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Road Trip 2018: Dickerson Family Reunion – Glen Canyon Dam, Antelope Canyon, & Old Paria

September 22, 2018 12:02 pm

On August 1 we had a reservation to visit Antelope Canyon outside of Page, Arizona.

Glen Canyon Dam

So I, Jess, and the girls headed off early to visit Glen Canyon Dam on our way.

In this picture, Corinne refuses to look at the camera and Jess has just poked Heather in the eye with her sunglasses, but doesn’t realize it yet:

Antelope Canyon

After our dam tour we headed in to Page for lunch and ice-cream at Slackers. Then it was out to the staging area for our Antelope Canyon tour. We got there, the rest of the family arrived, and then it started pouring, thundering, and lightning-ing. Then, after we all got flash-flood warning alerts on our phones, they canceled the tour. So no Antelope Canyon for us. Which was frustrating as I had booked it something like 6 months ago and was looking forward to it.

Old Paria

After being rained out at Antelope Canyon we needed to come up with something else to do. We decided to take a look at what’s left of Old Paria–a ghost town that my family visited when I was growing up that has since been burned down by vandals. On the drive back up in to Utah we stopped at Big Water Visitor Center to let the girls out for a bit. It was closed, but had some outdoors exhibits we could still look at about dinosaurs and the geological history of the area.

We got to the trailhead for Old Paria just as the rest of the group was heading in, so we joined up with the back of the caravan.

The dirt road was in decent shape most of the way out to a picnic area. We did have to cross one wash, but it was manageable even with 2-wheel-drive minivans, but then the road crosses the river bed which was not going to happen in our vehicles. So we parked there and walked.

(The guy in the green shirt isn’t with our group.)

Here’s us sort of recreating an old picture from when my family visited the same Paria Cemetery when I was growing up. If someone gets me that picture I’ll put it up too, but I don’t have it.

It started raining with some thunder while we were at the cemetery. So we turned around to head back to the vehicles.

Road Trip 2018: Dickerson Family Reunion – Zion National Park

11:36 am

Our family vacation this year was a road trip across across Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and Idaho (and necessarily crossing Nevada to return home).

On July 29 we met up with most of the rest of my family outside of Zion National Park for a family reunion which was originally planned as a retirement celebration for Dad.

We all stayed in a vacation rental out past the east entrance of the park. Lots of room for cousins to run around.

On July 31st we went in to Zion National Park, briefly. We drove in, parked, got on the shuttle, and rode it up to the Narrows station. We let the girls play in the water at the mouth of the Narrows for a little while.

Then we hopped back on the shuttle with the intent of doing one of the short, child-friendly hikes. Instead, Corinne completely overheated and we stopped at the lodge in order to find some air conditioning and get her cooled down again. After which we decided we better just get heading back to the house. So that was our trip to ZNP. Better luck next time.

Out to Fort Bragg

April 22, 2018 4:59 pm

During Heather’s Spring Break we took a short trip out to the Mendocino coast at Fort Bragg. We drove out on April 1st after our Easter Egg Hunt.

We stayed at a hotel right on the beach, so we were able to walk down and play until tired or cold and then walk back and get cleaned up and warm. It worked out well for casual beaching.

It was also right next to the Pudding Creek Trestle Bridge which is kind of neat. It used to have logging trains drive over it, but it’s since been converted to a pedestrian bridge.

I went out to take some pictures as night. None of them came out amazingly well, but they’re interesting as they are.

On Monday, April 2nd we rode the Skunk Train (so named because of the smell the old coal-powered, oil-heated trains used to make). It runs up in to the hills from the coast and back. The station has a large model train display which we enjoyed looking at. I’m not convinced the people running it completely believed us when we reported a derailment but said we had nothing to do with it. But we really didn’t, the girls were a good 10 feet away when we saw it happen.

On Tuesday April 3 we went to Point Cabrillo Light Station. This old, though still functioning, lighthouse has a few buildings on the property. You can actually rent the 3 keepers’ houses (keeper and assistants) to stay in. It looks quite well maintained. Unlike at Battery Point, however, you can’t go up into the light room.

It was actually rather busy there. I had to wait a fair while to snap the above picture with no one in it. I managed to snap it in a short window of just a few minutes before people wandered through the shot again.

On our last day, before heading back, we went to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens which worked out better than our trip to the Sonoma Horticultural Gardens (of Doom) back in 2011.

Corinne watches as Heather enters the light.

Heather found a comfortable place to grow.

Then it was back in the van for the drive home.

Lick Observatory

December 28, 2017 1:40 pm

Lick Observatory is a University of California observatory nearby us on the mountains above San Jose.

After Thanksgiving we tried to drive out to the observatory. Despite countermeasures, carsickness killed the trip about a fifth of the way there. After Christmas we tried again, but instead of driving the mountain road all the way from Livermore we drove the highway route around in to San Jose and then up the shorter mountain road. This time we made it.

Corinne was a demon in the visitor’s center and had to be taken outside. She did manage to stay quiet on the Lick Refractor tour for about 10 minutes before she had to be taken out.

The Lick Refractor is mostly a historical relic. They use it for tours, public viewing nights, and training students.

This is the same road at the top and bottom of the picture. The biker went across the bottom just a minute or so before taking that switch back. That’s the kind of driving you have to do to visit the observatory.

The haze was settled in to the valleys and I thought the way the ridges stacked up looked pretty neat, but I don’t think my pictures do it justice.

Christmas 2017

December 25, 2017 9:30 am

Heather had a Holiday Concert for school on the 18th. She had a blast. The program was all 4 kindergarten classes at her school so the multi-purpose room was packed. Luckily she’s a head taller than most of the other kids in her class so I was still able to get a couple pictures of her through the crowd.

Then it was quickly in to Christmas Eve with our own little “program.” Heather read us “Santa from Cincinnati”:

After the program the girls opened their presents for each other:

Corinne fell asleep clutching the trowel from the garden tool set. Heather woke up at no-one-knows-but-possibly-2-something and colored in about 3 feet of her 10-foot space coloring roll.

After bed Santa arrived bringing a fully edible dig site for Heather:

And in the very early morning we snapped an obligatory don’t-move-yet shot:

You’ll notice it is still dark outside. Heather had been up possibly since as early as 2-something, but no later than 4. Corinne was up starting at 4:30. We held them off until 6:30, but couldn’t keep them contained any longer.