Road Trip 2021 Day 9 (232 miles)

This is my last post about our 2021 road trip! We drove from Oakland to Southern Oregon, stopping at the Oregon Vortex. It’s a mysterious spot in southern Oregon, a lot like Confusion Hill in California.

And we spent the night in a cool historic hotel in Southern Oregon. It was probably haunted.

And the next day we drove home (407 miles if you were wondering)! I hope you enjoyed this trip report. Until next time!

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Road Trip 2021 Day 8 (251 miles)

By day 8 we are finally back in a climate that agrees with us! We spent most of our day in Yosemite. The one-way roads in the valley forced us to spend even more time, because I remember having to backtrack a few times. This first photo is just inside Yosemite’s eastern entrance, at Olmsted Point.

Yosemite is beautiful, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave Kira out of most of the photos.

Sorry that photo isn’t very beautiful, but I saw bears!

And since we entered the park through a less-popular entrance, we grabbed our sign photo on the way out!

We’re getting closer and closer to home, but rather than getting on I-5 today, we ventured a little further and caught a baseball game in Oakland tonight!

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Road Trip 2021 Day 6 (326 miles)

We left the Cameron Trading Post and entered the Grand Canyon National Park at the easternmost entrance.

First stop (after the sign) was Desert View Watchtower

And we explored around the South Rim Visitors Center!

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon three times now, but it was my sister’s first visit. She left disappointed, because smog from recent wildfires made the canyon look quite flat.

Leaving the canyon, we headed toward Vegas. I wanted to stay on the strip, but sister was afraid of covid, so we ended up in Henderson, NV. We stopped for lunch in Kingman, AZ at Culvers, one of my favorite fast food stops that we don’t have in Washington.

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Road Trip 2021 Day 5 (379 miles)

I’m back! Writing about a vacation that’s almost two years old now. I’ve tried to find inspiration to continue writing about this vacation, but it’s been hard to find. Honestly, it’s because the vacation got pretty unpleasant. We drove too much, sister and I didn’t always agree, and the desert climate and elevation got to be a bit much for these Seattleites. But I got some nice photos, so I want to share them.

We left Monticello, UT and headed to Mesa Verde National Park.

Then it was onto the Four Corners Monument, where you have the opportunity to be in four states at once!

Then a long, long drive through a remote area, including Monument Valley.

Our hotel for the night was the Cameron Trading Post, which I can recommend highly. It is super-close to the eastern entrance of Grand Canyon NP, and it has a nice gift shop and restaurant.

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Road Trip 2021 Day 4 (271 miles)

Let’s get back on the road! If you’ve been following along, I’m sorry for the delay in this post. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to say about this day. Perhaps it’s because the Arches defy description. But I’m finally ready to share this leg of our journey with you.

Our route from Vernal, UT to the Arches National Park took us through the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. They had adorable street signs.

We drove on the stegosaurus highway for a while, then continued through Colorado before going back into Utah. The drive through Colorado was surprisingly scenic. I attempted to capture a photo after we drove over some mountains.

Yeah, you can’t really tell in the photo how high and twisty it was. We arrived in Moab around lunchtime. I will mention now that we were there on Labor Day. Arches was having a predictably busy weekend and had stopped letting people into the Park when we arrived in Moab. But we were pretty confident that it would reopen before the end of the day. And besides, we had tummies to fill! We found a pizza place with dining on the sidewalk, and while we were dining we counted license plates from 45 states and the District of Columbia! (sorry I can’t remember which states we were missing, but by the end of our road trip we found every state except Hawaii, and sister saw that after she dropped me off!)

We ate and shopped in Moab and finally made it into the park around 2:30, which is honestly earlier than I expected.

We spent almost 4 hours in the park driving around and taking short walks. It would have been really hard to experience this park with less time than that. But we had a lovely time, and left as the sun was dipping behind some of the tall rocks and towers.

As mentioned above, the Arches defy description. So here are my photos:

we took a little hike to the Double Arch

We are not fit enough to hike to Delicate Arch. This is from the viewpoint as far as my camera can zoom.

And that’s our visit to Arches! Because we had a lot of driving planned for Day 5, we extended Day 4 by sleeping about an hour outside Arches in Monticello, UT. I found a charming inn named the Grist Mill, where sister and I had separate rooms in a suite (that unfortunately shared a climate control; sister disagreed on setting and I got very little sleep because I was too warm), and was attached to a tasty cafe. A calm way to end the day.

I hope to report soon on Day 5!

PS: a surprise arch on the drive to Monticello!

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Road Trip 2021 Day 3 (190 miles)

We left Salt Lake City on Sunday morning. Our first stop was in Park City at the Utah Olympic Park.

The park was just barely opening when we arrived, and the first thing open was the Ski Museum. The history of competitive skiing is not very interesting, but the exhibit on 30 years of ski fashion was delightful!

Upstairs is a museum dedicated to the 2002 Winter Olympics.

It was fun to be reminded of the highlights of the 2002 Games. My favorite parts were getting to pick up a curling stone, and this display of pins.

We then left the museum and went outside to look at the ski jump hills. The Canadian Ski Jump team was just starting to get warmed up to practice jumping into the pool (we didn’t get to see them jump, they were just stretching)

Then we left the Utah Olympic Park and headed to the Park City Mountain Resort. We rode both the Mountain Coaster and the Alpine Slide. You can’t carry anything onto the rides, so the camera got left in the car. Both rides were pretty fun, but I think I was too nervous to go at top speed.

After we slid down the mountain, we went into the town of Park City, but by the time we found a place to park, we decided we didn’t have time to do anything. So we drove on. We waited in the longest Wendy’s line ever in Heber City, we stopped for gas and Icees in Vernal, and finally we arrived at the Dinosaur National Monument!

We saw a lot of dinosaurs yesterday in Ogden, but today we got to see real dinosaurs! There are huge numbers of fossils in this area, probably due to a flood that killed a lot of dinosaurs at the same time. The paleontologist that discovered them thought it would be a good idea to leave some of them in the rock so visitors would know what it’s like to discover fossils in the rocks. What a great idea!

So from the Visitors Center we boarded a tram…

…to the Quarry Exhibit Hall. A big rock wall full of dinosaur bones! They were a bit tricky to photograph, but here are my attempts.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t sure dinosaurs were real until I saw these fossils. I’ve felt this kind of magic before in my travels, seeing a place in real life that you’ve only before seen in pictures and movies. Except this time it wasn’t a place, but living creatures.

But there’s more to the Dinosaur National Monument than fossils. We drove through just a small portion of the monument on Cub Creek Road, with the guidance of a $1 brochure from the Visitors Center.

The most interesting part of the drive were the petroglyphs, carvings in the rocks made by the Fremont People more than a thousand years ago.

At the end of the road was the cabin of Josie Bassett Morris, who lived alone on this land for about 50 years.

Then we headed back to Vernal for dinner and bed. It was a very comfortable little town, making the journey out to the monument one of the best parts of our road trip. I can definitely recommend it be added to your travel bucket list.

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Road Trip 2021 Day 2 (361 miles)

I woke up in Boise and had a nice tourist moment on the way to breakfast.

My sister opted for hotel breakfast rather than my walk across the parking lot to Cracker Barrel. And since she missed this photo op, she picked another one in Idaho, somewhere in Twin Falls. We still aren’t sure which falls are the Twin Falls, but we stopped at Shoshone Falls.

Our next stop is really nerdy. I wanted to stop at the Golden Spike National Historic Park at Promontory Point, Utah. It’s where the transcontinental railroad was completed.

And weren’t we lucky that the reenactment ceremony started as soon as we arrived, and that we caught the last reenactment of the season?

Um, maybe we weren’t that lucky. The reenactment was pretty boring, much as I imagine it would have been in 1869. I voted not to watch the whole thing, and beat the crowds back into the museum.

Are you wondering why Kira chose this outfit today? It’s the Maplelea Paleontologist Set, and after a yummy lunch (Polynesian plate lunch from Mo’ Bettahs), we found dinosaurs in Ogden, UT!

At Ogden’s George S Eccles Dinosaur Park, there are acres of dinosaur replicas, as well as a natural history museum. Fun and educational.

I took lots and lots of photos of the dinosaurs, but I think I’ll stop here. We spent the night in Salt Lake City. Sister skipped dinner, and I had food attempting to be Belgian (it failed). Comfortable beds at the Sheraton, but our room was impossibly noisy.

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Road Trip 2021 Day 1 (494 miles)

Another summer coping with covid = another road trip with my sister! If you want more stuff to read, here are the posts from last summer’s road trip. Just like last year, the journey started with a little plane ride. But while I brought along GOTY 2020 Joss last year, this year I brought GOTY 2021 Kira!

Kira says Ciao! before we leave home

all packed and ready

aboard the plane

flying past our house…

…and into Seattle

And those are the only photos I have of Kira on this first day. In fact, I don’t have many pictures from the first day at all. We drove all the way from Seattle to Boise, which would be almost eight hours without stopping. We made a couple stops: first in North Bend, WA for groceries, second in Yakima, WA for lunch at Sonic (and also McDonalds because the bathroom at Sonic was closed), third in Hermiston, OR for gas, and finally in Boise.

In Boise we got dinner (steak from a takeout container!), ate it at a picnic table around the corner from the Capitol building, and strolled down the Freak Alley Gallery. We spent the night at a pretty lame hotel near the freeway.

The road trip will continue in my next post!

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Welcome Kira (and a little book review)

Girl of the Year 2021 is here! Her name is Kira Bailey, and I just finished reading her first book, Kira Down Under. I’m excited to introduce this doll and book to you!

As you may guess from the title, American Girl Kira takes a trip to Australia. She is going to spend some time with her Aunt Mamie, her deceased father’s mother’s sister. Mamie is a veterinarian, and she and her wife (Kira calls her Auntie Lynette) run the Bailey Wildlife Sanctuary. At the sanctuary, they are taking care of all sorts of cool Australian animals. Of these, you can buy your dolls koalas, kangaroos, and wombats. Here are some of my girls wearing Kira’s outfits, and playing with the Animal Exam Table.

And that’s Kira Down Under! I’d like to say I’m kidding, but this book spends most of its 123 pages describing life at the sanctuary. I found the plot climax extremely predictable (but since this book is so new, I’m going to leave out the spoilers). Kira’s relationship with Alexis was pretty interesting. Alexis was so eager for a girl her age to come live at the sanctuary, that she and Kira bonded really quickly. That makes the friendship pretty fragile, but Kira and Alexis both seem like really caring girls, so I think it’ll stay strong for a while. I think we’ll see more of Alexis in Kira’s second book.

I have a few more things to say about the book. There are some lovely full-page illustrations, but they’re a bit too cartoonish for my taste. At the end of the book, there’s a few pages about a real girl who works with koalas, and a few more pages about the author’s research in Australia. Both of these sections are my favorite part of the book.

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