Last bits of Arizona

We had a pretty quiet week.

On Thursday we were in Page, Arizona and headed over to the visitor center for Glen Canyon Dam.

The visitor center had a lot of really cool exhibits, a Junior Ranger Corner, and you could take a tour of the dam (we didn't) that I overheard was similar to the tour of Hoover Dam (which we've done).

Check out this huge bolt and tools for working on the dam!

We've seen three of the four dams listed here! I don't know if we'll get to the 4th...

Not far, at least as the crow flies, is Lee's Ferry.

This was a Mormon-run settlement and ferry across the Colorado River, it is also the site where John Wesley Powell launched his expedition through the Grand Canyon

We drove past the Vermillion Cliffs

Really beautiful!

We also passed the entrance to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon

Our last stop of the day was to go to Pipe Spring National Monument

This was a fort, built by Mormon pioneers, with an actual spring running through it. Gotta protect the most important resource in the desert: water! It was fresh spring water, filtered through the sandstone behind the fort.

It was also a telegraph station

The spring flowed through the basement

Out through the wall

And into one of two retaining ponds. Unfortunately, that meant the water was somewhat contaminated at this point, and that was the only water available to the local tribes.

We were treated to an amazing sunset that night

We drove back into Utah on Friday

Today we attended the Green Valley 2nd Ward, St. George Green Valley Utah Stake

We went over to see how the renovations were going at the St. George Temple. An addition on the west side that was built somewhat recently and also the annex to the north that was the entrance to the temple have both been removed.

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Cross Country Trek!

Monday we went to Manassas National Battlefield. It was drippy and wet, so we didn't see much of the actual battlefield but the visitor center movie was fantastic and the exhibits were pretty amazing too. We learned something interesting--click on this photo if you want to read more. The stone is from the Manassas area farm of Wilmer McLean, the same Wilmer McLean whose home was used for the surrender of Lee to Grant at the end of the Civil War. McLean moved his family from Manassas to escape the battle, one of the very first of the Civil War. He could literally say the war started at his front door and ended in his front parlor! We then headed out, driving 8 hours a day. So our trip looked a little like this: Tuesday Wednesday Thursday We almost made it back to Utah before hitting any storms. There were some gloomy days, swirling snow, snow on the side of the roads (but not ON the road) until we got to west

Connecticut

Sunday we stayed put in Massachusetts where we were boondocking away from the brunt of the storm. We still had a lot of rain. Monday it rained and rained, we were able to find a campground that was open in Connecticut, we drove south in more rain.

Aloha, part 2

Day 9 -- Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona We rode the bus to Pearl Harbor. The bus in Hawai'i is TheBus, literally. We also noticed that the bus numbers matched the license plates Sights along the way, note the Hawaiian islands on the shaka hand gesture More murals The visitor center is open air, two museum galleries, a theatre, and lots of memorials The Navy runs the ferry from the visitor center out to the USS Arizona There are buoys at either end of the ship, so you can get a sense of its relation to the memorial structure Look closely, you can see a small, white buoy close to the USS Missouri and also parts of the USS Arizona sticking out of the water The entrance to the memorial You can still see oil on the water from the ship In the center of the memorial, there was an open area where you could look down directly onto the ship Looking toward the far end of the memorial The far end of the memorial had all the names listed of those that died in the attack on Pearl Harbor I di

Wandering Orbit

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