Hey, this is our third installment on this trip. We realized we forgot to mention a couple of other highlights from LA. One of the nights we were there we also went to Little Japan, which is near the downtown core. It’s such a cool little neighbourhood and really looks like the photos we’ve seen of a downtown Japanish neighbourhood... in Japan, well you know what we mean. Also, we stayed in this cool Mexican neighbourhood, where no one seemed to speak English, except the guy at the local laundromat, who cleaned our clothes for us.
Also, at the Doubletree we stayed at, every morning they charged us a different price for breakfast, depending on how old they decided our children were; ranging from all three being under 10, to not charging for the kids at all.
The train station in LA (Union) was an absolutely gorgeous structure. The wait for the train was unremarkable, except that everybody stood in this really long, organized line until it was time to board. Then all hell broke loose and all started running in a chaotic way to get on the train.
ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO:
So the night on the train from LA to Flagstaff, Arizona, was our worst so far. It was packed, so we didn’t have as much room to spread out, plus there was a group of people in our car who were talking noisily, laughing about how they’d never been on a train before, getting up and moving around, etc. Now we know what you’re imagining, a group of teens or twenty somethings. But no. These were a bunch of obnoxious, loud, silly and inconsiderate.... senior citizens.
We got off the train in Flagstaff at about 6 in the morning (the early arrival time also contributed to the yuckiness of the ride). We found a greasy spoon and had breakfast there and received a recommendation from the waiter who told us that if we wanted to get really good coffee, we should really go somewhere else called Macy’s, the crunchy granola, universityish hang out. It was totally cool and really did make the best coffee we’ve had so far.
We headed off to Grand Canyon, in yet another SUV (no not hybrid....burn fuel, yay!!). The Grand Canyon is such an awesome experience. You have no idea you are approaching something so spectacular until the moment you arrive and see it. We only looked at it briefly that first day, as a thunderstorm broke out, and we had been told by the rangers that you can’t be near the rim during lightening. After the rain we set up camp, in a gorgeous campground. Note: this was after Noah had a “hysterical hissy fit” (his words) when we were briefly considering hotel-ing instead of camping because of the rain.
During the two days at the Grand Canyon, we went on hikes each day. The first, Bright Angel Trail, was more touristy but the views were spectacular. On the second day we did a much longer and more rigorous trail, called the South Kaibob trail. There were much fewer people, and the views were even more spectacular. By the end we were exhausted, low on our water and a bit dehydrated, but exhilarated by our adventure. We refilled our water bottles at the top and each drank like a litre or so. On that second hike we went 4 miles down into the canyon, where it was close to 40 degrees celsius, but an extremely dry heat. Rob kept going on and on about how he loves dry heat. The hard part about hiking the Grand Canyon is that the easy part is when you’re going down, and the hard part is the return, so it can be deceiving for people. We learned that 250 people need to be rescued from the canyon each year.
On the first day we also went to an Imax movie about the Grand Canyon made by the National Geographic Society. It focused more on some of the history of the early discoverers of the canyon. Much of it was a dramatization of these early explorers, using replicas of the original boats. So we got to see some amazing white water rafting on fairly rickety looking boats, and the cinematography was one of the highlights of the movie.
Words can’t describe how beautiful the Grand Canyon is; it should be on a list of the things you need to do before you die or perhaps before you catch your next cold.
The last day in Arizona we spent back in Flagstaff getting hair cuts for Rob, Diane, Noah and Aaron (i.e. not for Aviva!). Aaron and Rob both had their hair cut by a stylist who had just gotten out of jail. We learned this by eavesdropping on a series of conversations. The recent trip to jail didn’t seem to be a problem, as both of them got great cuts anyway! Noah and Diane’s stylist also gave great haircuts, despite not having gone to jail recently. Of course we also returned to Macy’s for more awesome coffee and an incredible vegan “chicken” sandwich. Next we headed off on Route 66 to New Mexico.
One of our pit stops along Route 66 was Winslow, Arizona where we committed obscene touristiness. We took a picture of ourselves “...standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.....”. And that is all we did in Winslow, Arizona, ‘cause it really ain’t “such a fine site to see”. In fact, route 66 was kind of a grave yard of has-been towns. It was more sad than interesting.
We had intended to go to Santa Fe next, where we had a reservation in yet another campground, however, by the time we got to Albuquerque it was really late, so instead of making “a left toyn in Albakoyki”(*Bugs Bunny) we decided to stay in Albuquerque. It was a pleasant surprise, as so many had told us that we shouldn’t bother with Albuquerque, we should just go straight to Santa Fe. The first and only day that we had there, we went to the museum of Atomic Energy. This older vet/volunteer gave us a whole private guided tour of the entire museum, including how atomic energy works, the history of the creation of the atom bomb, the testing that went on in New Mexico, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Cold War.
On our way to dinner, we discovered that Noah’s toe, which he had been complaining about for a day already, seemed to be infected. So....we trotted off to the local pediatric urgent care centre at the University of New Mexico. Here’s the story that Noah and Diane told Aviva about what happened during that visit: an intern came in and examined Noah. She began stabbing Noah repeatedly in the toe to try to drain it. There was blood everywhere, so Noah started screaming really loudly and hyperventilating. They had to give him oxygen. Then the pediatrician came in and said “What the hell are you doing?!” to the intern, who burst into tears. The End. Here’s what actually happened: the intern drained Noah’s toe successfully and sent him off with a prescription of antibiotics and a dinner recommendation at a local New Mexican restaurant, which turned out to be outstanding, just as the care at the hospital had been.
What was even more outstanding, was the fact that Noah swallowed his first couple of capsule pills! He was so proud of himself.
The next day, we caught the train back to Chicago. What we mean by “caught” is: first we missed the train in Albuquerque. And there is only one train per day. We had arranged to drop the car off at the train station Hertz. Only problem: there is no Hertz at the train station. So as we stood on the train tracks with the train rolling away, with the kids...and Diane, all wailing, the conductor shouted to us that we could try to catch them in Las Vegas, New Mexico, two stops ahead. So we raced the clock to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico, making arrangements with Hertz along the way. We got there with 45 minutes to spare, when Rob and Diane got the bright idea that we now had enough time to go and get some food. Rob and Aaron took off to get burritos for the family at the local bakery, and when they returned not 10 minutes later Diane was frantic since the train was already pulling in. As we raced once again to get on that same train, Rob tossed the car keys to the train station attendant and we managed to make it in the nick of time.
We took the train overnight to Chicago, arriving in time to make our Second City reservation for that evening. In case our kids didn’t already know how to swear and talk rudely about the birds and the bees, Second City completed their education. It was actually another highlight of the trip; we all laughed our heads off, even if it was quite raunchy and political as well as extremely politically incorrect.
After breakfast and a morning stroll on the Magnificent Mile (the most elegant stretch of Michigan Ave in Chicago) where we got our next read aloud book in our series and a shi-shi picnic lunch (chevre, baguette, and jelly beans) we are now on the train to Detroit, once again annoying our co-passengers with our loud, obnoxious behaviour.
Tomorrow we drive our mini-van back to Toronto.
Talk to you later,
RANAD (always capitalized)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
California
August 13-18, 2008
So we got to San Francisco-ish by train, but we needed to take an Amtrak bus to get to the Caltrain to get to the shuttle van, to get to our hotel. Somewhere along this foray into various forms of transportation, during a mad dash to catch said Caltrain, Aaron unfortunately left his camera on the Amtrak bus seat, never to be seen again. This was very upsetting, as he had had it since his 10th birthday :(. It was very late so we all hit the sac without dinner :( (again) Oh, but first we all washed up because we hadn’t bathed since the morning we had left Chicago (which was 5 days).
The first day in San Francisco, we took a shuttle to the airport to take the air train to a van which took us to a car rental place. Yes folks, despite our best laid plans to use only public transit, the various systems were going to be so cumbersome and expensive in San Francisco, that it turned out to be considerably cheaper and more convenient to simply rent a car for the three days here.
So, next we made our way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a Bay Cruise. It was a bit cheesy, and they probably violated several codes by jamming 100’s of people onto a small boat, but we actually liked it (especially the cheesiness). We learned a lot about the history of San Francisco, e.g., people from San Francisco hate the term “Frisco”, the Golden Gate was the first construction site that used a safety net, and Alcatraz means pelican in Spanish. There were windsurfers on the bay and it was a gorgeous day. That first night we went for dinner in China Town followed by Gelato on the way back. It was excellent. We could have had Budweiser beer flavoured ice cream, sesame flavoured, avocado, etc. but we all stuck to more traditional flavours, On our way back to the hotel we drove down Lombard Street. As a man we met on the train said “You haven’t seen San Francisco till you’ve looked down the hood of your car and not been able to see the road beneath you”.
After stealing oranges and bananas from our breakfast buffets and catching a few minutes of the China vs. U.S. men’s basketball game, (summer Olympics) we headed off to Berkeley to eat lunch at a restaurant called Chez Panisse. This was a very special experience for Aviva because when she was little she used to love to read this book called “Fanny at Chez Panisse” all about the owner’s daughter. Aviva had this book read to her so often by Rob and Diane that we all started calling it “the bible”. The restaurant had outstanding food, although pretty pricey. After eating they even let us tour their really nice kitchen. We spent the afternoon in Berkeley and saw a protest by Tibetans against China’s oppression of Tibet. Their have been a lot of such protests with the Olympics, but this one was quite large (and some of the speeches were in Tibetan). We had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and watched what we thought was “Turkish Idol”. We drove home via the “Golden Gate Bridge” Damn those aliens they’re at it again go away- away I tell you!!!!!!!!!!
The next day we headed straight to the Cable Car museum and saw how the whole cable car system runs from that building and we also learned about the history of the cable car. We then went on an actual cable car along California street. We rode the whole line hanging the side poles like the true tourists we are. It was not that long a ride so we walked back. Next we went to a fortune cookie “factory” in a sketchy looking back alley in Chinatown. This wasn’t really a factory sorta just three little old people at two fortune cookie machines; there hands whizzing away at hydraulic speed. Which reminds us, Aviva has discovered that she has hydraulic force; but that’s a different story. We got some samples of chocolate and strawberry flavoured fortune cookies and bought sesame cookies and fortune cookies. We opted not to buy the bag labelled “adult fortune cookies”. We went to little Italy and ate dinner with no dessert because we’d had some hydraulic flavoured cookies and mummy and daddy thought that was enough for one day.
The last day of San Francisco...otherwise entitled “Noah Gets His Cast Taken Off” (remember, he broke his pinky in a freak portaging incident in Algonquin). The doctor thwacked off his cast with a large jackhammer and replaced it with buddy taping. Meanwhile... Rob and Aaron tried one more time to find Aaron’s camera with Amtrak, while Aviva changed our GPS to shout directions at us in Spanish.
As you may know our sole passion and purpose in life is to destroy pollute and wreak havoc on the environment as much as humanly possible in our short time on this planet. Our reputation is at stake here people! So...we rented a non-hybrid SUV for our loooooong ride down the pristine coast to Big Sur on route 1 (This was where some of the fires had happened in Calif.). We just thought that now would be a good time to mention that everything up until now that we have written in this very blog that you few people are reading has been grammatically correct and not awkward in the least!!!!! That’s all.
The coast line was spooky and SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!! That was an alliteration... heh heh heh. Actually as Aaron pointed out it was more on the eerie side than spooky. The waves were crashing against the rocks down below, the fog lingering in the cool air. This made it very difficult to navigate on the narrow winding roads. It quite reminded us of our drive in Scotland to Inverness (see summer 2006) except this time we chose to drive on the right side of the road. COWS! we saw cows grazing by the ocean. Cows are Diane’s friends.
We arrived in Big Sur and pitched camp in darkness, trying to find soft ground to put the stakes into. Eventually we came up with some pretty creative solutions to tie down our tents. Next we arrived at a beautiful cozy and overpriced pub style restaurant where Diane and Noah saw a small animal scurry across the rafters. After, we sat around a campfire outdoors (controlled) and met some french people who gave us some recommendations for some hikes. The next day we went to the beach in Carmel. We know you’re imagining towels, swimming, sunscreen, lifeguards, parasols etc. but no dice my friend; you are sorely mistaken. The water was bone-chillingly-cold, the beach, not much better. The guys went in up to their ankles, Noah played tag with the waves. Rob and Aaron chased ginormous flocks of various races of birds including huge-ass pelicans, while Diane and Aviva huddled together on the windy beach using their towels as blankets. The guys joined up to go rock climbing along the shore. We had a picnic with the birds on the beach which was rather traumatic for Aviva who conquered her fear of birds- a little- with the help of her Mummy.
The next day we went on a hike in a Redwood forest. Some of the trails had been burned during the wild fires that swept Calif. two weeks ago. In fact the region was only un-evacuated quite recently. We saw many Redwood trees on our hike that were spectacularly large, although apparently considered somewhat on the small side but we were impressed none the less anyway and needless to say. Of note, even though Diane has no problem with sleeping on the floor of an Amtrak train she had a hissy-fit about sitting on the ground to eat our lunch during the hike but we forced her to do it anyway. Apparantly it has something to do with her protest against the cows being held hostage by the martians- more on that later.
We left Big Sur, bye-bye. On our drive down to Los Angeles we stopped to admire thrashing whales in the sea, scenic coffee breaks and most importantly we saw Elephant Seals who are cool and look like seals, laze around, throw sand on themselves to keep cool with their flippers and look like they have socks hanging off of their schnozes. Apparently they only come to this beach once a year to deal with the birdsies and the beesies; and let us tell you, we saw some pretty awesome seal action going on in the water.
Hey, we should mention that place in Santa Barbara where we hit our max. on some pretty rad mexican food. It had a name. But that is not important right now. Our guide book and Julia Child conveniently both recommended it. It was this cheapo total hole in the wall, and we got a local to tell us what to order. YUM!
We arrived in L.A. where our S.U.V. fit in perfectly. Swimming pools, movie stars. Since we lost the family read aloud book, we all got into Aaron’s book called Fart Party by Julia Wertz. We f*$%ing love it. Side note: our family is irresponsible; we lose things. The list is infinite: a Croc, important classified documents (if found please memorize them, burn and proceed to eat), the family book, and a camera. We’ll lose more don’t worry.
The next day in L.A. we went on a v.i.p.tour of Warner Bros. studio. Everyone who takes a tour is a V.I.P., so we managed to fit in. Of course Warner Bros. is the home of the most gifted actor of the 20th century: Bugs Bunny- Rob’s hero. The tour was frickin’ amazing. We saw an entire fake town made to look like NYC, Philly, Chicago etc. We saw an Ersatz mini-Central Park, the city sets for “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”, and E.R. and the set for the TV show “Chuck”. We even saw the now retired set of “Friends”. You would have to go on the tour yourself to grasp the awesomeness.
The next day we went to Beverly Hills, Rodeo drive, and Malibu. We went to a beach in the latter. This beach was more normal this time. The guys were able to actually play in the water; body surfing, while the girls worked on their tans. They can now graduate from ghostly pale to slightly pasty. There were surfers on boards all over the place, from as young as about 5 to as old as 60. We were struck by how suburban everyone looked in Malibu, and even in LA. For dinner we went to this place that also had a name, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we were told we might see movie stars there. We did see lots of very Thornhill-looking people (that can be taken however you would like to take it, if you’re from Thornhill - hey, it’s probably flattering to think you look like you come from Malibu to us). And....we saw.....or at least we think we saw.....two tables over.....talking very animatedly.....the woman who played “Coco” on the TV show Fame!!
These past days we have been watching the Michael Phelpslympics known to non- Americans as the Olympics of Beijing 2008. And now we are whizzing along on Amtrak, which surprisingly left only half an hour late. We’re off to see the Grand Canyon next.
Love,
RANAD (always capitalized).
So we got to San Francisco-ish by train, but we needed to take an Amtrak bus to get to the Caltrain to get to the shuttle van, to get to our hotel. Somewhere along this foray into various forms of transportation, during a mad dash to catch said Caltrain, Aaron unfortunately left his camera on the Amtrak bus seat, never to be seen again. This was very upsetting, as he had had it since his 10th birthday :(. It was very late so we all hit the sac without dinner :( (again) Oh, but first we all washed up because we hadn’t bathed since the morning we had left Chicago (which was 5 days).
The first day in San Francisco, we took a shuttle to the airport to take the air train to a van which took us to a car rental place. Yes folks, despite our best laid plans to use only public transit, the various systems were going to be so cumbersome and expensive in San Francisco, that it turned out to be considerably cheaper and more convenient to simply rent a car for the three days here.
So, next we made our way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a Bay Cruise. It was a bit cheesy, and they probably violated several codes by jamming 100’s of people onto a small boat, but we actually liked it (especially the cheesiness). We learned a lot about the history of San Francisco, e.g., people from San Francisco hate the term “Frisco”, the Golden Gate was the first construction site that used a safety net, and Alcatraz means pelican in Spanish. There were windsurfers on the bay and it was a gorgeous day. That first night we went for dinner in China Town followed by Gelato on the way back. It was excellent. We could have had Budweiser beer flavoured ice cream, sesame flavoured, avocado, etc. but we all stuck to more traditional flavours, On our way back to the hotel we drove down Lombard Street. As a man we met on the train said “You haven’t seen San Francisco till you’ve looked down the hood of your car and not been able to see the road beneath you”.
After stealing oranges and bananas from our breakfast buffets and catching a few minutes of the China vs. U.S. men’s basketball game, (summer Olympics) we headed off to Berkeley to eat lunch at a restaurant called Chez Panisse. This was a very special experience for Aviva because when she was little she used to love to read this book called “Fanny at Chez Panisse” all about the owner’s daughter. Aviva had this book read to her so often by Rob and Diane that we all started calling it “the bible”. The restaurant had outstanding food, although pretty pricey. After eating they even let us tour their really nice kitchen. We spent the afternoon in Berkeley and saw a protest by Tibetans against China’s oppression of Tibet. Their have been a lot of such protests with the Olympics, but this one was quite large (and some of the speeches were in Tibetan). We had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and watched what we thought was “Turkish Idol”. We drove home via the “Golden Gate Bridge” Damn those aliens they’re at it again go away- away I tell you!!!!!!!!!!
The next day we headed straight to the Cable Car museum and saw how the whole cable car system runs from that building and we also learned about the history of the cable car. We then went on an actual cable car along California street. We rode the whole line hanging the side poles like the true tourists we are. It was not that long a ride so we walked back. Next we went to a fortune cookie “factory” in a sketchy looking back alley in Chinatown. This wasn’t really a factory sorta just three little old people at two fortune cookie machines; there hands whizzing away at hydraulic speed. Which reminds us, Aviva has discovered that she has hydraulic force; but that’s a different story. We got some samples of chocolate and strawberry flavoured fortune cookies and bought sesame cookies and fortune cookies. We opted not to buy the bag labelled “adult fortune cookies”. We went to little Italy and ate dinner with no dessert because we’d had some hydraulic flavoured cookies and mummy and daddy thought that was enough for one day.
The last day of San Francisco...otherwise entitled “Noah Gets His Cast Taken Off” (remember, he broke his pinky in a freak portaging incident in Algonquin). The doctor thwacked off his cast with a large jackhammer and replaced it with buddy taping. Meanwhile... Rob and Aaron tried one more time to find Aaron’s camera with Amtrak, while Aviva changed our GPS to shout directions at us in Spanish.
As you may know our sole passion and purpose in life is to destroy pollute and wreak havoc on the environment as much as humanly possible in our short time on this planet. Our reputation is at stake here people! So...we rented a non-hybrid SUV for our loooooong ride down the pristine coast to Big Sur on route 1 (This was where some of the fires had happened in Calif.). We just thought that now would be a good time to mention that everything up until now that we have written in this very blog that you few people are reading has been grammatically correct and not awkward in the least!!!!! That’s all.
The coast line was spooky and SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!! That was an alliteration... heh heh heh. Actually as Aaron pointed out it was more on the eerie side than spooky. The waves were crashing against the rocks down below, the fog lingering in the cool air. This made it very difficult to navigate on the narrow winding roads. It quite reminded us of our drive in Scotland to Inverness (see summer 2006) except this time we chose to drive on the right side of the road. COWS! we saw cows grazing by the ocean. Cows are Diane’s friends.
We arrived in Big Sur and pitched camp in darkness, trying to find soft ground to put the stakes into. Eventually we came up with some pretty creative solutions to tie down our tents. Next we arrived at a beautiful cozy and overpriced pub style restaurant where Diane and Noah saw a small animal scurry across the rafters. After, we sat around a campfire outdoors (controlled) and met some french people who gave us some recommendations for some hikes. The next day we went to the beach in Carmel. We know you’re imagining towels, swimming, sunscreen, lifeguards, parasols etc. but no dice my friend; you are sorely mistaken. The water was bone-chillingly-cold, the beach, not much better. The guys went in up to their ankles, Noah played tag with the waves. Rob and Aaron chased ginormous flocks of various races of birds including huge-ass pelicans, while Diane and Aviva huddled together on the windy beach using their towels as blankets. The guys joined up to go rock climbing along the shore. We had a picnic with the birds on the beach which was rather traumatic for Aviva who conquered her fear of birds- a little- with the help of her Mummy.
The next day we went on a hike in a Redwood forest. Some of the trails had been burned during the wild fires that swept Calif. two weeks ago. In fact the region was only un-evacuated quite recently. We saw many Redwood trees on our hike that were spectacularly large, although apparently considered somewhat on the small side but we were impressed none the less anyway and needless to say. Of note, even though Diane has no problem with sleeping on the floor of an Amtrak train she had a hissy-fit about sitting on the ground to eat our lunch during the hike but we forced her to do it anyway. Apparantly it has something to do with her protest against the cows being held hostage by the martians- more on that later.
We left Big Sur, bye-bye. On our drive down to Los Angeles we stopped to admire thrashing whales in the sea, scenic coffee breaks and most importantly we saw Elephant Seals who are cool and look like seals, laze around, throw sand on themselves to keep cool with their flippers and look like they have socks hanging off of their schnozes. Apparently they only come to this beach once a year to deal with the birdsies and the beesies; and let us tell you, we saw some pretty awesome seal action going on in the water.
Hey, we should mention that place in Santa Barbara where we hit our max. on some pretty rad mexican food. It had a name. But that is not important right now. Our guide book and Julia Child conveniently both recommended it. It was this cheapo total hole in the wall, and we got a local to tell us what to order. YUM!
We arrived in L.A. where our S.U.V. fit in perfectly. Swimming pools, movie stars. Since we lost the family read aloud book, we all got into Aaron’s book called Fart Party by Julia Wertz. We f*$%ing love it. Side note: our family is irresponsible; we lose things. The list is infinite: a Croc, important classified documents (if found please memorize them, burn and proceed to eat), the family book, and a camera. We’ll lose more don’t worry.
The next day in L.A. we went on a v.i.p.tour of Warner Bros. studio. Everyone who takes a tour is a V.I.P., so we managed to fit in. Of course Warner Bros. is the home of the most gifted actor of the 20th century: Bugs Bunny- Rob’s hero. The tour was frickin’ amazing. We saw an entire fake town made to look like NYC, Philly, Chicago etc. We saw an Ersatz mini-Central Park, the city sets for “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”, and E.R. and the set for the TV show “Chuck”. We even saw the now retired set of “Friends”. You would have to go on the tour yourself to grasp the awesomeness.
The next day we went to Beverly Hills, Rodeo drive, and Malibu. We went to a beach in the latter. This beach was more normal this time. The guys were able to actually play in the water; body surfing, while the girls worked on their tans. They can now graduate from ghostly pale to slightly pasty. There were surfers on boards all over the place, from as young as about 5 to as old as 60. We were struck by how suburban everyone looked in Malibu, and even in LA. For dinner we went to this place that also had a name, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we were told we might see movie stars there. We did see lots of very Thornhill-looking people (that can be taken however you would like to take it, if you’re from Thornhill - hey, it’s probably flattering to think you look like you come from Malibu to us). And....we saw.....or at least we think we saw.....two tables over.....talking very animatedly.....the woman who played “Coco” on the TV show Fame!!
These past days we have been watching the Michael Phelpslympics known to non- Americans as the Olympics of Beijing 2008. And now we are whizzing along on Amtrak, which surprisingly left only half an hour late. We’re off to see the Grand Canyon next.
Love,
RANAD (always capitalized).
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Crossing America
Aug 2, 2008
So RANAD (Rob, Aviva, Noah, Aaron, Diane) is off on another adventure. A train journey across the USA! And we’re writing this blog, once again as a joint effort between all five of us, on various Amtrak trains. And, as any journey starts, we start at the beginning.
We drove to Detroit. Unfortunately we didn’t start the drive till 9:00.....p.m.. And then we hit bad traffic around London. So we only got to a hotel in Detroit at 2:30 am.
The next day we headed to Royal Oak to get on the train. We raced to get to the train station, to unload our luggage from the car, to park the car, and get to the platform and wait and wait and wait. In fact we waited over two hours. The train was apparently late because a live wire had fallen on the tracks and for some reason they didn’t feel comfortable driving over it.
The train was um remarkable mostly do to our neighbours; an obnoxious grand mother with her two grandsons. It all started with the idea that we could turn the seats to face each other. The highly agitated and easily excitable conductor was not uh interested in this plan. She was very concerned about filling every single seat before 200 more people got on. A deal was struck. The grandmother proposed that we that sit together as a party of eight. this seemed like a good plan. Four of us sat together facing each other, while Diane sat with the grandmother and her 2 grandsons it was very squishy. Diane mentioned so. Twice, the grandmother told Diane that she was “welcome to sit somewhere else”, but Diane said that she wanted to be near her family. Finally the grandmother angrily moved saying that she didn’t know why Diane “insisted” on sitting next to her. In the end, the five of us ended up squishing together in the four seater while Aviva read the book “The Lightning Thief” aloud to the family (no accents this time it takes place in U.S.).
We arrived in Chicago, took a cab to the hotel, and met up with Grand-mummy.... surprise, surprise. (We actually planned to meet her for our stay in Chicago). We then went out for dinner to Weber’s grill which is part restaurant and part advertisement for Weber’s bbq company. Oh we forgot to mention that we hadn’t eaten a meal all day other than dinky little snacks and paw fulls of bread and cheese and humus (we had no knife).
The next day Grand-mummy woke us all up in time for breakfast. After six showers, and a big breakfast, we went on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture-that was amazing! We saw the biggest building in square footage in floor space. The tallest building in the world known only by it’s street address. And the Sears tower which was the tallest building for 28 years. On this boat ride we also got complimentary Starbuck’s paraphernalia. This is probably an apt moment to mention that Rob has been off coffee for a week and a half, and the mind bogglingly horrific migraines have just about ceased. After the boat tour, we went for a jacuzzi at the hotel; except for Noah. :( This is probably an apt moment to mention that Noah has been in a cast (well his pinky has) for about a week now, having broken it during an unfortunate portaging incident in Algonquin park. That night we went to see Mamma Mia which was quite cute. We all had barrels and heaps of fun and laughter but than the aliens came and we all knew we were screwed. The fun and the laughter was now over.:( That night, for dinner, we had Chicago’s famous paper thin pizza. Um well actually Chicago kinda isn’t famous for their paper thin pizza, that would be Italy. What Chicago is famous for is their deep dish pizza. But that was an hour’s wait and none of us even like deep dish pizza so there goes that plan.
The next day Grand-mummy woke us up in time for breakfast. After 5 showers, a bath, and a big breakfast we headed out for Chicago’s Ferris Bueler’s day off day. This is a civic holiday and no one can work. In honour of Ferris we started off at the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and systematically destroyed each and every piece of artwork.....
Rob managed to get in as a student and Grand-mummy managed to get in as a senior and Diane managed to get in as an adult. We saw Grant Wood’s American Gothic, finding out that the two models were really his dentist and sister. We saw American and European impressionist art. And it made a big impression. We then had a half hour tour of Sunday at La Grand Jatte by George Seurat. We rode the “eL” to a Grecian restaurant in Grecian town where they rushed us out faster than we could say “Homer”. We then took the “eL” to the Sears tower and together we scaled our way to the top with suction cups. The view was very impressive. We got there just after sun set and we saw the city lights not to mention the nightly fire works by lake Michigan. The aliens returned and stole all of our souls and any pink buttons we happened to have on us. Unfortunately we had a lot.
After a send off to grand-mummy and a mad dash to the train station we are now on our way to Colorado on a train, acting quite hysterical and out of control.
Point of interest:
One of the two conductors, both of whom are named Gary, explained to us the reason for what looked like Lakes around the Mississippi between Illinois and Iowa. Turns out the levies broke on the banks of the Mississippi, causing thousands of acres of flooding this past June. Vehicles and farmhouses were still almost totally submerged. The bridge we just crossed on the train was reconstructed only two weeks ago.
Currently, we are traveling 80 miles an hour across the very flat state of Iowa.
August 6, 2008.
So to pick up from where we left off, we had our first night on a train, and we got about 12 hours of sleep...between the five of us. Actually, we each got from 4-8 hours of sleep, depending on who you speak to. Rob slept on a bench in the lounge area. Aaron fell asleep peacefully with Aviva, but then awoke at 4:30 am to roll over, but kicked against a foreign object below. Diane’s head popped up from the floor underneath the seat and both let out a yelp. Aviva played musical chairs, and floors, but won the most sleep contest. Noah was comfortably sleeping on two chairs, with his feet hanging out in the aisle, but was the first up to see the sun rise over Nebraska.
We arrived in Granby Colorado at mid-day. Strangely, we were two hours late, since Amtrak always runs on time. We picked up our rental car and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The drive was spectacular, amazing vistas, birds, the cutest chipmunks and even some elk. When we arrived at the camp site the ranger who checked us in warned us that there had been a bear “incident” a few days earlier. He then proceeded to tell us what precautions to take, but he said it at ninety miles an hour, so that it was almost completely incoherent. To top it all off, the second ranger we spoke to contradicted what the “motor mouth” ranger had said about what to do when encountering a bear.
On each of the two days in the park we went on a huge hike. The first day was up to Alberta Falls and Loch Vale and the second day was up to Flat top mountain, which is at 12,324 feet, and is above the tree line (we only hiked the last 2000 feet). We had our first experience with altitude sickness, which hit us all on the descents both days. We were all fine once we drugged ourselves up on Advil and Starbuck’s after the hikes. During the first hike we were a bit low on water and that was a bit stressful as we really had to pace our intake (and may have helped us with developing the altitude headaches). The views were gorgeous and both hikes were quite challenging; uphill for 2 hours on the first day, and “relentlessly uphill” for three hours on the second day.
First a little about the weather here in Colorado. It starts our sunny and beautiful in the morning. Around mid-day the clouds start to build up and then for about half an hour in the mid-afternoon it pours for about 30 minutes, including thunder and lightening. And then it’s beautiful again by late afternoon. If you’re unfortunate or stupid enough to be above the tree line during a lightening storm, you’re at great risk for being hit by lightening, and it has happened. Both days we were just finishing our descent when it started to rain. But, on the second hike, as we were reaching the bottom, and it started to rain, by some mystical force, Rob magically knew to bring us under a small shelter along the path. Less than a minute later, it started raining giant hale stones, the size of grapes. It looked like everything was covered in moth balls. Within a period of about 1 hour, the weather went from feeling like a hot summer’s day, to looking like a cold winter’s day, and back again. When it had all stopped, Aaron and Noah went out and scooped up handfuls of ice pebbles and were throwing hail balls (far away from people).
On the second night in the park, at 4 in the morning from inside our tents, out of the blue we heard these dog-like creatures howling. It started with just one and then it seemed like there were dozens of them chiming in. It sounded like a combo of howling and yelping. At first we were scared they were wolves, then we knew it was the aliens, but by the next morning we figured it was Prairie dogs....probably because we also had their two foot deep holes all over our camp ground. In fact Rob fell into one of them while cooking one time. There were also deer grazing all over the camp ground, within feet of the campers. On our last night we had a cornucopia dinner consisting of sushi, Mediterranean salad, followed up by fruit and whipped cream-topped pancakes. And just as we were finishing up, we had another burst of rain, followed by a phenomenal full-arc rainbow.
The last morning we had to wake up at 6 am to pack up and clear out by 7:30 am, which we did by 7:55 am. We made great time on the way back to Granby. On the way we stopped to fill up the car with gas, but we had a little trouble opening the gas tank. After we searched for a good five minutes, these motor-cyclists started helping us as well. We all searched all over for 15 minutes including one or two other motorists. Then the cashier came out and the first place she looked was underneath the carpet under the driver’s seat, and there it was, the button to open the gas tank! This is just one example of how remarkably friendly and helpful people have been here. People have struck up conversations with us all over the place, most recently at the Amtrak station with a man and his deaf father. The son chatted with us at length, translating back and forth for his father in ASL. Even the attendant on our train here was incredibly kind and friendly. He was clearly expecting us when the train arrived, having already prepared 5 seats for us, with a plan to re-seat us after Grand Junction so that we can have better seats. Oh and by the way, the train was two hours late.
Now we’re sitting in the lounge of the Amtrak train, writing our Blog, reading Lightening Thief and enjoying the Colorado landscape, which looks like something out of the Zoom Zoom commercials or the TV show Bonanza. We are amazed by how vast, variable and undeveloped so much of the terrain is. We’ve also managed to scare off anyone who was seated around us by our obnoxious, loud behaviour while writing this Blog. Next stop: San Francisco.
So RANAD (Rob, Aviva, Noah, Aaron, Diane) is off on another adventure. A train journey across the USA! And we’re writing this blog, once again as a joint effort between all five of us, on various Amtrak trains. And, as any journey starts, we start at the beginning.
We drove to Detroit. Unfortunately we didn’t start the drive till 9:00.....p.m.. And then we hit bad traffic around London. So we only got to a hotel in Detroit at 2:30 am.
The next day we headed to Royal Oak to get on the train. We raced to get to the train station, to unload our luggage from the car, to park the car, and get to the platform and wait and wait and wait. In fact we waited over two hours. The train was apparently late because a live wire had fallen on the tracks and for some reason they didn’t feel comfortable driving over it.
The train was um remarkable mostly do to our neighbours; an obnoxious grand mother with her two grandsons. It all started with the idea that we could turn the seats to face each other. The highly agitated and easily excitable conductor was not uh interested in this plan. She was very concerned about filling every single seat before 200 more people got on. A deal was struck. The grandmother proposed that we that sit together as a party of eight. this seemed like a good plan. Four of us sat together facing each other, while Diane sat with the grandmother and her 2 grandsons it was very squishy. Diane mentioned so. Twice, the grandmother told Diane that she was “welcome to sit somewhere else”, but Diane said that she wanted to be near her family. Finally the grandmother angrily moved saying that she didn’t know why Diane “insisted” on sitting next to her. In the end, the five of us ended up squishing together in the four seater while Aviva read the book “The Lightning Thief” aloud to the family (no accents this time it takes place in U.S.).
We arrived in Chicago, took a cab to the hotel, and met up with Grand-mummy.... surprise, surprise. (We actually planned to meet her for our stay in Chicago). We then went out for dinner to Weber’s grill which is part restaurant and part advertisement for Weber’s bbq company. Oh we forgot to mention that we hadn’t eaten a meal all day other than dinky little snacks and paw fulls of bread and cheese and humus (we had no knife).
The next day Grand-mummy woke us all up in time for breakfast. After six showers, and a big breakfast, we went on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture-that was amazing! We saw the biggest building in square footage in floor space. The tallest building in the world known only by it’s street address. And the Sears tower which was the tallest building for 28 years. On this boat ride we also got complimentary Starbuck’s paraphernalia. This is probably an apt moment to mention that Rob has been off coffee for a week and a half, and the mind bogglingly horrific migraines have just about ceased. After the boat tour, we went for a jacuzzi at the hotel; except for Noah. :( This is probably an apt moment to mention that Noah has been in a cast (well his pinky has) for about a week now, having broken it during an unfortunate portaging incident in Algonquin park. That night we went to see Mamma Mia which was quite cute. We all had barrels and heaps of fun and laughter but than the aliens came and we all knew we were screwed. The fun and the laughter was now over.:( That night, for dinner, we had Chicago’s famous paper thin pizza. Um well actually Chicago kinda isn’t famous for their paper thin pizza, that would be Italy. What Chicago is famous for is their deep dish pizza. But that was an hour’s wait and none of us even like deep dish pizza so there goes that plan.
The next day Grand-mummy woke us up in time for breakfast. After 5 showers, a bath, and a big breakfast we headed out for Chicago’s Ferris Bueler’s day off day. This is a civic holiday and no one can work. In honour of Ferris we started off at the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and systematically destroyed each and every piece of artwork.....
Rob managed to get in as a student and Grand-mummy managed to get in as a senior and Diane managed to get in as an adult. We saw Grant Wood’s American Gothic, finding out that the two models were really his dentist and sister. We saw American and European impressionist art. And it made a big impression. We then had a half hour tour of Sunday at La Grand Jatte by George Seurat. We rode the “eL” to a Grecian restaurant in Grecian town where they rushed us out faster than we could say “Homer”. We then took the “eL” to the Sears tower and together we scaled our way to the top with suction cups. The view was very impressive. We got there just after sun set and we saw the city lights not to mention the nightly fire works by lake Michigan. The aliens returned and stole all of our souls and any pink buttons we happened to have on us. Unfortunately we had a lot.
After a send off to grand-mummy and a mad dash to the train station we are now on our way to Colorado on a train, acting quite hysterical and out of control.
Point of interest:
One of the two conductors, both of whom are named Gary, explained to us the reason for what looked like Lakes around the Mississippi between Illinois and Iowa. Turns out the levies broke on the banks of the Mississippi, causing thousands of acres of flooding this past June. Vehicles and farmhouses were still almost totally submerged. The bridge we just crossed on the train was reconstructed only two weeks ago.
Currently, we are traveling 80 miles an hour across the very flat state of Iowa.
August 6, 2008.
So to pick up from where we left off, we had our first night on a train, and we got about 12 hours of sleep...between the five of us. Actually, we each got from 4-8 hours of sleep, depending on who you speak to. Rob slept on a bench in the lounge area. Aaron fell asleep peacefully with Aviva, but then awoke at 4:30 am to roll over, but kicked against a foreign object below. Diane’s head popped up from the floor underneath the seat and both let out a yelp. Aviva played musical chairs, and floors, but won the most sleep contest. Noah was comfortably sleeping on two chairs, with his feet hanging out in the aisle, but was the first up to see the sun rise over Nebraska.
We arrived in Granby Colorado at mid-day. Strangely, we were two hours late, since Amtrak always runs on time. We picked up our rental car and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The drive was spectacular, amazing vistas, birds, the cutest chipmunks and even some elk. When we arrived at the camp site the ranger who checked us in warned us that there had been a bear “incident” a few days earlier. He then proceeded to tell us what precautions to take, but he said it at ninety miles an hour, so that it was almost completely incoherent. To top it all off, the second ranger we spoke to contradicted what the “motor mouth” ranger had said about what to do when encountering a bear.
On each of the two days in the park we went on a huge hike. The first day was up to Alberta Falls and Loch Vale and the second day was up to Flat top mountain, which is at 12,324 feet, and is above the tree line (we only hiked the last 2000 feet). We had our first experience with altitude sickness, which hit us all on the descents both days. We were all fine once we drugged ourselves up on Advil and Starbuck’s after the hikes. During the first hike we were a bit low on water and that was a bit stressful as we really had to pace our intake (and may have helped us with developing the altitude headaches). The views were gorgeous and both hikes were quite challenging; uphill for 2 hours on the first day, and “relentlessly uphill” for three hours on the second day.
First a little about the weather here in Colorado. It starts our sunny and beautiful in the morning. Around mid-day the clouds start to build up and then for about half an hour in the mid-afternoon it pours for about 30 minutes, including thunder and lightening. And then it’s beautiful again by late afternoon. If you’re unfortunate or stupid enough to be above the tree line during a lightening storm, you’re at great risk for being hit by lightening, and it has happened. Both days we were just finishing our descent when it started to rain. But, on the second hike, as we were reaching the bottom, and it started to rain, by some mystical force, Rob magically knew to bring us under a small shelter along the path. Less than a minute later, it started raining giant hale stones, the size of grapes. It looked like everything was covered in moth balls. Within a period of about 1 hour, the weather went from feeling like a hot summer’s day, to looking like a cold winter’s day, and back again. When it had all stopped, Aaron and Noah went out and scooped up handfuls of ice pebbles and were throwing hail balls (far away from people).
On the second night in the park, at 4 in the morning from inside our tents, out of the blue we heard these dog-like creatures howling. It started with just one and then it seemed like there were dozens of them chiming in. It sounded like a combo of howling and yelping. At first we were scared they were wolves, then we knew it was the aliens, but by the next morning we figured it was Prairie dogs....probably because we also had their two foot deep holes all over our camp ground. In fact Rob fell into one of them while cooking one time. There were also deer grazing all over the camp ground, within feet of the campers. On our last night we had a cornucopia dinner consisting of sushi, Mediterranean salad, followed up by fruit and whipped cream-topped pancakes. And just as we were finishing up, we had another burst of rain, followed by a phenomenal full-arc rainbow.
The last morning we had to wake up at 6 am to pack up and clear out by 7:30 am, which we did by 7:55 am. We made great time on the way back to Granby. On the way we stopped to fill up the car with gas, but we had a little trouble opening the gas tank. After we searched for a good five minutes, these motor-cyclists started helping us as well. We all searched all over for 15 minutes including one or two other motorists. Then the cashier came out and the first place she looked was underneath the carpet under the driver’s seat, and there it was, the button to open the gas tank! This is just one example of how remarkably friendly and helpful people have been here. People have struck up conversations with us all over the place, most recently at the Amtrak station with a man and his deaf father. The son chatted with us at length, translating back and forth for his father in ASL. Even the attendant on our train here was incredibly kind and friendly. He was clearly expecting us when the train arrived, having already prepared 5 seats for us, with a plan to re-seat us after Grand Junction so that we can have better seats. Oh and by the way, the train was two hours late.
Now we’re sitting in the lounge of the Amtrak train, writing our Blog, reading Lightening Thief and enjoying the Colorado landscape, which looks like something out of the Zoom Zoom commercials or the TV show Bonanza. We are amazed by how vast, variable and undeveloped so much of the terrain is. We’ve also managed to scare off anyone who was seated around us by our obnoxious, loud behaviour while writing this Blog. Next stop: San Francisco.
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