Arizona trip - Days 6 & 7

Well, the day after our trip to the Grand Canyon we knew we needed to take it really easy. So we all slept in, and pretty much just hung around the resort for the day.

Will went up to the Activities Center and played World of Warcraft (his current obsession), and then we played a round or two of pool. We hung around, read, watched TV, and generally did nothing!

There were only two things that had to get done on that day
- I needed to find a good trail ride for the family, and sign us up for it sometime before we left. This was the one activity that all the kids in the family wanted to do. Tom did a lot of riding as a child, and the children have all also had riding lessons (some more than others). I have the least experience in the family, but I was game! Anyway, I was able to get us on a 1 1/2 hour trail ride at 9am the following morning with High Mountain Stables, located about 40 minutes away in Mormon Lake.
- My husband ended up spending much of the day talking to our lawyer in Western Massachusetts, where we are working on selling a property (very long story!). After 2 years on the market, we had gotten a good offer about a month before. However, due to a very long set of complications, we still did not have a contract. Of course, their lawyer finally sends us a contract while we are on vacation! Tom had some questions about it that needed to be resolved, so there was quite a bit of back and forth about it.

We ended this very quiet day by seeing Get Smart at a local cinema. We are all big Steve Carrell fans! The kids all really enjoyed it; I thought is was only OK. I was a big fan of the TV series as a child, and I thought the movie wasn't nearly as funny. We all tried to go to bed quickly since we had to be up early to get to the trail ride by 9am.

We got up by about 7:30, and were out of the house by 8:25. We were running a bit late, since they wanted us to be a few minutes early to fill out the paperwork. The drive to Mormon Lake was another lovely Arizona landscape. This time we were driving by high mountain lakes and forests. We missed our turn and did arrive a few minutes late, but it was fine. We filled out the paperwork and were assigned our horses.

Here are some shots of us on our horses (I'm missing since I'm the photographer!):







They lined the horses up in a particular order (it seems some horse like/don't like each other), and we went off. There was one other family on the trail ride with us. We went up the mountain into the beautiful forest of Aspens and Ponderosa pines. It was very quiet and relaxing. The horses were obviously very used to this trail, and did not demand much input from their riders. At one point, Ally's horse shied and bolted a tiny bit - she handled it very well!

Here are a few photos from horseback:





And one that the "cowboy" in charge took of us:


The two "rules" of the trail were that we all needed to have a good time, and we couldn't let our horses eat while we were riding. If the horse we were riding snagged some grass, we either needed to sing a song, or we needed to kiss the horse at the end. Annika's horse was apparently always eating (they gave Annika a crop so her horse would behave!), and she sang more than once. Ally, however, preferred to kiss the horse instead:




We all had a great time, and I highly recommend the experience. We spent a few minutes visiting little petting zoo at the next-door Mormon Lake campground, and then got back in the car. I had originally thought we would go straight to Sedona from horseback riding, but the family preferred to head home first. This ended up being a pretty good idea, since we were all in long pants and hot shoes for the riding, and it was nice to clean ourselves up and change.

I can't remember what we did for lunch, so we probably just grabbed food at the condo. I do know that everything took longer than we expected, and we ended up heading down to Sedona much later than planned.

The drive from Flagstaff to Sedona down the Oak Creek Canyon is magnificent - and a little scary! The switchbacks are incredibly tight, and you are going down about 2000 feet in elevation in about 15 minutes of driving. You literally drive down into the famous red rocks of Sedona. As you get near the bottom of the canyon there are some amazing campgrounds, houses and resorts. We would love to stay there someday. We went by Slide Rock State Park, and would have gone in but the parking lot was full - so we kept on going into the town of Sedona.

Sedona is an an amazingly beautiful spot, but the town itself was a disappointment to me. It was so commercialized and gift-shoppy! It was a lot like a mall, but with more crystal shops. We got ice cream and did some shopping (the kids saw lots of things they liked), but unfortunately it was very hot, and just the sort of place that I hate, so I ended up getting very impatient and cranky.

Here are some photos of the beautiful rocks of Sedona:




We stayed as long as we could stand it, but we still wanted to get to Slide Rock State Park. This is a place where Oak Creek forms a natural swimming hole and water slide, and looked like a lot of fun. We got there at about 5pm, and it would be open until 7 so we had a few hours to enjoy it - there is a $15 fee per car to get in, so we wanted to make it worthwhile!

It really was a lot of fun! However, the rocks are really, really slippery - at one point I almost landed on my head. Also, when you go down the "water slide" it is very tough on your butt! We all wore pants over our swimsuits to minimize the damage.

There was a nice swimming hole and Will & Hannah both jumped in:




This is Tom & Annika going down the slide:



I keep saying this a lot, but it was also an extraordinarily gorgeous spot:



I had forgotten to bring towels (whoops!), and we were all somewhat tired from our long day, so near the end of our time there a bout of crankiness set in. There were actual tears and sulking! So we dragged our tired & bruised selves back to the car and headed home. Annika claimed that she was so sore she couldn't sit on her rear end, and when we got back she took a nice long jacuzzi bath.

After a nutritious dinner of KFC & Taco Bell, we went to bed. Only one more day before we have to go.

Day 5 - The Grand Canyon

What is there to say about the Grand Canyon?! Not much, really, so this post will mostly be pictures - it is truly an amazing, awesome and unbelievable sight! I am still thinking about it almost one week later.

The drive from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon is a little more than 1 1/2 hours, so I was hoping that we would get off by about 8am. That turned out to be a bit optimistic. We actually left the condo at about 10:00. Rather than take the usual route from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon Village, we drove up the 84 so our first view of the Canyon was from Desert View, which is about 20 miles East. The route takes you through the Navajo Nation and the Little Colorado gorge - another amazing landscape in Northern Arizona. I highly recommend this. The views were amazing, and it was much less crowded there than it was when we got to the village. There is a beautiful watchtower there designed by Mary Colter, who designed much of the beautiful architecture on the South Rim.

Some pictures from Desert View:



The Watchtower:



The inside of it is beautiful as well. There are murals illustrating Hopi rituals and life, and many windows to look through (as well as the inevitable gift shop).

The kids were complaining about being hungry so we grabbed a little food at the snack bar, and then went on to two other viewpoints, Lipan Point and Grandview:





See - Tom & I really were there!

The hunger issue (and the whining) was becoming a real problem, so we headed over to the Grand Canyon Village for lunch. When we drove by Mather Point, where most people go first, I was really glad we had not had our first view of the Canyon there. It was mobbed! We kept going to the Bright Angel Lodge, and went to the Arizona Room for lunch. The food was only OK, but where else can you eat while looking out over the Grand Canyon!

This area was also absolutely full of people, mostly from tour buses it seems. Anyway, we knew that we wanted to hike down into the canyon a little bit, so we decided to go down the Bright Angel trail which has its trailhead near the lodge. For me, this was the highlight of the trip! Not only do the crowds disappear almost immediately, but the Canyon is even more amazing from inside of it. We only hiked down about .75 miles before turning around (it was late, hot, and Ally is only 7!), but it was so worth it.

Some photos from the hike:





We actually saw a mountain goat! Hannah spotted it, and Will took this awesome photo:


This is a cool spot near the head of the trail:

After our hike, which took about an hour, we cooled off in the bookstore at the trailhead. We bought some posters and some books (including one book called Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, which lists all the known fatalities in the Canyon and tells many of the stories in full - I'm almost done reading it which I'm sure says something interesting about me! I find it fascinating!). While looking out the window there I spotted a bird which I was almost sure was a California Condor.

Well, sure enough I was right! We wandered over to the lookout point, and there was a naturalist there who was studying the Condor population in the Grand Canyon. There were 7 of them she was able to spot. Here is an attempt to take a picture of one (this is Will's shot also - I'm sure he did better than I would have!):

You'll have to take my word for it, but seeing those birds was amazing! They have 9 foot wingspans, and don't look the same as eagles or hawks at all.

Some final views before we leave the Canyon:



Isn't it incredible!

After hanging out in the El Tovar Hotel for a few minutes (and deciding that we would like to come back and stay there someday), we drove down to the town of Williams, about one hour south, for dinner. Williams was cute. It is on Route 66, and tourism in the town has been saved by really playing that up. I resisted the urge to buy some Route 66 shot glasses!

We had a wonderful meal at the Cruisers Cafe 66. It was good diner food, with some great beer and a bearded man singing 60's & 70's songs while we ate. I loved it!



Completely exhausted, we headed home for bed.

Arizona trip - Days 3 & 4

Another beautiful morning in Flagstaff Arizona!

Well, I have discovered that it is hard to be on vacation and document that vacation at the same time (particularly with a really crappy internet signal!), so I have gotten a little bit behind here. I will try to post about yesterday’s trip to the Grand Canyon later today, but for now will cover our activities on Sunday & Monday.

We settled into the condo on Saturday night, and made a pasta dinner. It is pretty comfortable here. We have 2 bedrooms, one with a king-sized bed, and the other with 2 twin beds. Tom & I took the king (of course!), and we set up the other bedrooms as a girl’s dorm with Ally on the Aero bed we brought from home. Will ended up on the fold-out couch in the living room as usual. I guess that’s what happens when you’re the only boy! We have a full kitchen, a gas fireplace and two balconies with views of Mt. Elgin.

A couple of pictures:



As I said in my last posting, our plans on Sunday were to check out the Flagstaff Renaissance Fair and maybe go for a hike in Walnut Canyon. Well, none of that happened! We took it easy in the morning and let the kids sleep or watch TV. That is, most of the family took it easy - I went on a four mile run! At about 11:30 we went in search of the Renaissance Fair and we never found it. We wandered around this park area in the car for about 25 minutes before giving up. I think it was actually cancelled but was still listed in the local guide books. Maybe it should have been a tip-off when the domain registration for their website was expired!

Anyway, we decided to head into Flagstaff for lunch and shopping. We had a great time, and ate a wonderful lunch at San Felipe’s Cantina (they had terrific fish tacos). Everyone bought something, and I also got some games for the kids to play at the condo.

When we got back we went up to the pool/activity center for a while. They have Starbucks coffee there, as well as a pretty nice pool and some billiards tables and other stuff. It’s a nice setup. We swam, and then rented a movie for the evening. We ordered pizza (it was only OK), watched Nancy Drew and went to bed.

There is so much to do up here that I know we will only see a part of it. I really wanted to make sure that we drove the Loop Road north of Flagstaff that goes by the Sunset Crater volcano and the ancient pueblos of the Wutpatki National Monument. So that was the plan for Monday.

After another slow start (but no running for me) we picked up food for a picnic at the local Safeway and drove up to the Loop Road. It is a National Park, so we paid our entrance fee and drove up to the visitor center where we had our picnic. Then we proceeded to the crater area. You could glimpse the crater from the road:

You can no longer climb Sunset Crater because hikers were damaging the soft cinder slopes. We debated climbing up an adjacent hill, but decided just to do the one-mile hike below the crater that gives you a taste of the lava field, as well as good views of the crater. Sunset Crater was formed about 1000 years ago in a volcanic blast, and last erupted approximately 800 years ago. What is amazing is how the cinders and the lava flow still dominate the landscape for miles around the crater. When you walk below the crater, the ground is soft with cinders.




Here are the kids in front of the crater:



Finally, here are the San Francisco peaks from this area. You can see the snow on the top of Humphrey’s peak! This was once one giant volcano, until a blast blew out the center and several separate peaks were formed. You can almost picture that here:



After drinking a bucketful of water at the water fountain, we moved onto the next site. At on overlook we got another beautiful view of Sunset Crater:



You could also see the Painted Desert (which is beautiful in person, but doesn’t come out well in photos on my camera), and some of the other craters of the San Francisco volcanic field:




Our final stop on this loop was the Wupatki National Monument. At about 1100AD ancestors of the Hopi people built this beautiful pueblo complex. It includes a multistory pueblo, , a ball court and a really cool “blow hole.” They have been excavated and stabilized by the park service. We toured the complex, but the younger girls were getting a little tired and hot, so we didn’t stay as long as I would have liked.





The blow hole is connected to an underground series of passages. It blows air out when the outer air pressure is low, and sucks air in when the outer air pressure is high. It was blowing air out when we visited, and the air was delightfully cool. It actually felt like air conditioning!

We spent some time in the visitors center, which was very interesting and worth seeing. They had some very interesting information about what it takes to live in this harsh environment. It also included some stories about the Native Americans who were booted off this land when it was made a National Park, which is very unusual in my experience. Usually the National Park service is not particularly self-critical! Anyway, at this point, we were all tired, and so we headed back to the condo.

After resting for a bit, we went out to dinner in Flagstaff at the Beaver Street Brewery, and had some awesome burgers! Also, I had some of their excellent beer – I was tempted to get some of their “beer-to-go” but thought better of it!

Next: our visit to the Grand Canyon!

Arizona trip - Arrival & Day 1 & 2

Greetings from Flagstaff Arizona! It is beautiful, clear and pleasant here and I am enjoying a cup of coffee on the balcony. The view is of 2 of the mountains of the San Francisco peaks – gorgeous!

We had an uneventful flight from Philadelphia (the best kind!) on Friday, and arrived in Phoenix where it was a blistering 112 degrees! I have never felt anything like it. While it is true that dry heat is much more tolerable than humidity, nonetheless 112 degrees is just unbelievably hot! I could actually feel myself dehydrating. It felt like standing in front of a hot oven.

Anyway, we picked up our rental car (a Nissan Quest), and headed for our first stop. I had booked us for one night at the Camelback Inn (I’d gotten a great rate when I packaged it with the rental car). It was a beautiful hotel, located between Camelback and Mummy mountains in Scottsdale. All the rooms are located in adobe casitas, and they are decorated in a very pleasing Southwestern style.

Here are some photos before we messed the rooms up too badly (we needed two connecting rooms to fit all 6 of us):





We cooled off in the room for a few minutes, and then went down to the restaurant to eat. It was on 5:00 in Phoenix, but our bodies felt like it was 8pm and we were hungry! We elected to eat outside under the misters. Here we are:




The food and the service were terrific! In fact, every single staff person that we met was friendly and went out of their way to be of service.

After dinner Hannah (16), Annika (10) and I decided to go for an early evening walk around the resort. We went up towards Mummy Mountain where they have a kind of fake Western town. They must do a show there when it is not 110 degrees! Anyway, we went for a little walk in the desert, and got some really nice pictures of some of the mountains and desert flora at sunset:





I have never been in the desert before and the beauty of the landscape was a real revelation to me! I don’t think I could live there – I like green too much, and I actually like humidity – but I would love to go back and visit again.

Anyway, at this point I was getting totally exhausted, and the kids wanted to watch Camp Rock (?), so we went back to the room. Tom and I crashed and the kids watched their movie and then put themselves to bed.

We got up, and had a wonderful buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. My son loved the pancakes, and our waitress went totally out of her way and got him the recipe, which was very, very sweet of her. We decided against a swim, and got ready to leave the hotel – which involved everyone showering and packing. Believe it or not, that took a while! We had a lovely time at the Camelback Inn, and would have liked to stay longer. If we come back to the Southwest we will definitely return!

We had a couple of hours before we wanted to head up to Flagstaff so we decided to go to the Heard Museum, which focuses on Native American culture and art. Tom and I were both Anthropology majors, so we knew we would find this fascinating. We were there for about 2 hours – it is a very nice museum, and I definitely recommend it. After a lunch at Taco Bell, we were on our way to the mountains.

The trip from Phoenix to Flagstaff is truly amazing. I’m afraid that I don’t have any pictures (any pictures I have ever taken from a vehicle on a highway have not been worth looking at anyway!), but essentially you move from an ecosystem of low desert – saguaros, other cacti, and an arid landscape – through a high grassy plain, to green mountains of pines and beeches, all in the space of 2 ½ hours. You climb from about 1500 feet above sea level to 7000 feet! Meanwhile, our minivan was laboring up these amazing steep hills, with periodic vistas of valleys and cliffs. Truly amazing! It is totally worth the trip if you ever get the chance.

We arrived at Flagstaff at about 4:15, checked into our timeshare, and settled in. I think this post is long enough for now so I will save pictures of our condo for my next post.

Our plans for today: visit the Renaissance Faire in Flagstaff, and perhaps hike in Walnut Canyon. And I have a little 4 mile run planned as well!

Quick update

Well, I've been reading other people's blogs, and I've decided that I'm a little wordier than most! So I have resolved to keep my postings shorter and more frequent.

In that spirit, this will be a brief update of what I have been up to!

Mostly what is on my mind this week is our upcoming family vacation. All six Gartners are flying to Arizona on Friday. We are spending one night in Phoenix, and then driving up to Flagstaff for a week in a timeshare there. A little over a year ago we won a week's Fairfield timeshare at a silent auction benefiting The Waldorf School, and decided to do something different than our usual Florida vacation. My husband is the only one of us who has ever gone to the southwest, so we looked our options and decided to do a Grand Canyon trip. Since we are based in Flagstaff, we will also be able to see Sedona, the meteor crater, possibly the petrified forest, and lots of other things. My husband is very excited about going to the Hopi Indian reservation. I added on one night in Phoenix (where it will be HOT - about 110 degrees!), and we may try to do a few things there as well.

I am going to try to keep up with my running schedule. Believe it or not, but right after my 10K it became time to start my training for the Philadelphia Distance Run half marathon in September! I am using Bingham's Marathoning for Mortals run/walk plan for a half marathon, which is a 14 week training plan. It actually starts me off with less running than what I had been doing to prepare for the 10K. I'm glad about that since I seem to have a little less energy and enthusiasm than I had a few weeks ago. I seem to be really motivated by races, and the next one is really far away! I think I will add a local 5 mile run at the end of July, and I am looking at an easy 5K in August. We'll see.

After we get back from Arizona we're home for one week, and then off to Maine for 2 weeks. So the next month or so my adventures will be as much about travel as fitness!

My plan next week is to post every couple of days and include lots of pictures. Hopefully the internet connection at the timeshare will allow me to do that.

Wissahickon Trail Classic 10K

I am taking a pause on my "historical" postings to give a race report about a 10K I did last weekend. I apologize in advance to any readers from the WISH boards who have come over here, since this report is almost exactly the same as the one I posted there.

On Saturday morning I completed the Wissahickon Trail Classic 10K! There were a lot of reasons that I did not feel particularly confident going into this race. Let me list them here:
- I had never run longer than 5.7 miles
- I don't usually run on trails - I pretty much stick to the roads around here
- I really HATE hills, and I knew there were a bunch on this route
- I had been on a low carb plan for about a week (a REALLY low carb plan!) trying to jump start some weight loss
- Finally, I knew it was going to be hot and humid (and it was!)

In my favor I had my last five months of training, no attachment to running this race fast, and lots of support from the WISH boards! I actually never seriously considered not doing it, which says something about how far I've come in this process.

I had recently read a race report from someone who had been on a low carb diet, so I knew I needed to give myself some extra carbs going into this race (in fact, I am now really questioning how well this plan is working for me at all, but that's another story entirely!). So Friday night I gave myself a pasta dinner, and I planned out my breakfast to include some extra carbs as well. I also made sure I had some Cliff Blocks with me, which also made a huge difference as you will see.

I hadn't walked the course, but I had looked at a terrain map of it pretty carefully. The park we were running through (the Wissahickon branch of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia) has two aspects to it. There is a wide path called Forbidden Drive that runs along Wissahickon Creek, which has a gently rolling but basically flat terrain. However, the creek is at the bottom of a very small, steep valley, so any paths that branch off it are very steep. I tend to avoid running on these trails very often since they are so intense, both on the uphill and downhill. Well, most of this race is run on the trails, with only a couple of small sections of Forbidden Drive in between.

So, my race strategy was very simple - walk up the hills, run downhill and on the flats, and simply finish the race!

I got there around 9:10, found a relatively convenient parking spot and went to pick up my bib & T-shirt. It was already about 84 degrees by then, with very high humidity (90-95%). This race was not chip-timed, we just used the tear-off on the bibs at the end. I wanted to put my shirt in the car, and I stopped of at the Port-o-Johns on the way. There seemed to be about 520 or so registered for the race. I stopped back there after dropping off my shirt, and then hung around near the start and stretched a bit. Everyone was very friendly, and a couple of them admired my WISH shirt. The crowd had a really nice vibe to it.

The race started right on time, with me at the back of the pack , and the first 1/2 mile or so was on Forbidden Drive. Then we went onto a trail on the right, and it got very steep very quickly. One of the funny things I discovered about a trail run is that you run much of the race in single file! In some places there was no room to pass at all. Anyway, I kept with my plan of walking up hill, and running on the flats and downhill sections. Originally I had thought I would take a Cliff Block around halfway, but I started to feel a little punk between 1 1/2 & 2 miles, so I had 2 of them. I carried my own water also, and drank a lot (it was really hot and humid!). Around miles 3 & 4 I was feeling really great, but lost it again when we got back on Forbidden Drive and had another Cliff Block. The race saved the best hill for last - right around 5.3 miles we went up a really nasty one! I mean, generally I would be talking about hiking a hill like that, not racing it. Very steep, somewhat treacherous, and it seemed endless! But once I got to the top I could see the finish line through the trees at the bottom, and I was OK the rest of the way.

My place - 391
My time - 1 hour 20:36 (or so - I forgot to turn off my Garmin at the end!)

There was pizza, bagels & bananas at the finish, and lots of cold water. I could not even imagine eating a slice of pizza at that moment, but I enjoyed the rest of the spread. I chatted with a couple of people, picked up a free water bottle, and headed back to the car.

Overall thoughts:
I had a really great time on this race! I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, and I think a lot of that was due to the fun atmosphere. There were some serious runners there, but no one took this race overly seriously. It was tough, but fun.

I learned a couple of things about myself:
- I'm better on hills than I thought. While I was walking them, I was keeping a good steady pace, and did not get exhausted from them which has happened to me in the past. I actually passed quite a few people going up.
- I really like running downhill! I know some people have trouble with that, but I really like flying down, even on trails. I think all the hiking I have done every summer for years on Mt. Desert Island in Maine actually helped a lot. I was very sure-footed.
- I was really glad that this race gave me some practice with preparing and pacing myself on a longer course. I'm very satisfied with how I did in the face of being pretty far out of my comfort zone.

The race was well-run, with plenty of food & water at the end, and the trail was well marked. This is only the 3rd year of the race and apparently they had some problems last year (I heard one woman say she had gotten lost in last year's race!) which they seemed to have ironed out well. However, there are 2 things I would change:
-Start the race earlier - 8am or 9am at the latest! June in Philly is very unpredictable, but on a day like today started at 8 would have been much more pleasant for everyone.
-More water stops! They had only 2, which is not enough on an 85 degree day with this kind of course. They could easily have added one more, and it would have made a difference for people. I brought my own water, but most people didn't. I would have had a much harder time if I had relied on the water stops.

Thanks for reading! I'll try to post again in the next few days.