Vaca 2021, Day 7 - Leaving the Pool, Craters, & a Canyon That Is Grand

Woke up around 6am today. I was kind of/sort of hoping for another morning of floating in the pool this morning again. Full solitude and all of that.  However, once I had shared my beautiful story of yesterday morning while we were playing Blitz, both boys made it abundantly clear that if Dear ol' Dad was getting in the pool in the morning, they wanted me to wake them up as they wanted to join me.  I knew that meant that I wouldn't have the quiet, resetting-the-mind-and-body floating that I had yesterday, but I also am keenly aware that if I blink two more times, these guys will be moving out and heading into their next "chapters".  That gets me a bit misty and as so, I keep that in mind at all times.  

Well, by golly, I woke them both to see if they still wanted to swim, but apparently, it didn't seem like as good as an idea at 6:45am as it did the previous afternoon/evening.

No matter to me as I had kept my side of the bargain and I also had a ton of stuff to do packing-wise to get ready to hit the road this morning.  So I started doing all of the stuff that would have been on my list had I taken the time to make a list.

Roughly 1/2 hour had passed and mom gave the final notice that it's now or never for one last swim in our private pool.  That got their attention and soon enough, Caleb and I were floating happily around the waters surface.  Rob drug his bones out a few minutes later, but had to go back inside to get the water football so we could, at the very least, play catch.

It was a fun time, but time has no mercy and we had to get out.  Time to pack and load!

We were hoping to be packed and loaded, hitting the road no later than 9am, but it was 9:15am as we exited the driveway.  All of us were a bit sad that we were leaving this place, hot as it was, it was fantastic and I think the boys could have spent a week in this house alone!

These first pictures were taken before we left the driveway of that house.

There was a well placed, as far as we were concerned, outlet mall on our way out of town and they had, of all things, a Starbucks!  So breakfast sammy's and one of the best bold and black Venti's that I've ever had in recent memory!

Off we go!

We drove a few hours before stopping for gas and a potty break... couldn't tell you where tho.  I can tell you that it was hot!

Back into the van and this time we drove all the way to Meteor Crater Natural Landmark near Winslow Arizona, and yes, I was singing, "Well I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona and such a fine site to see.  It's a girl my Lord in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me.".

Don't miss your opportunities folks!

Anyway, it turns out that even tho Mama and I had been here before but now we wanted to show the kids, it's not a cheap visit, but still super cool to see!

I was telling the boys about a scientific paper that I had read several years ago that was presenting some theory's about how the grand canyon was created.  It had theororized that from the melting of glaciers, 10,000+ years ago, there was a HUGE melt water pond up North in, I believe Montana somewhere, that when a meteor hit (I don't think it was this one as this appears to be a pretty direct impact), it catapulted debris of very large size up North and there was evidence presented where some of the evidence of the debris impact landed in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana and affected the dam holding back this huge melt water pond. This set off the flow of that water, which became greater and greater until it drained completely, carving many of the formations that we see today.  True?  Dunno.  Certainly a very cool theory and paper, and I will continue trying to find it!

But here we are at the crater.  Sorry for another sidebar...

Rob is in charge of family selfie's as he's the best at them.  My phone provided assistance to him at some point as a movable white dot appeared where you could move that to the most comfortable place to produce selfies....

I tried to get him to squeeze the aliens cute little butt, but he was having none of it!

Selfie queen again!

These two!!!  I love how they often have their SEP football shirts on at the same time!

The biggest chunk of the meteor that caused all of the trouble!

We piled back into the van and this time yet again and are now headed to the South rim of the Grand Canyon.

We arrived mid-afternoon as I truly have no idea of when we pulled into town and checked into our moth infested hotel room.  For the record, we're staying at the Grand Canyou Plaza Hotel.  I recommend that you don't!  We've ended up the lives of nearly 40 moths thus far and the b@st@rds still seem to be coming from somewhere!

Purposely left moth smear on their curtain.

A collection of carcasses.

Piles of moth carcasses in the garbage.

more carnage...

After checking in and battling our winged enemies, we headed up to the canyon that is considered grand. Caleb's reaction as he first laid eyes on it is EXACTLY what you hope for as a parent! It was complete amazement and awe! WOO-HOOO!!! Rob's reaction was amazement too, but more subdued. He was quite impressed with the size of everything and said something to the effect of, "I thought the Grand Canyon was just like this over here". Better yet? Both boys wanted to come back in the morning! MONEY!!!

While waiting for our hike (mom was in the gift shop) Rob and I saw Cookie Monster!  We didn't bother him for fear that he was hungry!

Trying to take a pic while the sun is blinding you!

My 3rd selfie ever!  A little too much of myself in the pic. The boys got a kick out of this.

Caleb dressing up the G.C.!

Rob practicing for senior pictures!

A bit blurry but the lad is clearly enjoying something!

These two melt my heart!

My love of a "dead" tree pic with cool backgrounds is starting to ramp up!

Rob was going crazy with the people sitting on the edge of the world.  There were quite a few of these folks.

These two again!  Love seeing smiles on both faces during our rather "demanding" vacations!

The Schmitz boys marching to the beat.

Sasquatch!!!  My big butt venturing near an edge to my death.  The rocks beneath me are hoping that I do not topple!

I really like this pic as the boys are clearly NOT interested in whatever Mama is mapping out for us next!  They do NOT understand that it is their best interest that she is doing due diligence as she is!

Once we finished our walk (can't call it a hike since it's on a paved path on the rim), we drove for a bit more around the park, stopping at a General Store  that I remembered from 14/15 years ago that had good local beers.  It was true again this time!  Happy Ted.

After that, we drove back into town to a steakhouse to have some dinner.  Whenever a restaurant has Calamari (yes, it NEEDS to be capitalized!!) on the menu, we order it. This one had it and we ordered it! They brought it to the table and in true Schmitz fashion, we tore into it like we had not eaten in weeks!  About the time that we were licking the plate, a Mexican feller brings out another plate of exactly what we had just consumed.  Mama Chaos tells him that we already recieved it.  He apologizes.  Then looks around/over his shoulders, winks and smiles while raising a finger to his lips and says, "shhhhhhhhh!".  We had won the Calamari (fried squid)  lottery!!

A good meal was had, and we had some leftovers. Back to the moth-infested hotel room where we exterminated more winged hellions before another game of Blitz.

Another day in the books.

Vaca 2021, Day 6 - Saguaro (Sa-wa-ro) West, Barrio Brewing & Chillin'

Woke up at 6:18am this morning and it was already 88 degrees out of doors. Do the morning routine while dreaming about the first sip of morning coffee. Being the clever fella that I am, I hatched a plan to start brewing the coffee while I'm brushing my teeth and my stupid looking hair, so that once I finished brushing, I would be in my swim trunks, cup of coffee in hand and if that weren't enough to cement my status as genius,  I'd also be in the pool alone by 6:35am.

I executed the plan flawlessly (as newly dubbed geniuses do!) and was in the pool with one floaty-noodly thingy-ma-bob under my knees and the other under my neck, cup of coffee in hand.  

It was so lovely!  Even when I closed my eyes for extended periods of floating, I could tell exactly which direction my feet were pointing due to the sun cooking me.  It was so quiet out there save for some construction a couple of blocks away on a house.  But the birds were singing to me and me alone and they weren't singing the songs that I would hear back home.  Different songs. New songs. 

At one point, I was staring at the blue sky above me and thinking of looking out the window of a plane when we were flying to Hawaii and seeing the ocean below.  I was imagining the sky being the ocean below and completely lost in thought when a single engine craft flew through my line of vision and caused me some horrible confusion for a couple of good seconds!!  THAT's how relaxed and lost in a daydream I was.

I have come to the conclusion that EVERY day should start with a peaceful, private float in the water to clear ones head and reset before another day of "normal" begins.

Once I was out of the water, I went back up to the chairs by the house to drip dry in the sun and have another cup of coffee (I'll clean up the water drips later!).

Once the boys got up and started moving about, we piled back into the vessel to head of to Saguaro Ntl Park West for a beautiful drive thru that section of the park.  

 

No cactus in this one, but we're entering the park outside of Tucson.

The very large visitor center.  They had a lot of stuff here that was closed for Covid, but I bet this would be a pretty cool visit in "more normaler" times.

I loved seeing the variety of cacti.  Roadrunner and Coyote only provided a view of very specific cacti!  They skewed my reality!

Taken off the back patio of the visitor center.

Same...

More cool variety of the pointy plant!  I love how the shadow of the plant alters the bottom half of this picture.

The remainder of the drive back into Tucson was gorgeous and sometimes stunning in it's views.  

I absolutely LOVE pictures like this when you can find a road or railroad track winding thru scenery like this!

 

It was after lunch time when we got into Tucson proper, everyone was hungry, so we headed to Barrio Brewing Co. for some lunch.  This place is located in an old industrial area being repurposed for more modern fare.  The food was excellent and the beer didn't suck either!

We went back to the Albertsons grocery as it's between Barrio and our "house".  We have some driving to do tomorrow so we got sammy's for everyone so we could eat on the road and eliminate delays.

Back at the house for the night.  Kids are happily in the pool enjoying our light day of driving and more just hanging out.

Tucson at dusk.  I wasn't sure what that bright light was, but turns out it was a plane coming in with landing gear down.

We spend a lot of time in the pool and it was also a great opportunity to start sorting the beer that I had purchased into the 'Ted' pile, the 'for this guy' pile and the 'for trade' piles.  We also got a ton of laundry done and repacked things.

This was one of my favorite days so far as we had a lot of time to chill and just spend time together with not much planned.  

There's also something about starting a day floating in a pool with no distractions, no expectations and some extreme quiet!

Just sayin'.

Vaca 2021, Day 5 - Driving, Extreme Heat, Saguaros & Private Pool

We left our Holiday Inn Express after extracting about as much coffee as we could carry! Rob was driving to Las Cruces this morning, with Caleb in the front passengers seat, mom in the second row and dear ol' dad in the waaaaaayyyyyy back.

This was a bit of a head trip with the boys in the front!

Google Maps of our drive from Alamogordo to Tucson. 

     

Not far outside of Alamogordo and part of the Holloman Air Force Base where they sometimes close White Sands while they conduct missile testing!  That might have been cool to witness, but alas, it was not to be.

More of the same.

Rob did a great job driving and Caleb running the map.  Rob also provided much humor with his near constant commentating on his current situation.  This guy would make a GREAT TV sports announcer! Once in Las Cruces, we ate at a lovely little place called Indulgence Cafe.  It was some stupid good food with very unique plates and some dang good coffee!  The bathroom situation was less then stellar tho, so before we got back on the interstate, we hit up a gas station to visit their rooms of rest.

Once back on the I10, this time with me driving again, our only surprise was just a mile or two out of town when we encountered a border checkpoint, with guards that were in combat gear and heavily armed, and also dozens of cameras aimed in various positions at your vehicle. We slowed, but never stopped as they waved us through.  Not sure what they were looking for, but apparently it was NOT the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit.

The border checkpoint as we were approaching.

On we went for several good hours.  I did road combat with an older lady and her Nissan where she would pass me, pull in front of me and within 10 - 15 miles, I would have to pass her again.  This went on for 100+ miles until we finally got to the exit to head to Saguaro National Park.  I hate that crap.

So we exited the I10 and shortly thereafter realized that it was hovering around 113 - 115 degrees!  Now for some, that's probably not a huge deal, but for several select Iowans, it was fairly miserable!

We stopped at the visitor center on the East side of Saguaro Ntl Park.  Unbeknownst to us, Tucson pretty much splits the Saguaro Ntl Park into East and West.  And they are very different looking as well.

We stopped at the visitors center and within one minute, Mama was talking to a couple from Maquoketa, IA!  One of the rangers working overheard the conversation and came over to ask us if we've ever seen the butter cow at the fair!  LOL!

We went on the scenic drive and got some reluctant photos with the lads who were NOT keen on getting back out of the vehicle into the crazy heat.   

Rob was not happy about the 50 yard "hike" to get to this cactus!  LOL!

You can tell by his posture in this pic that he's even less impressed the second time we stopped for a pic!!!  The boy has his mind on the private pool coming up at the air b n'b and this is only delaying that glory!

Once we left Saguaro East, we went to find Lesley a swim suit as you may recall, I left her suitcase back in Pleasant Hill, IA.  She got one for her and also bought one for Rob who, while he owns several pair, including a fantastic fitting new pair gifted to him by his wonderful girlfriend, Jackie, didn't pack them while he was spending his 93 seconds packing so he could get back to his video games...

While Mama was in Target getting swimwear, I was hitting up the Googles and looking for beer stores where I can buy stuff that you cannot buy in Iowa.  Too my surprise, we were about 12 miles from a BevMo, which I've never visited but they're said to be very much like Binny's stores in Illinois where there is beer for days.  So there we went and I delayed retirement by another year...

After that, it was time to go find our Air B n'b.  This place was quite lovely even though we are dumb-a$$3$ trying to use the keypad to open the door when Rob eventually fumbled the keypad thingy-ma-bobber and it fell to the ground, revealing a KEY, an old fashioned KEY, used to unlock the front door!!!  LOL

Once inside, we unload the van as we're in desperate need to do laundry and rearrange for the next bit of the trip.  But first?  The pool!!!

Ah, the pool!!!  What a relief after the heat!

Looking over the backyard fence.

The "grass" here is prickly, like the cactus and you really couldn't walk thru it to get to the pool thinking you weren't going to burn your feet on the sidewalks.  Seems like everything here wants to harm you in some fashion.

Taken looking over the fence from the back of the yard.  You can't really see it, but Tucson is down behind that first hill.  This is roughly the same angle of the last picture taken at night.

Rob and Caleb playing some pool baseball which they had just invented.

Those chairs are where I would enjoy my morning coffee!

Several card games of Blitz (31) played on that glass table!

Tucson at night from our vantage point at one of the only times that we'll exist in a gated community!

We had a bags tournament since they had the game in the backyard and Rob is competitive about EVERYTHING!

I think this was our bracket for the Tucson Bags Tournament...  Looks like when we reached the conclusion of the tourney, we failed to document the champion!  Must have been an unpopular outcome.

This was our score card for Blitz.  You can see one game in Alamogordo,  3 in Tucson, 1 at the Grand Canyou, 2 more in Kanab...  You know who didn't do well in these games?  ME!

Mostly Caleb's sketches to make fun of his brother!

And that's it for Day 5.