Grand Canyon - well not really

Hi everyone,

OMG, we’re leaving in 5 days! So much stuff to do! I’ve got to get my clothes and my husband’s clothes together to see what needs to be washed.  That’s today’s big chore.

To continue where I left off, we’re leaving Las Vegas and traveling to the Grand Canyon.  We’re taking I-93 and stopping off at the Hoover Dam. According to the web site, the highway used to go over the dam itself.  Since 2010, however, the highway was rerouted and takes a southerly route.  If you want to see the Dam, you exit the highway and follow the old road that leads to it.  From the confusing explanations, it looks like you park and then walk over the dam. You and your car get searched – yippee – before they let you through. Then you have to go back the way you came to pick up I-93 in Nevada again.

One cool thing I want to mention. You definitely want to buy the Annual Interagency Pass if you’re going to visit a bunch of the National sites.  It’s only $80 and is good for a whole year.  It’s good for all national parks, national forests, bureau of land management sites, bureau of reclamation sites and fish and wildlife service sites. Ok – I get the national parks and national forests, but bureau of reclamation sites? Really? Well, it just so happens that the Hoover Dam is one of those reclamation sites.  Who knew? Go back and click on the link I made with the Annual Interagency Pass words.  Which reminds me – I hope you’ve all noticed I linked a lot of sites to key places.  I thought they’d be underlined but they’re not.  Make sure you move your cursor over key words (names of parks, hotels, restaurants, etc.) so you can visit their sites.  You wouldn’t want me to have wasted all that time for nothing, would you?

After our stop at Hoover Dam, we’re continuing on to Seligman, AZ for a stop at the Road Kill Café for lunch. Check out the link.  Who could pass up a place that serves Highway Hash, Swirl of Squirrel, and Splatter Platter?

 As I mentioned in my very first posting (which I know you all read – you’ve been loyally reading everything I write, I just know it), my husband was only on board with this trip if I delivered plenty of awesome road food. He’s a definite foodie.  While he likes really good food, he’d rather eat interesting food such as the aforementioned Swirl of Squirrel. So a large part of my research has been finding great local places with dishes we can’t get in our native state of Virginia. All I can say is that southern Utah, where we’re spending the bulk of our time, is practically devoid of anything interesting.  This is not to say that cool, local places don’t exist, there just aren’t many of them and they’re not always that close to where we’re staying.

Finding restaurants is an art form in and of itself. I went to the ever-popular roadfood.com.  It’s an interesting web site with tons of road-food listings and a forum to pick up even more suggestions. When I looked here, there were very few places for southern Utah.  In fact everywhere I looked there was very little positive regard for restaurants around the canyon sites.  But do I give up – never! But mostly because I was desperately trying to avoid hearing the complaints of my husband and children who I’m quite sure would turn on me and make me their next road food meal.

I’ll be happy to mention all of the places we’ll be going and then reviewing them for you once we’re actually there so we can see if all the hype about each place was earned.  Again, I looked for places with good local cuisine that was family friendly and not too expensive.  We’re camping and with the kids.  The last thing I want is some hoidy-toidy white linen restaurant that I have to look clean for.

It’s later than I thought right now so I’ll write more about the Grand Canyon tomorrow and about Zion, too.  I’m seeing that it may be time to actually go on this crazy vacation before I get to tell you all about it. So I’ll step it up and get moving.

Tomorrow – The Grand Canyon (yes, really, this time) and Zion National Park

Getting nervous....

Hi everyone,

Less than a week until vacation time and I’m starting to panic.  I’ve Xeroxed everything I can think of and put it all in an organized binder.  I have our itinerary, all of our campsite reservation confirmations, our car rental confirmation, our airline confirmation, copies of the Google maps to every location, maps of the national parks and directions to some of the restaurants we’re going to. All of this in one binder and I probably won’t need half of it.  But we’re going far from home and I just feel more secure having it all with me.  Especially because, dammit, I put so much time and effort into planning this trip – I don’t want to forget anything.  I know I’m starting to sound crazy and yes, even a tad hysterical, but I just had a fight with my 12 year old daughter over the clothes she can pack.  I swear I don’t think that girl has one pair of matching socks anywhere in her clothing repertoire.  And now she tells me none of her bras fit except for one.  I just bought her three more about a month ago.  WTF? Okay, focus , focus.  Oh wait, before I calm down I actually overheard my husband saying to same daughter that she needs to get her stuff in order because he’s getting really worried we won’t be ready on time for this vacation.  WHAT?  Maybe if he’d actually lift a finger to help he could relieve his deep concerns. We may never get on this trip because I may kill them all before next Saturday.

Okay, I promised to talk a bit about Las Vegas.  There’s only a bit to tell. I was told there are all these great deals for hotels if you don’t stay on the strip.  This hasn’t been my experience at all and I used all those advertised budget travel sites – Expedia, Travelocity, etc.  After not seeing the rates I wanted – and I wanted something under $79 per night for all 4 of us – I decided to check out the rates at Circus Circus hotel and casino.  I remembered going there when I was on my whirlwind teen tour I mentioned in my first entry. They had a lot of carnival-style games for kids and they’re just about on the strip. I was pleasantly surprised when I put in my dates and came up with a total of $119.25 for the 2 nights with breakfast included.  Yeehaw.  Booked it!

So after we land in Las Vegas, pick up our car and get our stuff from Wal-mart, what should we do?  This is the only stop I left unplanned.  I know we’ll go to the strip with the giant mall.  We’ll make our way through the giant casinos and see the awesome water display in front of the Belaggio.  I did want to go to a show, though.  Hmm, what to see when you’re in Vegas and with your kids?  I decided on Cirque de Soleil.  They have a family show called Mystere

 which they perform in the Treasure Island casino/hotel. It looked really cool from the web site so I booked it.  I’ll let you all know what we thought afterwards.  Note, you have to pick up your tickets no less than an hour before the show so I thought we’d get to Treasure Island, pick up the tickets and then have dinner there.  We’re going to Gillys BBQ or the pizza place – we’ll see what we’re in the mood for. No buffets - we're just not buffet people.  Ok, we did check out the buffets in Amish country but that'll be another trip blog.

We’re staying in Vegas from Saturday until Monday morning when we leave for the Grand Canyon.  More about that stop tomorrow!

Las Vegas - Part one

Hello everyone,

So today I promised to write about Las Vegas and I will but in the context of “what the hell was I thinking?”  You know how some things sound really great in theory but when put into practice, well, not so much?  I’m realizing that camping across Utah is presenting far more logistical issues than I anticipated.  As you know from reading my first few entries, we’re flying into Las Vegas and renting an SUV to carry all our camping gear.  Ah, but how to get the camping gear to Las Vegas and the SUV.  We can’t exactly bring it all on the plane. Especially since the airlines now charge a stupid $25 per bag.  Sheesh, highway – or rather airway – robbery.  The company I work for ships items everyday and has a working warehouse and shipping department. I figured I’ll just ship everything from there.  Well, what does “everything” entail? Right here came the first problem.  I can’t tell you how many days it took me to pin down my husband, and not in the fun way, to make a list of what we need to bring.  We decided we’d buy some things in Las Vegas. This is how I discovered that Wal-Mart exists in the desert. My husband insisted on buying lightweight sleeping bags for summer camping despite my insistence that nighttime is actually very cold in these National parks with temperatures dipping down into the 40’s.  But don’t listen to the wife who does the research and can pull up the facts and figures. And who cares that the wife and kids are usually cold at night even when we do camp in the middle of hot and muggy summers? No, we are buying the Coleman Clear Lake 50-degree sleeping bag for warm weather camping all because the man is terrified of sweating at night.  Actually he’s terrified of sweating at night and having to throw back the sleeping bag, thus making him vunerable to snakes and scorpions.  Which brings me to our next purchase – sleeping cots. I’m actually happy about this purchase because I, too, am not fond of the idea of snakes, scorpions and other creepy-crawlies that exist in the desert.  We’re not buying a new tent, though – we’ve decided to use our current one since it’s served us well – so I’m hoping the cots will actually fit in the tent.  My husband was supposed to set it up, get the measurements of the cots and then see if there’s enough room for all four of us.  However, he never got around to it, preferring instead to “wing it”.  If there’s not enough room for all four cots, he’s the first one on the floor!

So the stuff I actually shipped included the tent and all its parts like the fly and the tarp below.  If you tent camp and you don’t put a tarp down first, you’re asking for leaks.  I also shipped the one polar fleece sleeping bag lining we have, our lantern, cooking gear like knives, a percolator, two pans, spatulas, and some other stuff I can’t remember at the moment.  I also packed our very important tent fan/light. You hang it up in the tent and you get light and air!

What we’re buying besides the aforementioned cots and sleeping bags are camp chairs, a camping stove, pillows, a funky cool Pack-away camp kitchen and some coolers.  We own most of these things already but it’s too expensive to ship them and we needed some new stuff.  Like pillows, for example.  They were cheaper to buy at $10 for a set of two then ship our own.  We needed a new camp stove and I liked the Pack-away kitchen.  That darling folds into it’s own case so we can ship that back home easily.  Food and incidentals we’ll buy when we go to the Wal-mart to pick up the stuff I ordered.  While I truly try to avoid Wal-mart at all costs, there are times when it’s unavoidable.  They have this awesome Site to Store shipping option where they’ll send whatever you order to whatever Wal-mart you choose. Cool, huh?

Okay, so by now you’re thinking I’m pretty organized, what could I possibly be bitching about?  Well, because I ordered over $500 worth of stuff at Wal-mart which I’m eventually going to have to ship home, along with the original stuff I shipped out today. And, I don’t have my amazing co-workers from our shipping department to help me out, just my husband.  He’s a great packer and all but packing a suitcase and packing boxes for shipping are 2 different things.  Now he calls me today to see about donating some of the stuff in Denver so we don’t have to ship it home.  Really? He doesn’t want to take the camp chairs or cots home!!  Okay, camp chairs are like $10 a pop but we could really use a few more.  And cots are useful for more than just camping – and they cost a lot more than $10. Whatever…….  At this point, with only a week and two days until we leave, I’ll be happy if all our stuff arrives on time and in one piece!

Okay, tomorrow I’ll write about Las Vegas and the fascinating things I have planned :)

Choosing the right route

Hi everyone. Today’s post is about the route we’re taking to get the maximum sites seen. As you know from reading my last post – you did read it, right? – I chose a West to East route.  Let me include a map so we can all follow along.

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This isn’t exactly the Google map I was using but I can’t figure out how to copy the Google map onto a document – or onto anywhere.  Anyone? Anyone? 

In a fairly close range, you can see Zion National Park, The Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches National Park and Glen Canyon (not pictured on this map but if you see Lake Powell in Utah, that whole lake/river area is part of Glen Canyon.) I figured we’d arrive in Las Vegas on a Saturday, spend the rest of the day there and the whole next day, then travel Monday with a full visit day the next day at our first stop and then travel the day after that.  So big driving days would only be every other day. This would make our vacation two weeks long.  Luckily we both get enough vacation time to make this work.  Quite frankly, if you’re taking a sightseeing vacation, two weeks is definitely the way to go.

Before I proceed I want to mention that there are very few main roads/highways through Southern Utah/Northern Arizona.  As the crow flies, getting to some of these places should be easy.  They’re not.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  I grew up in the Northeast where there are multiple highways to get to the same place.  You have but to choose the one with no accidents or traffic jams.  Although these days that task is far more challenging.  But I digress.  Keep this notion of few highways in mind as I explain the insanity of the first route I selected.

My so-called straight line was originally going to start at Las Vegas and then go northeast to Zion National Park.  I had been trying to decide whether to go to the Grand Canyon before Zion and then go up and across but I chose Zion first, then the Grand Canyon and then back up to Bryce.  More of a zig zag than a line.  My reasoning for this was because I’m trying to keep driving time to a minimum.  It’s only three hours from Las Vegas to Zion but about 6 hours to the Grand Canyon.  And the route from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon is rather crazy.  I’m going to try and get that map for you from Google so you can see for yourselves.

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I did it! 

Well this looks far more out of the way on the larger view. But it still takes 5 hours (for some reason I had written down 6 hours in my notes).  Look at the easy ride to Zion from Las Vegas:

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Pretty straight forward, right? Therefore, I chose Zion first, then the Grand Canyon and then back up to Bryce.  And I continued all my planning, campground reservations, etc. based on that choice.  About a week ago, I started second guessing myself.  Was this really the best way to go?  Zion and Bryce are so close together I should really do them in a row, etc.  The deciding factor was when I took a look at the route from Zion to the Grand Canyon and back up to Bryce.  It was pretty much the same route coming and going:

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This is Zion to the Grand Canyon. 

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And this is the Grand Canyon back to Bryce.  It’s the exact same route to just north of Kanab.

If we’re going to be doing that much driving, I don’t want to take the same way twice. So after much deliberation and driving my husband completely nuts (what do you think, hon? Which way would be better?  Are you sure?  Do you think I should just leave everything the way it is? What do you think? Honey? Honey? Are those earplugs in your ears?) I changed our route.  As it turns out, we’ll have an extra sight to see.  By going south out of Las Vegas we’ll pass the Hoover Dam.

That wasn’t the last change I had to make in our route.  After Bryce I had us going to Capitol Reef which is an easy 2hr 45min drive. Next was a trip to Glen Canyon to Lake Powell, another 2 hr 45 min drive, or so I thought.  I had never heard of Glen Canyon before. I googled it, of course, and saw fabulous pictures of Lake Powell and beaches and a lodge.  Great, I thought.  We’ll be there on my birthday and by then we’ll have had enough of camping and hiking.  We can stay at the lodge and swim in the lake and in the pool. I’m in heaven and patting myself on the back for such a smart idea.  Ah the best laid plans……

The lodge was more than I wanted to spend so I decided we’d camp at the campgrounds across from the lodge. The lake is right there and I thought you could use the pool at the lodge but I can’t find it mentioned anywhere now. There are lots of water activities including boat rentals, jet skis, kayaks and cruises.  All I wanted to do was sit by the pool or on the beach and chill. I knew the kids would feel that way, too.

Weeks go by, the campsite is reserved, the restaurants are decided and I pay a visit to the Lake Powell site to look for an interesting boat tour.  I click on a map and notice that the Wahweap campground isn’t in Lake Powell, UT. It’s in Lake Powell, AZ, a 5 ½ drive. Not to mention there would be another 5 ½ drive up to Arches National Park after Glen Canyon.  Holy cow (that’s not even close to what I really said) what a ridiculous and stupid mistake.  I keep checking and rechecking with the fervent hope that if I do this enough, somehow this mistake will disappear and all will be right with the world. Once again I’m practically in tears, convinced I’ve ruined our vacation.  I could say that I’m not usually this dramatic but that would be a lie.

I needed a new option. I consulted my handy dandy Google map of Utah which I can now show you thanks to my husband showing me the “snipping tool” on my computer.  I highly recommend it.

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Capitol Reef National Park, which is the previous sight before Glen Canyon, is only 4 hours from Salt Lake City and roughly the same back to Arches National Park.  That hour and a half savings is enough for me to consider rerouting us North for a change of scenery and a hotel.  It’s my birthday, dammit, and I want a hot shower and a comfy bed.  We also have friends who visit their parents every summer in Salt Lake City so I contacted them to see if they’ll be around to hang out with.  Not only will they be there, but their parents have invited us to stay with them. How cool is that? We’re very excited to visit, especially because the house we’ll be staying in is 11,000 square feet.  No, I did not misplace my comma.  I have no idea what a house that size looks like.  I’ll be sure to take lots of photos and post them!

We’re hoping they’ll show us the sights or at least recommend the best ones to see.  On the food front, this detour will send us through Salina, UT, home of Mom’s Café which is a Mecca for Road Foodies.  (more about that later)

So here’s a map of the whole trip:

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A – Las Vegas

B – Grand Canyon

C – Zion National Park

D – Bryce Canyon National Park

E – Capitol Reef National Park

F – Salt Lake City/Heber

G – Arches National Park

H – Grand Junction, CO (last minute change to stay here instead of 2 nights at Arches)

I – Denver, CO

I look at this now and see so many other ways I could have done this but it’s 2 weeks until we leave and there’s just too much to do to consider making any changes.  The better, circular route would have been Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon to Glen Canyon to Arches to Capitol to Bryce to Zion and back to Vegas.  Oh well.  May others learn from my mistakes :).

Next – Las Vegas