Warren's Place

Here's Gail standing on the viewing platform above the Meteor Crater in Arizona. It's hard to judge the scale of the crater from a picture, but the dimensions of the 49,000 year-old impact crater are astonishing: 4,100 feet wide by 570 feet deep!

--Warren

15 days, 3255 miles, and 950 pictures later, we're back home. It was a great trip. We went a little farther east (Durango, CO), and a little farther north (Salt Lake City) than we expected.

We were walking on Balboa Island near Newport Beach where I spotted a tree full of nesting Herons. I caught this one taking off from the tree:



Another picture of the same bird:



Thanks for checking in on my blog.

--Warren

Dear Readers,

Today, we arrived in Mesa Verde National Park, in Colorado. We're staying at the Far View Lodge which is right in the park itself.

On the way, we stopped briefly at Four Corners monument, which is nothing more that a small marker. Of course, it's everybody's duty to have their picture taken while having a limb in each state. And since the monument sits on Navajo land, the tribe charges $3/person for entry. the marker is ringed with souvenir booths. We met a very nice Navajo vendor and had a long conversation with her about her tribe and culture. Unfortunately, a storm was coming in, and the wind was getting very fierce. The blowing sand was a problem for both the vendors and the tourists.

Mesa Verde is an amazing place. We explored what we could in the afernoon after checking in, and before dinner. We plan to spend a full day here tomorrow.

Picture lag time:

Is this a sign of London in decay?

Answer: No, it's a neglected section of "London City" at the London Bridge at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. More information on this place later.

Thanks for reading. By the way, if any of you ARE reading my log entries, please leave me a comment or two, or email me.

--Warren

Today, we went to see the Meteor Crater near Winslow, and we drove through Holbrook on our way to see the Petrified Forest National Park. We're staying at the Thunderbird Lodge, which is inside Canyon De Chelly national monument. We're going to see it tomorrow.

Pictures are lagging as I have not had time to catch up the picture processing with the travel log.

Picture: Cactus Flower, seen in Laguna Beach. Does anyone know if this blossom has a name?



Thanks for reading,

Warren

We're leaving this morning from Newport Beach to Kingman, AZ. It's about a 5 hour drive. This is the start of our "real" touring part of the trip, since we've been to luxurious Newport Beach before.

--Warren

Picture: Dinner on Balboa Island at Ciao, an Italian Pasta & Pizza restaurant.

We left our house at 9:15am, heading for 3 nights at the Marriott Newport Coast Villas resort. Our plan was to go down Highway 5, which was the same route that we took in 2002 on our San Diego trip. On that trip, our BMW's transmission sprung a leak somewhere on Hwy 5. By the time we made it into LA, the tranny was slipping. Anyway, that was history, this time, the trip down Hwy 5 was easy and uneventful. We made 3 brief stop along the way, and we arrived at our destination at 4:35pm.

There was one weird thing that happened though, and we're not sure exactly where it happened. Can you spot the clue in this picture of, taken in front of our suite at the Newport villa?

I may not have internet access every day during our trip, I may skip a day or two here and there. Stay tuned, more adventures and pictures to come.

--Warren