Day #2: We woke up and drove through Sonoma's vineyard plantations. We stopped into the Clou Du Bois vineyard, where we enjoyed the tastes of their wines, the vineyard education seminar, and their friendly staff.
Leaving around noon, we enjoyed the freeway drive to Walnut Creek, which is a couple of hours away. We were able to see Scott's Oma and his Tanta Mariska (his grandmother and Aunt Mariska), visit with them, and have a delightful lunch at a local BBQ joint. Then, we were on our way to the Los Angeles area. Once we arrived in Santa Clarita, a little north of L.A., we had driven a total of about five hours. We went straight to Scott's Uncle Ed's house and visited a bit before we went out to dinner.
Day #3: The rain in the area sizzled any site seeing ideas that we may have had, which didn't bother us in the least bit. We needed a non-travel day to enjoy family, great conversation, and many laughs.
Day #4: We left Uncle Ed's house and begun our trip to Phoenix, Arizona. We left the rain and the sage-brush hills of California and encountered large mountainous landscapes jutting out of the Earth. We traveled around large wind farms, we enjoyed trading the sage-brush for the desert cacti, and we loved the fact that it got warm! Even 60 degrees of winter desert temperatures seemed warm to us. We wanted to lay on the pavement and soak it in for what it was worth, even though the locals were bundled up head-to-toe, and complaining about the cold.
We arrived into Phoenix around five o'clock, and surprisingly didn't encountered much rush hour traffic. However, we came upon something quite new: highway speed camera traps. Our radar detector was no match, but we did make it through them unscathed, thankfully.
After we checked into our hotel and fed our hungry dogs, we headed over to our friend Abe's house. I met his wife and three boys, ages 12, 10 and 3. The boys were delightful, Abe's wife was nice, and it was great to see Abe again. We ordered in Chinese and called it good for the evening.
Day #5: Scott and I woke up and found a Starbucks, thanks to Dad's Garmin, which we ended up nick-naming "Phoebe." Then, we headed to Abe's again to visit. They took us out to Cave Creek, which is a delightful Arizona town with old-town building styles and lots of little nick-knack stores. It was fun, and after we returned home, we indulged in a nice steak dinner at Abe's.
Day #6: We got to Abe's early and said our goodbye to our dear friend, who was the only one up at 7am. We were excited, as we had a full day of sight-seeing ahead of us. We headed on the road, and about two hours later, we arrived at the Red Rock State Park. Unfortunately, dogs were not allowed in the park, even if they were in the car and in their kennels. So, we headed out toward the town of Sedona. People encouraged us to visit there, and when the town came into view... we were stunned. The breathtaking beauty of the red rock formations, the canyon-nestled quaint town, it was all so gorgeous.
We left Sedona and traveled up the windy road toward Flagstaff, where we switched highways and headed toward the Grand Canyon. Scott slept a bit while I took a turn to drive. As we approached the State Park, I woke Scott up by slamming on the brakes. Kidding. But I did think about it.
After we entered the Park, we stopped off at the first viewing point, where we were accosted by the sharp, cold wind. So, we bundled up, grabbed the dogs on their leashes, and went out to the edge of the deep canyon. I had been there before but Scott hadn't, and he was speechless as he looked on at Nature's natural beauty, and he kept snapping pictures. After taking it all in, we traveled on and stopped at a few other overlooks, a conservatory building and learning center, and an overpriced gift shop.
Our next stop was the Hoover Dam, which took about four hours to travel to after we left the Canyon. The roads were icy for awhile, and once we dipped down off the high elevations, we finally arrived. Once we made it through the mandatory terrorism check-point, the engineering marvel was revealed to me for the very first time. I made Scott pull over so I could snap a few pictures and take in the magnificent beauty of the structure in the late afternoon. As Scott drove us over the dam, I rubbernecked to my best ability... enjoying little design features, laughing at the two time-change clocks on either side of the dam, and never once blinking for fear of missing something.
We didn't make any hotel reservations for the evening, so we stopped at the first hotel we saw, which just happened to be a casino! We parked and Scott ran in to see how much a night would cost and if they would take dogs. Alas! For only $29.99 a night, we could have our dogs in the room. So, after we took the deal and lugged everything into the hotel, I could help but laugh at our dogs' first experience in a casino. The lights, the game chimes and whistles, all of the people... they were in a new venue and were a bit frightened. Once we fed the dogs and let them relieve themselves, we safely put them in their kennels in the car while we gambled a little for fun. We enjoyed a little off-to-the-side movie about the building of the Dam, we played, we won, we lost, we enjoyed a little staged music, and we partook in the free drinks. It was a great time, and in the end, with the cost of the hotel, the dinner buffet and the breakfast buffet, we only lost about $50!
Day #7: This was the day that we would travel from the Hoover Dam to Reno. Scott kept telling me that it would be the hardest part of the trip, and I just figured he exaggerated. He didn't. The drive consisted of long, straight roads... many low, light brown hills... and nothing. For 100 million miles. As Scott drove, when I wasn't counting the mile markers, I continued to stare at the Garmin, waiting for ANY town to come up. And when they did, Scott and I counted the single-wide trailers, the shack brothels, and tried to see if we could find one live body (which we didn't).
Finally, about 3:30 we arrived in Reno. Before we arrived, we had called around to different hotels for pricing and the ability to have the dogs in our room or not. We ended up staying at the Circus Circus. It was a fun night: we had a great dinner, we had a few drinks, and we played the slots. We won and we lost, and we ended up only out the cost of the room and dinner.
Day #8: This was the day that we would make it all the way to Medford, where we would either decide to stay or travel home. Our plan was to pick up my 7-year old nephew for the week before Christmas. Connor and him always enjoy playing together. So, we ended up arriving in Medford around 2 or so and picked him up. Rather than pay for a hotel, we pressed on home.
When we arrived home, we were surprised that there was about 10-inches of built-up snow that we had missed falling over the last week.
Scott and I both agreed that the road trip was therapeutic, fun, interesting, beautiful, enjoyable, and quite the experience for the us. We were able to go from ice, to rain, to desert and cacti, to packed snow. And the best part, although my backseat driving was annoying and his driving skills drove me crazy, we didn't kill each other. And we plan to do it again!
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