The Singin’ Tourist in the SW USA (Days 6 and 7)
Before I went to sleep Friday night, I noticed that my edema was pretty bad. Despite my hope, when I awakened, it was much worse. I had no choice but to decide to cut out visiting any of the three Colorado national parks and making a direct route home. Unfortunately, the WiFi access for my GPS was extremely spotty, nor could I get a Mapquest map routing using my smartphone. Below are two maps. The first shows two routes. Route one (the darker blue line) indicates a 24-minute shorter route than number two (lighter blue). However, if I had been able to see both options at the time, I would have taken the second route because it would have placed me on Interstate 25, which would have allowed me to set the Silver Bullet’s cruise control and saved my right leg a lot of painful wear and tear. Instead, I…
Arizona, Take off Your Rainbow Shades
After some thought to visiting Death Valley and London Bridge in Nevada, we decided to head East, beginning to work our way back. Over the past week, the journey had taken us into Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Still, a lot to see and a long way to drive, and time is running short. We drove to see Hoover Dam to get a better view of the facilities and Lake Mead than we had on the tourbus yesterday. Unfortunately, we could not find the way to get a picture of the front of the dam, but got several pictures of the lake and the back area. As we go, I continue to find the changes in the terrain fascinating. And the temperatures are far more reminiscent of my Southern roots than the much cooler climes of Iowa. Making it as far as Phoenix, we realized the goal of Roswell,…
Checking off a Bucket List Item
RB got the day off, a chance to set under the cool canopy of a parking deck while Momma and I rode a tourbus from Las Vegas to an old entry on my Bucket List–The Grand Canyon. We rode past Hoover Dam and the Colorado River while the driver gave us history of road construction around the dam and played a PBS documentary about the site’s construction. After a rather limited night’s sleep last night, I didn’t hear the entire film. The trip took us into Arizona–my first visit to the state. We had lunch in a small town then continued on to the canyon. Momma’s visited the canyon before, so she let me explore mostly on my own. We visited two sites on the canyon’s South side, so we missed the opportunity to walk out on the glass walkway–which is on the West rim–an opportunity I’d hoped I would…