Category: Travel

We just completed our second night of driving south through Mexico and are having a wonderful time. We had dinner Friday night with our friends Kay and Riley at their home north of Tucson. I was great to see them.

Saturday we headed south and entered Mexico at Nogales. The paperwork and processing seemed relativley simple although of course Duke’s Spanish language skills really helped. The roads were good, all four lane and very straight across the desert. We did see three or four accidents. The countryside was much the same as Arizona and I passed the time learning more Spanish from road signs. One very important new word is Topes. It means speed bump. When you come to a pedestrain crossing or small town it is VERY important to slow down for the Topes.

We spent the night Saturday night in San Carlos, a little town on the coast. From the lookout point outside town the sunset over the Sea of Cortez was stunning.

Today we drove south to Culiacan. Finding our hotel was bit of a challenge since there are no street signs and asking directions at Home Depot didn’t really help, but we are here. We have a modern reasonably priced room with free Internet and are off to dinner soon.

I’ve been retired two weeks now and it still doesn’t seem real. Of course we haven’t been home very much so these two weeks have really just seemed like a vacation. The first week we flew down to visit my parents in Escondido. They had a list of projects for us and we got most of them done. It was nice to just spend some time with them. They are both doing quite well considering that my Dad has had type one diabetes for over 50 years and my Mom has problems with her balance.

Dad wanted a summary of their investments that I could update weekly and that he could print each week. I set up a Google spreadsheet that we could share. It seems to work quite well although this week he is having problems printing it. On the whole I really like using web based applications and Google spreadsheets will definitely be one I use.

This past week we went to Reno and Tahoe. Because it is a very slow time of year in both those places we had free rooms which we ended up essentially paying for through our gambling losses. The trip was fun and though we lost overall we had some good winning streaks. Unfortunately we had just a few more losing streaks.

While we were staying at Harrah’s in Reno the residential hotel next door burned down. Even though there is a fire station in the next block there were nine people killed.  I found it amazing that the fire didn’t disrupt the casinos or Harrah’s Hotel (which is right across the street) at all. We walked out the back door of the hotel and watched four ladder trucks pouring water on the hotel and what looked like at least 20 fire trucks working around the building.Several of them were still there in the morning as we looked out of the parking garage into the still smoking remains of the hotel. The night before when we went up to our room while the fire was still burning we could smell smoke quite strongly in the halls but not at all in our room. From what we experienced there was never even a mention of the fire or any possibility of evacuation in Harrah’s. When we left Reno the news people were still saying that only one person had died but since then they have found more bodies and the there may still be more. The whole experience was sobering.

Lake Tahoe was, as always, beautiful even though it rained pretty much the whole time we were there. We stayed at Harveys Hotel and  had wonderful dinner one night  at the restaurant on the 19th floor. As I said earlier this is the slowest time of the year especially in Tahoe so when Duke came out of the restaurant men’s room and said he wanted to show me something we had the place to ourselves. I about died laughing when I saw the paintings over the urinals. Each painting was of colorful young woman. One was holding a camera, another one was holding a tape measure, and another one was pointing and covering her mouth!

This coming week will be busy but we don’t have any more travel plans for a while.

I didn’t get a chance to do another blog entry about our vacation after we left Estes Park so I will fill in the rest of the details now that I’m back.

We left Estes Park on Wednesday morning and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. The Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved highway in the United States. It reaches elevations of more than 12,000 feet!  As you can imagine the views are stunning. We hiked from the Alpine visitor center about half a mile to the top of a nearby mountain and could see Montana and Utah, both sides of the continental divide, and all the mountain peaks in between. We also did a hike from the other end of the road at Grand Lake but it started to rain so we cut it short. The wind was really blowing and the Aspen leaves coming off the trees looked like giant yellow snowflakes.

Wednesday night we stayed in Hot Sulfur Springs. The spa we stayed at has 22 different pools that you can soak in. Most of them are outside. The minerals in the water and the sulfur are supposed to be good for you. The weather was cool and rainy so sitting in the very hot tubs was especially nice. Even though we showered afterward we both smelled like sulfur for a couple of days.

From Hot Sulfur Springs we drove to Grand Junction. Part of the trip was on one of our only stretches of freeway that we drove on the entire trip, through Glenwood Canyon. The canyon is so narrow that for a lot of the drive the westbound lanes are above the east bound lanes. There is also a separate bike lane the whole way. Since I’ve returned I found this fascinating site that describes this impressive road the construction details are especially interesting. I noticed that bike shops in Glenwood Springs offer trips through the canyon. I would love to do that some day.

Thursday night we stayed in Grand Junction  which is right by Colorado National Monument . What an amazing place! Words fail me in describing the enormity of the cliffs and canyons. It was like nothing I have ever seen. The road through the monument, Rim Rock Drive, is right along the edge of the cliffs and for most of the road there are no guard rails. Even at the view points where you get out and walk up to the edge of these thousand foot plus drop offs there were almost no guard rails. I don’t have acrophobia but the cliffs were so high and the drops so far down that it would not have been hard to have a panic attack. What a beautiful and stunning place. I highly recommend it. Thursday afternoon we did a short hike in the monument up to a place called the Devil’s kitchen. 

In Grand Junction we stayed at wonderful B&B called The Gallery . The owners Damian and Karen were very hospitable. Damian took us back to his studio and we watched him throw some pots. The room we stayed in was very comfortable and our breakfast was delicious. On Friday morning when we left Grand Junction it was raining and we couldn’t even see the monument. It was a good thing we drove the rim road and did our hike on Thursday.

On Friday we visited Dinosaur National Monument. The canyons there are also stunning. We were about the only ones on the road into the canyons and there was about two inches of snow on the road in some places.

Saturday we got to Park City, Utah and stayed at The Washington School House Inn, a wonderful bed and breakfast. The building was one of the first schools in Park City. It has been completely renovated and is beautiful. Sunday morning we hiked up Treasure Mountain behind our B&B. When we got to the top we were able to take the chair lift down the mountain for free. The chair lift goes right into the middle of town and has a wonderful view.  After the hike we drove to Salt Lake City, turned in our car and headed home. We drove a little more than 1400 miles almost totally on non freeways. It was a wonderful trip.

Yesterday afternoon we took a wonderful hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. We hiked from the Glacier Gorge trailhead on the Bear Lake Road to Mills Lake. The hike starts at about 9000′ and gains 750′ in 2.8 miles. There was a dusting of snow along the trail and we saw quite a few people. Interestingly enough we estimated the average age to be 55. I could really feel the altitude and was huffing and puffing but I thoroughly enjoyed the hike, the views, the aspens with their bright yellow leaves and of course the lake.

After our hike, on the way back to Estes Park we saw three different herds of Elk each of which had a stag with giant antlers in charge. In two of the herds there was also a younger stag hanging around trying to get in with the ladies. Chasing the younger stag away and keeping the herd together was a full time job for the lead stag. Not only did we see the herd but we also heard the herd. The elk calls were high pitched and surprising. The biggest herd (about 35 elk) was right in front of the main building at the YMCA of the Rockies. Duke’s family has had a couple of family reunions there so he took me up to see the impressive facility.