Last Tuesday we arrived in Alameda, CA, Liz and Jared's beautiful island city,  We now understand why they love their little city so much.  It has lovely Victorian style homes and the beach is just a short walk from their house.  We spent 5 days exploring the island, eating at some of the many restaurants and hiking in the Redwoods. Our last day there was Father's Day and the kids treated us to a San Francisco Giants baseball game.  Although the Giants lost, it was still a great day.  Each of us even got a Giants necktie. 

Just as were getting ready to head home, we got the news that Darcy's Aunt Florence was very ill.  We went to Vancouver Island instead of Kelowna but unfortunately didn't make it time to say our last goodbyes.  She was one of our favorite aunts and will be missed. We are so glad that we were able to spent time with her while she was still in Oliver.

This morning we are on the ferry back to Vancouver and then home.  It has been a great trip.  We have had so much fun that we are going to do it again in the fall for a couple of months.  I will start up the blog again then.

I am not sure what we were thinking when we planned a long hike in Lake Tahoe after a day in Reno.  What happens in Reno, stays Reno.  Tahoe is beautiful.  We had no idea it was so big.  There is so much to do there and we hope to come back and stay for a few days. After a stop in the visitors' centre, we finally made it to the trailhead at Mt. Tallac.  The top if that mountain is where Jared proposed.  It is a 3000 ft. climb.  We stood at the bottom, looked up and thought there is no way we ever could have made it to the top.  We did make it part way to a beautiful little lake and turned back.  Heading to Alameda from Lake Tahoe, the car registered 43 C.  We were glad to get to Alameda where the weather is just pleasant.  We are looking forward to spending some time in the bay area with Liz and Jared.

Today we drove from Winnemucca to Reno, NV.  If you think the highway across Saskatchewan is straight and boring, you haven't driven US 80 from Salt Lake City to Reno.  This is our first visit to Reno and as they like to say it is "the biggest little city in the world".  We were expecting it to be run down and struggling to be like it's big sister city.  So we were pleasantly surprised how busy and well kept the casinos and hotels seem to be.  We lost our usual $50 in the casinos and had fun doing it.  We watched the hockey game and called it an early night before the 10:00 karaoke got going in the Brew House. Tomorrow we hope to hike in Lake Tahoe before heading to Alameda to see Liz and Jared.

We are in the thriving metropolis of Winnemucca, NV so it is a good time to update the blog with our time in Bryce Canyon.  I ended the last post with us leaving Sante Fe after 4 fantastic days.  We have decided that we will be back in the fall as part of our October to December road trip but this time coming through Denver so we can see Taos, NM.

We arrived at our hotel in Bryce that was first opened in the late 1800's and is now a huge lodge designed to look like a cowboy town of that era.  Bryce is a smaller national park so the shuttle system is not quite as good as Zion.  It didn't stop at all the trailheads but was still quite efficient.  As usual we started at the visitors' centre to watch the movie about how the canyon was formed, caught a ranger talk about the geology of the canyon and then headed out for our first hike,  We learned that Bryce is not really a canyon as it was not formed by a river but rather by erosion caused by thawing and freezing.  They have a monsoon season in August, heavy snowfall in winter and then over 200 days each year where the temperature is below freezing.  The constant freezing and thawing has resulted in the most beautiful panorama of hoodoos rising 1000 feet from the canyon floor. 

We started with a hike along the rim where the panoramic views of the hoodoos are outstanding. Darcy says it must have been a good day because Nancy took 115 pictures of hoodoos. The light was so much better the days we were in Bryce and we think they really show the true colors of the canyon.

Over the next 2 days we did 2 hikes below the rim where we went down 1000 feet and could see the hoodoos from the bottom.  Awesome.  We are proud of ourselves that we could do 2 hikes with that kind of elevation.  The fact that it was about 20 degrees F cooler than Zion or the Grand Canyon probably  made it a little easier.

Now that we have been to Zion, the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon, we can't decide which one we like the best.  Each has it own attraction and if you have a chance you should try and see all of them.

We left Bryce today and drove west along the Great Salt Lake.  We have driven US 15 through Salt City many times but have never seen the Great Salt Lake or the Bonneville Saltflats. We had no idea the lake was so big.  West from the Great Salt Lake to the Nevada border it is flat and white as far as the eye can see.

 

Tomorrow we are off to Reno to try our luck and then off to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco.








 

We had 4 wonderful days in Sante Fe, NM.  This is our first visit and we have added it to our list of cities everyone should visit, especially if you love art and history.  We stayed at one of the historic hotels that surrounds the plaza.  The plaza was built in 1610 and that is where we started out walking tour with a docent from the Museum of History.  There must be a least 10 museums in Sante Fe and there was no way we would be able to see everything.  We concentrated on the historic area surrounding the plaza where many of the buildings have been there since the 17th century.  Besides history, we are interested in art.  Darcy says he likes art whereas I LOVE art and Sante Fe is filled with art.  There must be over 100 art galleries just in the historic area ans there is art in the hotels, restaurants, in the streets and parks.  For me a dream come true was visiting the Georgia O'Keefe Museum.  It was wonderful to see her art from her time in New York and then from hills of northern New Mexico.  The hills around Sante Fe are covered with trees and our last day we decided to hike there.  We were able to get high enough to see a panorama view of Sante Fe while being serenaded by cicadas. We had some outstanding dinners in Sante Fe in outdoor restaurants surrounded by trees, lights and more art.  Be will definitely be back to Sante Fe.  Then off to hike in Bryce Canyon, UT.   

The pictures I have attached are a sculpture while walking around the city and the other is the walkway to our hotel room.

I know we are behind with posting on the blog partly because of poor internet service in the Grand Canyon.  We are in Sante Fe now but more about that later.

From Zion we took the north west route around the Grand Canyon to the south rim this time passing through Page and Lake Powell.  We had no idea that Lake Powell was so big which would account for the number of huge boats we saw along the highway.  We got to the Grand Canyon in time to get a lay of the land.  Like Zion, they have a shuttle system which makes it so easy to get to the hiking trails and tourist information.  We stayed just outside the park in an over priced hotel where the internet didn't work but the location was perfect.  We only had one full day of hiking so we decided to make the most of it.  Like Zion, the temperatures were unseasonably high, 95 F.  We started with an easy hike along the rim stopping in the geology museum along the way.  I wish my pictures did justice to the scenery.  We learned that the canyon is 277 miles long, 10 miles wide and 1 mile deep.  This was a real chance for me to meet my fear of heights.  After about 5 miles we came to the start of one of the below the rim hikes.  We decided to try and get to the 1 1/2 miles rest house.  It was still over 95 F.  We had lots of water and the electrolyte tablets thanks to Dean.  The hike ended up with an elevation change of 1,100 feet and took us 3 hours.  We have never done a hike with that kind of elevation and were proud of ourselves that we survived.  Thankfully we had cold beer waiting for us at the hotel. It is hard to describe how awe inspiring the canyon is.  You just have to see it to believe it.  The next day we were off to Sante Fe with a stop along the way to see my dad's old college hockey buddy in Albuquerque.

One of these pictures is from the rim and the other is looking at the trail we have just come up.

I know it has been a long time since I posted anything on the blog. We have had a busy year and have not been home much and haven't been able to keep in touch with friends and family like we should so I thought this would be a way to let everyone what we have been up to.

We decided to take road trip as far south as Sante Fe, NM and as far west as Alameda, CA and left West Kelowna May 24.  After 2 driving days, we arrived in Zion National Park.  We have always wanted to hike this park and we weren't disappointed.  My pictures do not do justice to the beautiful red Navajo sandstone mountains.  We have travelled many times to Arizona and California but Zion is not like anything we have seen before - the mountains, rock formations and colors are so different. We were so lucky to see prickly pears in bloom, something we were never able to see in Arizona.

The national park has a vey efficient shuttle system that will take you from your hotel to the visitors' centre and then from there will drop you off at all the trailheads.  We did 8 hikes the 3 days in unseasonably hot weather with highs of 95 F.  Besides a little sunburn and a few blisters, we felt great and rewarded ourselves every night by going to the sports bar across from our hotel.  They even showed all the hockey games so we didn't miss any of the playoffs.  Many of the patrons were hockey fans, so it was great fun. Then we were off to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.