And so I begin a new job...

Today I begin sales (and continue training) of the ALL In Learning solution. The goal of ALL In is to improve student success daily, meaning that it makes simple the often inefficient process of collecting formative assessment data in the classroom.

Road Trip 2012, Day 23: Fort Davis & Balmorhea

We drove a little bit around Fort Davis and Davis Mountains State Park. I absolutely love seeing what the Civilian Conservation Corps built so many years ago for the enjoyment of the public at our nation’s parks.

Then we headed over to Balmorhea State Park. I had no idea that this park is essentially a huge, spring-fed swimming pool. The girls and Brad donned their snorkel gear (I won’t go in water under 80 degrees) and paddled around checking it all out until the girls got too cold and had to come out.

The water temperature ranges from 72 – 78 degrees year round, which surely is nice in winter. The artesian spring that feeds the pool pumps out 1 million gallons of water per HOUR. It takes under 4 hours to completely fill the 3.5 million gallon pool. The bottom is partially cement, partially natural rock bottom. Fish swim around, including some large catfish. It was a great opportunity for the girls to practice snorkeling, since their experience in La Jolla with the seals was rather short and we’ll be snorkeling next summer in Bermuda, and possibly this fall in the Keys.

There were a couple of diving boards that the girls tried out.

Grace liked the high dive more.

But Caroline kind of made a poor decision to try a forward flip on the high dive. That’s a long way to fall only to flop on your legs. She got a nasty red splotch and spent some time whining. Luckily, our girls are tough. She shook it off and was perfectly fine not long afterwards.

The spring flows from the pool through a beautiful, clear channel into a wetland area. I think this was a softshell turtle, but I don’t know my turtles all that well.

When we headed back into town we stopped and picked up dinner at Murphy’s Pizza, which was quite yummy. Then we went back to the hotel and chillaxed. The girls went swimming, Emmy and I read, and Brad worked on building the schedule for the ER. We had another good night of rest.

Road Trip 2012, Day 22: From Phoenix to Fort Davis

This day was spent traveling. Nothing exciting whatsoever happened or was seen, aside from a fabulous truck stop which I now wholeheartedly recommend. They had free wifi, a huge, nice restaurant, a grocery sort of store, super clean bathrooms, a lounge-type area with couches and stuff and so on. We found this place somewhere between Phoenix and El Paso in New Mexico. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, but was awesome.

And then finally, finally we were in Texas.

We pulled into the Fort Davis Stone Village Tourist Camp around 9:30. Randall met us and showed us to our room, number 8. The room was really cute and the pool area was pleasant and a great place to relax. We looked forward to a nice, long night.

Road Trip 2012, Day 21: North Rim Sunrise to South Rim Grand Canyon

Because my mother was very grumpy about missing the earlier part of the night’s sunset, Brad decided we would all wake early so as to experience sun rise over the canyon. When you’re camping (we stayed at Demotte campground, just outside the park gates) it’s not so difficult to wake up near dawn. Your eyes are blinded and your ears assailed by the sounds of birds near and far, pleasant and raucous. Even the girls weren’t too hard to get up for some reason. Maybe because we promised hot chocolate at the lodge.

It had been a very uncomfortable 44 degrees (or lower) that night. Brad had actually decided to crawl into bed with the four of us who were sharing a king-sized air mattress. He said he made that call when he couldn’t stop the shivers.

So, here’s what we saw.

Then we went up to the lodge and ate breakfast. We sat in the window right behind us (look closely; we’re on that patio). The Grand Canyon Lodge is much touted for its impressiveness, but really it has nothing on the Lake Crescent Lodge. It seemed a little rundown, but I guess with zillions of folks walking through to get to the sunroom overlook or the back porch, that’s just what happens. It was neat, though, and the breakfast was pretty decent. It was the ideal place to chillax and gaze out the window over the beauty of the Grand Canyon before we headed out to the long drive to the South Rim.

Along the way between the two rims we passed over the Colorado River at Lee’s (something – bridge? canyon? crossing?). We stopped to take some pictures and bought some jewelry from some Native American women who definitely weren’t speaking English. That was one thing we noticed about traveling all these canyons: there were SO many people who were not native English speakers. I would say probably half of the visitors were from other countries. That’s how impressive these things are – people come from everywhere to see them. How many US citizens take the time? My mother came with us on this leg of the trip because she wanted to see the Grand Canyon “before she died.” Or as Caroline puts it, “before your death chamber.” CHECK.

Driving to the South Rim we passed across rocky, dry lands with nothing but scrub brush dotting the landscape. Honestly, it was pretty awful compared to the lush but rugged beauty of the North Rim approach from the north (since we were coming from Salt Lake City).

The one real advantage to the South Rim is that you can actually see the Colorado River. I don’t think there was any North Rim viewpoint that would show the river.

We went to the Watchtower. Of course, there was a gift shop there. There were no less than 4 gift shops at the South Rim.

The highlight of the South Rim trip was staring at the sky, watching two California condors soar overhead. Numbers 87 and 33 made my day.

Our cute little family.

IRCIN ATTACK!

We thought Smokey was pretty awesome. He was totally buff.

Kaibab National Forest – love it! When studying environmental science in college we looked at the Kaibab deer studies as clear and simple demonstrations of population issues.

This massive guy was just right outside the park. They obviously see a lot of people and are unimpressed. There were maybe 20 cars stopped alongside the road to capture this elk’s mug on a flash card.

We left the Grand Canyon and headed to Phoenix to spend the night. Along the way Brad and I kept teasing my mom about camping, since our previous night’s campsite hadn’t had a shower and it was 105 degrees near Phoenix at 10:30 at night. I told her this campground didn’t have a shower either, and that all the other places were booked up because of a bluegrass festival nearby. But I figured the attendees probably wouldn’t be too bad because they wouldn’t be back in the campground until after we’d gone to sleep. And then it looked like it might rain so we figured we’d put the fly on the tent, but then that would trap the heat so Brad and I were torn as to what to do. She just kind of sat there in a daze, groaning. It was awesome.

And then we pulled into a Hampton Inn. I had reserved it hours earlier using hotels.com.

Road Trip 2012, Day 19, Part 2: North Rim of the Grand Canyon

The area surrounding the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was very beautiful: huge forests fronted by rolling expanses of short-grassed green meadows filled with wildflowers. If we’d never seen the actual Grand Canyon I think we still would have been happy with the beauty around it.

It’s quite a ways before you actually enter the park. These folks, Helmut and Helga (no idea, sounds good), were doing the traditional “photo in front of park sign.”

We had been warned about beefalo, but this was the only one we saw (alive – there was a dead one, probably hit, that had been dragged off into the woods for vulture food. Ick).

And here was our park sign photo.

We drove straight down to the lodge (another 12 miles away!) to get our first view of the grandaddy of all canyons, the Grand Canyon.

And here was our very first view:

The kids were, once again, somewhat more interested in the creatures around than the awesome rocks. Biology, not geology, for them, I guess.

In the lodge there is a statue of “Brighty,” a mule about whom a story has been written (by the author of “Misty of Chincoteague!”). The legend states that good luck will come to those who rub his nose. Someday I bet his nose will be worn to a stump.

We rushed out of the lodge, hopped into the truck and headed off to try to catch the sunset from Point Royal, the farthest point along the canyon-rim road. Along the way, some beautiful wildflowers: lupines, or BLUEBONNETS!

While we missed some of the beautiful color variations of the canyon walls because we got to the point just a few minutes before the sun dropped below the horizon, we still did get to see some beautiful stuff.