Lazy day

last night we had dinner at the peppermill lounge in las vegas. we discovered it last time we were in vegas, and liked it, so we just went again... :) although i have never seen such a restaurant in the us before, i think its very american. big booths with pluche seats, a large table, and lots of neonlights everywhere. and the portions? crazy, crazy big. even for american standards. i had a salad and tim a starter; half or so was lunch for today... nice! i had a margarita and tim a gin tonic, hmmmm...

today we didnt do too much, compared to the days before. as i read in the comments, it must be quite a cultureshock... well, yes. but, unexpectly, its a welcome one! we saw so much, we had a natural beauty-overload.... and..  we are staying at the trump hotel, which is so very luxurious, and... we dont have to pay! the room is enormous, and the bathroom is crazy big too, with a huge jacuzzi. the bathrobes are very nice too :) so much luxury (i never saw so many towels in a hotelroom, there are 2 sinks and there is a tv in the huge mirror above it, for whatever reason...), it feels a little weird, and wasteful, but nice at the same time. only thing i dont like is that there is only valetparking, so everytime you need your car they get it for you... thats actually how we got the 2 free nights (and is the reason we are here again); we stayed in this hotel in may last year (through some discount site, ofcourse, its far too expensive for us!), and then the valet made a scratch on our rental car (luckily we had insurance), but the hotel really didnt handle it well while we were here and never admitted that it happened while they handled the car... so eventually they just gave us 2 free nights....

anyways, we did some laps in the fancy outdoor pool, went to the shopping outlet center (booooring), drove to the desert and took numerous pictures, and the day was over again. tomorrow we go back to boston, where its supposed to be quite cold!

Last park....

i think today we visited our last park for this trip. we drove to zion national park, an hour or so from where we stayed for the night. another 25 dollars park fee (just like grand canyon, but you can actually also buy a pass for 80 dollars, which will grant you access for 1 year to all national parks... somehow we didnt do that...). and yet again; it was so pretty! and the scenery was so different once again! to me the mountains looked really delicate, like silk or something; but yet again it was hard to photograph... :) it was great to walk around, however. the weather was perfect too; not hot (as would be in summer), and not cold, as it was very sunny. we needed coats and so on, but we had lunch outside. unfortunately many of the hiking trails were closed (some halfway, so we had to turn around), due ice on the paths.

in 1909 this park was named mukuntuweap national monument, but in 1917 the visiting director renamed it zion, as mukuntuweap was very unpopular (now i just wonder why he named it zion, but im too tired to figure it out tonight).

and now, we both have had a bit of an overload of natural beauty. i didnt know it was possible, but we both have seen so much, that it is actually enough for now... :) and so... this evening we gained another hour as we are in the pacific time zone. to be specific; las vegas, nevada! in the city itself we dont have to fear for natural beauty, thats for sure... ;) we are here to cash in the 2 free nights we still had at the trump hotel... we are in a very fancy room, at the 40th floor, and it might be that tomorrow we will just do nothing.... 

(this evening we went to see django unchained from tarantino. it started out great, showing a lot of the wilderness we saw for ourselves the past days, but somewhere halfway it started to become really weird and bloody and now im still not sure whether i liked it or not. lets sleep on it.... good night!)

Horseshoe bend

close to page we also went to the horseshoe bend, which you can see above. you have to walk a bit through some flat desert, and then suddenly the ground is gone, and deep beneath you is water. water that has shaped out the middle rock, making it look like the water runs in horseshoe form around it. it was very pretty to see, and scary again, the cliff was so abrupt and deep. you really had to be careful, there were small slits, and some of the stones were just a little overhang, that could break off when standing upon it. the only way i dared to look down (and most others with me), was by sitting down. its funny what games your mind play when there is a depth beneath you. i took some pictures with my fisheye as well, the only way you could get the entire thing on the picture; quite cool! once i will post some pictures on flickr or something.....

its very cold here in utah, -11C or something!! we are about to take off for our final destination.....

Taking pictures...

we have taken "picture taking" to an entire new level.. by now we have both so much its almost becoming a frustration! this morning we woke up in page, arizona, where we went to see the antelope canyon (as suggested by our friend from san diego). unprepared tourists as we are, we just drove somewhere (we are pretty sure we went to the upper canyon; there is also a lower canyon, wikipedia tells me), and discovered you cannot "just" goto the canyon; you can only go by guided tours. ours turned out to be 31 dollars per person, but that would be cheaper than the tour in the afternoon they told us. that one would be 46 dollars! (because the lighting was better at that time). we were loaded unto a truck, and were driven to the canyon through the navajo desert (luckily the ride was not too long, as it was very bumpy, driving with high speed through the sand). it was really amazing to see, and almost impossible to photograph, but everyone tried their best, just clicking, and clicking and clicking away..... i tried with my fisheye lens, without it it was even harder, and above you see the result.... but... being there was so much more impressive than the photo shows. these canyons are formed by water flowing through navajo sandstone, due to erosion you get the amazing shapes and curves in the rocks... 

if you look at google for images, you will see a lot of fancy ones from professional photographers, with light beams from openings above. wikipedia just told me that those beams are only visible in summer, when the sun is high up in the sky (so i guess tours are even more expensive then, apparently they range from 30-80 dollars per person! we got a cheap one). the family you see above had brought a tripod, and at every spot they put it down, and jumped all in front of it, like clockwork, hahaahaha.

another set of kids decided to carve their names in the rocks when we got out. it was quickly discovered by one of the tourguides and they had to remove it (dont know how well that worked). i was surprised their parents were not that angry. but even more so that the kids apparently thought this was a normal thing to do.... (moreover, it was posted at the parking lot, and the tourguide had mentioned it, but they had missed both these announcements as their mom upon reading the guidelines later on said; oh, i guess we should have read those rules before you started carving, kids!)

we saw more beautiful things today, but now its time to sleep in yet another nice motel. this time in kanab, utah, just across the state line with arizona.

More canyon...

another pic of the canyon.... i took so many of them.... just like all the other tourists around us. for days we were often the only people on the road for miles, and suddenly we were surrounded by tourbuses full of people. it was such a happening! i think thats interesting... what we saw before was amazing too, but somehow doesnt draw such a crowd as the grand canyon.

here you see how high up you are, and the depths you are staring into. sometimes it made me a bit dizzy, and with the slippery snow i was overly careful, constantly imagining that i would slip and tumble into the depths of the canyon.... here there is a rail that protects you from the depths, but walking just a little further leads you to edges without.... scary!! (it was also interesting that you can walk along the rim for several miles, but most people didnt go far at all. it seemed they just took all the required pics and went off to the next stop... :)  ) as there was quite a layer of snow, you could see how far some people had ventured to have the best view or photo opportunity (it was one big photoshoot where everyone was taking pictures of each other, asking others to take one, offering to take one in return, etc etc). i ofcourse stayed away from the edge, just thinking about going closer made my legs feel shaky....

now we are off to more wonders of nature, here around page. im very curious!!

Grand canyon

the new year started out well; we went to ihop for breakfast!! (homemade bread would have been good too, but thats quite difficult when you are in a motel). its too bad we only discovered ihop about 1.5 year ago (except for my weight, ofcourse....); if only someone had told me ihop stands for international house of pancakes.. then we would have tried it out sooner...

it was indeed really cold outside, and the waterbottles we had left in the car got frozen overnight. after breakfast we drove to the grand canyon! it was yet another nice drive, high up in the mountains at some point (8000 feet). and then, finally, i got to see the grand canyon with my own eyes. magnificent! and impossible to photograph, its just too big and colorful. even though conditions were excellent today; very good visibility and sunny... in reality it was just so much better than the pic you can see above (which is just a tiny part). we walked around there for quite a bit, and then discovered the road we planned to take was closed due to icy conditions. we thus had to drive the exact same way back again (some 2.5 hours), and from there we had to drive up north again to our next destination. it was so disappointing, because of that we had to drive the last 1.5 hours in the dark, and i could only imagine what great scenery we were missing.... :(

now we are in page, just at the border between arizona and utah. we found an excellent hotel (amazing how much the prices can differ from town to town, just depending on the amount of tourists) for not too much money. after dinner we enjoyed the outdoor hot tub (while its freezing, around -2C), so nice! time to sleep in yet another bed, and lets see where we will get tomorrow... the trip is almost coing to an end... :(

Happy 2013!

and now its the first morning of the new year..... happy 2013!!! tim will probably not be happy with this self portrait; he couldnt keep his eyes open because of the bright sun, but i think its still a nice pic. oops, there he is, and yep; he says; nohohoohoho! but its one of the few where i look ok, and im posting the pics, so..... :P

enormous party animals as we are, we had pizza in the town of flagstaff, arizona. this is an actual town, with many, many hotels (and many were fully booked for new years eve, we discovered). the city center seemed really nice, with lots of restaurants and shops. but.... tim didnt feel too good, and we were both soooo cold! so, after the small pizza (which we could not finish), we got back to the hotel and watched some soap series, until it was midnight; time to sleep! :D

there was actually a "ball dropping" like in new york, only not with a ball, but with a giant pine cone. we saw it. it was also dropping at 10 pm, to accomodate those that didnt want to wait till midnight (isnt that weird!!? yes, that was new york new year time, but still..). around 9.15 many people were lined up to wait for that event, in the freezing cold!! but by that time we were heading back to the hotel...

anyways, its a new day, and according to our computer its -18C outside (-0.5F), thats crazy!! lets see if its really true...

Just awesome!

im not often using the word awesome, i dont think i can pronounce it quite american enough, but you wont know that when i write it down, right? :) today was awesome! i think we had the best vistas so far, and we already had seen so many beautiful sights... the weather helped too, beautiful cloud formations and the sun was often present as well.

we woke up early this morning (im still on boston time, 2 hours earlier), had a not too bad breakfast, and we were greeted by beautiful surroundings. unfortunately we had driven the last hour in the dark the day before, but it was nice to see that the strip of motels and neon signs was actually in between enormous mountains. it almost made the walmart across the street pretty... ;) we avoided the highway again and drove westwards; we got high up in the mountains, where we remained for most part of the trip. around 7000 feet (2 km!). and yes, we got snow too.... quite some snow. the road was entirely white at some parts, and just cleared at others. luckily there werent many cars and it all went smoothly. we stopped quite often to take in the stunning views; one of them above, in the magdalena mountains, new mexico. eventually we hit arizona. we spent quite a while in a shop with western wear (!!) and i bought some boots (we actually went for tim, haha). the snowy roads were behind us, and the road ahead was straight and empty; tim decided i had to drive again, and so i did, for quite a while. i now know how to drive straight, but anything else means panic....

we wanted to drive through the petrified forest (with yes, petrified wood, lots and lots of it), but unfortunately they decided the snow made for unsafe conditions and we had to turn around... ah well, the other road was awesome too. for the last bit we got onto the real highway with lots of cars (the old route 66), and now we are in flagstaff for the night.... (its freaking cold, -8C, 17F)

the new year just started; so happy new year!! more tomorrow, and can you guess where we are headed?

Hi dear!!

yesterday we saw a lot of live deer, so cute!! very different from the day before, when we saw many alongside the road, hit by cars... i guess that explains why most people around here have a big car with a huge cattleguard in front (we dont know the actual term, but you get what i mean, i hope). we saw some elk too, yesterday!

and so many cows, literally in the middle of nowhere, im really curious how that all works, does the farmer visit them.. or? 

and another thought that cannot leave my mind; i once read that the entire world population (thats 6 billion people, right?)  fits in the state of texas... but... then the density would be like new york city.....  the remoteness we are driving through also made me realize something else, and although so very logic, it was a revelation to me.. ;) once the entire world was as remote as the places we drove through the past few days.... i am just not used to such emptiness and keep wondering how people can live there....

well, today is a beautifully sunny day! (the first, so far we started out grey every day), and we are up for another long drive, further west and north...

Rural America

this morning we woke up early in alpine, texas. had breakfast at the hotel (not too bad), and drove to fort davis, which was much less interesting than i thought (once there was a fort, but now only the foundations were still present). the road towards it however was beautiful. then we drove on the interstate for a bit (80 mph, even faster than yesterday!), then we got onto road 54 from Van Horn to the highest peak of texas in the guadelupe mountains. that road was deserted (we maybe met 4 cars in total?), and almost entirely straight. so... tim decided i should drive. now, mind you, i never drove in my entire life.... so it was a little scary. even with a road with just a few curves and no other cars.... but i drove, for 10 miles or so, hahhahaha.

eventually we entered new mexico; the first sights were not too pretty, and the desert was pretty flat. most roads were rather empty again, and distances between towns were huge! at some point we were high up in the mountains, full of snow, after which we entered the desert again. what an amazing change in landscapes in just several hours of driving!! during dinner we looked at the photos i took, and its crazy how fast you forget (even during a 1day drive), what you all saw.... its good to keep a blog for just that reason... :) we are now in socorro, judging from the hotel prices clearly less touristic than alpine, we got a room for just 42 dollars.

above one of the first pictures i took this morning. the landscape there was so yellow and deserted. the windmill is so very typical too. i knew it ofcourse from the movies, but during our time in texas i have seen many of them... wikipedia tells me they are part of a domestic water system....

today we gained another hour (2 now since we left boston), as we are in the mountain time zone.... but to me it feels like midnight, clearly time to sleep to get up early on the last day of 2012!

God's country

this is how you are welcomed in the city of hondo (or rather, the street of hondo, as it was just one street we drove through, with some houses here and there..)... to me its just interesting that so far, texas has the highest speed limit i have seen in the us (75 miles per hour! while around boston its often 55...)

Texan desert

this morning we left san antonio and took highway 90. after i had done some reading online last night, i had high expectations. and... we were not disappointed; it was beautiful. so much desert!! and such an ever-changing landscape. here and there a teeny tiny town, with many abandoned buildings... the nature was a whole lot better, whenever there seemed to be some humans around, there was also a lot of old crap; from cars to barns to entire houses....  the roads were perfect and there were not too many cars. we stopped here and there to take some pictures, and i also took a lot while driving. i just had to think of those cowboys in the early days, going through this empty, so very empty country!! at least at this time of the year its not soaring hot, as im sure it will be during summer.... (we didnt wear our jackets, but it was a little chilly when outside). we passed creek after creek, but all the riverbeds were empty...

eventually we stopped in alpine, which is surrounded by several hotels (luckily for us, several were pretty full already!), and also by an interesting mountain landscape...

ah, along the way we also got checked by the border patrol (along the road we saw 2 inspection stations, i guess because we were close to mexico), but everything was fine after showing our passports...

now its time to sleep again, seeing so much beauty is tiring... ; ) we havent fully decided how to drive tomorrow, and we still havent left texas......

Concrete jungle

we left mckinney this morning. it was chilly (but definitely less cold than yesterday), grey and a bit rainy. this is somewhere along the highway; arent the signs a bit abundant? motels, hotels, and food, food and more food (mostly mexican, pancakes or burgers). along the highway you certainly dont have to worry finding something to eat or a place to sleep, just the signs might be confusing.... the parts of texas we saw today were just flat. not always unpretty; stretches of empty (farm)land, mixed with (too many) outlet malls, superstores, apartment complexes, and stuff like above. i preferred the empty stretches of land...

eventually we ended up in austin, and the sun had come out!! we could even walk around without jacket, quite a change from this morning... we learned a bit about the history of texas, cowboys and austin, saw the capitol (the largest in the country), had lunch and drove on to san antonio. quite the tourist city! we walked along the river, together with many, many other people. it was fun, but in my opinion it actually was an ugly version of the dutch city utrecht, which also has many restaurants lined along its canals. now we are in a motel a little outside of the city, tired and curious about tomorrow, when we will continue on highway 90 towards el paso. from what ive read, this must be a very interesting route! lets see how far we will get... unlike yesterday we did not yet book a hotel and will just see where we will end up....

McKinney, Texas

yesterday we were in the tiny town of mckinney, an hour from dallas. still some snow residues here and there, as you can see. and, i guess no surprise, i was cold... :) but doesnt it look cute, and quite american?

mckinney only exists since 1848, and is named after collin mckinney, signer of the texas declaration of independence. this year, cnn has named the city the second best place to live in the entire us, and its the only place in texas to make the top ten... now i wonder what is supposed to be the best place to live, but its time for breakfast!!

Freeeeeeeezing Texas

last night i could not get blogger to work... but... we are in texas! we got up at 4 in the morning, had a cab waiting at 5, a delayed flight that eventually left at 8, and landed in dallas somewhere in the afternoon, where we were greeted by freaking cold weather, and snow. more snow than in boston, not a lot, as you can see above, but enough for lots of kids to have fun... :)

as you might remember, we were in texas last year may for a wedding, so now we had to witness the result of that; a cute little baby boy! i just wish it wasnt so cold here.... grrr...

we did some touristy stuff too, we saw the memorial for john f kennedy, who was shot in dallas. it is a really nice memorial. we walked around a bit more, but while last time it was too hot to walk around (nobody was walking except us), now it was too cold, haha. tomorrow we drive further; at the very moment we are still deciding where to.... lets see.... :)

ah, i learned something too; if you want tea around here, you have to specifiy you want hot tea, otherwise you will get iced tea (bleeeghhh!), and some places dont even have the hot version....

Christmas angel?

yesterday afternoon we went for a hike in the woods not too far from our place. the path we walked had several trees that were decorated with christmas stuff! in a way it was a bit weird, especially this angel, which looked kind of scary to me... especially from up close...

tomorrow we leave for a small trip! we booked it only yesterday, so we havent quite figured out yet how/where and what... our flight is at 7 in the morning, so we have to get up real early... somehow i have this obsession that the day before a trip (be it a week or more) i need to have the entire house clean. so thats what i mostly did today (and tim as well); cleaning... well, yes, i know it was christmas (we woke up to some snow! but it wasnt much and it didnt last...); i just cant help it. i like the thought of having a neat place to come home to, and i like to think while away that at home everything is in perfect order (i guess i have a little ocd.... ). ah well.. only didnt leave me much time for packing my suitcase.. hope i didnt forget anything....

Enjoy christmas!!

this is (again) at the boston common. the tree you see here comes from nova scotia, and is a present from their government to the people of boston. since 1971, this has been a tradition. it is in thanks and remembrance of the halifax explosion in 1917. on december 6 of that year, a french wartime ship fully loaded with explosives collided with a norwegian ship in the halifax harbour. the gigantic explosion that followed instantly killed 1900 people, and 9000 were wounded. anything, buildings, people, within 500 acres of the explosion vanished, and the explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour, causing even more damage. the city of boston quickly learned of the disaster and was the first to send help. the year after, in 1918, the people of halifax sent a tree to thank all those that helped. and as mentioned, since 1971 this has been a yearly tradition.

the tree lighting is a spectacle in itself, with a lot of performances and whatnot. we went there the first year we were in boston (together with 30,000 other people). it was so cold, we could hardly see anything and the (live) singing was not that good....needless to say, we did not go the past 2 years!  but... although sad, its good to know the story behind the tree....

and now you all should enjoy christmas!!

Holiday shopping

a shop window somehere in boston... i just dont know what the sentence on the window means "the woman prepares for the holidays". literally? the woman does all the work? (the cooking, etc), or does she prepare herself by buying this (boring) blue dress? or....? i also seem to see a moustache, at least on the doll to the left... 

anyways, we didnt do much holiday shopping. thats the advantage if you live on the other side of the ocean... ;) i did buy some shoes, yesterday. for myself. and tim bought 2 pairs. the guy at the counter asked us about our holiday shopping, and if we were almost done.... i just answered that it was, with the 3 pairs of shoes... :D

Common birds

today we walked a bit around in boston. that was pretty cold. there was a strong wind, and it was kind of grey out... brrr!! i guess still better than yesterday, when it was raining like crazy...

here the boston common again, a little further is the frog pond (that i showed you yesterday). here someone just stirred up the pigeons and they happened to fly right over me, yuck... i did what everyone would do; i used my camera for protection... ;)

Getting better

after a week (a week!!) of being sick, i can finally say im feeling better again. not entirely, but better.. defenitely much better than i felt last week friday, or the entire weekend for that matter. beeehhh.... we must have picked up a virus here or there.

anyways. no pictures at all this week, so this is one from december last year. this is the frog pond in the boston common, which i have shown you several times before, mostly in summer when little kids play there to coll off. in winter it frozen, although both last winter and so far this winter it has been too warm to be frozen by itself.... :) (im waiting for the snow!!!). here you can see the huge amount of people, waiting to get onto the ice thats being polished. i really dont get why so many people are always skating here; its so tiny! 

ah well... time for bed now, still not feeling 100% healthy...