I say almost because Mo’s foot (which she injured while trying to capture a photo of Mission Dolores in San Francisco) has turned out to be slightly more than sprained.

To be more specific:  It’s broken. … And requires surgery.

So it’s not been exactly an easy landing on our return to “reality”, but we’ve managed to get the rest of the photos uploaded … and some videos.  You can view the pics and videos on flickr (which, unfortunately is having lots of “hiccups” right now, but…)

Okay…so we haven’t exactly kept up with the promise to update the site regularly. My excuse is two-fold.

Number  One – technical difficulties.  In spite of the considerable effort and skills of our Trip Engineer , AKA Troy, we were not able to get internet access in certain remote spots. (Turns out tumbleweeds and snakes have little use for Wi-Fi).

Number Two – exhaustion and lack of time. Even when there was internet available, like at Goulding’s Campground in remote Monument Valley, UT, or believe it or not, amid the great Sequoias at the restaurant at Grant Grove Village,  full days of hiking, desert travel  and touring  and mindless wandering whooped our butts and we grabbed sleep when we could get it.

So now, comfortably ensconced in the grown-up room of The Holiday inn Express, at Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, CA, with Troy sound asleep in the bed and the kids resting comfortably in the next room, the saga continues…

There will be more blog updates in the next couple of days, but if you’re antsy, you can view our photos on flickr in the meantime.

So I sneaked out into the quiet morning for a few moments alone, and I snapped some pictures.

There was a peaceful calm, that took my breath away.

And nothing was moving…except me and the sun and a stray dog, who reminded me in some odd way of our old Rocky. (RIP)

Rocky reincarnated?

I watched the shadows change as the sun peaked over the mesas and buttes in the east.

For a few moments, everything turned slightly golden.

When the show was over, I headed to the laundromat to wash red dirt and several, shower-free days of adventure out of our clothes.

Then it was time to add one more bumper sticker to the back of our own trusty stagecoach and move on.

So by the time we had crossed the awesome loneliness of the local landscape into Monument Valley, we were greatly diminished as a group. So much so, that we feared Goulding’s Lodge, which sat as an oasis in endless miles of red sand and rock formations, was nothing more than a mirage.

As the story goes Harry Goulding brought movie director, John Ford, to his trading post in Monument Valley to see the landscapes here, and the rest is movie making history. The lodge was developed to support the filming of Westerns like Stage Coach, and John Wayne’s cabin is preserved onsite.

“How do you find these places?” Troy asked, and I have to say I was pretty impressed with myself for a minute. It was a really neat place.

That’s why, when I entered the office to check in and was told there was no reservation for us, I almost cried. The problem was quickly resolved however when I learned that our reservation was for a Goulding’s Campground cabin…just up the road.

And wow, what a cool cabin that was–refrigerated and comfortable, with a kitchen, bathroom and sleeping loft–all for a bargain price of $92. (Lodge prices are considerably higher.)

The cabin was so comfortable that it was very difficult to get motivated to catch the last backcountry tour into Monument Valley Tribal Park, but we wolfed down a snack, and headed back out into the oppressive heat to board a non-air-conditioned vehicle for a tour of the desert. Really…we did.

It did not go well at first….the audio equipment in the truck was faulty, and our guide, Anna, was extremely soft-spoken. Plus, it was hot…so hot that when you splashed water from your water bottle on your face, it evaporated immediately. So hot, that I am certain that no matter what the folks on Mythbusters might say, you could fry an egg on the red rocks.

Our first stop was a tourist mock-up of a hogan, a traditional Navajo home, and a demonstration of blanket weaving and hair braiding by an older Navajo woman, who agreed to have her photo taken. Due to lack of audio, I would say we didn’t get a lot out of that portion of the tour. And Anna (the guide, not the daughter) later admitted that not many of the 200,000 Navajo still live in these basic shelters, which offered shade, but no air-conditioning.

And it was getting hotter….

By the time we reached the next stop for a photo op at “mittens” (two rock formations that look like mittens), the Cawley family was becoming increasingly, um, Goth, in our outlook and demeanor, but there was no turning back. We still had three hours of desert touring ahead of us.

Perhaps, it was that the audio improved, or the sun started to ease up (a tiny bit) or that a breeze blew regularly across the open-air vehicle as it bounced over the sand paths of the park, but for whatever reason our attitudes improved greatly as we traveled through one of the most spectacular landscapes I’ve ever seen.

There aren’t really words for it–for the sheer size of the buttes and mesas, the changing colors, the wild horses running across unpopulated sands and the shadows cast on cool coves as the sun began to set.

The pictures will have to try to tell that story….

When we got back, we showered quickly and had a relaxing dinner, including Navajo tacos on fry bread at Goulding’s Stagecoach Restaurant, where we watched the buttes disappear into darkness.

Then it was back to our cool cabin, where the kids giggled maniacally in the loft for several minutes before fading off to sleep, hopefully dreaming of red dragons and lumbering elephants in a hot and magical land.

Kids in the loft

Pictographs - Dr. Seuss Was Here!

Elephant Rock

Dragon

We were headed west…toward Monument Valley, Utah, with a planned pitstop for a photo op at Four Corners Monument–the one spot in the United States where four states (New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah) intersect.

But first, we had to enter the Twilight Zone. Ne, ne, ne ne- ne ne ne ne…

You see, the trip took us here…

View One Month Off in a larger map

Out of Colorado which adheres to Daylight Savings Time, then back in time to Arizona, which doesn’t, except for the portion of the Navajo Nation, which does, then it was on to Utah, which also does. Our cell phones registered time changes every half hour or so, so by the time we got to Monument Valley, we had mostly given up on trying to figure it all out.

Our consensus of Four Corners Monument as a family was that the four states could have found a nicer place to meet, preferably somewhere with air-conditioning, or at least a spot of shade to escape the 110 degree temperatures.

The monument itself is basically a concrete slab, laid down in a white hot parking lot, in the middle of a rocky desert, in the middle of nowhere. Picture the moon, under a heat lamp.

Yet, when we arrived we lined up behind twenty other cars, full of families from all over the world, waiting to pay their $3 per person fee to enter. Then it was out of the climate-controlled cabin of our minivan, and into the hostile terrain, to wait our turn in line for 20 minutes or so.
Being Navajo Territory, we were on the same time zone as Utah–even when you walked around platform to Arizona. In fact, it felt as if time had stopped altogether. Did I mention it was hot?

While we waited, I tried to convince the kids it was fun.

“Hey, why don’t you take a walk around the monument and see how long it takes you to walk through four states?”

My suggestions were met with polite scowls, instead of the out-right mutiny being waged against the father behind us, who was quietly pleading with his Goth teenage daughter to at least stick around for the photo. Not that I could blame her for her anger. With all that black, attracting the heat, she must have been positively combustible.

When it was our turn, and we stepped out into our moment in the sun, we were less enthusiastic than I had imagined during the planning stages of the trip, but still my children and my husband (kind as they are) obliged me by doing a few stupid human tricks across four state lines. I brought a jump rope for Katie, and a baseball and gloves for Troy and Emmett, and Anna used her superhuman flexibility to draw a few comments from the crowds.

Here are the photos, plus one that the father of the Goth girl took of all of us, while waiting his turn. Then, after an obligatory stop at the Navajo Flea Market and a jewelry purchase, we were back on our way.

Not to worry, though, we fancied the lack of bathing to be part of the true pioneer experience, complete with the echoes of howling coyotes at dusk and dawn. Plus it was only two nights…and we had lots of baby wipes.  The price was right for  comfortable digs, just 15 minutes from the entrance to Mesa Verde State Park, too – $60 a night.

Mesa Verde is the former home of the Native Americans, formerly known as Anazasi. Ranger Dan, the tour guide who led us through the Cliff Palace ruins explained that the Navajo word”Anasazi” translates roughly to “ancient ones” or even “ancient enemies” and is a less-than-accurate way to refer to the people who built these amazing dwellings and inhabited the four corners area of the United States about 900 years ago— years before the Navajo settled nearby and way before Christopher Columbus was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye.

So now, we latecomers call these industrious early settlers “Ancient Puebloans” to distinguish them from the Puebloan people they eventually joined to form groups in placed like Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona. (Hope I got that right.) This journey certainly has inspired me to learn more about American history.

To see the ingenious dwellings that these native people built without benefit of modern machines is humbling and amazing and to think they scaled these cliffs daily to make their way to the mesa tops where they farmed without rivers or running water is almost unimaginable.

During our day in Mesa Verde, we learned about kivas—circular ceremonial spaces incorporated throughout each collection of dwellings. Ranger Dan explained these underground spots were also used regularly for socializing and relaxing (kind of like a holy rec room). They eventually abandoned these awesome dwellings for reasons no one knows—possibly a drought, possibly other depleted resources, possibly some cultural incentive to move on

The most interesting thing I took from his talk, however, was that early people probably didn’t distinguish subject from object as we modern folks do. In other words, a worthless, inanimate rock to us was part of living earth to them, just like our living bodies are collections of rocks/bones, minerals, etc. The whole world was alive to them, he said, complete with crying streams, angry storms and sympathetic stones.

In the afternoon, we took another guided adventure of “Balcony House.” The tour of this smaller dwelling is not for the faint of heart (like me). It included climbing a 32-foot ladder, squirming through an 18-inch wide tunnel, and a steep ascent up a cliff face assisted by a swinging chain railing.

All the kids ranked this potentially perilous experience as one of the highlights of the trip to date—although surprisingly Anna learned she has a fear of heights, and Balcony House is an adventure she will always remember, but likely not repeat.

Ya know what Emmett got for his 13^th Birthday? A nine-hour car ride. Yippee!!!!

The day would have started out a bit better if the folks at Elkins Ranch, in Palo Duro Canyon in Texas hadn’t cancelled the Cowboy Breakfast, due to lack of participation. Turns out Emmett’s  Birthday Breakfast hoedown was not to be, but turns out things worked out okay anyway.

Emmett can always remember that his 13^th Birthday started out with a bit of vandalism. Our first stop was Cadillac Ranch, where we spent some time adding our own graffiti to the ten Cadillacs, buried nose down in the middle of a cow pasture. (No one was arrested, as this “public art” display is not only allowed, but encouraged.) We looked for Uncle Joe Cray’s mark in bottom of the third car down, and we think we scored…but who knows.

Then after what seemed like an endless two-day drive through New Mexico and a simple campfire dinner at Mancos State Park, Emmett ended his 13^th Birthday watching a million stars twinkle in an endless, Colorado sky—each one offering a wish for more adventures tomorrow.

When we last left you, we were leaving Oklahoma City. After a free breakfast (and free WiFi), we updated the website, loaded up the car and set out for the west…but not before we stopped off to see a few more Oklahoma Cowboys. This time we saw them at OKC’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, which was one of the trip’s unexpected thrills and surprises.

Upon arrival, the nice lady at the museum information desk gave us a quick overview of the museum’s highlights, beginning with the artists, whose work is included in the museum’s multimillion dollar collection (none of which I knew, but some of you might have heard of Frederic Remington). I was a bit nervous because after five days on the road, I wasn’t sure the Cawley kids were up for an art museum, no matter how significant, but it turns out I had nothing to fear. The paintings and sculptures in the collection were so engaging—amazing marble replicas of wildlife, pioneers and Indians and paintings that brought a world we know little about to life.

Plus the museum offered a hands-on area, rodeo and Western movie exhibits and a life-sized replica of a Western town (Prosperity Junction) to wander around in that rivaled displays in Disney World. Turns out OKC has one of the nicest museums we have ever visited, and we all agreed after four hours or so of meandering that we could have spent more time there…and not just because the temperatures outside the museum walls were approaching 107 degrees.

We had a leisurely lunch at the museum café, which featured a homemade Western potluck of baked goods, chili and tortilla soup. Then we kissed good-by the blissful cool of the museum, and headed toward the Big Texan, which after a few hours of travel, stood as an oasis of Western Kitsch in a the hot Texas Prairie. In short, it is Cheeseville.

We arrived by 6 p.m., and the kids enjoyed swimming across Texas, or at least swimming across the Texas-shaped pool that was plopped down right n the middle of a seemingly endless dusty pasture. The motel also offers lodging for horses, so over a couple of poolside Lone Star beers, Troy and I watched a pair of cowboys check their equine companions into the barn next to the pool area.

What our room lacked in amenities, it more than made up for in silly charm—from the swinging saloon doors on the bathroom to the heavy cowprint spreads that the girls arranged on the floor as mattresses. (They offered Emmett the double bed in honor of his impending 13th Birthday.)

Dinner at the Big Texan Ranch was a blast. We didn’t attempt to eat the “free” 72 oz. steak, but we did watch one outmatched cowpoke try to attempt the feat from the elevated table in the front of the restaurant, where a digital clock counted the down the minutes he had left to polish off the steak, shrimp cocktail, potato and salad. (You get an hour to get into the clean plate club, or pay 72 bucks for the privilege of trying.)

We, on the other hand, had no problem getting into the clean plate club with our smaller, but not small, steak dinners. A roaming country trio serenaded Emmett for his Birthday, and Katie again ate her weight in steak. She says she wouldn’t mind living in these parts since it offers abundant opportunities for steak and beef jerky.

Then full and happy we drifted off to sleep under the watchful eye of a three-story tall cowboy and a truck-sized steer, plus a giant boot…to boot.

After breakfast we headed straight to Oklahoma City, stopping only for gas, a bathroom break and a chance to grab lunch out of the cooler in the trunk in Fort Smith, Arkansas on the Oklahoma border. It was near here that we also stopped to look at our car thermometer, which was displaying readings we had never before seen.

104, …105,…106, …107. Really? Must be broken…

We checked into the Days Inn off I-35, and I took the kids to the pool as ASAP. Troy, my hero, volunteered to get the laundry started. While in the pool, I spoke with a nice lady from Oklahoma, who confirmed what I feared. The car thermometer was not broken.

“We’ve had a bit of a heat wave,” she said. “It’s supposed to cool down to the 90’s tomorrow.” Okay…

We had an awesome steak dinner at Cattleman’s Café in the OKC stockyards, complete with lamb fries (AKA fried slices of cattle testicles…really, but don’t tell the kiddos). Katie ate her weight in steak and still wanted more.  She was also amazed and thrilled to see cowboys wearing real cowboy hats.

Everyone but Troy fell into refrigerated and blissful sleep by 10 p.m. Troy, the trooper, stayed up after midnight, updating the website.

We’re off to the Cowboy Western Museum and Amarillo next. See ya’ll at the Big Texan.

The in-flight movie was Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” which we all pretty much agree probably deserved to be passed over for that year’s Academy Award. It was, however, a good warm-up for our scheduled tour of Graceland, and fortunately–or unfortunately–it has added to our road trip lexicon.

Our brains are now uncomfortably stamped with the King’s loving words to the movie’s leading lady, “You are so sexy to me. You are like a hammer on my soul.” And my offspring, who are never content to let well enough alone, occasionally practice the line in their best Elvis voice in the back seat before bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Another groovy 50’s slang expression, we have picked up from the movie is “gonesville,” which for those of us in modern times, can be translated to mean, “cool” or great.

On the way to Memphis, we stopped for a lunch picnic with Derek and his two sweet kiddos, GiGi and Thomas, who showed us around Centennial Park in Nashville. That’s where we saw the impressive replica of the Parthenon, which was built during Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition. According to Derek, Nashville had the Parthenon built because it fancies itself the Athens of the south, which leads one to wonder how Athens, GA; Athens, TN; Athens, FL, and Athens, MI might feel about that.

Nonetheless, the park was lovely, in spite of the heat and humidity that descended on us at our arrival. The temperature (according to the car thermometer) climbed from 70 degrees to 94 degrees in our four hour drive. That’s where the Snowcone Man became the hero. Anna, Derek, Thomas and I had blue raspberry ones that stained our lips and teeth for the remainder of the day.

We bid the Petrella’s good-by after a nice visit and hopped back on I-40 on the way to Meeman-Shelby State Park, which is just 10 miles north of Memphis according to google maps, but situated in such a way among illogically twisted rural roads and dense forest that it took us much longer to find than we expected at the end of a long day.

Plus, we did not pass any stores for dinner provisions on our way, except of course, the famous Shelby General Store, just outside the park, which offers bluegrass and steak dinners on Friday nights until 9 p.m., but closes at promptly 6 p.m. on Sunday. We arrived at 6:06 p.m. and in spite of my attempts to press my face pitifully against the store window, begging for just a loaf a bread and some cheese, we were not granted entry. Not to worry, we found provisions at Kroger just nine miles away and managed to celebrate with a cheeseburger dinner well before midnight.