4-22-08 (Tuesday): Well, despite the fact that no one commented on my last blog - :( - here's another one! We just crossed the border into NC. Tomorrow we'll be at our new home in Boone. We've had an uneventful trip so far.

We enjoyed a busy and happy week with Wiley's family in Winter Park, FL, last week. Thanks for having us, Wiley and Mag! We enjoyed visiting with friends and family--did something every day!
Wiley did a few chores for his Mom, including sanding and painting the porch railing. Doesn't he look like the worker from outer space?!
Wiley's cousin, Darcie, and her three kids visited one day. They had a great time playing with Muffin. Muffin belongs to Katelyn, Wiley's niece.
Mag has a gorgeous tree in her side yard. It's called a "tabebuia," and it has yellow, trumpet shaped flowers all over it. When the blossoms fall to the ground, it looks like a Gauguin painting. Gorgeous!

Mag and Wiley had other visitors while we were there. They were "parked" in the garage. I'm not sure what kind of baby birds these are (and the picture is a little fuzzy), but I'd like to find out what they are. If anyone recognizes them, let me know! There's a wren that hangs out in the driveway, but those yellow feathers don't look much like a wren!

I'm going to call it quits now. The WiFi connection here is a bit tenuous. I'll blog again soon from our new home.

4/14/08 (Monday): Hello from Winter Park, Florida! We arrived late Saturday at Wiley's family's home. We have the 5th wheel parked in their driveway (it looks so big when it's not in a campground with other RVs!). We have a busy week planned before we leave for Boone, NC, next Monday. We stopped in Ocala, FL, on the way here and had lunch with Julie and John at a Cracker Barrel.

Yesterday, we took Wiley Sr. and David and Katelyn (our nephew and niece) to Haulover Canal to do a little fishing and see if we could find some scrub jays. Haulover Canal is a neat place near Merritt Island, FL. As its name implies, it's a canal that links Mosquito Lagoon on the east with the Indian River on the west. It was built in 1854 by the federal government (at a total cost of $5,000!). It had been a traditional crossover point for travel down the coast via the inland waterway, except that cargo had to be carried across an island and then loaded on boats before continuing southward, so constructing the canal made a journey by water possible for a long distance. It was constructed by the slaves of a local citrus grower. The Old Haulover Canal was abandoned in 1884 when the new Haulover Canal was constructed nearly a mile to the north. Nowadays it's crowded with fishermen and it's fun to sit on its banks and watch the manatees and big, fancy boats go by.

It was raining, but the guys fished for a while anyhow.

We did manage to call up three scrub jays, but they were a bedraggled bunch (and so were we)!

Today we had breakfast with some Florida Trail Association friends and then went to Melbourne to visit another Florida Trail Association friend, Les. We had gotten a new GPS just before we left California and it proved itself very valuable again in navigating our way to Les' doorway. Dell treated us all to a great seafood lunch at an interesting seafood restaurant named "Squid Lips"! The food was great--and so was the decor. Mandy (that's what we call our new GPS system) helped find a scenic route home.

Tomorrow, Wiley Jr. has an appointment with the neurologist. Then we both have dental appointments. On Friday, we're driving Wiley Sr. to Jacksonville for his appointment at Mayo Clinic. On Saturday, Julie and John are hoping to drive down and we'll visit a new Ikea that has opened in Orlando (I've been wanting to go to an Ikea for a long time!). On Sunday, we hope that Wiley's Aunt (who's just back from a cruise) will come for a visit. We haven't seen her in nearly a year. We'll pull out Monday morning.

Busy, busy, busy--what a great life we lead!

Here are a few photos from the last few days of our trip that I thought you might enjoy.

These are some petroglyphs in the Painted Desert (a place called Newspaper Rock). You couldn't get very close to them, but they had telescopes pointed at the rocks for a closer view. The rocks actually looked like newspapers because there were so many petroglyphs on them!

One more shot of the Painted Desert--this part is called The Badlands.

All along I-10 in New Mexico were these odd looking big hills. I guess there was a big rock on the peak and the sides eroded in a cone shape. Very strange looking!

Wiley found this moth (?) near the restroom in a campground in Texas. Isn't it gorgeous? It was very cold that morning, and we think the moth was just very chilled. It didn't try to fly away. We put it back where we found it.

We leapfrogged with this RV all along I-10 and finally caught up with it at a rest area between El Paso and San Antonio. I chatted with the older lady who was driving it. She said that every time she got a ding in the RV, she painted a flower over it. It was beautifully done. Turns out she's a full-timer like us.

I think this roadrunner sitting on the fence was at the campground near Albuquerque. We also saw lots of funny quail. They have a little bobbing feather that hangs over their foreheads.

The wildflowers in Texas were gorgeous. We pulled over to the side of the highway to take these pictures. The blue ones are bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas.

The wildflowers in the eastern half of Arizona and all over Texas were glorious! Take care, and I'll blog again when we get to North Carolina (if not before).

4/6/08 (Sunday): We're now at a KOA in Van Horn, TX (see map). We're making pretty good progress. There hasn't been any traffic to speak of (except in El Paso). We're on I-10, which will bring us the rest of the way to FL, where we'll get on I-75. Our next major stop will be in Grand Isle, Louisiana, where Wiley hopes to get in some fishing and crabbing. I'm looking forward to just vegging out for a while.

As promised, here are some photos from the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. It was really gorgeous, although not on such a grand scale as the Grand Canyon. We were surprised to learn that petrified wood can be found in all 50 states! The wood in Petrified Forest National Park is some of the most beautiful in the world, though, due to the color of the minerals the trees absorbed. The wood is made up of almost solid quartz. The rainbow of colors is produced by impurities in the quartz, such as iron, carbon, and manganese.

Over 200 million years ago, the logs washed into an ancient river system and were buried quickly by massive amounts of sediment and debris also carried in the water. Oxygen was cut off and decay slowed way down. Minerals, including silica, replaced the cellulose in the wood, and crystallized in the cells. Sometimes the logs were cracked and large crystals of clear quartz, purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and smoky quartz formed.

The wood lies everywhere--it's quite amazing! It looks like a rocky desert with logs scattered around, but all the rocks and all the logs are petrified wood! Some of the logs are almost 200 feet long.

The big logs look like they've been cut with a chain saw. Actually, they just split when they were underground and the land shifted. The ranger said it was like dropping a piece of chalk--the logs break cleanly. In case you're wondering about it, visitors are actually encouraged to touch the petrified logs. They're rock, so they're not fragile.

This video offers a 365 degree view of the desert. Everything that looks like rocks is actually petrified wood! (Turn off your sound--the wind was so bad that my commentary doesn't come through.)



The Petrified Forest is located within in the Painted Desert, which covers over 93,000 acres. It was getting a little late by the time we drove out and it was cloudy, so I don't have many photos of the Painted Desert. There were some very unusual formations. These striped things are called "teepees." The desert is covered by a soft layer of earth, sandstone and volcanic ash. Various combinations of minerals and decayed plant and animal matter contribute to the various colors seen throughout the park.

Hope you enjoyed that brief tour of a very beautiful area. We just crossed into the Central Time Zone, so the clock says it's 2 hours later than our bodies feel like it is! It's now 8:30 PM by the clock, and I'm only just beginning to think about starting some dinner. Don't know when we'll get to blog again. Campgrounds are few and far between on the next leg of our trip, so we may be doing some boondocking (camping in Walmarts or rest area without electricity). I'll blog again when I can.

4/4/08 (Friday): We took a day off today for a little housework and shopping. I've got dinner in the crockpot (something I miss when we're on the road all day), I'm watching cable TV and enjoying my nice, clean home. So, of course, my thoughts turned to blogging! I'll catch you up to the present time before we head East again tomorrow morning.

So ... my last blog was about our tour of the Mojave Desert. The next day was going to be a short drive to Williams, AZ, gateway to the Grand Canyon. So we planned a little detour to Chloride, AZ (see the map). Chloride is in the high desert (4,009 feet) of NW Arizona. It's VERY dry and is billed as "the ghost town that never quite died." It has a population of 250 people and looks pretty poverty stricken, even in the ghost-free parts of town. Chloride dates back to 1862. In its heyday, there were over 70 silver mines in the area. Its website says that Chloride has the largest collection of yard art anywhere. I guess you could call it that! It looked an awful lot like junk to us--bathtubs, old wheels and auto parts. You get the idea.

This is the jail.

I think Wiley offended one of the yard art patrons. His cell didn't even have a cot in it!

The bank didn't look terribly secure. I think we'll stick with keeping our cash under the mattress.There was no price on these gas pumps. We paid $3.57 just outside of town.

We had lunch in the only restaurant in town. Wiley had the burger, which wasn't bad. I thought some homemade chile would hit the spot. I'm pretty sure the chile I was served was made in the home of the Hormels! It was an interesting stop, but I'm very glad we weren't planning it as a major highlight of our journey!

We arrived at our hotel in Williams, AZ (see map) at about 2 PM. The hotel is right next to the historic train depot and looks like it was built a long time ago, but it was actually built in 1995. It was quite comfortable and clean. Our package included dinner and breakfast the next morning (both buffets) in a nearby restaurant. We were quite pleased with the package we bought.






After a good night's sleep and breakfast, we caught the Grand Canyon train. It has a historic steam engine and the cars are restored from early 20th century trains from all over the U.S. It's about a 2-hour train trip to the Grand Canyon. Williams has a lot of lovely, refreshing evergreens with snow-capped peaks in the distance. After the first hour of the trip, though, we went through a transition zone of short grass prairie, then high desert.




Despite the fact that I've been to the Grand Canyon before, and knew when we got off the train that we were at the Grand Canyon, it still took my breath away to step off the train and walk over to the edge of this wonder filled place. After a short lunch break, we boarded a bus for a tour. There really is no way to capture the breadth of the vistas, the colors and textures. Incredible!

To save space and time, here's a link to lots of information and pictures about the Grand Canyon. Those of you who want to check out the history, geology, etc., can check out this link. I'm just going to post some of my photos for your viewing please, without any commentary.

Right now, we're in Holbrook, AZ (between Flagstaff and Albuquerque). Check out the link to the map. Yesterday, we toured the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. I'll blog that the next time we have an internet connection. I've spent a lot of time on this blog, so I hope I get some comments! The next couple of days will mostly be a lot of freeway driving, so I don't expect to blog again soon. Have a great week!

4/2/08 (Wednesday): Hello from Williams, Arizona. We saw the Grand Canyon today. Wow! But I'm going to keep you in suspense for a little while longer about that. Tonight's blog will cover our trip from Piru through the Mojave Desert. Because so many folks enjoyed the maps on the trip West, click on this link to see our route East (so far): Map.






The ride along I-40 was spectacular--so beautiful that it felt as much like a vacation as arriving at our destination. We reached elevations of 6,000-7,000 feet. There was snow on top of some of the mountains, even though the outside temperature was very pleasant. There weren't as many wildflowers in bloom here (it was very dry) as in CA, but the ones that were in bloom were really neat. This is desert primrose. It grows out of the bare sand in basketball-sized clumps. Traffic was light and the truck and RV behaved beautifully.


Our first stop was Mojave National Preserve (still in California). We had the 5th wheel behind us, of course, so we didn't get to visit many of the spots we'd have liked because of road limitations. But it's a 1.6 million acre park, and we were quite content with the tiny fraction of it that we saw. Among other amazing sights we saw were: singing sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones, and desesrt wildflowers.




This is the Kelso Visitor Center, which is interesting in itself. On 1862, the Union Pacific Railroad wanted to reach the rich California markets and the ports around Los Angeles. To get there, it needed to construct a railroad line across the Mojave Desert. Kelso was crucial to reaching that goal. Construction of the line begain almost simultaneously in Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles. The name Kelso comes from a railroad worker, whose name was drawn from a hat. The building dates from the early 1900's. We watched a very informative film about the Mojave Desert and then took a short walk.

On the 40+mile drive to the visitor center, we had a good view of the Kelso Dunes (the light colored dunes in the distance of this picture). These dunes were created by northwesterly winds carrying sand grains from a nearby dry lake bed. A mountain range traps the blowing sand. The entire dune system was created over a 25,000 year time period. The dunes are about 700 feet high and cover a 45 square mile area. The most interesting thing about them is that they make a booming or rumbling sound when the sand slides down the steep slopes. People drive a long sandy road, hike to the top and then run down the side to make the sand slide and boom. We didn't do this, but we heard the sound in the movie at the visitor center.

Just past Kelso Dunes, the mountains turned very dark (black and red) and had little or no vegetation on them. The whole area was volcanic, and we were looking at cinder cones and ancient lava flows. Scientists believe the cones range in age from 10,000 to 7 million years. And yet, in all those years, very little vegetation has gotten a foothold.






Our next stop in the Mojave Desert was Amboy Crater, an ancient cinder cone that was used to test the Mars rover. There were lots of lava flows--the whole area was so desolate it was hard to believe the eruption was about 6,000 years ago!

The next blog will be about our trip to the Grand Canyon (with a brief stop in the ghost town of Chloride).

Happy trails!

3-31-08 (Monday): Farewell Lake Piru! We're in Kingman, Arizona tonight, on our way to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

But first, I have some catching up to do on our Lake Piru great adventure.

We had an Easter celebration for the campers and some locals the Saturday before Easter. My fellow Workamper and friend, Linda, and I spent several hours doing face painting. It was great fun for me, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. We had a long line--must have painted 50 kids' faces!


These are the General Managers, Nita and Lon.

This is Lon with Becky, one of our new Workampers.

We enjoyed a last week at beautiful Lake Piru with my son, Mark, and his family.

We said "goodbye" to the Pacific Ocean at a little Ventura County beach.

We fed the fish at the fish hatchery just down the road from the campground.

We went to the honey farm and tasted lots of different kinds of honey. My favorite was avocado honey. Each of the boys got to buy a jar, too. Austin liked his so well that he took the whole jar on a hike the next day and ate about a third of it. He was on a sugar high for the rest of the visit!

We spent another day at the Santa Monica pier, where Wiley went fishing and the rest of us enjoyed the little amusement park (which is right on the pier).
On Thursday, we hiked from the campground all the way to the far end of the lake (note the honey in Austin's hand!). He also found a green caterpillar on the way up. He named it "Jo Jo," and we left him with deep regret in a new home, which we assured Austin was superbly suitable for a friendly green caterpillar. The knoll upon which we sit in this picture was named "Jo Jo's Knoll" in Jo Jo's honor.












The wildflowers were incredibly beautiful. It was a great hike and a wonderful way to end our stay at Lake Piru.

On Friday, Mark took us all to Disneyland. We had a wonderful (and very long) day. The boys enjoyed the rides and I enjoyed watching them. Then Mark treated us all to a night in a wonderful suite of rooms. It was incredibly nice to spend a night in a luxurious room rather than driving through weekend traffic back to camp. Thanks, Mark!

It's getting late and Wiley has fallen asleep on the couch. I'd hoped to cover at least part of our trip East tonight, but it's going to have to wait. I do want to take a few minutes to say a fond farewell to all my friends and co-workers at Lake Piru. We had a wonderful winter and enjoyed working with all of you. We hope to stay in touch, and maybe we'll work with you again sometime.

For now, goodnight. The next blog will be Joyce and Wiley's Great Adventure, Part V.