Grand American Tour

Saturday 10/14 We do nothing but hang out at the resort’s lazy river and go for dinner at a nice Greek restaurant at Mill Street. Mill street is a very nice and lively street through Tempe with lots of restaurants and shops.

Friday 10/13 We take Hwy 89 to Prescott via Jerome. Once one of the largest cities in Arizona, Jerome is now the largest ghost town – with roughly 500 people how ever living there. Most of the homes are empty and lots of ghost business is going on. This is a very neat town, definitely worth visiting. Prescott is like many other Arizonian towns a rapid growing community with a lot of home development going on. Wide roads around Prescott keep the city clean – yet it is worth taking the “detour” to see the old town of Prescott. In the afternoon we continue on I-17 to Phoenix AZ. We’ve been here a few month ago and we decided to stay two nights in the Point South Resort in Tempe – a very relaxing place.

Thursday 10/12 We completely change plans. Rather than going to Grand Canyon which we have been before and later Bryce Canyon we decided to drive to Sedona, AZ. It is October and the lodges starting to close. The service teams are exhausted from the summer tourism and we feel we better do no more national parks on that trip. We take highway 89 to Flagstaff and Sedona. Flagstaff surprised us with its size and nice old town. This town has changed a lot in the last 20 years, definitely worth a visit. We continue on 89a to Sedona. What a cute town. Very busy and lots of construction right now. We stay at the Amara, a very exquisite resort in down town Sedona. And since we are up for a nice dinner we went to the “Gallery on Oak Creek” – this was an excellent dinner with a great selection of wines. So far we did close to 10,000 miles and shot over 2,700 pictures. There is so much to say, yet so much more to explore. The entries in this blog get more and more factual quick reviews and do not ...

Wednesday 10/11 With blue skies and a great morning we decided to take a boat tour on the lake. Even so there is so much less water than several years ago and we have to go along a channel to get to Padre Bay, it is just an awesome ride. What a great day today. We realize that the season is over and the coffee shop closes early and so does the bar. The personnel at the Wahweap lodge is more busy with shutting down the lodge than with servicing guests and so we decide to check out the next day.

Tuesday 10/10 The weather is so so and we relax today at Lake Powel. We check the house boats and wonder if this would be fun with all our kids, but we are not sure. The prices range from $4,000 to $10,000 per boat per week - wow. We hike near the Colorado River, after Glen Canyon Dam. Here the Colorado has a beautiful green color and winds his way through the deep Canyon, carved in dark red sand stone. It’s a great afternoon.

Monday 10/9 We leave Durango (without riding the train to Silverton) and head towards Lake Powell. We take Rout 160 and short before “Four Corners” take 41/162 towards Monument Valley. This is a wonderful road. We follow San Juan River and have another picnic at the river. While there was almost no water a few days ago, today water is flowing very fast and took the river over its normal size. After “Bluff” we get close to Monument Valley and have one of the most awesome views of the monumental rocks while the sun shines between dark clouds. Heavy rain hit the park so we didn’t go for today but will come back. In the evening we arrive at Lake Powell and stay at the Lake Powell Lodge.

Sunday 10/8 Again no way to take the train to Silverton, so we go again to Mesa Verde. It is a great day, weather is better and the ruins are very interesting.

Saturday 10/7 Weather is still not too good and the train to Silverton does not go because of mod slide. So we decided to go to Mesa Verde. Even so it rained here and there and was even very foggy when we claimed up to Mesa Verde, we were compensated with a breath taking view when we arrived on the top of the mountain. Believe it or not but we ran out of gas and couldn’t go to the ruins. But we more than enjoyed the views from up here. The clouds did an awesome play and we shot probably 100 pictures. In the evening we checked in the local Days Inn – it is scheduled to be demolished in 2 days. Next to the motel is a great very local – very nice upscale restaurant called Sweeny – highly recommended.

It is indeed a bid strange. We shot about 1,500 photos so far but one had a strange white shadow. Neither the picture before nor the picture thereafter had any abnormal behavior. We joked: “It looks like a ghost”. After we looked up the Internet, we found out that a German called Tiedeman is known to be a Ghost in the area. So we thought we put it up here for those who believe in ghosts.

Friday 10/6 We planned to take the old train to Silverton today, but it rains cats and dogs. Since Ashville, 2 weeks ago we had no rain. But now we are hit again by a thunderstorm. We decided to stay here for a few days and simply wait until it’s over. We hang out in Durango, and do some maintenance work: write the blog, update maps, hair dresser and other things. One of the things we did was reviewing the pictures we shot. Only one had a strange shadow, like a ghost, it was a picture from Sandusky, OH. After we researched the Internet, indeed a ghost is known in Sandusky, trying to contact Germans… hmmm…. Oh well, unfortunately we don’t believe in ghosts but added the picture to the blog. J We try to get some accommodation for Saturday and then plan to stay here until Thursday when the bad weather is expected to be over. Even so it is not planned but it is actually a welcome stop. We are so overwhelmed with exciting, beautiful and interesting impressions from that tour so far that we ...

Thursday 10/5 Checking the weather forecast and talking with our daughter in California where it is very cold, the next thunderstorm is obviously hitting us any soon. We take I-25 towards Albuquerque. Based on the info’s we had is Albuquerque just an ordinary industry type city and we plan to skip it and go straight to Durango. But as so often, people fly in and out of places without having the chance to uncover some of the beauties. As we are so close to town we decided to make the detour and drove downtown. Old Town Albuquerque is definitely worth visiting. Similar to Santa Fe the old town has a lot of little pueblo type buildings, one of the oldest mission in the country and a very nice plaza. While Santa Fe feels very much like an esoteric Mecca, Albuquerque is just a very cute old town surrounded by a very modern city at the Rio Grande. We liked Albuquerque a lot. We go onto Hwy 550 and drive up to Durango. As we leave Albuquerque the scenery changes quite a bid. The rolling hills...

Wednesday 10/4 We go shopping and leave Carlsbad, another nice village for retirement. We do a picnic at a little lake 5 miles off the highway. The little village is mainly a super modern school building and a few shabby homes. It is interesting to recognize this over and over across the country: No matter how little and poor a community is, the school buildings are just beautiful. Back on the highway we drive towards “Ufo town” Roswell. We enter Roswell from south and pass by a huge air force airport. No wonder that there is a possibility that some test equipment crashed in the field. We skip the wearied down UFO Museum and continue the road towards Santa Fe. It is getting dark and we arrive in Santa Fe after sun set. Also here the town is very busy and the only room we could get was a Best Western a little outside town – everything else was booked. We realize that for cities like that reservation is recommended. We walk through old town Santa Fe which is very nice. Old pueblo style b...

Tuesday 10/3 We get up early and continue I-10 to Fort Stockton, where we take hwy 285 to Carlsbad. While on the road we tried several hotels but Carlsbad seamed to be completely sold out. Our only chance was to get to the Caverns in the afternoon and stay may be in Artesia or so. Luckily we won 1 hour as we got to Mountain time and arrived at the Caverns around 2PM. When drove to the visitor center and entrance of the caverns we were surprised by the breathtaking view from that plateau to the south where it looked like we can view Texas from here. As a lazy elderly couple we didn’t want to walk down to the caverns, so we took the elevator. Wow – 380 ft. down into mother earth in 60 seconds. We exited the elevator and walked a few yards on a self guided tour. After a minute or so we entered the inner part of the caverns. It is hard to explain what we felt. It most be like Armstrong when he left the sphere and stood on the moon. Every explanation is worthless – this experience you have ...

Monday 10/2 We leave San Antonio in northerly direction on I-10 towards Carlsbad New Mexico. After a few miles we toured around some very nice new communities and checked homes and pricing. Like Houston a very attractive retirement area. Homes are about 25% of what we pay in California. We hit the road again and make a detour to Fredericksburg. This is a very cute little German village with German food and a funny German-English dialect. Of course we try a real German lunch. It is amazing how a humans taste can change. The Braten was good but we are just not in German food any more. We drive through the old town of Fredericksburg with its many little shops and restaurants and drive back onto I-10. To our big surprise Texas continues to be so green. For what ever reason we expected a desert scene but there is so much forest and green meadows. Since the sun set and we are tired we stead over in a Best Western in Ozona, a little village on I-10. To our big surprise the motels where almost...

Sunday 10/1 After breakfast at the river walk and a river tour I decided to take some time and update the blog while Marita does a tour through town and some shopping. For us San Antonio is the most westerly European City. We are really up for a good Texan steak. We hesitated a bid when somebody recommended a German steakhouse – “Little Rhein Steakhouse”. But it was the best Fillet on this trip so far. We walked off some calories at the river walk again which we enjoyed so much.

Saturday 9/30 We leave towards San Antonio. While we stay mostly on I-10, here and there we leave the Interstate and check into little villages such as Weimar, once in a while. Most of them are pretty much down – almost ghost towns. It’s a pity to see those little villages die out. We arrive San Antonio late evening around 8PM. We called the Menger Hotel and a very friendly lady guided us via cell phone through town to find the place. When we arrive the front desk had the most professional and friendliest staff on our trip. It was late we are hungry and hope to find a restaurant on what is called “The River Walk”. We heard about it as one of the attractions in San Antonio. Wow – what a unbelievable place. It is now after 9PM and there are restaurant after restaurant packed with people – pretty much everything is outside at this gorgeous little river. And again what a high level of service in every restaurant and bar we went to. We planned to leave in the morning but decided to stay one...

Friday 9/29 Today we don’t do anything but hang out at the beach and at the pool. In the evening we tour around old town Galveston, the Strand and have dinner in one of the many beach restaurants.

Thursday 9/28 After a quick breakfast we are curious about a thing called “Home Finder Center”. It is an information center about a gigantic home development called “The Woodlands”. We wanted to know what it is. New homes between 3,700 and 6,000 sft range from $250,000 to about $700,000. The homes here are probably a 10th of the price in California. The Woodlands represent “Boom Town”. The whole area around Houston is booming like nowhere else in the country. Las Vegas? A slow moving village in comparison. After we kind of digested our initial shock of living conditions here versus other places in the country we are heading towards Galveston at the Gulf coast. We don’t expect a lot since people told us it is nothing special, the gulf has oil platforms all over and it may be dirty. What a surprise when we get there. Galveston is a great beach community. The beach is perfect, the sand like powder and absolutely clean. Of course we have perfect weather conditions now in late September and...

Wednesday 9/27 In the morning we take I-10 out of New Orleans towards Slidell where we do a Swamp Tour. This tour is certainly one of the highlight of our trip. We are guided deep into a tropical yesterday. It feels like 2 Million Years back in time. After a few minutes the first alligator is approaching us. Captain Nolan guides us and a few other people deeper into the swamp. We are going towards a very small arm – looks like unapproachable. But we just push through the vegetation. About 100 yards further it opens up again and we are in the middle of an entirely green covered area. As the boat goes forward we see the water in the back which closes right after us. It is beautiful and hard to explain with words – even with photos. After about 3 ½ hours we return to civilization and back to current time (2006). We hit the road again and head towards Houston Texas. We pass by other villages which still lay there, destroyed from Catharina. By sun set we arrive Texas. And right immediately ...

Tuesday 9/26 On our way to New Orleans we stopped by Brookhaven. Jackson Street has some very nice, very large plantation homes we just liked to see. And on the road again we drive south on 61 to New Orleans. Further south we missed the junction to hit the 10 and then cross Lake Pontchartrain, using the large bridge across the lake. But that was actually fortunate. We continued the 61 which is build on concrete posts and guide is to some of the swamp land. This was a very nice ride. In the afternoon we arrive at New Orleans. From I-10 we still see the devastation from Hurricane Katharina 1 year ago. Some areas look like the hurricane was yesterday while other areas are pretty much rebuilt. We missed an exit and drove through one of the poorest areas. People sit on the street and talk or wait for better times. Nobody is busy cleaning up the dirt. We enter Bourbon Street, which welcomes us with a sweet smell of trash. Now we realize that this town is not devastated by Katharina but by th...