Tag: vacation

The second and third days of our trip (and the original reason for going) were spent with my brother Christopher, his wife Jenny, their two kids Miles and Hannah, and Jenny’s parents. We went to Disneyland! And it was super fun. There was a fair bit of walking around, deciding what to do next:

Miles was really excited to go to Cars Land. This is Jenny and him riding one of the rides there:

Aaaand those are the only pics we got of the family we drove all that way to visit. Oops?

For the most part, we stuck to kiddie rides that everybody could go on. Heather’s favorites were the splash pad in A Bug’s Land (where she basically chased the water around) and the carousel. Over the two days, we actually rode carousels six times!

Her least favorite rides were Pirates of the Caribbean and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Both actually scared her quite a bit. She recovered easily, though, once it was all over.

Our second day we actually split from the rest of the crew. Christopher got food poisoning and wasn’t up for Disney. They were all staying a day longer than we were, so they could put it on hold for a day. We could not, so it was just the three of us! The day started out chilly and drizzly, but it was lovely once the rain stopped. Nice and overcast.

In the carousel picture above and the first picture below, you can see Heather’s Ride Face. She’d be looking around, laughing and pointing, right up until a ride started. Then her face went completely blank and she just looked around, as if studying and trying to figure out just what was going on. As soon as the ride stopped, she’d become animated again. Silly girl. (Regarding the first picture below: No, I am not a crazy person. The ferris wheel car was sliding around.)

 

I just want to put in a comment about the Baby Care Center in Disneyland. Of course, the bathrooms all have changing areas. But the actual Baby Care Center was fantastic! We popped in to change Heather’s diaper just as we were leaving, and man, it is posh! The staff are dressed up like old-school child attendants (I don’t know how better to describe it, but think of a traditional nursemaid, I guess) and the whole place is so cozy. There are areas for nursing and places to warm bottles/heat up food for toddlers and the changing tables are deluxe. They actually change the paper liners every time they’re used! It’s also where they take any children who get lost in the park, and I honestly can’t imagine a more soothing atmosphere. And now, moving on to more elephants:

This is the parade. She really liked the floats and even mimicked the princesses’ arm movements. But I think what she’s really pointing at in this picture is those balloons. She went crazy-go-nuts every time she saw one: pointing, babbling, laughing, and running after it. We didn’t get her one because we figured it’d be a pain on the car ride home, but she sure loved them.

I was, of course, nervous about how Heather would handle this trip. Long car rides and sleeping in hotels are not the norm for her. But she was a champ! I think that most of the success of the Disneyland days was due to the fact that we were very mellow about our time at the park.* We got up and went in the mornings, but returned to the hotel for Heather’s nap in the early afternoon. Then we went back to the park for the evening, until Heather needed to go to bed. We certainly could have seen and done more than we did, but it wasn’t worth making Heather miserable over. So we did what we could and were satisfied. Our real reason for going wasn’t to see the parks, after all, but to see family. So it all worked out.

The day we left town, we met up with the whole crew again for lunch in Downtown Disney. It was good to see everybody again, especially since we’d missed them the previous day. All in all, it was a really good trip. Yay Disney! Yay fun! Yay family!

*And the binkie. As always when Heather is on the edge, that was key.

We went down to southern California for most of the week on a short vacation.  We drove down on Sunday and met up with Josh (of Project Runway fame) for dinner.  On Monday we met up with him again to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Traffic in the Los Angeles area is notoriously bad, but what makes it even more fun is when they hold a Grand Prix event on the blocks that surround the place you’re trying to get to.  The Aquarium had been closed over the weekend for the race, but reopened on Monday.  However, they were just starting to take down all of the fencing, barriers, stands, etc. from the race.  So roads were randomly blocked off and everything our GPS unit wanted us to do was simply not possible.  We finally wandered into a member of the event staff at yet another intersection where our only allowed movement was a U-turn.  They were able to tell us how to get to the aquarium.

Heather thought it was pretty great.

For somewhat unknown reasons, the aquarium also has a lorikeet exhibit you can walk through.  You can buy a little cup of nectar to feed the birds.  This wasn’t any of us, just some random other person feeding this bird.

Jess finds the jellyfish to be mesmerizing.

Here’s Heather playing in a touch pool:

Josh meets up with a sea turtle:

And this is Jess’ other favorite thing at aquariums, sea dragons:

And this is where we part ways.

The way home took us right past Four Corners.  So we stopped and took some pictures.  It’s pretty much as you might expect; some lines on the ground to mark the borders of the four states.

It was a nice break from driving, but then it was onward to Grand Canyon National Park.  We would have been driving right near the park and decided we might as well drive through and stop at some lookouts.

This view is from the Desert View Watchtower.  Below is the inside of the watchtower.

Here’s another view from a different lookout.

After we drove through the park our adventures were over and it was time to get home.  From the Grand Canyon we drove to Needles, CA just inside the Arizona border.  We stayed the night in Needles and the next day, Friday, September 7, we finished our driving and returned to Livermore.

The trip had a lot of driving, but we were able to see lots of friends and family and sites that would not have been possible with other forms of travel.  And as a bonus we never had to stand in line waiting to be scanned or groped.

From Colorado Springs we headed southwest to Mesa Verde National Park.

My family went there when I was 9-ish and I have vague memories of that trip (mainly of Mom being scared as the kids climbed the ladders up from Balcony House [I understand why now]).

We stayed at Far View Lodge which is inside the park.  Being inside the park is nice because the closest lodging outside the park is 15-30 minutes away from the park entrance and just driving from the park entrance to where Far View Lodge is takes another 20-30 minutes (and ~15-20 minutes from there to where points of interest are).  So by staying at the lodge you can save a lot of travel time.

We rented a kiva room which is an upgraded room with air conditioning (but that’s the only real difference).  We weren’t sure whether we’d need air conditioning or not at the beginning of September, but it was nice to have during Heather’s afternoon nap times.

We got there late in the evening on Tuesday, September 4.  After we got checked in to our room we had dinner at the Metate Room which is the nicer dinner restaurant.  The place to eat all other meals (and cheaper) is the Far View Terrace Cafe (it’s also open for dinner, but closed before we arrived).  The food is a little pricey for what you get, but then, you are basically in the middle of nowhere so you don’t have a lot of options.

If you wanted to save some money and plan ahead you could easily bring cereal and sandwich stuff (the rooms have mini-fridges).

But enough of the accommodations–on to the attractions:

It was the somewhat off-season when we were there which means you can get multiple tours on the same day.  Tour tickets can be purchased only at a few places (and not in advance).  One of the locations is the Visitor’s Center which happens to be across the street from the Far View Lodge, so walking over when they open at 8am is a great way to make sure you get the tour times you want before they fill up.

We went on tours of two of the cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace in the morning and Balcony House in the afternoon.  We had specifically bought a child-carrier backpack off of Craigslist in which to carry Heather for these adventures and it worked out great.

Cliff Palace

Compared to Balcony House getting to and from Cliff Palace is easy.  You walk down from the mesa along staircases that have been built and then come back up some into the dwelling.  This dwelling faces west, so we did the tour in the morning while it was in the shade.

The tour of Cliff Palace overlapped with Heather’s normal nap time.  She got a bit fussy, but I was able to bounce her and rock her and eventually she fell asleep on my back.

After the Cliff Palace tour we ate lunch and then went back to the room to get Heather a real nap.  Then it was time for our next tour.

Balcony House

Balcony House is harder to get to and from than Cliff Palace.  You start by taking stairs down from the top of the mesa and then you have to climb a ladder to get up into the dwelling.  Once inside you have to squeeze through some fairly narrow passages.  And to get out you have to climb up a few ladders and walk along a very narrow ledge.  This dwelling faces east, so we did it in the afternoon when it was in the shade.

Going through the narrow passages I had to take the backpack off.  For one of them I was able to carry it in front of me and maneuver it through.  But for the other passage we took Heather out and I carried her in my arms while Jess shoved the backpack through in front of her.  Our hands were a little full, so we don’t have any pictures of that process and the pictures I took of the passages themselves aren’t particularly illustrative.  So here’s a picture of Jess and Heather in Balcony House:

Below is the ladder system to get back up to the parking lot.  Surprisingly, it was essentially what I had remembered from when I was a kid.  The ladder rungs are fairly round and very smooth which makes them feel rather slippery.  Then you walk up a narrow path with a short chain rail/fence and then up another ladder.

Oh, I forgot to mention that below you at this point is essentially a several hundred foot drop to the canyon floor.  So I understand why Mom was nervous about this when we were kids.  I was glad to have Heather 5-point harnessed into a backpack.

We also drove around to see some of the sites on the mesa top.  They let you see some of the developments that led to the cliff dwellings; but the cliff dwellings are the real attraction.

Stars

Since Mesa Verde is mostly in the middle of nowhere I thought it’d be a fun place to try taking some pictures of stars.  I was able to take some shots which actually mostly turned out alright before a ranger came and yelled at me.  Despite there being no rules (as far as I could tell) about being out and about at night he was apparently suspicious of my intentions outside at night with a camera on a tripod pointed at the sky (and basically told me to go away).

The picture below would be really cool if the exposure hadn’t been too long.  All the blurriness is from the motion of the Earth rotating (notice the horizon is nice and sharp).  The lights on the horizon (as far as I could determine) are from a small town about 50 miles away.  So that gives you an idea about what light pollution does when trying to look at the sky.

We stayed at Mesa Verde for two nights and then it was time to head home.

We stayed in Colorado Springs from Thursday, August 30 through Tuesday, September 4.

Jess’ brother, Christopher (seen above, in, what I’m told, is a representative pose) and his wife had a new baby, Hannah.  So we, and the rest of Jess’ family (except Cameron who’s serving a mission in the Philippines) came to visit for the baby blessing.

While we were there we went to the Garden of the Gods which is, essentially, a nature preserve.  None of my pictures of the scenery there came out looking very interesting, but here’s a picture of us that Jess’ dad took.

A lot of time was spent hanging out in the back yard with games including croquet and cornhole.

We took Heather to a pool for the first time.  She seemed to enjoy it so long as the interaction was on her terms.  (I was sitting right next to her off camera; the picture was taken by Jess’ dad.)

After the blessing on Sunday I got some pictures while people were still dressed up nice.  I’m still learning how to effectively use my external flash, so many of the pictures using flash aren’t great, but I’m getting better.  The picture of Colton came out quite well.

One night involved a game of Risk which actually almost went all the way through to conclusion, but ended early once the remaining players conceded.  As usual, I’m told, Christopher won.

Another evening involved a rather heated game of Scattergories.  With arguments about what causes an answer to be disqualified.

Here are some more random pictures:

Heather getting acquainted with Papa (Jess’ dad).

Chance’s wife Rachael:

Chance and Rachael’s kids, Maddox and Vivian:

On Tuesday we packed up again and headed on to Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of Colorado.