lost all of my pictures of Monument Valley on the Durango-Silverton Railroad some 10 years ago, I made up for it by taking a ton of pictures here. It was very, very hot--up to 115 degrees (but it was a dry heat :-p)--so we did most of the viewing from the car. After awhile, the kids had about hit their limit of National Parks. Adam finally said "No more rocks! We want town!"

We stayed the night in Price, UT and the kids were happy as clams because they got to swim for a long time in an indoor pool. The pool was really warm so I got in but I did not enjoy myself because there were some seven kids there who were running around and jumping on top of us at every opportunity. Their parents were not there and I eventually figured out that they were children of employees of the hotel. Now, I was having some compassion since it was an extremely hot day, but it was a tiny pool so my compassion began to wear thin since we were the ones paying for the use of the pool. After asking them repeatedly not to jump on top of Daniel and I (a reasonable request, I thought), I finally complained to the front desk. The parents (hotel employees, I knew it!) came in to talk to them but it did no good whatsoever. Oh well. It didn't bother my kids at all; they had a great time so I didn't press the issue.

On to today...We briefly drove through BYU in Provo and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. We were in search of any leftover Olympic sites in SLC but couldn't find any. We ate lunch in SLC but didn't spend a lot of time there. It was a very hot, very smoggy day and under those circumstances the city really wasn't very appealing. We resisted (ha!) visiting the Polygamy Museum we saw advertised on a billboard ("Multiple Spouses are the way to go!" or some such equally inane tag line listed above a picture of smiling, blond-haired people (well, just one man and multiple women, of course). After that, we caught highway 80 and headed west (home!). P.S. I am not kidding about the billboard.

We drove along the Great Salt Lake but could barely see it though all the haze. After we left the lake, we drove along the vast evaporation grounds with so much pure white salt stretching in each direction that if it were not 100 degrees out, one would think it was snow.

In the early afternoon we left the "sin-free" state of Utah and entered the sinful state of Nevada (casinos, bars, and "gentlemen's clubs" right at the border!) We're staying the night in Elko, NV. Jay took the boys swimming, won $90 in the casino (!), and now we're chilling out in the hotel room. Well, chilling out as much as we possibly can with Adam running in every five minutes with amazing new dinosaur facts he's learning from "Prehistoric Predators" on the Discovery Channel (Did you know that pigs are decendents from a species of dinosaurs? I thought not.)

It's been a good trip but the boys are very excited to be getting home soon. They have for the most part done just great in the car. The Harry Potter CDs have been a godsend. They listen intently to them and then act out made up scenes involving all of the characters (often using a British accent LOL!)

Until tomorrow, when we're back in California...

Hobnobbing With The Rich

but unfortunately no one famous. We made brief pit stops in the lands of the very rich today.

First we stopped for lunch in Vail Village. It was a gorgeous day and it was nice to walk around a bit in the village window shopping and people watching. It was crowded, but not overwhelming. We ate a nice lunch, listened to some live music, and then hit the road again.

We stopped next in Aspen and walked around the town there as well. We talked about staying the night but the prices were ridiculous for just a roadside pit stop that our stay would be. It was too early for dinner so we played in the park for a bit and were on our way once again.

We drove through a town called Glenwood Springs. There are hot springs there and a pool filled with water from the hot springs that you can swim in. When we read about it, we considered staying there. However, when we saw it, we changed our minds. It is amazing and not the little hot spring pool that we imagined. I mean, the pool is literally the size of a football field with water slides and other apparatus. But it was also filled with just about the entire population of Colorado. We had visions of relaxing in the hot water, but I doubt that there would have been much relaxing for Jay and I trying to keep track of all three of them in all of that mess. All of the hotels that we passed were full anyway, so we drove down the road a bit and are staying the night in Rifle, CO.

Before we left this morning, we fed the fish and ducks the rest of the chow, Matthew and Adam had one last rock wall climb, Daniel and I walked around the art festival, and Adam and Daniel had pony rides.

We are all just exhausted tonight. We didn't drive any further than on our other drive days but boy are we all tired tonight.

Our Last Day in Keystone

We spent our last full day here kayaking, miniature golfing, swimming and eating. Matthew and Adam both took out solo kayaks and did great while Jay, Daniel and I puttered around in a paddle boat. It was Adam's first time in a kayak (Matthew and I had taken out a double kayak yesterday). It took him a little bit to find his groove, but soon he was paddling around with the best of them. And, most importantly, he made it back to the beach under his own power.

We begin our journey home at some point tomorrow. I want to see the arts festival that starts here tomorrow morning, Jay wants to get Daniel on a pony ride and Matthew wants to go rock climbing (shush, Harley) so I doubt we'll get out of here very early tomorrow. We might stop in Vail on our way out to check out the summer action (if any).

At the risk of totally alienating all of you, I will post of one more animal sighting. We saw a muskrat swimming in the lake. Oooohhhh. Very unexpected.

Right now Adam is watching "Jimmy Neutron" for the millionth time this trip, Matthew is watching some movie on the Disney channel starring Justin Timberlake and some blond teenager girl (oy!) and Daniel is curled up on Jay's shoulder, sound asleep (they look very cute). After I finish this, I am going to go back to reading "The Nanny Diaries". Fascinating! (and appalling!)

Until next time....

Horses and Boats and Rocks, Oh My!

Well, Jay's and my night out didn't exactly work out as planned. Adam was extremely tired and was not in any mood to stay at the child care place even though Daniel and Matthew were up for it. (Actually, I didn't really blame him. The place didn't look that enticing when we went there earlier in the day to check it out.) We all went out to dinner and tried to reassure him, but he was not buying it, so we bagged it. It ended up being just fine. We had a nice dinner, browsed in the toy store, and then came back here and played various card games. The kids are in watching a movie now and Jay and I are sitting on the balcony enjoying the view.

Today was an activity-filled day. In the morning, Matthew and I went for an hour-long horseback ride. It was a lot of fun and I was really impressed with Matthew (Harley, this might be Matthew's sport! :-). He has not ridden any horse other than a led pony and his instincts were great. He was in the lead behind the trail guide and knew just what to do when his horse would stop dead in the trail (which his horse tended to do quite often). Once when we encountered hikers on the trail, his horse turned completely around to face the wrong way and he did exactly what he needed to do to get the horse back on track. I had a lot of fun too. It's been years since I've ridden a horse and I wish I had the opportunity to do it more often. I know some of you are animal-spotting-weary so I will make this part brief: we saw a deer and a fawn on the hill above us near the end of the ride.

Quick Note from Jay:

I admit I've gone a bit over the edge when it comes to wildlife sightings. I was walking with Adam and Daniel and I thought I spotted a wolf and Daniel pointed out to me that it was a dog and the owners were quite perplexed as to why I was scampering to take a picture of it.

Back to Donna:

While we were riding, Adam, Daniel and Jay went miniature golfing and rock wall climbing.

From Jay:

The course wasn't terribly exciting but Adam and Daniel had great fun with it. The rock wall was fun. Adam was excited to do it, as was Daniel. Adam almost made it to the top (25 ft). Daniel just enjoyed swinging on the rope. Adam is eager to go back tomorrow to make it to the top. After the rock climbing was playing in the River Run mining playground where the kids can pretend to be in the old west and even be in jail. Then, back to the hotel to meet up with Matthew and Donna.

Back to Donna:

After lunch, Jay, Adam, and Daniel took a paddle-boat out on the lake while Matthew and I took a two-person kayak.

Later, I took the boys swimming in the afternoon but the water was so cold (for me) that I soon retreated to the spa. Grand Teton's pool was so warm, just my kind of pool. I keep saying that I want to build a pool in our backyard but I think we would go broke keeping it the temperature that I like to swim in.

I forgot to mention yesterday about a town that we passed through on our way here from Boulder called Black Hawk. Most of the drive from Boulder to the interstate was through deep canyons. Just before we reached the main interstate. we drove through this town that was literally carved (well, blasted) out of the canyon. It was a string of very modern, huge casinos. It was very old looking, but all brand new in a Disney-esque sort of way. It was interesting.

On top of everything else, it was a banner day because Fed Ex delivered my new contacts today. Woo-hoo! I have passed my designated healing period and now have fresh, new contacts in my eyes. I am myself again! Adam's comment after I put the contacts in: "Now, Mom, I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, but you looked really weird in your glasses."

A Final Note From Jay:

I'm so happy that Donna's eyes are fine and she has contacts again. I'm also happy for all of you that there won't be additional Donna eye updates :)

From Donna:

:-p

Keystone Resort

This morning was another time we could have really used that GPS device. After breakfast in downtown Boulder, we set off for Keystone. We headed in what we thought was the right direction for the highway we needed. We found the highway but it was the wrong section (it went in the wrong direction). We backtracked via our very undetailed map and ended up driving through Colorado University. It is a very pretty college! All the buildings we saw were beautiful brick and stone and very well kept up. It's very big and the area is very nice, very much like the downtown area. So we ended up making a big circle and finally stumbled on the road that turned into the highway we needed. Yep, it was the exact road that our hotel had been on! We "wasted" a half an hour, but it was nice to see the University.

We are now staying at Keystone Resort in Colorado. This place is great and it's not at all crowded. We're staying in the main lodge and thus have easy access to the lake and the pool. The room is really nice and it overlooks the mountains and the pool.

The first thing we did after arriving was pan for gold. We went down to the stream and all took turns flusing the sand and rocks out of our pan and looking for the gold. I, of course, called upon my extensive experience in panning for gold at Knott's Berry Farm. We eventually found one (!) gold flake which we taped to a card as a souvenir.

After Jay took the boys swimming we all ate dinner in the restaurant overlooking the lake. The really cool thing about the restaurant is that the kids meals all came with a "make your own cookie". Before the meal, the waiter brought each of the kids a hunk of raw cookie dough and some toppings. The kids decorated their cookie and the waiter took them back. After dinner they were each presented with their warm, just out of the oven, decorated cookie. They were delicious! I'm sure we'll be eating there again before our stay is over.

The other fun thing we did today was feed the fish. We purchased some duck and fish chow and tossed a couple of pebbles in, expecting the ducks to scoop them up. All of a sudden a rainbow trout swam up, ate the pebble and splashed us with its flapping tail. There were tons of rainbow and brook trout and it was a feeding frenzy! Some of the fish were a good foot and a half long (and that ain't no fish story!) That was a lot of fun. We bought a big bag of chow after dinner and will feed them again.

The activities desk is already closed so I'm not sure exactly what we'll be doing tomorrow, but there's a lot to choose from. Matthew wants to go horseback riding and Adam and Daniel want to go miniature golfing. In the evening Jay and I can (if there's still room) leave the kids at a kids camp from 6 to 10 p.m. (for free!) and go out to dinner. I hope that works out!

I apologize for not having any pictures available but the dial up connections (the only option we've had thus far) have been pretty slow. I may have to wait until we get home before I do the uploading.

We are now sitting in our room, looking out over our balcony, and enjoying a thunder and lightening storm the likes of which we rarely get to see in California. The thunder is long, loud and echoing between the hills! Luckily it's still light out and it's not scaring the kids (let's all hope it stops before bedtime!)

We Finally Make It To Boulder

About eleven or twelve years ago, Jay and I were living in Naples, FL and not liking it very much. We hatched a plan to move to Boulder, CO. Even though neither of us had ever been there before, it possessed many of the qualities of a place we wanted to live. I worked for an educational software company (Sunburst) with four other employees. Our boss was in Minneapolis and the headquarters of the company was in New York. There was nothing really keeping us in Southern Florida anymore (the person who had founded the office was long gone), so I recruited them and we wrote a proposal to move the office to Boulder. Jay began looking for a job as well. Well, it never worked out for many reasons and we ended up moving back to California instead. In the intervening years, we never made it closer to Boulder than the Denver airport but we always talked about going there someday.

So, here we are! The downtown is just great. It's an outdoor pedestrian mall and very outdoorsy and bohemian. But outside of that, the town is very...suburban. We haven't seen the University area yet, though, but I imagine it's much in character with the downtown area. It's very pretty, though, nestled as it is at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

We drove through much of the Eastern side of Rocky Mountain National Park today. It's very impressive but in a different way than Grand Teton and Yellowstone. RMNP is just massive. We drove to over 12,000 feet and we felt like we could almost touch the clouds. The vistas are expansive and impressive. You can see all the different levels of plants, rocks and trees that exist where they are because of the altitude and weather and because a glacier moved through and left them there. At the tops of some of the mountains (below treeline), all the branches of the trees face in one direction because the snow and wind and debris are so fierce that the branches can only survive downwind. There were some patches of snow, but not as many as we thought there would be in a place called "Never Summer Mountains".

Immediately after we entered the park we passed by "Sheep Lake" where the bighorn sheep come down from the mountains and cross the road to feed in the meadow. You are not allowed to stop on the road because the sheep are very timid creatures and apparently the stress of having to cross the road causes them to get sick (!) We stopped in the designated viewing area and were told that there had been one sheep trying to come down earlier and one the day before but none had been seen in awhile. We figured the odds of our seeing a sheep today weren't very good, so we drove on to see the land.

At the top of the drive, we had lunch at the snack bar. Now I have eaten at many snack bars and truly don't expect much but this was absolutely the worst meal I've ever eaten. The kids couldn't even eat their hot dogs. If a kid can't stomach a hot dog, you know the food is bad!

We got back to the car and tried to decide which way to go. We could continue on to the West side of the park or go back the way we came, take another crack at the sheep and stay the night in Boulder.

Well, you already know that we chose the Boulder path. We got back down the mountain and parked once again in the sheep viewing parking lot. There was a crowd gathered, but there had been one gathered there earlier in the day as well. This time, people looked like they were looking at something, but they all had binoculars and we didn't. All of a sudden a ram appeared! We quickly woke up Daniel and got the kids out of the car. The park rangers immediately closed the road and the ram timidly began to cross the road. A kid and a female soon followed the ram across the road. They took a long time crossing the road and then stood together on the other side for a long while. I got some great pictures once I remembered the digital zoom on my camera. It's not as sharp as the regular optical zoom I've been using, but it sure did the trick! I am kicking myself for not remembering to use it when we saw the bear and her cub in Yellowstone because those pictures did not come out well at all.

The bighorn sheep family crossed and re-crossed the road a number of times before retreating up the hill and calling it a day (as far as we know, anyway, because we left after they ran back up the hill out of sight). I felt sorry for them. It was so exciting for us humans to see them, but so nerve-wracking for them, a small family just out for a bite to eat.

I forgot one other animal sighting...as we neared the top we stopped at an overlook. Jay got out alone because the boys were tired and hungry so they stayed in the car with me. I noticed a family pointing to something under the car next to us but I didn't pay much attention because I figured they saw a squirrel. Well, they were so impressed that I had to go check it out. It was a marmot! They look just like beavers. I got all the boys out of the car and the marmot (who was clearly not afraid of us), ran along the pavement among us. I pulled out my camera and when I looked up, the marmot was sniffing Daniel's toes as Daniel calmly looked down at him. Yikes! Luckily he didn't smell anything he wanted to taste and after I shooed him (her?) off a bit, I got some good shots.

We had dinner at a fantastic Chicago-style pizza restaurant in downtown Boulder. I wanted to shop a bit, but it just wasn't going to work out. I did dash into the bookstore and find the book I was looking for (plus another one for good measure). I had wanted to go into the bead shop but it was closed by the time we walked back there. Maybe tomorrow before we leave for Keystone if I can convince Jay :-)

Matthew's Musings

Well we left the Jackson Lake Lodge. We had a lot of fun there and now we are on our on way to Keystone CO. Right now we are in Loveland CO. and we are staying in the Holiday Inn Express. P.S. yesterday my Mom didn't tell you why they closed the pool. It was closed because somebody threw up in it and that’s it for today.

On The Road Again

Quick recap of yesterday (Sunday, July 7th): We all (except for Jay's brother Jordan who went on a long, solo hike) went to Jenny Lake and took the boat across and went for a short hike. It was short because it was straight up and the littlest legs tired before we reached the top (but they went a lot further than I thought they would!). Even though we didn't make it to the top, we got to see some rushing waters and falls and it was very pretty.

After taking the boat back, we stopped for lunch at the Signal Mountain Lodge and then went back to our cottages at Jackson Lake Lodge. We chilled out a bit in the afternoon and some went swimming before the pool was closed for the rest of the afternoon due to an unfortunate bodily release. Dinner was again spent at the BBQ at the pool (still closed). After dinner we went over to the lodge and saw another (the same?) bull moose in the pond just below the lodge. There was a baby moose and a female moose below the lodge as well, but they were further away.

On to today...after a quick breakfast in the lodge, we said goodbye first to Jordan, Lisa, Ben and Jessica and later to David, Lori, Abigail, Noah and Sue and Ed. The boys were very sad to leave. They had a great time with their cousins, grandparents and aunts and uncles. Adam and Ben were once again best buddies. Matthew had fun with Abigail and taking care of Jessica. Daniel had a great time playing gameboy with Abigail and playing with Jessica and Noah. There are a lot of good memories of this trip!

I forgot to mention that after breakfast we saw another (same?) moose close up and Daniel and I saw a fox.

We left Grand Teton National Park shortly after nine in the morning. We drove south through the center of Wyoming. This is such beautiful country! Rolling green hills, trees, rivers and tons of wildflowers. The few people who live here have such a beautiful land with amazing views. As we went further south, the land changed and there were many of the colorful, beautifully shaped hills of the type that you typically see in Arizona. The difference being that behind these hills are vast snow-capped mountains.

We had lunch in Lander, WY and began heading east in Rawlins, WY. It was our longest driving day yet but we pushed on since the kids were doing so great in the car and the longer we went, the more time we'd have to spend in Rocky Mountain National Park. We stopped for dinner in Laramie, WY and bought the kids the Jimmy Neutron movie to watch in the car after dinner so we could go even further. We decided to stop for the night in Loveland, CO (just outside of Fort Collins). Tomorrow we'll go into Estes and see the East end of Rocky Mountain National Park. Our goal is to see a bighorn sheep or two. We have not been able to pin one down yet (we won't actually attempt to pin one down, I promise).

There have been a number of times that we have wished we had the navigating GPS device. We wasted a half an hour in Laramie looking first for a Wal-mart (or similar) to buy the movie and then to find a restaurant. Later, in Fort Collins I had just finished my book and discovered that there was a third novel in the series just released, so I was desperate to find a Barnes & Noble (or similar). It would have been so nice to just punch in what we needed to find and have the navigation software tell us how to get there. Oh well.