Anyone who has read this blog knows how fond our family is of traveling, and how Mike and I tend to be non-corporate types when it comes to spending our money. With those two facts in mind, I would like to present to you a website that is the prefect culmination of independent and travel: Darn Good Digs.

Darn Good Digs is run by Michael and Allison, of Brooklyn, New York. They are adventurous travelers as well, with a little son. They've started a site for hotel rooms priced below $150, independently owned, with neat features and otherwise made for the adventure loving traveler!

The inns reviewed are all over the globe, with an easy map for location, user reviews of every property, and nifty little tidbits of info about the locales. I would highly recommend that you check it out the next time you have some travelin' to do, and/or submit your own review for inclusion! Another reason to visit: right now they're running a little giveaway promo for a travel bag.

Remember that independently owned businesses of any kind (ahem...) give much more money back to the community than chains. Please support your little local guys!

Labels: budget, hotel, inn, non-corporate, travel

• The sun was shining enough to make my eyeballs peel, which made reflections all over inside the van...
• I was so happy to see the things that I was kind of bouncing...
• Arizona has kind of a high speed limit in areas, we were truckin'
  

Labels: Arizona, mesquite, palo verde, road trip, travel, Tucson

Labels: Arizona, road trip, travel

We all know one cannot visit the north end of Arizona without a trip to the Grand Canyon, right? Right?

Uh, right.

What if you schedule your trip to show up at the North Rim at sunset? In the winter...? Some of you are laughing at me right now. It had never occurred to any of us that anyone could close the frickin' Grand Canyon. But they can. And apparently, they do. Every winter. And the trip from the North Rim to the South Rim is about five hours- five hours of winding roads and twisting mountainous paths and long stretches of flat nothing in between. We gave up for that night and just drove.

Coming into Arizona, it was mighty flat,Soon, however, canyons and cliffs began to show up...

We stopped at a little park for a walk, and there was a Navajo couple selling terribly overpriced bead jewelry. Most of it was right out of the Rio Grande catalog that I use at work, so I had to smile and grimly shake my head when the girls began to ask.

The plant life was looking decidedly more alien,
Michael and the girls ran down to this gulch, skipping from stone to stone like nimble goats. I followed behind, snapping pics and studying the strange flowers, scrub, and succulents growing amongst the rocks.The shadows grew long and the air- already brisk- began to chill.
The moon against the red rocks and blue sky was fascinating to us, we took many shots of the contrast...
Back in the car, the road stretched on endlessly, and the colored haze around the cliffs and mesas was mysterious and enchanting.
We never made it to the Grand Canyon, I am sorry to say. We drove and drove for what felt like hours, winding up eventually in Tuba City, which is on the Navajo reservation. We got an overpriced room from some glumly indifferent natives, enjoyed the smell of piñon smoke wafting over the cliffs, and had- hands down- the worst Chinese food any of us had ever experienced. I suppose that's what we get for eating Chinese in a land housing other cultures, but it was either that or a fast food chain that late at night. The next morning, Kid #1 was having issues with carsickness/altitude sickness again, so we just dropped straight down to Flagstaff, heading due south to our destination.


We'll go back another day, see the Canyon, see Monument Valley, visit Joshua Tree Nat'l Forest maybe... try not to cram so many sights into such a short amount of time.

Labels: Arizona, road trip, travel, vermilion cliffs

We drove south in the waning Utah afternoon, crawling higher in elevation as we neared Kanab.
Outside of Kanab, lovely red rocks greeted us, worn by the sun and rain and wind...
We stopped at a little pulloff on the side of the road. Although there were patches of snow clinging stubbornly to the dirt and rocks, the air was balmy and clean. We scurried up the side of a hill, finding twisted trees (mesquite? pinon?), brown scrub, and a few tiny cactus plants, our first of the trip...

the kids were just happy to get out of the car after two hours of winding roads and slower speeds...


This is the rock wall that greeted our view when we parked. I love the stripes of sedimentary rock, dampened here and there by the melting snow,


For a better size reference, here is our minivan against the rock cliff:
We left our doors open for half an hour to get that 'travel smell' out of the car a bit... three kids and a bin of snacks did not bode well for the aroma!

Here is the view of the road from atop the hill. Again, a place we'd love to build right into the rock and just exist there...
The trees were enchanting in their carved and twisted beauty. Something about the shape of them echoed the flow of the rocks they grew in, a perfect testament the Artist who created this land,
Driving away from the red rocks:

Labels: mountains, red rocks, road trip, travel, utah

This wasn't a ghost town in southern Utah. Close to several State and National Parks/Forests/Resevoirs, it seemed like a town that had sprung from mining, ranching, or perhaps tourism. On this street, as well as others in the area, boarded up windows and forlorn driveways greeted us. The area was still as brilliant, peaceful and beautiful as the rest of the state, but it seemed that prosperity had long ago crept away, with its tail between its legs.

The building pictured below was a bit too far north for the pueblo look, and apparently not well loved, for every single windowpane was broken out of it. I'm sure there's a story to that, I only wish I knew what it was...


A little further south, and we began to see nice homes tucked away into the increasingly beautiful mountains. This nifty geodesic dome house captured our fancy:

You can see that its inhabited, unlike some we've seen. I cannot wait to build my straw bale house and live happily off int he country somewhere, with a bed of asparagus nearby...

The next chunk of pics were taken in the basic vicinity, but as time goes on I've begun to muddle which ones fit precisely where. Suffice it to say these were from Utah, somewhere far south of SLC. The road through these rocky crags bent and wandered beside a bright stream. I have never, ever been more enchanted with a place in my life. I want to go back to this river and build right near it and just stay there for many years.
Melting snows tumbling down from the mountains and hills fed the river, springs were visible twinkling in the incredibly bright sunshine...

Red grasses grew beside the river, for miles we could track the curve of the water by where the red grass was.
The weather was a brisk 42˚, cold enough for a coat, but warm enough for ice to melt and join the river. It flowed merrily along, lovely green-blue, beating the ice and rocks into submission under a rapid current.


Okay, so I've done a been of trackback research, and the closest I can come is somewhere around Fishlake Nat'l Forest for this area, and I think this is the Sevier River. Here's a pan:


More pics in a few days...

Labels: road trip, Sevier River, travel, utah

So, I know I could edit and crop these photos so that you (maybe) can't tell i just shot them from the van window as we drove. But I'm feeling a smidge lazy lately, maybe it's the pain. I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed last week, developed dry socket in one spot. It's pretty painful, and they've got me on a strong antibiotic for the bacterial infection underneath the teeth. Between pain pills every 4 hours and antibiotics every 6, I am so tired of pills I don't think I'll ever go to a doctor again!

Either way, Utah was a large state to traverse the length of. We have literally hundreds of photos, and I don't plan on boring you with the bulk of them. However, it is an incredibly diverse and beautiful place, we saw more different terrain there than in any other state.

Nifty little abandoned gas station at sunrise in a small town I've forgotten the name of...


A couple hundred miles of Utah looked like this:
Cattle ranches and open fields. The good stuff comes next post.

Labels: road trip, travel, utah

When a bottle of children's liquid Mucinex opens partway through your trip, and you notice the gritty pink stuff seeping right through the medicine bag, do not be discouraged. Although you meant to put it in that handy little spillproof zipper pouch, the inside of the minivan was chaotic and you just forgot.

Instead of sighing or cursing or throwing it all away, just pull out each and every thing from that medicine bag....... and wash it all. Every item. Even the cardboard Alka-Seltzer box that isn't meant to be washed. Just take the little motel washcloth and wet it down, over and over again, and wash that weird sticky stuff right off your shampoo.

And your soap.

And your nail polish.

And your razors.

And your lotion and your deodorant and your chapstick and...

well, you get the idea. Not that I am bitter or anything. Actually, spending a solid hour cleaning and reorganizing my medicine bag was kind of grounding after hours on the road.

What was not grounding, however, was mistaking Burt's Bees Cuticle Cream with their (very similarly colored and packaged) Lip Balm. Oh, the lip balm works great on one's dry peeling fingernail areas, but the lemon-infused cuticle cream tastes none too nice on the lips. Just sayin'

Labels: medicine kit, mess, road trip, travel