Family

Becky and The Parents Day Three: Bryce Canyon National Park

We spent the night in Kanab, then got up early the next day and drove up to Bryce Canyon National Park. Again, the drive was just as beautiful as on the previous days. The photo above is one view along the way of a river in southern Utah, in Long Valley.

To get to Bryce Canyon from Kanab, you take Hwy 89 north until you get to Hwy 12, then turn right. You go through an area of red rock formations in the Dixie National Forest that is spectacular all by itself. If you didn’t get to Bryce, you would still be in awe just from the drive on Hwy 12.

Once you get into Bryce Canyon National Park, there are several different areas and viewpoints. We went to the Bryce Ampitheater, which included Sunrise Point, and to Fairyland Point. FabGrandpa and I went to Bryce last year, but we were there in mid-afternoon and the sun was too bright–all my photos looked washed out and did not truly show the gorgeous colors. This time, we got there early in the morning. The light was better and I got some fantastic pictures.

The pictures below were taken at Sunrise Point:

Becky and FabGrandpa at Sunrise Point

And the pictures below were taken at Fairyland Point:

So, so far, we have been to Antelope Canyon, Zion National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park. Three canyons, all different, and all very beautiful and awesome in their own ways. Then we went home to the North Rim and took Becky on a tour of the Grand Canyon.

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Becky and The Parents Day 2, Antelope Canyon Tour

Karen · 5 Comments

We spent the night in Page, at Amerca’s Best Value Inn, which turned out not to be what it’s name claimed. For only $116 per night, we were allowed to listen to the crackheads upstairs from us stomp around their room until well after 3 a.m. I really don’t know what they were doing up there, maybe they had a bad case of Montuzema’s Revenge and had to run to the bathroom repeatedly during the night, who knows? But, I can tell you this: They kept me awake most of the night, and the maids said their room was trashed the next morning. At any rate, I would not recommend staying at that motel even if it is the only one in Page with vacancies. I’m just sayin!

After leaving the motel and eating breakfast, we went on a guided tour of Antelope Canyon. Wow! OMG! I have been wanting to go there forever! I am so glad we got to go on that tour. It is so fabulous. I took over 150 pictures, but I will only be showing a few of those here. I checked them out online, and all the different tour companies websites quoted prices of $32 per person for the one and a half hour tours. But, we walked in and paid for our tour in person, and for three of us it was only $88. It was the best $88 we spent all weekend.

We rode out to the slot canyon site in this big four wheel drive vehicle. It was a very bumpy ride in places, but it was fun.

There are Becky and FabGrandpa on the truck, waiting to take off to the Navajo Reservation.

We bumped down this road, which is actually a wash when the rains come. Notice the power lines–there is a nuclear power plant nearby.

We finally got there, and got out of the truck. The ground is very fine sand, which made walking difficult, but we managed to do it. Becky was wearing flip-flops, and I had on sneakers. My shoes were full of sand at the end of the tour.

This is the entrance to the slot canyon.

It is so hard to describe this canyon to someone who has never been there. It is very deep and narrow. The sun shines through the top of the canyon and makes the inside glow orange and red. At different times of the day beams of light come in and iluminate the walls of the canyons. It is absolutely amazing!

Of the many pictures I took, a lot of them are not very good. These are some of the best ones. You can get a “Photographer’s Tour” for a little more money. You get to stay longer, and the guides give you more time to take pictures at each stop along the way of the tour.

The tour guide took the photo above for me. He was very helpful in letting people know what settings to use on their cameras, and in some places he took photos with each person’s camera for us, to make sure we got some good shots.

There we are, back on the truck after an hour and a half of tour time in the canyon. It was an awesome tour, one of the best tours I have ever been on. The only thing about this tour I was not happy with, was that there are five tour companies that take people on tours of this canyon each day. There were probably close to 300 people in the canyon at one time. Considering that it is a very narrow canyon, it was very crowded. However, that was a very small price to pay for such great tour, and to get to see the place with my own eyes. I want to go tour the same canyon again, at a different time of day.

If you ever get a chance to go to Arizona, Page has to be on your list of places to go, and this tour has to be top of the list!

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Becky and The Parents Day 1

Karen · 3 Comments

We left the North Rim headed for Page, Arizona early enough to have breakfast at Jacob Lake Inn. We stopped at the scenic overlook of House Rock Valley. Here is Becky with the Vermillion Cliffs in the background.

The next stop was at the balancing rocks near Cliff Dwellers in Marble Canyon. Those rocks are huge! How they don’t tumble over is a miracle to me!

This is a view of the Colorado River from Navajo Bridge. It is absolutely gorgeous!

And this is looking across at the other side of the bridge at the very eastern edge of the Grand Canyon.

We stopped for lunch at Fiesta Mexicana, where Becky and I both ordered Camarones a la Plancha. Yummo!

After lunch we toured Glen Canyon Dam. It is the second highest dam in the United States. The highest is of course the Hoover Dam.

This is one of the old turbine rotors. Th original on was placed in service in 1964, and was replaced this year. That is FabGrandpa’s backside there in the photo.

Lake Powell, so much blue, blue water in the middle of the desert.

The Colorado River where it comes out of Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon Dam. That bridge is Hwy 89 in Page.

See that water pouring out of the pipe at the bottom? That is what they call seepage, water that seeps through the concrete and rock from behind the dam. 1600 gallons a minute worth of seepage. Amazing! And there is enough moisture for those plants to grow right on the rocks.

More tomorrow!

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Remember Whensday

Karen · 10 Comments

This is a picture of me, around Thanksgiving, 1971 at my home in Neunkirken, Germany with a vase our neighbors gave me for Christmas. My first husband was in the Army, and I had gone over to Germany to live with him and await the birth of our first child. My son was born in Wuerzburg on November 14, 1971. Shortly after his birth, we found out that my husband was going to get an early release from the Army. So, we opened our Christmas presents early, then immediately packed them up for shipping home. I flew out of Frankfurt, on my way to Atlanta, the day before Christmas Eve. My son was one day short of being six weeks old.

After my husband dropped me off at the airport in Frankfurt, there was a flight delay that lasted about six hours. The delay caused me to miss my connecting flight from JFK in New York, so I sat in the airport in New York for another 12 hours, waiting for a standby flight. I finally got on a flight to Atlanta because my son was the youngest baby waiting, and I was running out of supplies of formula for him. I was so happy to finally arrive in Atlanta at Hartsfield Airport, way beyond exhausted. And when my mother picked me up? The first words out of her mouth were “Be careful with the baby.”

For more Remember Whensday photos, click here.

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In The Company Of Friends and Relatives

Karen · 6 Comments

This weekend the only thing I had planned to do was a dinner party for about 10 people. Yeah, I’m sorta crazy like that, who in their right mind would plan a dinner for 10 when they live in a travel trailer??? The menu included Mexican Seafood Soup, avocado slices, corn tortillas, and cantaloupe and honey dew melon. My friend, Kathie, brought home cooked mini bread loaves for those who eat wheat.

(ready to go outside to the picnic table)

I spent the day on Saturday doing nothing, and I do mean nothing. I laid on the sofa and read a book, one by Debbie Macomber, which is like junk food for the brain. Chatted with some friends on Facebook. Went out to sit by the campfire with my neighbors for a bit right before dark.

(a huge pot of soup)

This morning, I got up, wrote down my recipe (it’s on my hard drive but I didn’t feel like messing with my printer). It is a wireless and sometimes it won’t talk to my computer, so writing down the recipe was faster. After that, I gathered up all the indredients and put them on the counter, ready to go. Chopped jalapenos, celery, onions, garlic. Peeled carrots and potatoes. Everything was ready. I made a HUGE pot of soup.

(mmmm, smell that soup!)

In between the gathering and chopping, I went out to do laundry. Got everything washed, dried, folded and hung up, in less than two hours. When I got back to the trailer, the phone rang, and it was my cousin, Susan. I have never met her, but I have talked to her on the phone several times. She is coming to visit me tomorrow. I am very excited about that! Susan’s mother, my mother’s sister, died when Susan was 12 and she was sent to live with her paternal grandparents in Oklahoma. She never saw her mother’s family again until the last year.

In December of 2007, I was invited to be a guest blogger on a blog that is no longer in existence. During the time that I was trying to figure out what to write, I went to my mother’s 80th birthday party. So, I decided to write about my mother’s life. I started out talking about my mother’s parents, and mentioned her maiden name in the article.

That maiden name is not a common name, and my grandfather’s last name was the only last name Susan knew to search for after so many years. She and her husband had googled and searched for that last name many times over the years, with no results at all. The weekend after I posted my blog post at that other site, they googled again, and were very surprised and excited to finally get a hit on that last name.

The article included some pictures of my mother when she was young, and in the picture I chose, she looked very much like her sister, Susan’s mother. There was a link from that article back here to FabGrandma, which Susan clicked on and found enough information to find my mother’s telephone number in Georgia. The rest is history. Susan and her husband travelled from Missouri to Georgia to meet my mother last summer.

So, now, after all these years, I will meet my cousin tomorrow here at the Grand Canyon. I am very much looking forward to getting to know her a little bit. She credits me with finding her family and is very happy that I wrote that article. I’m sure I will have some pictures to post tomorrow.

The party tonight was so much fun, hanging out with the folks I work with, laughing, talking, having a beer or two. We stayed outside at the picnic table until after sunset, just enjoying each other’s company. Ahhhhh, isn’t life Grand?

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Dinner On Hold

Karen · 5 Comments

I have been planning a dinner party for 10 people for the last month or so. When we went to Flagstaff, I bought 3 pounds of tilapia and 2 pounds of shrimp, so I could make a large pot of my Mexican Seafood Soup. Yesterday, we went to Kanab, and I bought six avocados and some corn tortillas. My neighbor, Mark, bought fresh pineapple, cantaloupe, and mangos for his contribution to the party.

And then, this morning, my supervisor, who was also invited to the party, called to tell me she just remembered we have a mandatory staff meeting for our department tomorrow night at 6 p.m. One hour after my party was to have started. She apologized to me for not letting me know when she was invited, but hey, we ALL got the memo in April with all the dates of all our staff meetings for the year. Oh well, we are still having the party, but is has been rescheduled for next Sunday.

Because the party was postponed, I have to figure out what to do with those avocados. I bought some frozen avocados from Schwan’s a couple months ago, and they turned out pretty good. I was surprised at how good the guacamole was that I made with them, because, to be honest, I really didn’t think frozen avocados would be all that good. So, I am going to try freezing them, and them mash them up next week and make guacamole out of them. I usually serve avocado slices with my soup, but I have also put guac on the top of the soup before, and it was good. I just can’t stand the thought of wasting $9 worth of avocados.

So, no party this week. And I was so looking forward to the company of friends…..

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Make New Friends, But Keep The Old…

Karen · 5 Comments

(Me and my sister, circa 1964)

Anyone who has ever been a Girl Scout will know that song…..One is silver and the other gold.

This week has been busy, and full of friends, both old and new. Last Saturday, FabGrandpa and I had a little dinner party to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Our guests included Curtis and KJ, a couple we met here at the North Rim, and have been trying to get together with since the end of April. Our schedules finally clicked last weekend. I had so much fun getting to know them better, and hope we will be friends for a long while. Curtis is an electrician here, and KJ, his wife, is a law enforcement ranger.

On Tuesday, I had my appointment with my new musculo-skelteal doctor, Dr. Monika Radloff, in Flagstaff. In my opinion, she is a very good doctor. She spent lots of time, both listening to my description of my symptoms, and in explaining to me what is wrong with me and telling me how to get better. While I hope I don’t have to visit her very often, I am glad that I met her and would recommend her to others with similiar problems.

On Wednesday, I got a phone call from a long time friend, who I have not seen in ages! She and her husband were in Las Vegas, and wanted to come to visit the Grand Canyon. Gloria and I go waaaay back–to 1982 when I was a Girl Scout leader, she also was a Girl Scout leader. The girls in her troop were just a couple years younger than the girls in my troop, so sometimes our troops did things together. Gloria is now the older girl program manager for the Girl Scout Council in Atlanta.

I managed to get four and a half hours of leave time, so I could take Gloria and Byron on a private tour of the North Rim. I took them up to Cape Royal, where I discovered that Byron is afraid of heights! We had a wonderful time, but no pictures because I forgot my camera!!! Oh My Gosh! It was like I had just seen them last week, except now we talked about our grandchildren instead of about our Girl Scout troops!!!

And, you know how sometimes, even with the closest of friends, the ones we call sisters, we can come close to blows? Good thing I am in Arizona and my sister is in Georgia, or that probably would have happened. We had a huge sibling fight, through about 15 emails back and forth. I have kept it very private, but I want my sister to know, I still love you. While we probably won’t EVER agree on politics, religion, child-rearing, best place to live, or even choice of sodas, we WILL always be sisters and I will always love you. You are the GOLDEST of the GOLD, my seester!

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And The Diagnosis Is:

Karen · 8 Comments

(Me, not a happy camper at the doc’s office today. Fabgrandpa said I looked like a prisoner. I told him I feel like a prisoner of my pain.)

Medial Epicondylitis. Dr. Radloff asked lots of questions, pushed and pulled on my arm, pushed on and felt of the swelled up part of my arm, took x-rays, and generally spent a lot of time with me during my appointment with her.

At one point, she said that to get the best treatment I would have to leave the North Rim, and I was very unhappy about that. But, she explained, that is because there are no medical facilities up here, and I really should do physical therapy.

So, other than physical therapy, she offered me two choices today:

1. Get a shot of cortisone in my elbow

2. Do exercises for “at home physical therapy”, use ice for theinflamation and take Naproxen and Lortab for the inflamation and pain, and come back in a month to see if I am improving. If I don’t improve, then she will go ahead with the shot of cortisone in my elbow.

I opted for number 2, only because I really don’t want that shot in my elbow. I have heard other people talk about how painful that can be. I am already in pain, and have been for quite a while, so I am just going to do the exercised and see what happens. If I played golf, this would make sense to me, but I really can’t think of what I am doing that would cause this to happen. Y’all think good thoughts for me, ok?

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