Tag: sightseeing

Southwest Road Trip Day 3: Grand Canyon

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They always say that nothing can prepare you for the awesome sight of the Grand Canyon. Yes, we’ve all seen pictures of it, but can they really do such a monumentally place justice? Actually, both Carrie and I have been there in our youth, but it had been so long that it was truly like being there for the first time again.

Carrie and I got up this morning, rarin’ to go. We drove on in and parked in the Grand Canyon Village, where the various lodges and eateries are located. We decided from the beginning that we would follow the Rim Trail as that would afford us a great variety of spectacular views. Our first glimpse was no disappointment!

It was hard not to become reflective looking at the view…

We kept hiking the rim until we became hungry. What to do? No worries there as we had prepared a picnic lunch!

Walking further along, we finally caught a glimpse of the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon!

What an amazing day. Well, all that hiking did make us pretty hungry, and we still did need to address the matter of celebrating our third anniversary, so what better place to go within the national park than to El Tovar, the finest dining establishment at the Grand Canyon?

We started off with a few cocktails, naturally…

The restaurant turned 100 years old in 2005, as these plates show.

Carrie had a New York Strip while I went all old school and ordered Chicken Cordon Bleu. Seriously, who gets that anymore? It was delicious…

Wonderful and awe-inspiring day. And still so much more yet to come! Tomorrow, we hit the road again, so stay tuned!

Southwest Roadtrip Day 2: Route 66 Roadside Towns

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Today’s leg of our trip focused on all things Route 66! There was plenty to see and do – and we couldn’t wait to hit the road!

But, first things first – keeping in line with our kitschy theme, we had to hit up The Pioneer in Laughlin for breakfast before starting our day.  What can we say – the Pioneer was a goldmine of kitsch, and we thoroughly enjoyed the Old West theme!

In Ed’s words, “When you’re in a gamblin’ kind of place, you gotta have a shrimp cocktail, no matter how early it is” – so here is my happy guy with his Shrimp Cocktail:

I chose to stick with coffee and pancakes. :)

Route 66 Roadside Town #1: OATMAN

Oatman is quite a place – and yes, you read it right – the sign mentions Wild Burros. As you walk through the main drag in town, there are tons of donkeys just cruising around unattended! They are descendants of all the pack animals brought to the tiny town by miners back in the day. You can buy a bag of carrots to feed them for $1, so of course we did!

Another big claim to fame for the town is the Oatman Hotel – where Clark Gable & Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon! The actual suite is undergoing renovations, but here is the entrance:

Oatman is a cute little old west town, and it was fun to take a few shots of all the old signage.

After leaving Oatman, we made a few stops along the way to take in the scenery.  A man was even nice enough to take a picture of the two of us!  Here are a few shots, but man – it really doesn’t do things justice!  One thing we both agreed on was that it was during this stretch of the road that definitely seemed the loneliest, and definitely most forgotten …


We even drove by the infamous Cool Springs Mobil Gas Station, which is an icon of stops along The Mother Road:

Route 66 Roadside Town #2: KINGMAN
We got into Kingman, which is one of the better known roadside towns. It was home of the Route 66 Museum, so we had to make a stop inside to check out all the memorabilia.

Also in Kingman is Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner. We were holding out for another place to actually eat at which was a few towns away (more on that later!), so we settled on a milkshake at Mr. D’z.

We didn’t have too much time in Kingman, because we wanted to make sure to get to the Grand Canyon Cavern in time to check it out before it closed. On the way, we passed through a TON of open road, some Hualapai Indian Territory, and the teeny tiny town of Peach Springs.

Route 66 Roadside Attraction: GRAND CANYON CAVERN & CAVERN INN

The Cavern was so awesome! We were glad to make it in time for the last tour of the day (they don’t let you go down there unattended). We took an elevator 21 stories down underneath the ground with 4 others and our tour guide, Johnny. Tough to capture – but here we are in the Cavern!

Also on site is a ton of other fun stuff, like dinosaurs & the groovy old sign at the Inn!

Route 66 Roadside Town #3: SELIGMAN

We hightailed it out of the Cavern as soon as the tour ended en route to Seligman – where the fictional town of Radiator Springs (from the Pixar movie Cars) is basically inspired from. There were promises of a pretty extensive (and wacky) mega gift store, as well as the diner we’d really been holding out for all day – The Snow Cap Drive-In. We are bummed to report the Snow Cap was CLOSED by the time we got there! However, they had lots of pictures of cars just like the ones in the movie Cars – so these pics are for you, Facey family! :)
Look at the eyes they put in the windows:

We were really disappointed, the Snow Cap just seemed like the ultimate place to stop … SO old school!

They’re most famous for their “Dead Chicken” – and we didn’t get to find out what it was all about!

Route 66 Roadside Town #4: WILLIAMS
By the time we got to Williams, the sun had already gone down – but this was the most bustling of the roadside towns. Don’t get me wrong – its still teeny & quaint – but the lights were on, the Old West vibe was strong, and there were lots of people milling around. This is the Route 66 town before we left the Mother Road to head to the Grand Canyon.

To finally quench our ultimate Route 66 diner quest, we had a bite at Cruiser’s Cafe 66.

That wraps things up for day 2. We gotta get some rest – we’re planning a big day of hiking at the Grand Canyon. We both can’t wait to see it, we’re getting up early!

Museums and Fossils and Canters … oh, my!


This weekend, our 3 nieces and nephew get to spend some quality time with us. Last night, our oldest nieces Kendall & Jordan got to spend the night at our house, and then we had an action-packed day planned for them. We have been waiting for such a long time to take the big girls to an art museum … and then we decided to hit up the La Brea Tar Pits, too!

However, no time spent at Uncle Ed and Auntie Carrie’s house can go without a little Guitar Hero. Check out these rocker-girls in action!

After a fair amount of rocking ensued, we headed off to LACMA for an introduction to some modern art!

We were particularly excited for the girls to see the “Happy Happy” installation in the Your Bright Future exhibit. Basically, Happy Happy is bunch of brightly colored kitchen items from the 99 Cent Store, all hung from up high. It’s huge! You can walk through it, play in it – its fascinating for both adults and kids alike. I think the girls were really surprised to see how art isn’t just a painting on a wall or a drawing in a sketchbook.

We bought the girls sketchbooks and colored pencils so they could draw at the museum if they were inspired, or they could simply write how they felt about a piece that they saw. I was excited that they really got into it:

Kendall and Jordan also got introduced to some of our favorite artists – Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Wassily Kandinsky!
Learning about Warhol …

Intrigued by Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” …
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Inspired by Kandinsky!

After exploring the museum, we walked around to the back, and noticed that the Happy Happy artist also had another similar exhibition that allowed the public to participate in!

The girls were really impressed by this, and we checked out all the random objects people incorporated into the piece:

All that art worked up our appetites, so we decided to hit up Canter’s to show Kendall & Jordan how all the cool kids do lunch in L.A.!

Matzo Ball Soup, Pickles and Bagel Chips … yep, we’re at one of the best Jewish Delis ever!

We were feeling good after lunch, so it was finally time to check out some fossils and Ice Age skeletons at the La Brea Tar Pits …

Once inside, there was lots of cool stuff to see – including lots of bones! Just a few of the monsters we saw …

They even have real volunteers in the Paleontology Lab cleaning up the bones and fossils right in front of you! The museum said that after all this time, they finally found a Woolly Mammoth with tusks intact. This is the very first time they have been able to salvage a full Mammoth! Inside the lab, they are calling him “Zed”. Here is part of Zed’s tusks:

Pretty cool stuff:

Everyone enjoyed the visit, but the girls were surprised at how strong the smell was. Here is Kendall’s summary:

And finally, the perfect end to a perfect day – we made a stop at Sprinkles for Kendall & Jordan’s first “original” gourmet cupcake. Only the best for our girls!

Check out the album for more awesome pics!

Kendall and Jordan visit
August 2009

Tomorrow’s agenda: Another big day out with Mikayla & Ethan!

It just isn’t summer without the Orange County Fair

Ed & I missed the fair last year, so we made sure to make it this year! We were seriously fiending for some of that grilled corn on the cob, and we always like seeing the wacky homegrown produce and all of the animals. What we weren’t expecting was to be spectators at the Pig Races! It was surprisingly fun … and those little pigs are adorable! Ed snapped the camera at just the right time:

Amazing, right?!? Those guys were fast! And we are proud to report that our section’s pig, Yukon, brought home the bacon and earned first place in the race! He’s pictured below – the brown little guy with the red bib:

Here we are, happy to be spectators!

After all that excitement, we had to get our corn on the cob fix!

All in all, it felt like a very summery day, and we even took a ride on the skyway …

No fried twinkies, but we did get our rings cleaned. It was a pretty good trip to the fair!

Spontaneous Day Trip to Temecula

Today, we felt like making Sunday a Fun Day – so we hopped in the car and drove out to Temecula. Seems kinda random, but we wanted a long drive and a tasty lunch. We were also pretty motivated to drive through the Wine Country and see what they had out there. It’s a mere 2 hours away via the scenic route, so we went for it.


Once we rolled into Temecula, we embarked upon Old Town. It’s kinda cheesy with its old West vibe, but it was fun. We definitely thought if Huell Hauser hasn’t been already, it’s a destination he’ll be visiting soon! We saw a Mexican Restaurant called “The Bank” – and sure enough, the restaurant exists in the town’s old bank building, originally built in 1914. Since today was Sunday, they were serving menudo.

Menudo makes Ed a very happy boy.


The highlight of the day was hitting up Temecula Olive Oil Company, where they do Olive Oil tastings! We had no idea that tasting Olive Oil could be so interesting and fun! We learned a lot about the olive oils they make themselves, as well as some very unique vinegars. One of the most interesting combos we tried was their California Pomegranate Vinegar mixed with their Citus Reserve olive oil. We came home with a bottle of their Mission Late Harvest Olive Oil, which stands out due to its smooth, buttery taste. Can’t wait to saute some fresh summer veggies with this one! We also picked up their “Just Dress it!” which is gonna be awesome for some fish marinade!!!


 Finally, we arrived in wine country. Since we were driving, it was kind of a tease. We couldn’t do a lot of tasting … but just going along the vineyard-lined roads was really relaxing and beautiful. But we’d be lying if we said we weren’t seriously jonsing for all of the wine! Needless to say, we can’t wait to go back with some sort of driver. There were probably about 20 wineries in the area. Some were really pretty, especially Leonesse, which we stopped at to look around, but didn’t taste. :(


Once we came up on Maurice Car’rie, we figured we HAD to stop … I supposed I was a little influenced by the name. :) We did taste the wines here … and we were not disappointed! Nothing like a little spontaneous wine tasting!

Ed’s Faves: the 2008 Riesling and the 2007 Muscat Canelli.

Carrie’s faves: Pineapple Champagne (okay, I admit – it sounds more like a Wine cooler than a wine, but it was goood!!!) and the 2008 Chenin Blanc. Both of us chose pretty light wines, but it was 99 degrees out there today!

All in all, we had a very fun day! Now, who wants to go on one of those wine tours with us?!?