Well hello everyone! I thought I would take a little time and blog about our final vacation of 2009. We had an outstanding time! For this vacation we headed South, back to Utah and Arizona. It was the first time I have ever seen Canyonlands National Park and the Grand Canyon. There is no way, after seeing all of this beauty, that one cannot believe in God! The handy work of these creations could not be made any other way.
We started out on the 12th of September with taking a geo-jaunt down to Wyoming to attend a "Meet and Greet" with some of our Wyoming club members. One of our geocachers had recently lost his wife from heart disease and it was the first time we had seen him since the tragedy. I guess in addition to hunting for caches, we all wanted to rally around him and let him know how much he was loved. We had a blast looking for caches and ran into some interesting scenarios. One of the caches was located on a fence post, close to some big tires. As we were looking for the cache, I started to reach my hand into one of the tires to check and stopped short of getting pricked by several discarded hypodermic needles! Needless to say, we posted a warning on the site so others would not get hurt.
After we returned from this day jaunt, we packed up and got ready to head out South the next day. It never amazes me that we "plan" to get out early but end up leaving at our regular time of 11:00. It doesn't matter how hard we work at it, that seems to be the bewitching hour. This time I just gave up and let it all flow. After all, I was on vacation and didn't have to hurry. We actually made it to Twin Falls Idaho and secured a spot at the Snake River RV Park. We had stayed in this park before and fell in love with it! Nice spaces and clean restrooms. I love to camp but I just am not willing to give up my shower. The next morning I heard a real odd cry of a bird so I grabbed my long distance camera and zoomed in on the cell tower close to the campsite. It turned out that there was this beautiful Osprey sitting on the tower. At first I thought it was a Gosh Hawk but when I looked it up in my bird book, it turned out to be an Osprey. He was really a sight to see! I'm not the best at bird spotting but I had just gotten some really nice books from the book store and decided that since I geocaching, I may as well start bird watching as well.
We packed up and got ready to leave the park and I realized that in the hustle of packing up and putting down the trailer, I had lost my glasses. Oh heck! I am blind as a bat without them. You see, in 2002 I was attacked by a mental health patient who made a punching bag out of my head. Since that time, I see double and get severe migraines. The blows also separated the Vitreous from my eyes which caused floaters to slide across my eyes and impair my vision. I was quite frantic about losing the glasses. Without them, I couldn't help my hubby with the driving and I cannot see at night. We left our name and cell numbers at the desk and headed down the road. About 50 miles away, we got the call that my glasses had been found and my husband unselfishly made the trip back to get them. We didn't make a great deal of time that day but at least I got the glasses back.
We made it down to Utah and planted our trailer at the Canyonland RV Park in Moab. This was another nice park with clean facilities. We decided we would stay here for two days. Canyonlands National Park was so beautiful! We were able to see a wonderful sunset over the park. It was fascinating to see the canyons within a canyon. I took so many pictures and got some stunning shots. I took in the fresh air and the sounds of the wind. Outside of the park, I was able to pick up some sand for my collection. There were reds and creams and dark browns. We drove back late, when the last of the sunlight had faded away. Tomorrow, we would be headed to Arizona.
We got up and of course, made our way out of the camp at our usual time of 11:00 am. We hoped to make it to Flagstaff at a reasonable hour but we wanted to do some geocaching along the way. We got to Monticello Utah where we wanted to find a cache located in the Pioneer Museum so we found a place to pull the car and trailer over. After locating the cache, we made our way back to the car and headed out of town. About a mile out of the town, I saw a funny sign that I wanted to get a shot of so my hubby pulled over and I ran across the street to take the pictures. It was the road departments idea of a funny joke as it had one sign that read "Watch for Deer on Roadway" and the second one read "Dead or Alive". Well, I had to have that sign for my collection...bad, bad mistake! As I made my way back across the street, I slipped and fell onto the side of the asphalt. Beings as I tried to catch myself with my left hand, I fell slightly onto my right leg. The asphalt, which was new from the stimulus money, cut through my pants, slicing my right leg. Well, I knew I had done it up bad this time and hollered for my husband. Not only had I put a large gash in my leg, I later found out that I tore my rotators cuff of my left shoulder. He took my to the Johnson County Hospital where they stitched up my leg. Well, this sucks! I wasn't going to let this mishap screw up my vacation. The doctor was stellar and the nursing staff outstanding at this hospital. About two days later around 0400 in the morning, my leg "woke up". Holy cow! Where's the Advil?? We worked out a system with the geocaching however, my sweetie would do the ground crawling and I worked the GPS and got the high up stuff. It really worked out pretty well.
After the Monticello detour, we managed to roll into Flagstaff about midnight. We had reserved our spot and were trying to be very quiet as to not wake up the other persons in the camp. However, we were given a site with a huge gully on it and we couldn't even out the trailer no matter how hard we worked at it. Finally, we were just so tired that we gave up. It was odd sleeping on a slope. You sort of had the feeling like you were in the Mystery House in Oregon. The next day, we did some town caching and drove out to the Grand Canyon. That was probably the most beautiful place I had ever been. While there, I got some great pictures of a flock of turkey buzzards soaring on the breeze above the canyon. I wish we could have stayed a little longer to hike around but we had to get back. On the way back, we went through a little storm which produced a fabulous double rainbow. As luck would have it, I snapped some great shots of them which is sometimes hard to do.
We got up the next morning and made our way down to Sedona Arizona. It was a stunning town. The red cliffs towered all around like sentinels protecting it from every angle. I got some great shots of Oak Creek Canyon on the way down to Sedona and some nice shots of the town and area around it. As we headed back, we decided to go out of town the other direction thinking it would be quicker. That was a mistake...there was a round-about every few miles and road construction (no doubt from the wonderful stimulus cash) practically the whole way back. We were starving as we didn't get anything to eat in Sedona and it was pitch dark. After finally making it back to Flagstaff, we grabbed some all night Mexican food and fell into bed.
We left the next morning and drove down Route 66 to Gallup New Mexico before turning North and heading home to Billings Montana. We decided to stay in a motel here so be picked one out and signed in. It was a pretty nice room but the nicotine was so thick on the windows, we could barely see out. Now my husband is a smoker but this even grossed him out! We got the Windex from the car and spent 15 minutes cleaning the grime off the window. Believe it or not, the room actually smelled better just by cleaning the windows! After spending the night in semi-luxury we did some city caching and I was able to find a focal stone to go with the beads I purchased in Sedona. The beads I bought there were the color of the hills and the green foliage. It will be fun putting together a vacation necklace to remember the trip.
We left Gallup and headed North. We were tired and ready to sleep in our own bed. Traveling is great but there's nothing like falling into your own bed. We have another trip planned for February where we will head South again but go to Hemet California where we will visit my parents and do some geocaching. So until that time, cheers! Freedancer.
