It has been on the bucket list for 50 years. We have always found ourselves driving “near” it in January or April. Way off season and we try to avoid cold, which at 7,000 feet on the South Rim it will be in those months. The bar mitzvah delayed our eastward migration until the first week in July. We endured much heat in Jojoba Hills and all the way through Phoenix area – average high of 107! Finally got to Grand Canyon and found tolerable temperatures in the 80’s.

We no sooner got set up in Grand Canyon Camper Village in Tusayan, as close to the southern entrance as you can be without entering the park, then we headed over to the airport to check out helicopter flights over the canyon. We waited 45 minutes for our flight with Papillion in their newest chopper. We took off and flew low over forest and desert headed for the canyon. We knew we were approaching the rim when the pilot dropped even lower and seemed to pick up speed. Then he turned on “Thus Spake Zarathustra” timing it so that the grand crescendo coincided with the ground dropping out from under us and the canyon being revealed. I laughed, I squealed with delight and I clapped my hands! OMG! We saw the key points one looks for in the canyon without really intruding on the tourists on the ground. We flew over the North Rim looking for buffalo (bison) that apparently had gone into hiding since the morning flight. Some saw an elk, Carol and I didn’t. After landing we drove into the park to get an overview.

Carol getting off the Helicopter. Better than words.

Somehow we still had energy so we drove into the park as far as the Village which is as far as a private car can go in summer season. We reconnoitered and planned for the next day before returning to the coach for dinner.

Friday we took in the NatGeo Imax, Almost across the street from our campground, then found a spot in the Visitor Center parking lot after a really good lunch at Sophies Mexican Restaurant. Carol was enticed because their signboard advertises vegetarian. We started riding shuttle buses and taking some walks to see the canyon. This is a great way to get around as there is limited parking, even in the visitor center parking lots and there is a shuttle that runs from Tusayan which permits one to avoid driving into the park. On our drives we also saw several cow and bull elk along the road. Exhausted we returned to GWhiz and put together dinner.

The “new” Kiva, replacing an earlier one destroyed by fire in the ancient Tusyan Village and at the Desert View Tower: which was too crowded and hot for us to consider climbing to the top. From there we turned back to G Whiz to rest and write. One stop along the way will provide what may be our exit photo from the Grand Canyon: Duck Head Rock

Just two weeks ago we celebrated our anniversary, in San Diego. After a week back in Jojoba Hills we headed into Los Angeles in the Jeep for grandson Avi’s Bar Mitzvah. A Bar Mitzvah (becoming an adult in the eyes of the community) is always a special occasion. This one was particularly special since Avi is our youngest grandson. At dinner I mentioned that the next “simcha”, joyous occasion, was likely to be a wedding. I didn’t even look at the eldest, now 24 🙂 I swear that wasn’t what I was thinking.

When the Torah was brought out of the ark it was handed to my sister to carry through the woman’s side of this orthodox synagogue. After I was called for my turn to honor the Torah our grandson Azriel was called. We had never seen him called up so this was very special for us, and I got to stand with him. Finally Avi got to do his thing. Later, after the Sabbath had ended Avi got out his Sax and played several numbers for the family and friends. He has talent coming from our musical family and it showed.

Our boys in the middle Sandy’s children to either side and her youngest grandson

We returned to Jojoba via Astro Camp in Idyllwild where we and Dan, Malena and his clan dropped off Avi for two weeks of camp. Dan followed us back to Jojoba Hills where they saw why we are so very happy there. We toured a bit and then had a delightful dinner at our wonderful patio set under the glorious cantlever umbrella before they started driving toward LAX (stopping near Temecula for the night) for flights east.

We used Monday the 4th to prepare the site for our absence and the coach for the road. This morning we rolled out at 9:30 with a stop at Parkhouse Tires in Thousand Palms to torque the studs holding the tires on and to pick up the hub cap replacement that had been ordered for us. In and out in 15 minutes. Next stop was a lunch break at Chiriaco Summit along I 10 where there is a museum and memorial to George Patton!

Today, June 21, 2016 is our 52nd anniversary. We have celebrated this memory of a time when we were really, really young (our eldest grandson is older then we were when we gt married) in so many different ways and places. Today was weird, special. Given a whole lot of stuff I may get into below, my attention was not focused on care of the motorhome. A couple of weeks ago it crept into my mind that a year had passed since we have any service done on it. I decided that a trip to San Diego was worth considering, since there is a Freightliner Oasis Center there (Our chassis is Freightliner and Oasis is their brand for techs trained in servicing motorhomes not just big trucks- they keep things clean). There are few good places to stay close in and no free spots so I booked a place near La Jolla where we had stayed many years ago. Somehow as I was putting this together the fact of June 21 as an anniversary barely surfaced in my brain. Great, I booked the service for the 21st and the campsite for the 20th and 21st.

We spent our anniversary in the customer lounge of San Diego Freightliner. During this exciting day I attended a preplanned virtual (on my part anyhow) board meeting of CityNewspaper and conversed with assorted drivers and service people working at the counter. The service took from 9 AM until 4 PM plus paperwork leaving us to drive separately through SD rush hour to get back to the campsite.

Our great minds are closely linked after all these years and we mutually agreed that dinner out, again!, made perfect sense. I will report on Nine-Ten Restaurant and Bar in La Jolla later, maybe even later in this post.

Monday, last night, we arranged to meet Ron and Jing at there apartment across the street from the baseball stadium where the Padres play. We got to know Jing through my late mother who hired her give a massage several times a week. Jing morphed into a caregiver and ultimately into a friend and that is how we met Ron, her husband. We hadn’t seen them since Mom died and they moved out to San Diego after Jing retired as a Xerox executive and Ron retired from teaching at RIT. We had a delightful visit and then dinner at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant across the street from the apartment.

Later: Somehow we left earlier then necessary to make our reservation, I think I misread the clock or something. Carol is still in some pain when walking so that would not be a great option although that is much of what La Jolla is, given the parking is very difficult. Between a couple of fire trucks blocking traffic and just traffic in general we managed to arrive only 30 minutes early we elected to sit in the parlor of the hotel built in 1913 that houses the restaurant and had a delightful moment to relax with nothing hanging over our heads. We entered the restaurant a bit early and they had a table ready and seated us immediately. The wine list is extensive so we were saved on learning that the by the glass list was more limited. I had a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carol had a Syrah, both California wines. With any luck we will remember the wineries too. Carol had a lovely vegetarian dish and I had roast Halibut. No pictures, they were food! excellent food, beautifully presented, the taste was divine. I would recommend this restaurant to anyone who isn’t worrying about how much it costs. Those kinds of worries would spoil the meal.

As for distractions, Carol has had a muscle/ligament/joint pain since the middle of our Hawaii excursion. It moved from one side to the other with the truck trip to Green Sand Beach. She is walking with a cane to take pressure off the hip area and we are waiting for the results of an MRI. I continue to have painful skin cracks on the heals which reduce my desire to walk. In general terms “bummer.” We are hoping to make full recoveries in time to begin trekking again the end of August.

Wednesday we will complete our stay in San Diego by replacing all six perfectly good looking five year old tires on the coach to be relatively more certain of an unremarkable driving experience as we cross the country in hot time this July.

For those who keep asking: Leave CA July 4, Arrive Essex Junction VT July 23 to 29, Arrive Rochester August 1, leave Rochester for safari August 24 returning September 20, leave Rochester for the winter sometime in October. That’s all we know for now.

Wow, we are back in GWhiz recuperating from our recuperation in Hawaii. Our AirBnB in Maui was a wonderful change from small campervans and luxurious hotels. It is a small, well appointed condo. Chris, the resident owner, has built her own private loft space and we pretty much had the run of the rest of the condo for our use. Breakfast on the lanai overlooking the ocean was a daily happening.

Carol standing in the road to get a special picture!

A not so calm shoreline along the coast

Rainbow Gum Tree, not native, in Arboretum

Because I could

Hamoa  Beach – the most beautiful beach in the world! just a little hyperbole

Unique, both of us with waterfall on my head

On our last day in paradise we chose to take the shorter drive to the north from our location in Lahaina up to the cliffs and overlooks along the shoreline. We went as far as the blowhole before turning back:

Not an atypical warning sign!

It takes an active sea to create a blowhole!

That little puff in the upper right is the blowhole. We were tired and had endured enough rough rock scrambles for one trip!

The next day we flew from Maui to Honolulu and onward to Los Angeles where we stayed the night before picking up a rental car to get us back to GWhiz in Aguanga CA. We’ve done some doctoring and hope that Carol makes a full recovery from the pain in her left leg so we can make our trip to Africa, not to mention the much earlier Bar Mitzvah of Avi at the beginning of July.

We had a delightful dinner at Ohelo with Frank and his wife Zoe. The food was fine and the company even more so. So much so that we sat at the table long after paying the bill to the distress of those waiting for the table. The staff did not even bother us at all.

The next day we set out for Kona with dreams of coffee and other treats along the way. Of course we could not pass through the territory unimpeded.  First there was the Ka’u Coffee festival that called us off the road, I tasted several interesting coffees, none worth the asking price to me ($15/7 oz bag minimum). Being fully caffinated  we moved on down the road stopping at Black Sand Beach again to look for turtles.

Hilton Hawaiian Village is a wonderful old resort. It has so much that it takes real effort to leave. Well in advance we had planned two excursions.  The first was to Doris Duke’s home, Shangi La. If you don’t know,  Doris Duke came into her fortune at age 12. Her parents died and she was the soul heir to Duke Energy for one. She fell in love with Islamic art and Hawaii at about the same time.  The house, which she continued to update as late as 1992, is a wonderful collection of designs and items.  It is worth the trip if you will be in Honolulu.  The other stop was Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial :

 

 

 More importantly we made it to

We are at Hilton Hawaiian Village – Rainbow Tower, having flown in from Sydney two days ago.

Hilton has elevated the frustrating of small boys to a high level.  Every small boy I have known (no small girls in our life) must push the floor button on the elevator.  These elevators have no buttons in the car! There is a panel on the lobby wall where one enters the destination floor and the appropriate elevator car is illuminted. You enter the car and then exit when your destination is reached with an announcement. Not only small boys find this frustrating. We are all used to entering an open elevator car and THEN pressing the desired floor. I just rode up with two small boys who found this completely unsatisfying.  They screamed through four floors wanting to push the nonexistent button, only to resume screaming when the grandfather, trying to change the subject, asked who would open the door to the room.

Ah, small boys, we survived or own two and their five, and now everyone else’s.  It’s a wonder they are permitted to live to manhood.

Alice Springs is a cool little town.  With decent hotels, dining,  art and a fine hospital. From here there is 1,500 kilometers North to Darwin and a like distance South to Adelaide. Those roads are not interstates with towns and services.  In some cases they may not be paved all the way.  Carry the fuel you need and spares to repair flats and anything else that might break.  For good measure carry a satellite phone as cell service quits at the edge of town. Our busses had satellite phones mounted by the driver.

That is the Gap between East and West McDonnell ranges

The Todd River with puddles from recent rain Yes it rained on us in Alice Springs and it was cool, mid 70’s. They promised us the river would flow if we had 4 or 5 days of heavy rain. The good news was we did not see it flow.  We drove to Uluru (Ayers Rock) In the rain. Sections of the road were flooded, but not to exceed our bus’s capability of 300 millimeters so we pressed on through 600 kilometers of ever changing nothing. Finally Mt Connell came into view,  it is also known as false Uluru or “fooluru” according to John, our driver guide. It looks like the Rock but there is still 60 km to go.  We arrived at Sails in the Desert, our hotel, to find our evenings plans had been washed out,  no dinner under the stars and the roads were impassable and the grounds a marsh. Instead we had a magnificent buffet dinner in the dining room.  5:45 wakeup to see Sunrise light the rock was not a wash out, but the clouds lingered and this is what we saw:

Not the image we were looking for 🙁

To get Wednesday straight.  We started with a bus tour of the CBD (Central Business District for the acronym adverse) that wound up at Circular Quay where we boarded a very large cruise boat to complete the city tour from the water,  with a lovely (overwhelming) buffet lunch.  We passed under Sydney Harbor Bridge a couple of times and I got my binoculars out to ogle the climbers on the top of the bridge.

After our tour of the Sydney Opera House we bused back to the hotel for a two hour break.  We caught a cab back to the Opera House for the 6:30 performance by the Sydney Symphony of the aforementioned Leningrad Symphony by Shostikovich. They opened with a world premier of a Cello concerto follwed by a performance of  a cello piece by Tchaikovski. The cellist then played an encore including vocalizations, hammering on and other methods of achieving sound not normally associated with concert performance on the cello. It was marvelous and the standing ovation was well earned.  Following intermission the Orchestra doubled in size for the Leningrad.  90 minutes later I felt I had survived the siege on Leningrad.  The performance was wonderful,  I do not remember ever hearing a live performance,  RPO must have performed it in a moment of feeling rich. We walked back to the hotel stopping for a snack on the Quay.
 We were preparing for the morning climb of the Bridge. The are plenty of superlatives, all available on bridgeclimb.com. There will be pictures, later. I had to buy them on a thumb drive.  We were not permitted to have anything with us that could fall or be dropped.  We were provided hats with clips to lanyards to the provided jump suits.  There were lanyards for glasses, even a handkerchief with clip was proved and a fleece in a bag clipped to the safety belt in such a manner it could be extracted and worn without unclipping it. We were to spend almost 2 hours directly above the flow of traffic,  a long way above. For all the nervousness the climb was essentially a long walk along a narrow catwalk,  we were harnessed and locked into our safety line already.  Then we climbed a series of ladders,  passing through the traffic deck between lanes 5 and 6 in a caged safety Island. Eventually we gained the top arch and began a long climb to the midpoint.  None of the climbing was particularly strenuous and there were many pauses as our guide related the history of the construction and we waited for the group ahead to move on. We were working with a 10 minute separation.  At the mid point we crossed the top center beam to the west side of the bridge to begin our descent. Total time from check in to tossing the used jump suit down the laundry chute was just over three hours. We would recommend that any able person who can climb two stories without straining should do this for the once in lifetime experience.

We walked back to our hotel and took a break to recover from the physical and nervous energy we had spent.  Friday we got up early and flew,  and flew,  to Alice Springs.  Near the middle of no place in the Outback. I’ll write about that in another post.

Today we tour the famous Opera House.  Tonight we attend a performance of the Leningrad Philharmonic playing Shostikovich and Tchaikovski. Since we didn’t have our schedule or theirs until yesterday we had to take what seats that were available.  Last row. There were seats in the first row but apparently the stage is quite high.

More tomorrow.