Friday, May 25th - Monday, May 28th

Since we aim to please our loyal blog readers, we are trying to catch up on the missed blog entries. Before you respond by saying "hey, they're getting off easy by grouping days together," I'll mention that the next phase of our trip was in multi-day increments, so we'll make the write ups mirror the number of days we were in the particular spot. Let us know what you think of this new format...

We arriving in Houston on Friday afternoon. No shorter had we hit the road did we encounter torrential downpours. Ben and I both commented that the rain we saw in this portion of the drive was more rain that we had seen combined in the two years we lived in California. Ahh, gotta love the south in the summer and the wonderful rain storms and humidity that come with them.

Anyway, we stayed with Ben's parents in Houston and his sister Michelle and her boyfriend Justin came down for the weekend to hang out. We had a lot of fun. The boys did some boy things like playing golf and putting together furniture (well, Justin put the furniture together while Ben watched and Lu took a nap, but the Dorfman men were there in spirit). The girls did some girl things like getting our nails done and shopping. Both genders seemed to enjoy their respective gender-specific activities :)

While in Houston, we spent a few hours looking through old photo albums from Ben's childhood. He sure was a cute kid! Once we're near a scanner, I'll have to scan in a photo of him that we found and add it to the blog. He looked straight out of Love Boat - it was quite cute! Some of Robin's friends also threw us a wedding shower, which was a lot of fun. They brought some really great recipes and we had a fun afternoon enjoying each others' company and enjoying some freshly made guacamole - yum!

On Monday morning, we woke up early (well, a little later than we had anticipated but still pretty early) and drove to Mississippi for Camp Dream Street. More to come about that later...

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Wow. We are slackers. Amanda blames it on me, since I'm "the blogger" in the relationship, which I guess is true. I know that a blog that has been active for 17 days and abandoned after day 3 is pretty pathetic, so we'll try to get a few posts up here for y'all. This was from two Thursdays ago.

We started the day in Santa Fe over breakfast with Shosh and her brother Steven. We ate at a place called Tecolate (their menu proudly states "good food - no bread") and I had the "Sheepherder's Breakfast" which came with 2 different types of chili and was so spicy the waitress brought me a pitcher of water with a straw. Which I used.

We then walked around the historic (read: touristy) part of town for a few hours and really enjoyed ourselves. The shops and art galleries were all very charming and it would have been great if we could have spent at least another day there. I saw a great little guitar shop that I went into with the idea of playing around with one or two of them before I realized I don't really play well enough to walk into a guitar shop and play around with really expensive guitars. It was cool, though.

We left Santa Fe and hit the Texas state line around 5:00, at which point we got out and took the picture posted below. We then stopped in Amarillo to check out the Cadillac Ranch. For those of you who don't know, the Cadillac Ranch is a weird piece of art in a cow pasture. There are about 8 or so Cadillacs that are upended into the ground, sticking straight up in the air. I don't know the history, but some guy just decided to plant a bunch of Caddys in a field face first a number of years ago. They used to be painted blue (according to the road trip book we'd been consulting, which may have explained the history, but we've already given it back to our friend Tracy who lent it to us), but evidently some punk kids have been spraypainting them for God knows how long, because now they look like a New York City subway car circa 1982. Not that I ever saw a New York City subway car in 1982, but you get my drift. Actually, there was some teenage girl out there spraypainting while we were there, and she gave us a pretty good dinner recommendation. Next time you're in Amarillo, stop at Blue Sky for a damn good burger.

After dinner it was just a dark drive through farm country on our way to Wichita Falls, where we found a room at the coolest Howard Johnson hotel I've ever seen. They had a pool, gym, shuffleboard court, and an arcade, all in the lobby. The whole place smelled like chlorine. It was great, but I enjoy the smell of chlorine. If you don't, you might not have liked the hotel.

Friday entailed a really REALLY boring drive to Houston, mostly through rain. We'll post more about the weekend in Houston, as well as our week at Camp Dream Street, in a little while. This should get you through until then. And again, sorry for the delay.

All the Livelong Day

Just crossed into the promised land. Yee-haw! Unfortunately the camera battery just died, so the cell phone camera will have to do for awhile.

On the Road Again

Filling up with some cucumber water before leaving Santa Fe, which was awesome! Hopefully we'll have some internet access in Wichita Falls tonight.

Wednesday - 5/23/07

Today was great. No car trouble, no shady B&B issues to deal with, just smooth sailing and beautiful scenery. And a little rain, but nothing serious.

(I'm telling you, Amanda's description of the Bed & Breakfast situation did not begin to describe how scared I was. I've seen way too many horror movies not to have been crapping my pants while we were literally wandering around the pitch black surroundings of a house in the middle of nowhere right off the side of the highway - I felt like we were in an Eli Roth movie or something.)

We woke up and hit the Petrified Forest National Park around 8:00. No Grand Canyon, but wow. Really cool. And freezing. When you think about driving through Arizona and New Mexico in the Summer, you think shorts, right? Think again. We've been freezing our butts off the whole time. Anyway, the Petrified Forest was great. We drove from the South end to the Painted Desert at the North end (about 26 miles), and it all looked like different planets from Star Wars. The Painted Desert was absolutely beautiful, and pictures really don't do it justice, but here's one anyway.

On the way from the Painted Desert to Santa Fe, we made a few stops. First was the famous El Rancho hotel in Gallup, NM, where old-time movie actors like Ronald Reagan (the actor!?!), Gregory Peck, and Jackie Cooper used to stay while filming Westerns. We looked around a bit and had lunch there. All of the menu items were named after famous actors. I had the John Wayne, Amanda had the Burt Lancaster.

We also made a stop in Albuquerque, and we were really glad we did. They have this historic section of town called "Old Town," which we walked around in and went into a few shops. It was really quaint and comfortable (aside from the sporadic rain), and reminded me a lot of Oxford, MS, but with a Southwestern flair.


We got to Santa Fe around 6:30, and checked into our hotel - the Hilton - INTERNET ACCESS!! After checking email, updating the blog a bit, and changing clothes, we headed out for dinner. Amanda found this great Mexican place called The Shed, and afterwards we headed over to this bar called The Cowgirl where an alt-country band was playing. If I wasn't still feeling sick we'd probably still be there, but after a beer, I was just ready to head back to the hotel. All I could think about while we were there was our cold walk back (it was maybe 2 blocks, but I'm a huge wuss).

Tomorrow we're going to wake up and have breakfast and spend a few hours walking around this area of town, where there are a lot of art galleries, shops, cafes, and even the oldest church in the United States. Hopefully it will be a bit warmer.

Tuesday, 5/22/07

This is Amanda blogging today, so it's going to sound a little different (and probably a little less humorous than Ben, but I'll give it my best shot). Today started off bright and early with Ben groaning because he felt sick. Shockingly, there was no drug store within 100 miles of the Grand Canyon, so he just toughed it out for most of the day.

Our day began with a hearty breakfast at the Bright Angel Lodge, followed by a guided tour of the Western Rim of the Grand Canyon with a final destination at Hermit's Rest. This is an old lodge that was used long ago for stops on guided wagon train tours. Now, it's prime real estate for selling hot chocolate and ugly tee-shirts. I think our tour guide was a little messed up in the head because he kept recommending that we buy the book "Death in the Canyon." Fortunately, we came away from the tour alive, and the views were absolutely amazing.

We were hoping to go for a short hike after the tour, but due to rain (and a weird hail storm!), we passed up the hike in lieu of a talk from a park ranger. I think the ranger might have been drunk because he kept slurring his words. The stories were still pretty cool and told us (again) about some famous deaths in the Canyon. (I started to notice a weird pattern at this point...)

Our Grand Canyon visit ended with a drive to the Desert Viewpoint. We climbed the lookout tower, which had spectacular views of the canyon, but the rain and haze made it a tough to see very far in the distance. Regardless of the crummy weather, our trip to the Grand Canyon was great!

After leaving the park, we stopped for a late lunch of Navajo tacos at the Anasazi Inn. (See below for details.)

We decided to take a side trip to the Wupatki National Monument and the Sunset Crater Volcano. As we turned down a small road towards Wupatki, we quickly realized that we we were on a 30+ mile journey down an unpaved road. We laughed about the situation and enjoyed the drive through a beautiful countryside. The monument was really cool and told the story of an ancient pueblo village. We then headed for the Sunset Crater but didn't realize where it was and drove right past. Fortunately, we got some cool shots from the car of the volcanic rocks.

We tried to stop off at the Meteor Crater but we didn't arrive until around 6pm, and by that time, it was closed :( I guess we don't have good luck with craters.

Our next stop was the infamous Winslow, AZ. You may be wondering what is so special about Winslow. Well, for all you Eagles fans, the tiny town is featured in the famous song "Take it Easy." Ben and I took a bunch of photos "on a corner in Winslow, AZ." Fun fun fun.

The day ended in Holbrook, AZ, which is a place that I wouldn't recommend visiting. We were supposed to stay at a cute bed and breakfast, but we showed up at the house, and it was totally dark. We walked all around the property and Ben thought we were going to die, so we decided to check into the Comfort Inn instead.

Day 2 was great. We saw some incredible sites, saw some weird places and had a great time!

Monday - 5/21/07

After going to sleep around 12:30 a.m., the beeping alarm at 6:00 a.m. was NOT fun. We got up, though, dutifully, and loaded the rest of the bags into the car, and we were off and running at 7:15. Luckily, we never really hit too much traffic (outside of an accident near San Bernadino), and the first half of the drive was rather uneventful. We stopped to have a picnic lunch at Moabi Regional Park, just inside the California/Arizona border, then crossed over into Arizona. This was where things got interesting.

The check engine light came on in Amanda's car. Somewhere, Howard is laughing to himself (or maybe to the people around him). Nothing really seemed to be wrong, but just to be safe, we drove to the Toyota dealership in Flagstaff to have it checked out. We sat there for about 2 hours while they reset the computer in the car, which cleared everything right up, and we hightailed it up to the Grand Canyon, racing against time in order to get there before sunset. Amanda really showed her inner Ricky Bobby and got us there just under the wire.

Words really cannot describe how amazing the Grand Canyon is. We walked around Mather Point and watched the Sun go down (from the East side, unfortunately, so the view wasn't as spectacular as it could have been), but it was simply majestic. It is almost incomprehensible how something like this could just be there in the middle of the desert. We then checked into our hotel, the El Tovar lodge, and caught the season finale of Heroes (yes, I am a dork) before dinner.

We just got to our hotel in Santa Fe and finally got some internet access, so we will get the next couple of reports posted later tonight. We're starving, so we're off to dinner. Safe travels, and check back with us soon for more updates!!