Arizona

(Somewhere near Flagstaff)

And I thought Arizona was all desert!

When I was little we used to live in Tempe, near Phoenix. It was all flat dirt with scattered scrub, and that's all you got. I guess it eventually had to give in to the trees and such of Colorado, but I never suspected for a minute that that might be in the middle of AZ.

Kind of reminds me of the first time I went to Death Valley on a job (a story and photo album for another blog). Whenever you see scientists interviewed there, or news coverage there, it's stark, bleak, and featureless. But when you actually go there, there's an amazing variety of terrain and scenery. You have vast white salt flats, in the lowest point in the country if not the continent, and this is surrounded by hills and mountains splashed with red, blue, yellow, green, and orange from all the rich mineral deposits found in the soil. There's a place there called Artist's Palette because it's so saturated with colors, it looks like just that. There's even a band of wild horses out there! Death Valley is one of the most amazing and strikingly beautiful places I've ever seen. And if I hadn't been there to see it myself, I'd still be convinced it's nothing but a big stretch of sand.

This place reminds me of that. The last things I expected to see were big green groves of trees and brush. The man sitting behind us told us Flagstaff is home to the biggest grove of trees and biggest population of elk in the world.

Going to Death Valley taught me that no matter how many times you've seen a place on documentaries, never to judge a place before seeing it yourself. Today I learned that you can't judge a place just because you've been someplace nearby, either!

Set up mobile posting for the blog

A few more hours left!

Last-minute wrapping up and we're off to the train station.

Set up data access today with our cellular provider so we can post from the road. Thanks to promotional deals, when you sign up for $5/month for 1MB internet, or $3/month for sending of 20 multimedia messages, each of these services has the first month unlimited access! Is that a perfect time frame, or what?? Hehe. We can post to the blog by e-mail, so I just want to be able to do e-mail offline, log on for 5 minutes and do my send/receive, then sign off. These plans I signed up for couldn't possibly be more perfect.

This is gonna be so awesome!!!

Los Angeles, California - inclement weather

Just in case anyone is under the illusion that we never get inclement weather here...

...these are all from today.


Heavy hailstorm


Streets flooded up over the sidewalk


The river that was the 60 freeway onramp - Hacienda Blvd.

While I will grant you that this isn't our usual weather, it's not like we haven't seen it hail before. Just not this hard. I've seen really heavy rain before, but I've never seen the skies just open up quite like that. It started as sheets of rain, then suddenly came down with hail just as hard. The streets were instantly flooded, and we knew if we didn't get out of there soon we were going to have a stalled engine.

Maybe God wanted to prepare us for the weather we're going to experience on our trip? LOL

Los Angeles, California - and random commentary

There are still things in L.A. that are just beautiful. I snapped this with my phone this morning when we went out for coffee. These formations promptly dissipated and were completely gone within 2 minutes after I took the photo.

And while we're on the subject of beautiful things in L.A., we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw this doe recently, right here in the city, at Griffith Park:



In addition to the interesting cotton-ball cloud formations this morning, I happened to see a flock of sparrows feeding underneath a tree. They'd get frightened by a passing car and they'd all fan out and whoosh up into the branches above, like an explosion in slow motion. The interesting thing was that the branches were the same color as they were, so when they did they disappeared completely. Then, slowly at first, they'd come fluttering down... like leaves with a life of their own, spinning and tossing in the wind as they fall off the tree. The brownness of the branches made the illusion complete. I couldn't take my eyes off of them. I watched this amazing cycle over and over again until they took refuge in the tree as it started to rain.

All of this served to remind me today that no matter what you think you dislike about a place, there is still abundant beauty to be had.

Preparations, aka mad rush time

Well, we made it through the workweek!

Now it's been a flurry of preparations. For reasons I won't bore you with, preparations involve more than making our reservations, buying supplies, and getting everything packed. We also have to do the equivalent of helping 4 people move... 1 is very messy and a hardcore packrat, 1 is messy and a severe packrat, 1 is messy and a recovering packrat (myself), and one is a compulsive purger (Nickie). Do you ever wonder why I feel sorry for the woman? LOL Anyway, we are utterly exhausted but hopeful that the worst is over and we can get started doing some actual, you know... PACKING done. Hehe.

Departure: day after tomorrow

Made reservations

Reservations made with Amtrak today:

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Dep 10/18 6:45p Los Angeles, CA (LAX) - 4 Southwest Chief
Arr 10/20 7:26a Kansas City, MO (KCY)

Dep 10/21 7:26a Kansas City, MO (KCY) - 4 Southwest Chief
Arr 10/21 3:20p Chicago, IL (CHI)

Dep 10/21 7:55p Chicago, IL (CHI) - 48 Lakeshore Limited
Arr 10/22 7:05a Buffalo, NY (BUF)
*****************************************************************

I don't have our passport #'s with me to make the reservation with VIArail (Canadian train system). I'll have to call tomorrow morning and make the reservation with VIArail, then call Amtrak with the reservation #'s (one # for each of us).

One more day of work...

Random commentary

I called my offspring a couple days back and he said he would be interested in going to Niagara Falls together. He had the additional idea of "doing a little border-hopping" over to Toronto. Now that would be awesome!! So I've checked it out and it looks like if we leave on the 19th we can make it to Buffalo, NY by Saturday 10/22 at 7:00 a.m. If he takes a Greyhound from his college to Buffalo, we can rent a car, pick him up, have until Sunday evening to do our Niagara Falls thing and see Toronto, then drive back with him to his college.

As full-time RVers always say, "you make your plans in jell-o." Things can change at any time if you decide you like a place more and want to stick around, or decide you're more interested in something else.

Incidentally, there are elevator and hiking trips at Niagara Falls that take you to the base of the falls and even behind them. How awesome is that??

2 more days of work...

Random commentary

Our Los Angeles neighborhood


Too many cars and no place to park. Hard to see here but many streets are hard to navigate, because due to the parking crunch, parking is often allowed even where it shouldn't be and cars are jammed into any available space... frequently making already narrow streets into unnerving tight squeezes when you're driving up the street and another car comes from the opposite direction.


Dried-up unkempt lawns with garbage strewn everywhere


Wrought-iron fencing, garbage and debris on the sidewalk and in the gutters, walls completely covered with graffiti


The gang-infested alley we have to drive through to get home, because the only entrance street is so jam-packed with traffic and most people are too rude to let you in to make the turn onto our street. Further down this alley, not pictured here, is a favorite area of several homeless who make their cardboard shelters and leave their garbage here.
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There is something primal about driving in downtown L.A. traffic that can turn a gentle, mild-mannered humanist into an out-of-control, raging, cursing, feral beast. One episode can do it, but doing it 5 days a week is liable to bring out a side of you you didn't know existed, a side you wish didn't exist. After almost a year of this, I'm so through with this commute. I'm a pretty defensive driver, but almost every day I have a dangerous near-miss situation as someone makes a reckless move and almost takes out everybody around them. This, coupled with the fact that the main freeway I take has regularly been plagued with drive-by shootings in recent months, often makes me wonder why in the world anyone would ever move to L.A. and how existing residents can stand it here. It doesn't help that my current job is frustrating sedentary work in one of a sea of cubicles. I think there is something about being that caged up that can drive people to the brink. Maybe that's why we have so much craziness here.

If there's one thing that working field positions in a wide area has taught me, it's that the farther away from L.A. you get, the friendlier and more peaceful people are. You find that the grocery clerk stops to chat with you, people on the street say hello to each other, and drivers cooperate so everybody can get where they're going safely. I mean, naturally there are always exceptions, but in general I've found that this friendliness factor is in direct proportion to your distance from L.A. Of course, I don't know how far that radius actually extends.

I am so looking forward to finding out. :)