Go West young man...

Hey. It’s me again. Hope everyone had a good Father’s Day and I hope everyone is having a good summer. I had a really great father’s day. Amber and the kids went all out for me and I really appreciated it. I am blessed and lucky and I know it.

So… Zion trip. Man. I don’t know if I can describe just how pretty that part of the country is. I have been all over the US and can pretty much find something appealing about most places… but southern Utah has to be one of the prettiest places around. It was a really scenic drive just getting there and Luc was able to add New Mexico and Arizona to his states visited tally. Lot’s to see along the way, some unexpected, some really surprising and some of it I didn’t even really see… it was all a blur. Literally. You should have seen the bug guts on the windshield. ;]

So on the way there we took the north Texas route out up through the panhandle. Somewhere outside of Amarillo we happened upon this. Its 10 Cadillac cars buried nose down into a farmer’s field. It could be a symbol of these economic times or even a statement about the state of the American auto industry… but I am sure that was not the intent years ago when Stanley Marsh (read up on it) did this. I know, I know, it’s been around since the 70’s but its still kind of cool to happen upon it. Unexpected to see cars used as sculpture. In a field with not much else around. That is Texas for you, cool, quirky and fiercely independent all at the same time. It looks like everyone around us had already planned things because they had paint in hand… yes, you can add your own mark to the already heavily graffiti’d “paintjobs”. Cool stuff.

We pressed on to Albuquerque and got a room for the night. Nothing to note there…except I didn’t expect Albuquerque to be as big as it is. I also didn’t expect Flagstaff to be as small as it seemed. Curious how we picture things or places until we see them in person. I also didn’t expect Flagstaff to be at the base of a mountain. We didn’t spend any longer there than the time it took us to eat lunch. We had more pressing things to get to… namely the park. Luc was getting more excited about it as we went and I was thankful. We have been talking about doing this for a month or two and a few weeks back, Luc decided that he didn’t want to go. Sad stuff as I start to worry that he and I are going to lose the bond we have as he gets older. He came around to the idea just a couple of days prior to us leaving after I showed him a few pictures of the park… that and a few days away from his brother and sister probably didn’t hurt. Anyway, I was glad to see him excited about the park after all that driving.

The scenery north of Flagstaff heading toward Utah is really beautiful. The highway we took was the one you use to get to the Grand Canyon so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how pretty it all was. Now I know some people think that the Grand Canyon is just a big hole in the ground (cough, cough Amber cough…) but I am one of those people that think the Southwest is amazingly beautiful. I think Luc is too. At one point when we got into Utah, I think we both said “Wow” just about every 5 minutes as we drove along.

Oh… I skipped a part. On our way into Flagstaff we came upon the Petrified Forest National Park. We decided that we needed to stretch our legs and I needed a National Park pass so it made sense to stop (didn’t order one ahead of trip because I wasn’t sure Luc was on board or not until two days prior to departure…).

Pretty cool little side venture as it’s designed as a drive through park with a 26 mile loop through nice painted desert vista’s and some pretty cool rock formations. The petrified rocks are incredible as it just looks like a ton of large tree stumps just littered around. Tons of them. I didn’t get any shots of the petrified stuff but I did experiment with some overexposure shots of what the park rangers called the “painted desert” Cool stuff.


I was working on perfecting this method of blowing out the background while maintaining detail in the foreground. It’s tricky and you have to overexpose by at least a stop and a half to get it to look right. Anyway, you guys probably aren’t interested in the photography part of this so I will get back to our story.

Lots of places to pull over and look out over the incredible vista's. It is not Montana but this is definitely big sky country. It seemed endless. I loved how quiet it all was. It was easy to picture yourself back in time. I was doing one of my favorite things that I always do on a road trip. I picture what it would have been like making the journey just a 100 years or so back... on horseback. I love doing this and it makes you appreciate just how far technology has brought us. Pretty loop in this park.

We even stopped at one point to do a little impromptu diorama shot with one of Luc’s Lego guys. Lego’s? Yes. My kids are consumed with it… not Karah but definitely the boys. So Luc brought his “sand trooper” with him on the trip because as he put it…”my Sand Trooper has really been looking forward to getting out to the desert…”. Here is an action shot of the aforementioned trooper on patrol…

Silly stuff and since he is going to grow up faster than I want him to anyway, I kind of like that he is still a kid in a lot of ways… well, not in the way he eats, but that is another story.

Oh, funny side story. So I ordered some auto parts the other day… and when parts come in they seem to hit our neighborhood right about the time that Max gets home from school (when they are in school) so around 3 pm or so for both UPS and FedEx. When there is a box at the door, I or Amber always get a call from Max within minutes…he is that kind of observant. He doesn’t always call the person it’s addressed to and around Christmas time this has caused some heartburn but that is another story altogether. These last parts were brake parts so they were pretty heavy. Max calls me… “Dad, you got a box”. I ask him if he can get the box inside. He tells me its “pretty heavy and that he doesn’t think he can do it”. A couple of calls back and forth and it sounds like Max had to really wrestle with it… even dropping it on his foot at one point. I tell him that I know he can do it and to give me a call back once he does.

I get the call a bit later… with Max snickering… “Dad, I guess a square box can roll”.

Funny kid. I will have to remember not to order anything large and fragile. ;]


By the way... I went to a different layout because the former one seemed too cramped for photo's. Let me know if you like this one better or not.

Check back tomorrow for Utah trip report part 2.

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