Gold Wing Adventures in Petrified Forest

We finally got the bike down at Grand Canyon and took one long trip out into the desert but forgot to take pictures so.... when we got to the Petrified Forest and took it out for a ride we took some photos.

Parked at the south entrance

GREAT photo of Kim

Another one of those sappy self-portraits....we look a bit happy huh?

Just wanted to document where we stopped.

It got warmer as the day went on...witnessed by the coats on the bike.

That's all for now.

Meteor Crater in Arizona

We left Grand Canyon by the east entrance and headed down to Flagstaff for some groceries, lunch and an additional battery for my Droid Bionic phone. Gorgeous tree-covered high desert...BUT, once we got outside of Flagstaff, we ran into real horizons !

This is the way it looked for about 25-30 miles toward the famous Metor Crater.
http://www.meteorcrater.com/

I went here as a kid but don't remember much of it so Kim and I were determined to visit it .... and it was well worth the side trip off highway 40. We cruised around the visitor's center, then went outside to look at the crater itself. WOW !!!!

It is so big that there could be 20 football fields inside of it and a million people watching around the rim ! over 500 feet deep, 4,000 feet across and over 2 miles around.

Our RV is the one with the white van behind it.

view from the rim looking north

our RV in the parking lot

our guide, Eduardo

I made a movie to show the expanse. Pertty darn cool.

Next stop: Petrifed Forest and Painted Desert...staying at OK RV in Holbrook, AZ...nice town.

Grand Canyon (and it IS Grand!)

Next Stop: Grand Canyon, Arizona. 292 miles. Nice drive through the stark Arizona desert...

The Grand Canyon is so huge that photos cannot convey it all properly. It's more than a mile down from the photos you're about to see. The entire canyon is over 277 miles long and, at most spots we were at, it's 10 miles across. The two movies following the photos might help with some perspective.

This is one of the few viewpoints where you can see so much of the Colorado River. Many of the others, the river can only be seen a tiny bit or not at all. This viewpoint is called Watchtower and it's the very first lookout if you enter from the east.

We got up at sunrise to take photos. That darn sun is getting up later and later.

...and a few at sunset....

There was also many deer and elk hanging around the roads and our campground. They were not afraid of humans so we could get real close to take photos.

This fellow liked to pull down the juniper branches with his rack in order to get to the berries for some snacks.

These photos can also be seen at this link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100376105788369441882/GrandCanyon#

Next stop: Meteor Crater, Arizona.

NASCAR Las Vegas

This was the view from our "font porch".

We headed down to Las Vegas after Bryce Canyon. Nice, easy trip. We stayed at Nellis AFB for two nights before heading over to the LV Speedway. On Friday morning we, checked in to our spot on Motorhome Hill.

We are about halfway down this row of RVs situated on the backstretch of the speedway.

Friday was qualifying. The IZOD Indy cars got up to the 221-223mph range on their laps....zoooooooom. Robert Campbell and his son joined me for this as well as the race on Saturday.

This is a view from the start/finish line during qualifying.

Camping World is the main sponsor of the NASCAR Truck Series race on Saturday. Ron Horanday won the race. He pretty much led the entire race. The Vegas track races....Sprint and Camping World, in my opinion, have never produced a very good race. The cars get spread out and there's not that much side by side racing.

Our view as the trucks came by.

Sunday was the IZOD Indy car races....Indy Lights in the morning and "the big boys (and girls)" in the afternoon. Rick Frank, Wessam and Raniah and their daughter (from the MWH Vegas office) all came over to watch with us. Nice to have some friends with us for the day.

The afternoon race ended in tragedy as, during the 12th lap, there was a terrific crash/collision between turns 1 and 2 involving 15 racecars.

This is Tony Kanaan's race car which won the pole at over 223mph.

Here's a movie of what the first couple of laps looked like. You can see them all bunched up with very little separation.

Apparently, someone bumped another car and it started a chain reaction that threw Dan Weldon and his car into the safety fence mortally injuring him. A helicopter rushed him to the hospital but, after a two hour delay while the track was cleaned up, the announcement came that he had died in the hospital and the race was cancelled. The remaining drivers made a five lap, 3-wide tribute in memory of him.

A very sad, somber end to the weekend. The entire RV park was very subdued and quite the rest of the day and night. No one wanted to get loud or party. Very sad experience.

The next morning we quietly packed up and headed out of town and headed to the Grand Canyon.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

After we left Zion NP, we headed north on 89 to Bryce Canyon NP. This was to be our next stop. It was after a storm had come through so there was snow on the ground and it was quite chilly. We are at the very end of the Bryce road at about 9100 feet. 34 degrees and 20 mph winds....brrrrr.

Of course, if you click any photo, they'll open up larger.

It is hard to depict, in a few photos, how amazing this place is. These upcroppings of rocks are called Hoodoos. Here's a link to more information for all you geologists out there....
http://www.nps.gov/brca/naturescience/hoodoos.htm

The colors are spectacular and we had to sit down and just look at them for a while to take it all in.

Here is a movie that will try to show you a partial view of the overall park from Inspiration Point...one of the most famous spots in the park. Sorry about the wind noise...it was really blowing.

We uploaded many other photos if you want to see more.

https://picasaweb.google.com/stevenlstrick/BryceCanyon?authuser=0&feat=directlink

At night we had to unhook our water hoses because the temperature dropped down to around 26. But the days warmed up nicely into the 60s. Very pleasant. Because this was October, there were not the massive crowds that are usually there in the summer. However, BUSLOADS of french-speaking tourists were everywhere. There are tours where they take them to Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce and Vegas. One or two days each.

For fun, I have a Garage Sale for Kim. She likes to go garage-sailing so this keeps her in shape in between towns. She gets to "buy" what she wants to keep and we let go of extra items and that helps lighten up the coach.

Next stop is Las Vegas. We went for the NASCAR Camping World (advertisement plug) Truck Series and the IZOD Indy car races.

Watch for the next installment.

Kim and Steve

Zion National Park Movie

We took a couple of movies in the park to try to show the vastness of it. This one we're posting is a test to see how it views on your computer.

You can hear the amatuer video photographers trying to figure out if they're recording or not....funny. But the video eventually gets rolling.

Feedback would be appreciated.

thanks!

Kim and Steve

Trip to Northeast California

We went away up to the northeast part of California for a week with our 5th wheel to see Burney Falls and Lassen Park and came away delighted (again) at how much there is to see, even on a short trip like this one.
First off, we went up highway 5 to Redding, then cut NE up the foothills (about 5,000 feet) to a nice campground at Hat Creek.

The next day we went to Burney Falls. This is actually two waterfalls in one. One that comes from the Pit River above and over the cliff (this splits into two large waterfalls) and multiple streams coming through the porous volcanic rock from underground water. It flows about 100 million gallons a day. You can view it from the top, then walk down to the water level and further down Burney Creek on a nice walk. The Creek ends up in Lake Britton, which, of course, I had to jump in.

Another self-portrait in front of Burney Falls. So much to smile about.

Cold, refreshing, fun!

Next day we headed up to Lassen Park, but there is still 32-feet of snow in some places over the road so we could only get into the park about 10 miles before turning back. We took a great hike through the forest past some serene meadows, Lily pads and some amazing rock landscape. This turned out to be a part of the mountain that gave way years ago and formed a huge landslide which came at speeds over 100mph and covered the surrounding area with these volcanic rocks.

The Lily pad pond on our walk. Looks like a Money painting.

This is only 10 miles from the park entrance. The roads are getting cleared still.

Rocks strewn from the mountain landslide.

Rocks strewn from the mountain landslide.

Lassen through the trees

Part of the debris field that went for miles.

Manzanita Lake in Lassen

Manzanita Lake in Lassen

The next day we went over to Fall River Falls to see their museum and special horse barn.

Mount Lassen

Very unique horse barn. This was torn down miles away and rebuilt at this new spot using new wood but the same plans.

This was a terrific museum with 7 building full of 1830-1900 antiques. A great curator talked to us and answered all our questions at length. A real find in a town of only about 709 people.

In one of the building there was this tea pot set that had been donated by the children of the lady who collected them over the years. If you click on the photo and look closely you'll see a number of very interesting and one-of-a-kind teapots.

Shasta to the west (far right) and Lassen (far left) from the top of the hill on a dirt we climbed with our truck.

The last thing we did was go to the Crawdad Festival in Red Bluff. We learned how to eat crawdads, dance Cajun and buy homemade pomegranate marinade and homemade jelly.

The crawdad's were sure big !

Homemade jam....someone (Kim) looks happy!

Doing the Zydeco Slide....what moves !

...and what would be a blog without all these cutesy photos.

Nattie watching the ducks...."can I just lick their little feet"?

Water-baby in the RV pool.

...and Water-Girl

Hobbes and new friend.

Some geese at Manzanita lake looking for a handout.

It seems no matter where we go, there's some sort of huge statue. This one was a cowboy-brander.

awwwwww...how cute.

Hobbes and Nattie watching Kim feed the ducks.

Well, we hoped you liked this entry. LOTS more photos to be seen here if you're interested.

https://picasaweb.google.com/stevenlstrick/Hat_Creek?authkey=Gv1sRgCLOzyPTZgs61nwE#

Next trip: Northern California Redwoods ! See you then.

Kim and Steve