From to Tucson, Arizona to Brownsville, Texas

Since we left Tucson on Wednesday morning we have traveled over 1000 miles. Now it is Saturday morning and we are at the southern tip of Texas in Brownsville. Along the way we stopped at  Kartchner Caverns State Park near Tucson, Calsbad Caverns in southern New Mexico and visited my cousin Carol in San Antonio.

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Carlsbad Caverns and Kartchner Caverns are both caves but they were very different.

Kartchner was discovered in 1974 and was kept a secret for years until the discoverers could work with the owners and the state to create a new state park which was opened in 1999. The cave has been preserved. The discovers went into the cave through a sink hole. To enter the cave when we were there we went through new sealed doors to a new tunnel entrance. The doors are sealed so that the cave will not dry out and die. IKartchner has beautiful formations and is beautiful. But the most impressive thing about Kartchner is that it is a living pristine recently discovered cave.

Carlsbad on the other hand is stupendously big and awe inspiring. At Carlsbad caverns We took the self guided hiking tour which goes into the natural entrance of the cave. The entrance is a big hole in the ground. We hiked down switch backs on a trail down into the big hole. We went down, down, down. Every time I thought we were at the bottom we would come around a corner and there would be more switchbacks going down. It literally felt like we were descending down into the bowels of the earth and it was as beautiful as it was awe inspiring.

We descended 750 feet almost straight down and when we got to the bottom we explored enormous caverns full of impressive structures. The Big Room that we explored is 8.2 acres big and has a ceiling that is immense. We took the elevator back to the surface.

Carlsberg Caverns were fantastic they were totally different from Kartchnar Caverns. Both of them were fascinating.

From Carlsbad we headed to San Antonio. We had lunch with my cousin Carol and her husband in San Antonio and then drove on to Brownsville where we are now. Today we are crossing into Mexico.

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We ave been having picnic lunches most days. Thursday we stopped In Pecos, Texas and bought some local cantaloupes and then had one for lunch. Boy! Was it good. The 100+ temperatures are pretty impressive too!

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Restarting My Blog for our 2011 Road Trip

Duke and I left Friday on a six week road trip. We are driving through the U.S. and Mexico. We plan to drive about 7000 miles. While we are gone family, friends and neighbors are taking care of our house, my sister will be visiting to keep Dad company, and Duke brother and his family will be staying at the house for a few days.

I have spent a lot of time pondering how I want to chronical the trip. I strongly considered just using Twitter, Flickr and Facebook but finally decided to restart this blog. More people can see the Blog. The Blog is permanent and it gives me more space to talk about what we are doing. I am interested to know what people like to read about?

 I have made the trip to San Diego down the eastern side of the Sierras several times. it is a beautiful drive. We stopped at Schats Bakery in Bishop and bought bread then stopped for lunch at a rest area. I love the new hat I got for my birthday

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In San Diego we visited my Mom's grave which is actually in Escondido near San Diego.

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We took a hike at Point Loma, walked along the San Diego waterfront and had a great time visiting with Vicky, Nick and Duke's brother and his family.

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Today, Tuesday, we left San Diego and headed east.

We stopped at the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historical Park but didn't get to go in it because the park is closed on Tuesdays. The temperature here in Arizona got up to 113 f / 45 c. That is certainly hot!

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Tonight we are in Tucson. We had dinner at the wonderful Tucson Tamale Company which is owned by our friend Todd Martin. We had a great visit.

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If you would like to see all of our pictures from the trip they are on Flickr here. 

If you want to follow us on this trip I will be posting on the blog here whenever we have internet and also will be posting to Twitter (@marionvermazen) and on facebook for friends and family.

The End of my Blog

I haven't posted a blog entry here since the end of our Australia trip. I got busy over the holidays and since the beginning of the year I've been thinking a lot about why I blog and about whether to end this blog. I've always said I do it for me, but lately that doesn't seem like enough. If all I want is a private journal then there is no reason to put it in a public blog. 

I think it is pretentious to say I do it for my readers. I don't have many reasders and even fewer commenters. I thnk it is inherantly obvious that if this blog went away it would not be missed.

I'm not sure why I don't have a community of readers but I think at least partly the blog is just not all that interesting. If I had as a goal to build a communicty of readers there are things I could do to enhance the community. But it all comes back to the question why do I blog and is it something I want to continue to do.

I've thought aobut the fact that writing helps me improve my ability to articulate my thoughts and it is a mental stimulation. If I subscribe to the use it or lose it philosophy then blogging is good for my brain health. While both points are true they aren't reason enough to keep going.

I've thought about the idea of making this blog more technically challenging. I could host it someplace other than Typepad and do it to learn more about the coding and building of web pages. I could add some widgets, add an amazon affiliate link and making the blog at least a little bit self supporting.Then I guess I could say I do it a least a little bit for the money.

I started blogging in September of 2004 on my Sun Microsystems hosted blog and then moved my blog here when I left Sun. So it has been six and a half years. I've enjoyed writing this blog but now I think I'm done.

The bottom line is that although writing this blog has its benefits they no longer seem worth the effort. So for now at least I am going to let this blog just fade away into the sunset. I may change my mind at some point in the future and I may continue to use it for personal record keeping but for now Thank you and good bye.

 

The end of our Australian Road Trip – The Great Ocean Road, Grapian National Park and Home

A mother and two little girls about 7 and 10 sitting behind us on our plane home from Australia on Wednesday. As the Qantas 747 lifted off the Melbourne runway the mother told her girls to tell Australia good-bye. They called out "Good bye Australia! Good-bye Australia! We love you!" I wanted to join in with them. We had a marvelous trip and although it is wonderful to be home, I do love Australia.

We flew home on Wednesday. In my last blog post Sunday night we were in Apollo Bay, Victoria on Australia's Great Ocean Road.

Almost every small town in Australia has a bakery, a butchery, and a fruit and veggies shop. Most days on our trip we stopped at a bakery and picked up bread and a treat for lunch. The bakery in Apollo Bay had signs in its windows saying it had won awards for being one of the best bakeries in Australia.

They had what looked like some wonderful big cinnamon rolls. I asked the shop lady what they were and she said "they are cheese and Vegemite rolls".That would have been a shock to my mouth if I thought I was biting into a cinnamon roll and instead got cheese and Vegemite! We bought one and had it for breakfast. It was really good.

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Monday we continued our drive along the Great Ocean Road. We climbed down Gibson Steps to the beach. You can just see me in this picture.

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We stopped at several view points along the road. We saw the Twelve Apostles rock formations.

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The London Bridge Rock formation used to be like a two arch bridge. The first arch collapsed in 1990. At the time there were some people out on what became the island. They had to be rescued by helicopter.

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After our drive along the Great Ocean Road we headed inland and spent the night in the town of Halls Gap in Grampian National Park. We stayed in a cabin on Monday night. The lawn in front of reception was covered with kangaroos.

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There were also several cockatoos on the table outside our door.

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Tuesday morning we hiked in Grampian National Park. This formation is called the Balconies.

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Grampian National Park also had a lot of pretty wild flowers

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Tuesday afternoon we headed back to Melbourne found a motel near the airport and spent the night there before flying home on Wednesday.

All of my pictures from our trip are on Flickr here. I'll be adding titles and descriptions to the picture over the next week or so. I'm also planning a summary post with info about the cost of our trip, a map, and what I consider some of the highlights and low-lights of the trip. If there are other things you would like to know about our Austalian road trip please leave me a comment or drop me an email.