44 Hours

What to do when you only have 44 hours to spend in Vegas over Thanksgiving?

1. Eat.

Steak 'n Shake at South Point is always our first stop

Bumpass Hell

For our second day of exploring Lassen Volcanic National Park, we started at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center first thing this morning. M and J worked on completing the activity page for this location, while I stepped outside to snap some pictures.

Brokeoff Mountain, part of the remnants of Mount Tehama

Mount Diller (left) and Point Pinnacle (right)

Tame the Volcano

After our super fun kayak tour at Whiskeytown NRA this morning, we drove about an hour east to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Our first stop was the Loomis Museum, which is located near the northwest entrance to the park and by Manzanita Lake. We went through our usual visitor center routine - watch the park movie, work on junior ranger activities, and get the passport stamp.

Kayaking Whiskeytown

It takes a little bit of marketing to get certain family members on board for another road trip. The selling points for making the long trek up to Northern California were:

• Visiting two more national park units, Whiskeytown NRA and Lassen Volcanic NP
• Redeeming two free Marriott hotel stays that we earned from a promo during our spring break trip
• Sleeping one night at a motel with twin beds (no complaints about sharing with a bed hog)
• Going back to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
• Kayaking on Whiskeytown Lake

Saving Summer

Ever since we got back from spring break, I had been dreading summer. Why? Because there was nothing to look forward to! No Saiki-delic adventure to plan, no place to go! We knew that nearly M's whole summer would be likely be taken up between freshman basketball and marching band. Since we didn't know whether or not he'd make the team and what the schedule would be if he did, we couldn't book anything in advance. A certain sibling wanted to go on vacation anyway, leaving him behind to fend for himself. Tempting as it was to consider, it was not an option. *sigh*

Once we knew that M had been selected for the summer team and got the schedule from the coaches, we saw that there was a small window of opportunity at the end of July. In spite of layoff rumors at my work, we decided to go ahead a take a quick trip. Because we've picked all of the low hanging fruit, we have to keep expanding our radius to get to national park units we haven't visited yet!

Hits and Misses

I wanted to write up a recap for this trip, but when I went to poll the family, my not-so-diplomatic teenager had this comment to offer...

"Not one of your best trips, Mom."

Ouch.

After nursing my bruised ego, I had to admit, he's probably right on that point. This *won't* rank up there as one of our most favorite trips. I'm okay with that -- you can't hit a home run every time, right?! Still, I'm happy that we were able to see places that we had never been before and learn new things. That's why I think traveling is a valuable experience!  

So, even if there were more misses than hits this time around, I am still going to make them find something positive to say about it...

3:10 to Yuma

Did I already mention that one of the pre-trip homework movies was 3:10 to Yuma, starring Noah, Batman, and Percy Jackson? Let me just say that as much as they liked the gunfights, the boys had a hard time buying into the ending...

That doesn't make any sense!

WHY WOULD HE DO THAT ?!?!

Even though the location is never shown in the movie, we learn that Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) has escaped from Yuma Prison before and will have no problem doing it again. So, first thing this morning we headed off to see Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park for ourselves. 

Run for the Border

To visit Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, you have to really want to go there. It's not on the way to anything, and quite a detour from any major interstate, so I don't think anyone would go there just on a whim. Clearly, count me among those who really wanted to visit (and my lucky family got to come, too!)

From Tucson, it took us about 2.5 hours on a small, two-lane highway to get to Why, where we turned south on AZ State Route 85. The park entrance was just a short distance from the junction.

Wonderland of Rocks

From the trailhead parking lot at Fort Bowie, it was 8 miles of gravel road back to AZ State Route 186, where we turned south for the short drive to reach our next destination...

Fort(ress) of Solitude

"What are we doing today?" asked the not-so-junior rangers, as we got off I-10 and headed south on a very small, desolate road.

"Fort Bowie," I replied.

"Why would the government build a fort out here in the middle of nowhere?" asked the patient husband of the crazy lady who will travel anywhere to visit any place with a brown National Park Service sign.

After parking at the trailhead, we started the 1.5 mile hike in to the visitor center to find out.

Miners and Gunfighters

Kartchner Caverns had been highly recommended to us, but since we knew we were going to explore the cave at Coronado National Memorial, we decided to see the Queen Mine in Bisbee instead. Glad I made reservations for the 10:30AM tour a few weeks ago because it was sold out when we arrived! 

Exploring Arizona

Our first stop this morning was a trip back in time at Tubac Presidio State Historic Park. It preserves the site of Arizona's oldest Spanish presidio, or fort.

The excavation of the original adobe foundation of the presidio has been enclosed so that it can still be viewed

Chicago West

The latest installment of our travel blog started when we loaded up the covered wagon, um, minivan and hit the road for Phoenix right after the kids escaped school for spring break on Friday. Unfortunately, we weren't quite as lucky in our efforts to get out of Dodge, um, Southern California, so our trek took more than an hour longer than usual. Ugh.

If you haven't guessed by now, this road trip will take us through the Old West (a.k.a. Southern AZ). Our pre-trip homework involved watching a lot of (laughably bad) Westerns. Among them: Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, 3:10 to Yuma, and The Lone Ranger. Does Cowboys vs. Aliens count as a Western?!