Home at last?

Lee and I have been in Petaluma for a couple of weeks now.  The moving truck from Pennsylvania arrived yesterday, the final day of November.  It was raining cats and dogs, but the guys worked hard, and the sun came out just as they finished moving the last box.

By the way, just so you know, our items did not fill the truck.  We were the fifth of six loads to be dropped off.  The driver told us he drove over the Donner Pass on I-80 to reach us, and since it was snowing had to put on snow chains.  Fun, fun.  Thank you, Mr. Driver!   

I didn't realize that the Sebastopol area could be so wet.  With some exploration, I discovered that Sebastopol receives, on average, 40" of rain a year.  Philadelphia receives 42-25" a year, not much more.  Who knew??  Most of California is much drier than the northern coastal regions.

Thank you all for following Lee and I on our journey!  Please keep in touch or, better yet, come visit some day.

Happy Holidays to all of you!

 

 

Las Vegas

Hi, all.  Las Vegas was not on my bucket list, but we were in the area and decided it was worth probably one visit to see what it was all about. 

It isn't quite what I imagined, in that the casino resorts are much closer and more crowded than I anticipated.  They are all scrunched together.  At the same time, the resorts are humongous, each taking up a full city block that in the average city would be four city blocks.  The first two days we walked with energy, but on the third and fourth days we really slowed down.  The strip itself is over 4 miles long, and when you weave in and out of all there is to see, it's easy to double the mileage.  Whew!

I found the strip to be very much like a canyon.  The buildings are high on the strip, but the rest of Las Vegas is low and flat.  Interesting place. 

Each casino resort includes the casino and hotel, but also several restaurants and bars, swimming pools, and frequently a shopping mall.  Huge!  The themes are pure fantasy, although some of the hotels carry out the fantasies better than others.  Below is the Venetian, based on Venice.  You might recognize the Rialto Bridge in the center, and the tower of the Piazza San Marco on the right.

Below is the Mirage, where water is the theme, inside and out:

The Flamingo, the oldest casino on the strip (although it has been rebuilt), included a wildlife habitat with a pelican, many species of ducks, koi, and an albino catfish.

My favorite was Paris.  I had a delicious dinner crepe there:

New York, New York was pretty cool too.  It includes Coney Island's roller coaster:

The buildings and Statue of Liberty were smaller than their real counterparts:

Caesar Palace was the most opulent, in my estimation.  The Bellagio, next door, has a seasonal display that included a talking tree for autumn:

Everyone knows about Luxor, the Egyptian Pyramid, right?  The inside is all things Egyptian, while balconies look down from above.  Very cool:

As you can see, the Las Vegas strip is opulent and well over-the-top.  But it has its place, I guess.  As a vacation destination, it allows people to live in a different reality for a few days.

I should add that Lee and I aren't big gamblers, so didn't spend much time at the slots.  We did walk a LOT, however.  Good exercise!  We had nice weather while we were here, but in the summer months you would want to stay indoors more.

Everything was more expensive than I expected.  I remember the days when casinos subsidized buffet meals and hotel rooms, but they don't anymore.  Perhaps this is because there is now so much more than the casinos - there are shows and roller coasters and shopping malls... Overhead costs are much higher than ever before.

Here is another interesting tidbit.  MGM owns most of the hotels on the strip, which surprised me.  MGM owns, amongst others, MGM Grand, Bellagio, Luxor, Excalibur, Mandalay Bay, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Circus Circus, Mandarin Oriental, Mirage, and Aria.  That is a lot of acreage. 

Ancient Cliff Dwellings

About 10 miles south and west of Flagstaff is the Walnut Canyon National Monument, with a mile-long loop trail into the canyon that passes several cliff dwellings, all about 1,000 years old.

The story of how they came to be is interesting.  Most of the Sinagua (ancestors of the Hopi) lived on the plains around Flagstaff.  But about 1,000 years ago the area suddenly became a very active volcanic field, producing more than 600 volcanoes.  Who knew?

   
The largest of the volcanoes is a part of the San Francisco Peaks.  Today it is 12,633 feet high, but before it blew its top it had an elevation of about 16,000 feet. 

At any rate, the point of all this is that the natives of the area moved away, some to Walnut Canyon, to escape the eruptions.  Walnut Canyon wasn't far from all the volcanic activity, but it offered protection.

Like many of the canyons we have seen on our trip, the canyon was made by a river.  It includes hard and soft rocks, and the river cut into the softer material, leaving protected ledges.  It was on these ledges that the Sinagua (literally "without water") built their homes.

Walnut Canyon is about 400 feet deep:

On the loop trail, we dropped into the canyon quickly:

The first view we had of the cliff dwellings was by looking across the canyon to the other side.

We rounded a corner, and suddenly, we came upon the first of several dwellings and storage rooms:

A panel shows how the people lived.  These dwellings are at 6 to 7,000 feet in elevation, so it does get cold here in the winter.

Below is a photo of the ceiling of a dwelling, which shows the black left by the smoke from the fire pit, and also shows areas where chunks of stucco have fallen.

Some of the dwellings were better preserved than others:

 
The canyon is lovely, with a wide variety of plants and interesting rock formations:

This is Gamble oak, named after William Gamble of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia:

On the sunny side of the canyon one finds prickly pair cacti:

As we ascended back to the rim, we saw more dwellings across the gorge:

On top of the rim were dwellings of another period of time, like those we saw on the Grand Canyon rim:

Near these dwellings was a Kiva, or ceremonial pit, partially underground.  At the Museum of Northern Arizona (in Flagstaff), we learned that archaeologists have found remnants of surprisingly colorful and sophisticated murals painted on the walls of one of these Kivas.  Below is a reproduction of the mural, more than 500 years old.  The ladder was used for entering and exiting the Kiva. 

Beautiful!

Mystic Sedona

Why am I writing this at well past midnight, you may ask?  Because I had hot chocolate a couple of hours before bedtime and am still on a caffeine and sugar high.  When will I learn?

When I first heard of Sedona Arizona many years ago, it seemed to be a quiet place, newly discovered.  I pictured in my mind a big open valley surrounded by red rock formations, with a few people doing yoga.  I wish I had seen it then, it must have been beautiful.  It still is, but the large valley is now filled with businesses, shops, housing developments, wide boulevards and gated communities that encroach upon those red rock formations.  It is a bustling metropolis.  Does this seem right to you?  A part of me wishes it had been turned into a national park before the developers took over.

Can you imagine having Sugar Loaf Mountain in your back yard?  I think it should belong to the world.

 Despite all this, I enjoyed visiting Sedona anyway.  It was worth seeing, and there still are areas that remain undeveloped.

We started off the day by driving through Oak Canyon on the road from Flagstaff to Sedona.  Oak Canyon itself is stunning, but offers only a glimpse of what is yet to come.

We quickly found a road that led out of town and to a local park.  The formations here were as beautiful as any we have seen on our trip so far.

 

Do you see the house in the foreground, below?  Why do those people get to live there??

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We came to a road that led to ancient Indian ruins, but you can only travel the road with a guide.  The ruins are on an Indian reservation.  We will have to come back again some day to see those.  We turned around and headed back to town.

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We found a restaurant with huge picture windows where we could eat and watch the sun bathe the rocks in brilliant red and orange hues as it set:

A truly magical place, and we didn't even look for the healing vortexes that people talk about!