Finally fingers have got to keys to remember the highlights of the last 8 weeks or so. On March 11, Sarah & John arrived from England for 5 days with us before heading to Whistler for skiing. Sarah & Claire were housemates at university so there is a lot history and we laughed a lot. Claire accompanied them on ski boot shopping and now knows more about ski boots than she ever wanted to. On one of our shopping trips we came back to the car to find the same type of car we have in England parked next to our US car. Claire could not resist a photo! Last time Sarah & John visited they spent a fair bit of time number plate spotting and only failed to see plates from Hawaii and Rhode Island! All the US car plates include the state they are registered in and we can see cars from all over the country. On this trip, there were some very excited Brits when we spotted "Rhode Island" near our church!!! By the end of the weekend, we were sad to see them go north to ski.
However, the following day we headed south to some welcome sun in Las Vegas, as Mark was again speaking at a Microsoft conference there. This was our 2nd trip to ‘sin city’ and this time the whole visual nature of the place hit Claire as we got off the plane. We were amazed at the number of people on ‘the Strip’. It seemed like a recession proof place but maybe they all had cheap rooms. Surely there is nothing else cheap about Vegas. Everything is overpriced for a captive audience. The moto is ‘what goes in Vegas, stays in Vegas’…hm, not the credit card bills. Given the current economic situation, the whole place made us feel uncomfortable.
We were both ready to leave town on Friday as we headed east towards the Grand Canyon, which is about 300 miles from Vegas, This trip and just flying into Vegas reminded us again how big the US is. We drove 100 miles to the next small town in Arizona called Kingman. There was nothing much in between Kingman and Vegas except the Hoover Dam, which we visited last yer. Kingman is a smallish town and we enjoyed some excellent bbq pork at a newly opened place called the Redneck Southern Pit BBQ. Kingman is a ‘Route 66" town and we decided the next morning to drive on that road instead of the new Interstate. It was excellent! We were in the middle of nowhere and saw very few cars as we drove through rural Arizona and Indian Reservations. We stopped in an even smaller town called Seligman, which is the town the film Cars is based around. After about 3hrs driving we stopped in Williams for lunch at the Pine Country Restaurant. The pies were supposed to be legendary. They looked great but the taste was not as good as we expected.
Replenished, we set off for the last hr or so of our journey. Folks have asked us if we went and stood on the new ‘skywalk’ over the Canyon. We did not. All the trip reviews we read said it was not worth it and very expensive (about $100 by the time you payed for everything) and no cameras. So we decided to drive straight to the National Park section of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Wow! It was worth it. We stopped at the first pull-out and our jaws dropped at the shear scale of the place. Everytime we look at our photos we know that they just DO NOT capture the scale. On the South Rim, the National Park consists of two drives, Desert View Drive going east and Hermit Road west. These two cover about 32 miles in total, but the Canyon is 277 miles long!!! On Saturday we drove along Desert View, stopping at Shoshone Point for a walk to the rim. This was one of the ‘treasures’ recommended by the Rough Guide and it was excellent. Since it involved walking to the point, there were very few folks there and at the first look-out we sat alone on a log looking out at the immensity and variety of stone structures. Just the two of us, watching the giant condors flying below us. Our solititude was repeated at sunset when we stopped at Lipan Point and we climbed out to a rock and watched the sun go down.
The only disadvantage of our exploits was that it meant we arrived at our hotel (El Tovar) in the Grand Canyon Village in the dark; and it was very dark. After a few false starts we got there and ate dinner (OK) at the Bright Angel restaurant in the lodge next to ours. Walking between the two we were conscious that literally feet from us was a very large chasm! Sunday morning dawned rather windy but bright and we had the first glimspe of the Canyon again. We went west, walking along the rim edge path for about a mile or so. We watched folks heading down into the Canyon on some very steep paths and saw others on mules through the binoculars. Seeing others in the Canyon reminded us again of the scale of the place. Just HUGE. Walking along the rim so that the Canyon was in view all that time was fantastic., but after a while we found we could not take in another view! We did the rest of the west section via the bus and went to the end and back, just in time for it to start snowing, lightly. Definitely time for lunch. We had a very good meal in the Arizona Room of the Bright Angel Lodge, but while we dined at our window seat overlooking the rim (wonderful), the power went out. It dawned us on, rather slowly, that this could be a very uncomfortable night! Arriving back at El Tovar the staff had no idea when power would come back on and were cancelling reservations. We decided this was time to make an exit stage left when we could at least still see our luggage, as the snow had started to fall heavily and settle. Disappointing but the safe option. We headed back to the Best Western in Kingman and enjoyed a good dinner at the Dambar & Steakhouse.
Monday we arrived back in Vegas much earlier than expected because of our change in plans. We enjoyed lunch at The Bellagio besides its tasteful indoor conservatory and spent some time afterwards in the sun enjoying the fountains which "dance" to different music; then to the airport and back to a wet grey Seattle. The following weekend, Wayne, Sarah, Amy and Nathan visited us for a long weekend which proved wet except for Sunday, which was Wayne’s birthday. After a nice breakfast out, we boarded a ferry to Bainbridge Island (one of Mark’s favourite pass times!) and headed to Port Gamble for a cream tea. Cream teas are a rare luxury here. The Tea Room at Port Gamble is very Victorianesque but the hot chocolate is good and we all wore hats that they have there "for the ladies", yes including Mark & Wayne. We had a lot of fun and some good food!
Our most recent outing was April 4, when the sun was shining brilliantly – one of three days when we were deluded that the rain and grey had stopped. Mark fancied a drive to the top of Snoqualmie Pass to see the mountains and snow sparkling in the sun (an hour there and an hour back). However, we had not really through that the impact of a lot of snow the previous week and sun was not a good combo. We got to the top to find westbound traffic was down to one lane for avalance control and there was a two hour delay to get back home! So much for a quick drive before church. We decided to continue heading east and go home via Leavenworth, a town built on a Bavarian theme and looking very alpine this time with all the snow on the mountains. It was indeed a beautiful drive, but very lengthy. Worse still we ended up in another line of traffic coming home that way which added an hour and a half to our journey! Ahh…
The rain returned with vigour over the Easter weekend. Monday 13th we had a hail storm, Wednesday 15th we bbq-ed for the first time, and tonight we have sat outside eating our evening meal after a day of absolutely brilliant sunshine! The trees in the garden are coming into blossom and it really feels like spring is sprung. Our raccoon has been a lot more evident this winter/spring than recently. The snow has made the raccoon tracks very obvious (see our first picture) and Claire came nose to nose with one on our drive…she kept a prudent distance and let him/her move (actually limp) away before she ventured any further forward. Raccoons are generally considered pests and can be quite vicious, but they are still a novelty to us. Over the weekend, we saw the raccoon sitting having a wash in one of the trees. As soon as Mark got the camera out it retreated into a crevice in the tree and that was that - we have a photo shy raccoon.
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