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Anatomy of a Vacation

Number of days gone from home: 21

Total miles driven: 5,920

Number of flat tires: 1

Number of states entered: 15 (Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida)

Only state consistently out of gas, because panic drives the people there to make poor purchasing decisions: Georgia

Number of times driving across the Continental Divide: 2 (in Colorado and New Mexico)

Favorite dining experience in Colorado: The Wines of Colorado, where we ate lunch creekside on the patio and enjoyed the dappled Colorado sun

Number of National Parks and/or Monuments visited: 8 (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial--St. Louis Arch, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, Carlsbad Caverns, Sunset Crater Volcano)

Number of State Parks visited: 2 (Goblin Valley, Red Canyon)

Best food in Utah: Panatele's Desert Deli in Moab, Utah, where the grilled cheese sandwich is a gourmet experience

Best coffeehouse: The Mean Bean in Springdale, Utah

Best restaurant service: Moab Diner, where the waiter not only brought sprouts to the table to bridge the language gap with our French friends but also gave me the recipe for the diner's honey dijon dressing

Nights sleeping in a tent: 7

Favorite Campground: Moab Rim Campark, which has hot showers, grass, and wi-fi

Coldest night in a tent: 32 degrees

Keith's favorite hikes: Park Avenue in Arches, Grand View Point trail in Canyonlands, and Angels Landing in Zion

Rita's favorite hikes: Goblin Valley, The Narrows in Zion, anything involving petroglyphs

A sampling of animal sightings: a couple coyote, a bald eagle, many ravens, chipmunks, the fattest squirrels ever, mule deer, pronghorn sheep, a tarantula, a roadrunner, a peregrine falcon, black-tailed jackrabbit

Closest critter encounter: a chipmunk tried to crawl into Rita's pocket in order to get closer to the yummy trail mix she wasn't sharing

Nights in a motel: 7

Favorite motel: White Sands Motel in Alamogordo, NM, because it looked like it was straight off of Route 66

Least favorite motel experience: the Super 8 in Winslow, Arizona, not because the room wasn't nice but because the busload of fellow travelers yelling at each other through the halls all night deserved the 6 am wake-up calls Keith started making

Best song heard on the radio: Mexican Dog by Chute Nine on Keith's beloved 95.3 the Range in Dallas

Nights with friends and family: 7

Number of photographs taken: in excess of 1700

Most used items: Nalgene bottles to keep us hydrated in the desert and Burt's Bees lip balm

Oddest gift received: a Schick Quattro from the proprietress of the Zion Park Motel, who apparently thought Keith's facial hair was out of control

Number of laps Happy Beagle did around the backyard when we arrived back in Atlanta: too many to count

Keeping the Faith

While I have been wandering around the American Southwest, my latest article was posted by The Southwest Orlando Bulletin. This article is about a woman I recently had the privilege to interview. She is a true inspiration as she journeys through a fight with breast cancer.

Other Things We've Enjoyed

• Spending four days with Bruno and his girlfriend. Bruno is one of the young men we hosted as an exchange student several years ago. In the past four days we've done quite a bit of sight-seeing.
• Waking up frozen. Monday night we made the brilliant decision to camp out at Bryce Canyon National Park, which has a reputation for being cold. When we woke up yesterday morning, it was just at freezing. We promptly decided to spend the next night in a motel.
• Waking up very warm and toasty.
• Enjoying some fall color. Apparently, on the first day of autumn, fall color is easy to find at the right altitude.
• Watching a herd of mule deer feeding casually on the lawn at the Zion Lodge in Zion National Park, completely oblivious to the many tourists gathered around watching their meal time.
• Driving across Utah and watching the scenery change in new and unexpected ways.
• Anticipating at least one more day at Zion before moving on to the Grand Canyon.

Things We've Seen

• A bald eagle playing in wind currents in the wake of Hurricane Ike.
• The flooded banks of the Missouri River, which was another by-product of Ike.
• Our good and very missed friends, the Pecks, who now live in St. Louis.
• Fields of sunflowers, corn, and a bunch of other stuff we can't identify.
• A wind farm complete with dozens of giant wind turbines.
• A coyote wandering down a river bank. He decided he was too shy for a photo opportunity.
• Antelope playing on the range.



• The oh-so-majestic and beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountains.
• Goblins. We spent our first full day in Utah hiking around the Valley of the Goblins.
• A whole bunch of bunnies who are intent on taking over our campsite. Keith said one of them made a run for the tent opening.
• Arches. We spent our second full day in Utah hiking around Arches National Park.
• Lots of Land Rovers. The 2008 National Land Rover Rally is taking place this week in Moab.

Let the Photos Begin

On Saturday morning, Keith and I left for vacation.

First stop was Atlanta, where Monty will be spending some quality time with Keith's parents. Saturday night we had a wonderful dinner with Keith's parents, brother, and nephews.

Yesterday, we drove to St. Louis, where we had the great joy of spending a few hours with our good friends Mark and Susan Peck, who moved from Dallas to St. Louis at the same time we moved from Dallas to Orlando. A side benefit of that was being able to also see the Arch, which I have never seen before. Even though I knew it was big, I never imagined it was quite that large.

Today we drove through Missouri to the westernmost parts of Kansas, where we plan to get a good night's sleep before journeying into Colorado tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more fun-ness.

Happy Birthday, Keith!

Today is Keith's birthday. His fortieth birthday.

One of his favorite things in life is breakfast. So I got up and made bacon and eggs and toast and coffee for him. Then, I sent him off to work with a full Thermos of hot coffee.

Since he loves to eat at home, I cooked some of his favorite non-breakfast things for dinner: pot roast, asparagus, loaded mashed potatoes, cheese bread, and butterscotch brownies.

Now he's well-fed and doing his favorite evening activity, which is watching news, with Monty curled up next to him on the couch.

Happy Birthday, Keith. I hope it was a good one.

My First Trip to Indy

Last Wednesday, I surprised my friend and sporadic blogger, Lynette, by flying into Indianapolis. Don't worry too much--her husband was in on the whole thing. Her 40th birthday was last weekend, and I followed a long stream of announced and unannounced friends and family who went to Indy to celebrate her birthday with her. We spent three days hanging out and just being friends. It was great.

In one of those crazy randomnesses that the universe sometimes throws at us, Lynette lives in the same neighborhood with a friend (boss) that we worked with in Atlanta only about thirteen years ago. So on Friday evening, Lynette invited Lou and his family over for dinner to surprise him.

I do see Lynette several times a year, so even though I was a surprise, it was nothing like the shock Lou experienced. I don't think I've seen him in a decade or more. Far too long, I assure you.

When I got home, Keith wanted to see my photos. Well, we were not too surprised to see that I had pictures of everyone's dogs. And Lou's motorcycle (yep, that's Lou on his toy). And not much else. It says a lot about me, doesn't it?

Recent Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. Here's another book that has languished on my bookshelf for years awaiting the day that I would actually read it. The first Chabon book I read was Wonder Boys, which eventually became a Michael Douglas movie. It was Chabon's second and possibly last chance to gain me as a loyal reader.

There is a lot to love about Kavalier & Clay, and there is also a lot not to love about it. A quick trip through some things I don't like:

• Chabon beats his reader over the head with his well-endowed vocabulary.
• Chabon is so enamored of his own ability to craft a good story that he often gets in the way of the reader enjoying that story.
• I am not a fan of books with lots of gratuitous and unloving and violent sexual encounters.

I did enjoy a good bit of this book, and I think that it's the kind of book that will keep on giving as my brain continues to work through some of its themes. One of the reasons I finished it was to decipher one of the themes I identified at the very beginning of the book. I'm not entirely sure that Chabon satisfied my readerly curiosity, but I do think that the book ended as happily as it could.

While I know that a lot of people love this book--it received a Pulitzer Prize in 2001--I am not sure that I would recommend it for a casual reader. In fact, at a book club meeting last night, only about a third of the people there had finished it.

Rain Maker Fay

Rain Maker Fay has been camped out over Florida for a few days now, dropping "historic rain" and basically being a nuisance. Here in the "safe" confines of the center of the state, we've had gusting enough to whip some trees around and litter yards and streets with twigs and leaves. While we don't have the extreme flooding issues of some areas over on the east coast, the main road and the entrance to our neighborhood are now officially a lake.

Since it rained buckets all night long, during a lull in the raining this morning I rushed out to check the status of things. The storm drains are working overtime, our pool is close to cresting, and Rain Maker Fay seems to have a dislike for flag poles. Aside from all that waterlogging and the forecast that we are going to have more rain sporadically throughout the day, we are relatively high and dry.

But at this point, I am ready to ditto some of my fellow Floridians: Go Away, Fay!

An Author with the Midas Touch

The August 21 issue of The Southwest Orlando Bulletin features the article I wrote about author James Sheridan and his treasure hunt designed to help promote his book, The Pandora Prescription, and reading in general. (In case you've already forgotten, I loved the book, and here are my thoughts about it.)

During the interview, I was definitely a fangirl. It's difficult not to be when you find yourself in the presence of someone whose book kept you enraptured for two days.

Here's an interesting note or two about the photograph. The Italian version of the book had just arrived, which was an exciting point for Sheridan and his publicist. In addition, Sheridan said that for every hour of actual writing he achieves, he probably spends five hours in his thinking pose. I'm considering adopting a thinking pose that entails something besides staring all glazy-eyed out the window of my office.