Road Trip 2012, Day 4 (part 2) – Malibu & Santa Monica

We met Aunt Paula and Uncle Bob at Paradise Cove Café in Malibu. Many years ago Brad’s mom & dad had also eaten there with the Castruitas. We had a yummy meal and caught up on each other’s lives.

The beach there is pretty wide and well populated with families out for a fun time. We kicked off our shoes and wandered down to the water’s edge. The girls, loonies that they are, go into the frigid water a little bit and Grace wandered off exploring under the pier (which was the scene of a Hummer commercial where the Hummer drives off the end of the pier at full speed).

It was great to see Paula and Bob; the last time we saw them was at Megan & Eric’s wedding several years ago. Our visit had to be fairly speedy though, because they were leaving the next morning for a family vacation in Yosemite National Park. We said our goodbyes and turned the truck north towards Santa Monica Pier.

I was really concerned that the kids would want to play there all night, but we managed to make it a really speedy trip. The pier is neat, but it has nothing on the Ocean City, NJ, boardwalk. It looked similar except the boards were more in disrepair and it’s maybe half a mile long compared to the many miles long boardwalk. Grace bought a sweatshirt and we got photos of the sunset and we left Santa Monica for the Beverly Laurel Motor Inn in west Hollywood.

It was a cute hotel, kind of kitschy with a Hollywood theme for the rooms. It has low cost parking (I had though it was free – I’ll have to look that up) and a pool. Best aspect though is its location. Oh, and that there’s a great restaurant called Swingers right downstairs.

Road Trip 2012, Day 2: From Bluewater Lake to San Diego–with a lot of stuff in between!

Our day started out quite early, seeing as we froze our butts off at night, tossed and turned and then heard those early birds loud and clear in the morning. We packed up the truck (thank you, Eagle Scout Brad) and headed on out.

First stop, Continental Divide, where Grace picked up a splinter that haunted her for a few days.

And then we cross into Arizona – good bye, New Mexico!

Next stop, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park (ah, thank you, America the Beautiful park pass).

The girls scavenged for petrified wood, but were very good and didn’t keep a single bit!

Next stop, Winslow, Arizona. We couldn’t drive Route 66 without stopping here. Duh. This place is interesting: that wall back there? It’s just a wall. I mean like there’s no building behind that wall.At the curbside is a red, flatbed Ford. Other than a 5 & Dime kind of place on the other corner, there doesn’t seem to be too much in Winslow. It does look like they’re making it a little snazzier with cute lampposts and stuff, though.

Yet another stop: Meteor Crater. This was really pretty awesome. The crater itself is large enough to hold 20 concurrent football games along with 2,000,000 cheering spectators. The remaining chunk of meteor, on the other hand, is kinda little. Show you how fast that sucker was going when it hit and broke up (50,000 mph!).

The wind up there was totally cranking. Honestly, I’m surprised they don’t appear to have any incidences of people blowing off the edge. Seriously – it’s nuts.

OK, now it’s on through a WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING until we finally got to Flagstaff, Arizona. There was something I liked about that city, although we really only stopped at Wendy’s. The Wendy’s guy, Kyle, was really nice and funny and he suggested we should go ahead and drive through Sedona, even though it would be a little out of the way. GREAT decision. The drive there from Flagstaff was gorgeous. It reminded both Brad and me of the drive up River Road from I-95 heading to New Hope. There were twists and turns, green trees, green plants, steep drops, trees overhanging the road, houses for sale by Sotheby’, of course, the scenery here was a smidge more dramatic than the Delaware Valley. You would drive around a curve and come face to face with massive red hills instead of meandering, shallow river water.

The town of Sedona even reminded me of home, except it’s about twice the size of New Hope. There are lots of cool stores selling jewelry and art, trinkets and antiques.

Then on we drove, through more nothing Arizona (why everyone doesn’t live in Flagstaff, I don’t know) where we baked when we had to stop for food (109 degrees. Oh yeah, dry heat – really, it felt fine. NOT) and finally entered California and got to San Diego exhausted and punchy.

Road Trip 2012, Day 3: San Diego Zoo

This is where some strange alignment was going on in the universe. Some background: last summer, our great neighbors, the Petersens, moved and left our little happy Katy neighborhood for the great wilderness of Alaska. The girls were particularly upset because Megan, their younger daughter, was a good buddy to both of them. We hoped to be able to travel to Alaska to see them but my research indicated we would either spend an eternity or a couple arms and legs to get there. A couple weeks ago Wendy Petersen texted me saying that Megan and her older sister, Emilie, were in Austin so maybe we could get the girls together out there. I was really bummed to reply that our girls were in Oklahoma and they would be so sorry they missed the opportunity to see their friends.

So, that brings us to Friday in San Diego. On Thursday night Wendy texted me that the girls, their Aunt Michelle and Uncle Dave and cousins Audrey, Alec and Amanda were going to be in San Diego for a football tournament that Alec was in. She gave me Michelle’s phone number and I texted that we would be there and we were planning to hit the San Diego Zoo the next day. Michelle replied that they were planning to go the next day, as well, since that day they just happened to have a bye during the tournament. So far that’s three big coincidences to this point.

We wandered the reptile house and took photos of cool reptiles for Kris Swanson, then met up with the Dickersons, Megan and Emilie.

The San Diego Zoo really is a bucket list kind of item. It’s like Disney for animal people. It even has some amusement rides, a Skifari and evening entertainment. If you’re anywhere nearby you really shouldn’t miss it.

I do have to say though that after experiencing so many of these animals in the wild in Kenya it was kind of depressing to see them in enclosures, no matter how awesome they look. When we saw elephants they were on the move. They might stop at a bush to grab some leaves but they would move on, as a large group, in just a few minutes. These guys looked lonely and bored. The lions were less troubling since they are such loners in general anyway.

We really did have a fabulous time at the zoo, made all that much better with the terrific company of old friends.

And of course, the day wouldn’t have been complete without the requisite knee-licking by Uncle Dave.

Road Trip 2012, Day 1: Driving New Mexico (6/20)

 

We left Granny, Papa, Megan and Eric waving from the front porch about 6:30am on Wednesday as we headed off towards New Mexico. Honestly, there isn’t a lot to look at for many, many miles. However, what we had thought would be a straight shot to our campground at Bluelake State Park and then to San Diego turned into a convoluted, multi-stop trip after a chat with Big Brad. He had driven the route and had some great ideas of things for us to experience along the way.

The first place we stopped was Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque. We bought an America the Beautiful national park pass here, since we plan to visit a whole slew of other parks along this trip. We hiked to the top of the big ol’ pile o’ rocks and spotted some cool petroglyphs along the way.

Albuquerque, on the other hand, was far from cool. I respectfully disagree with the lunatics who say that a “dry heat” is better than the humid heat we have in Houston. Heat is heat and although I typically love it, I don’t usually crawl into my oven and enjoy the swelter.

Following Albuquerque (which did have the bonus of a dry ice purchase – that stuff’s awesome), we headed on to our campsite at Bluewater Lake. Brad took the girls fishing while I wandered around and found fossils – way cool fossils, but no fish.

3-24-12–Dubai City of Merchants Tour

Our non-chatty driver picked us up at 8am and drove us to the Burj Al Arab, a beyond-super-exclusive hotel near the beach. There we met up with a very nice tour guide named Renatta and hopped onto a comfortably-sized bus with a bunch of other English-speaking folk (bonus!).

Our first stop was the above picture, a marjolis (sp?), which is a meeting room for men. Some sheik had this building and land and would have guests come to talk to him about anything going on. The main room is on the second floor and the breeze is lovely. They are working to recreate the gardens with a ductwork irrigation system as well.

The next stop was a huge mosque. Honestly, it was just a photo stop and I don’t have any clue about it, but the building was pretty.

Next, the “wind tower houses.” This is the coolest idea – they build these towers with walls inside forming an X (it would look like an X from the top or from underneath). The idea is that the wind would be caught and funneled down part of the X, while the hotter air would rise up the other sections of the X. Perfect for a beach house!

Next we went to the Dubai Museum and finally to the spice and gold souks (which I hated, go figure).

3-24-12–Dubai Arabian Nights

OH BOY was it windy! Gotta love being in the middle of a desert with a cranking wind. Um, sand like blows everywhere. Hard. Well, we made the best of it anyway.

The guide picked us up at our hotel as well as a German couple and a young lady from Seoul. The guide said nothing, and none of us talked to each other. It was kind of weird, especially coming on the heels of our great driver in Kenya, Newton, who would tell us about his country all the time, pointing out scenes and giving us historical backgrounds. Actually, none of our drivers in Dubai said anything. It was really irritating.

Anyway, off we went driving, driving, driving in his Nissan Armada (with roll bars!). We finally reached the gates of the reserve.

The mute driver hopped out and deflated out tires. We waited while several other trucks did the same then it was off to go “dune bashing.” Weeelllll, guess I really shouldn’t have eaten that huge lunch at the hotel because all that rolling and bouncing and turning and sliding was, uh, a little uncomfortable (don’t worry, I didn’t throw up!). The ride initially was pretty awesome but then, and I know I speak for Brad too, it just got plain old. We were like, “OK, where’s the little tent camp? Had enough of this!”

We did stop for a couple photo opportunities and a cool falconry demonstration (this photo would totally rock but I didn’t catch the whole bird) but we finally reached a snuggly little camp deep in the dunes.

The tent camp was actually pretty cool. There were many tables set up low to the ground with big cushions for seats. There was also a belly dancing “stage” area with more cushions, a sand bottle guy (we paid about 4x what they sold for in the airport, darn it!), a henna lady (still have the funky pattern on my hand – it kind of makes me look like I should be on Stargate or Star Trek), a bar and a lot of food. We got bowls of tasty tidbits and were sitting back to relax when the tour folks said that dinner was served. Huh? Well what was that we just ate, then? Oh, just appetizers. Ugh. Anyway, it was pretty good. Then it was time for belly dancing. I hope she really enjoyed it (she looked like she did). We met two families from Sugar Land. Small world.

Finally, the night wrapped up and we head back to the Marco Polo hotel (nice place, but be sure to get a non-smoking room if they have them. I didn’t even think about it, they didn’t ask and my backpack still smells). We ordered a 5:40 wake up call and crashed.

3-22-12–Kibera

Kibera is the second largest slum in the world; only Soweto in South Africa is larger. We had passed by it previously, but today we had some time to kill before heading to Lake Nakuro so Newton gave us a mini-tour.

There are more tin buildings than the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. Apparently the central part of the “city within a city” is more residential, and there were market stalls lining both sides of the street that circled the area. It appears to be fairly self-sufficient. The stalls had every single thing you could imagine you might need to live and Newton said those things actually cost less in Kibera than elsewhere. For example, a loaf of bread might be 50 Ksh (Kenya shillings) in Nanyuki but only 30 Ksh in Kibera.

I could see children playing in school uniforms, women hanging up clothes, men building some sort of house, a german shepherd on a rooftop (that was odd – and there are very few dogs around Kenya, totally unlike say, the Bahamas where there are packs of strays and they aren’t generally kept as pets like we do), AK47 toting officers, trash sorting folks and so on. Aside from the extraordinarily unsanitary conditions (I swear there’s no trash pick up anywhere) I think Kibera was pretty cool. I saw one man outside a butcher shop sharpening his knife. He was using a bike wheel with a wire set up on the axel that he would step on and off of – that would make the wheel spin which would in turn spin his whetting stone. It was totally awesome. If I didn’t hate hawkers so much I would have enjoyed walking around. I’m not sure Newton would have been OK with that though!

We drove to a peak that overlooked Kibera and discovered a camera crew there filming a musician playing some weird pipes using Kibera as the backdrop. When questioned they explained that they were filming musicians from all over the globe for the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 40th year of her monarchy. So that’s kinda cool – we got to watch some of the filming and maybe we’ll get to see it on TV. Princess Elizabeth was on safari (about 100 meters from where we broke down that day) when she was told about her father’s death. She was actually in a tree when she learned she was the queen of England.