page, az

Next stop after Bryce Canyon was Page in Arizona. On our first day we took a tour of the Glen Canyon Dam and also headed to the Horseshoe Bend near town. But not before watching Germany loose to Italy in the Eurocup Semifinals. The tour of the dam was pretty impressive and kind of scary thinking about how much pressure is applied to the concrete structure. It prohibits the Colorado river to flow in its natural ways and the canyons behind the dam filled with water and are now called Lake Powell. Below you can see one of the turbines that are used to create hydroelectricity while the water is flowing through them into the Colorado river below.

 

 

After our tour of the dam we drove over to the Horseshoe Bend. The walk from the parking lot to the edge of the rocks was not really far but the heat and walking on very fine sand made it sure seem that way. How women in maxi dresses, flip-flops, wedges (yes, i saw a woman in those!) etc. were able to make from the parking lot to the viewpoint is beyond me. I had a somewhat hard time with wearing hiking boots and a hat to protect me from the sun...On our second day in Page we took a boat tour on Lake Powell to see Rainbow Bridge National Monument. I will post about it next week. And then I will finally leave you alone with my trip and red rocks ;)

Enjoy your weekend! Do you have anything fun planned? I need to get some small projects on the house done. First I want to paint the inside of our front door white, it is still only primed so far and the front yard needs weeding again...

 

 

 

bryce canyon

As promised I am going to share our next leg of our road trip with you. From CA we headed to Bryce Canyon City, UT. Basically we traded in the big city for a small town, which mainly consisted of two hotels, three restaurants, a campground and a bunch of stores at an intersection. From the little town you have easy access to Bryce Canyon National Park. We spent one and a half day hiking and exploring the park by car. There are great viewpoints that are accessible by car or by shuttle bus.

I believe I have uttered the word wow!!! countless times in our time in the park and after saying wow I needed to take a picture. All in all I took a little under 500 photos and had a hard time narrowing them down for this post. From every angle the landscape looked different, the colors of the rock range from white through orange to deep red. Paired with a blue sky and green forest it is the perfect landscape for taking photos. The colors also seemed to change over the course of the day and how the light would hit the rock formations. I feel that the photos I chose do not really do the park justice, it looked way more impressive in person. Some of hoodoos reminded me somehow of the terra cotta warriors in China, especially the ones in the fourth picture. I really hoped to see a prairie dog but we had no luck, instead we encountered a very curios chipmunk and a short-horned lizard.

Do you have a favorite National Park or other area for great hiking? I could start planning my next vacation right away...

 

driving through LA

As mentioned yesterday on Sunday we met a friend in Venice and had a second and late Brunch. We ate at 3 Square Cafe on Abbot Kinney. The food is super yummy and at the adjacent bakery they have great baked goods too. After we needed a long walk along the beach and also checked out the stores on Abbot Kinney. When we got back to our car all three of us where hungry again and decided to eat some Mexican food. I can't remember what the name of the restaurant was but my burrito filled with a chile relleno was delicious!

From there we decided to stop by LACMA and see if they still had the Eames living room on display. Unfortunately they didn't. Bummer! The Eames chairs in the entry plaza had to suffice. At least we got to see the Levitated Mass and the Urban Light installation.

To end the night we stopped by the Standard hotel in Downtown LA for a drink. Of course we headed up to the roof bar where they also have a small beergarden. Since we partied the night before I wasn't ready to drink anything alcoholic I was more than happy to realize they sold Bionade in my favorite flavor Elderberry. Sooo goood! Because we were really tired we headed back to our hotel not too late and by 11pm I was soundly asleep just to be woken up by a fire alarm not even an hour later. I packed my bag still being half asleep and tried to convince P to do the same. He was reluctant to get up while I already saw us on a burning ship and starting to panic a little bit. My heart was beating so fast I could hear the blood in my ears. Luckily after a couple of minutes, which felt like an eternity, an announcement was made that the issue was fixed and we could all go back to sleep. I tried to fall asleep but only dozed off for a short period of time. The next morning we had to get up early to tour the Eames house in Pacific Palisades. And from there we hit the road to drive to Bryce Canyon with a stop over in Mesquite, NV.

Have a great weekend everybody! I will be back with more travel adventures on Monday..

California

Hope you all had a great fourth of July!

Our trip started off on the wrong foot after the scatterbrain that is me left her ID and boarding pass in the bin in which I placed my bag and shoes at the security check. Luckily I noticed it not too long after going through security. We sat down at a restaurant in the airport and I saw P put away his boarding pass and I realized I left mine at the security check point. I panicked and ran to the check point and explained my problem, of course I was half crying so the poor TSA guy had a hard time understanding what I wanted but he searched all the bins for me and found my ID and boarding pass. Phew crisis averted!!! In the end I would have had enough time to go home and grab my passport from home because all flights were grounded for hours because of storms all over the east coast. When flights around us got cancelled I was worried that we will not make it to LA in time for our friends wedding. In the end we arrived in our hotel at 3am. We stayed on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where the reception was going to be the next day. Love the art deco style of the interiors but the hallways to the rooms were kind of creepy. I always thought I might run into the twins from The Shining. Scary! I wish I would have had more time to explore the ship...

The first night we did not get much sleep but had a great late breakfast at In-N-Out Burger the next morning. Oh how I love their fries! After eating we got ready for the wedding and started to make our way to the Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes for the wedding ceremony. I have to admit I didn't really know anything about the location and since we got there early we had time to explore and discovered the chapel was designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. What a great location for a wedding! My photos don't really do the location justice as I snapped just a few shots with my cell phone. Try cramming a DSLR into a clutch ;) For the reception we all headed back to the Queen Mary were most of the guests partied until 1am and some even later. On Sunday we all met again for brunch on the Queen Mary and afterwards P and I met a friend in Venice. More about our adventures in LA tomorrow!