Travel

City Gardens

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Debora

No school today, so the kids and I decided to visit the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. It’s the first time we’ve ventured back into downtown Fort Worth since Luke’s birthday trip to the Science Museum, mostly because I am intimidated by the DFW freeway system.

When I first moved here I said that if I ever mastered these freeways I would never fear any kind of city driving ever again. Now, seven weeks later, it’s more accurate to say that I’ve gotten really good at NOT using the freeways. I know all the ways to get where I need to go without ever touching an onramp. It’s sheer cowardice, but I’m okay with that.

It wouldn’t be so bad it you could just hop onto a freeway and get to where you want to be. But there are SO MANY freeways, and they come together and merge and entwine and separate like a series of snake orgies. One moment of inattention or confusion and you’re shunted off in the wrong direction on an unfamiliar roadway. The Fort Worth Botanic Garden is less than 20 miles from where we live, and to get there we had to navigate these four interchanges (it would have been five but I bypassed the first one):

I come from a town with one highway and no stoplights. Even driving to LA or San Diego was a fairly straightforward (albeit slow and crowded) business. This snarl of Metroplex freeways is alien to me.

But today we girded our loins and headed back into the heart of the city. And it was totally worth it, because the Botanic Gardens are amazing.

If you ever visit the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens and you wonder whether it’s worth paying extra to see the Japanese Garden, the answer is yes.

Yes it is.

All of the gardens are beautiful, but the Japanese Garden is stunning.

There are koi food dispensers along the paths, and whenever you get near the water a galloping horde of hopeful koi appears.

The Japanese Garden was our favorite, but all of the gardens are worth visiting.

I found this near the Conservatory. I think it’s a pretty good arboreal representation of the DFW freeway system:

When we had seen everything there is to see at the Botanic Gardens we still had a good chunk of afternoon left, so we decided to go check out the Water Gardens.

The Water Gardens are kind of surreal. They’re designed to resemble a wilderness of canyons, mountains, lakes and rivers, represented in stark, geometric lines.

The active pool is energetic and exciting.

The quiet pool evokes a sense of standing in a wooded canyon near a serene lake.

The aerated pool was the least interesting to us. I get what they were going for, but it didn’t really speak to us like the others did.

Got mildly lost on the way home, trying to navigate my Apple Maps directions in reverse. By then I was in too good a mood to be bothered by it, though. Eventually I will master these freeways, because the alternative is missing out on too many of the incredible things that the Metroplex has to offer.

I freaking love this place.

Categories: environment, Family, Gardening, Humor, kids, Life, Travel, Uncategorized, Wildlife | Tags: Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, Fort Worth Water Gardens | 3 Comments

Our Grand Adventure, Part III

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Debora

Part I

Part II

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Monday’s hike was my favorite part of the whole trip: we travelled west from the Village along the Rim Trail to a spot called Hermit’s Rest about 7 miles away. Some of the group opted to take the shuttle, which ran on a separate road not far from the trail and stopped at eight big overlook points along the rim before stopping at Hermit’s Rest and looping back to the Village. There were ten of us that chose to walk, and it was a fun group. The trail was pretty and the views were amazing; it was just a great hike.

We ended up taking a shuttle the last three miles or so to Hermit’s rest, where we found an old (built in 1904) structure that had been converted into a gift shop and snack bar. Underneath all the modern clutter the primitive design was wonderful.

And now it was afternoon, and the one thing no one wanted to do was risk missing the train back to Williams, so we caught a shuttle back to the Village. The kids and I collected our carry-on stuff from the Lodge and then walked along the Rim Trail back toward the depot. We’d given ourselves plenty of time, so we stopped for ice cream along the way.

Luke had been wanting to look inside the Hopi House (like Hermit’s Rest it was built in 1904, designed by Mary Colter and eventually converted into a gift shop) ever since we’d arrived in the Village, so we stopped there next and had a look around. It was two stories high and crammed full of shiny merchandise, but the structure itself looked like a house I could see myself living in. It reminded me of my grandfather’s simple and beautiful hand-built shack, but with more fireplaces.

And then it was time to head down to the train depot…

…and settle in for the ride back to Williams.

We saw deer and elk from the train, but I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to catch them.

At one point we were overtaken and boarded by armed bandits.

They did a bit of comedy schtick that was pretty funny even to a cantankerous old fart like myself. The three of them came down the aisle demanding “money, jewels and prized possessions” from random passengers, mostly focusing on kids. When the first guy got to me and Luke, my boy dramatically turned his pockets inside-out to demonstrate his possessionless condition. While I was still laughing at that, the big gunman moved to the seats behind us, and I heard him suddenly exclaim in genuine surprise and bafflement, “She hissed at me!” I looked back and saw Elizabeth clutching her beloved picture of Espio to her chest and looking like the first robber that tried to lay a hand on her “prized possession” might lose it at the wrist. The bandit moved on without another word, and I didn’t blame him.

Sometime after the train robbers had left the car, Fiddle Guy returned. He told all the same jokes and played all the same bits of music as he had on Sunday, and they were still lame.

We rolled into the Williams Depot around 5:45pm, bought an obligatory Grand Canyon Railway Christmas ornament and a tee-shirt, and loaded up the Saturn for the long drive home.

I made one big mistake on this outing, and that was not printing out the driving instructions in BOTH directions. I didn’t think about it until we were already in Arizona, and then I figured it wouldn’t really matter because I could just follow my printed instructions except in reverse. The trouble was that without actual exit names and numbers, it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Specifically, it turns out that there is more than one way to get from I-40W to US-95S, and I managed to take the wrong one. By the time I’d realized my mistake I figured I might as well just keep going, since I knew I had to be on the 95 eventually anyway. The worrisome thing was, there was no sign of civilization for miles and miles and the AZ/CA border did not appear to be anywhere near where we’d left it on our way to Williams. I confess, I was beginning to quietly freak out a little. But Luke and Elizabeth responded to the situation with a combination of stoic acceptance and cheerful sense of adventure, and pretty soon we were making jokes about finally making it across the Arizona border only to find ourselves in New Mexico. If I have to be lost in the middle of nowhere, my kids are the people I want to be lost with.

Eventually we reached a town, and I stopped at a gas station to fill up and find out where the hell we were in relation to the border. So that’s when I found out that my poor choice of exits had brought us to Lake Havasu, well north of where we should have been, but that staying on the 95 was still our best bet. We eventually crossed the border in Parker and got back to Anza without any further incidents. The next day I google-mapped our detour and learned that I’d inadvertently added about 150 miles to our journey home. The baffling part was that it didn’t really take us that much longer at all. We left Williams at about 6:30 Monday afternoon and were home by 1am Tuesday morning, so about 6.5 hours. According to Google it should have taken over nine hours to travel home the way we did. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

[EDIT: And now that I’ve had more sleep and checked the route again, ACCURATELY this time, I see that my improvised route only added about 15 miles to the trip. That would explain why it didn’t take us much longer. Whew.]

We slept like dead people, but surprisingly had no trouble getting up the next morning and getting the kids off to school. As eventful and sleepless as our outing had been, it left us more energized than exhausted.

I’ll say it again: the Grand Canyon is amazing. It really is one of the great wonders of the natural world, something everyone should see at least once. The kids haven’t stopped talking about it since we got back.

Still…it’s good to be home.

Categories: Family, Friends, Humor, kids, Life, Love, Road trip, Travel | Tags: Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Railway | 4 Comments

Our Grand Adventure, Part II

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Debora

Read Part I Here

The South Rim of the Grand Canyon is at 7000ft elevation. The weather was as perfect as it possibly could have been for hiking, but the thinner atmosphere meant that temps dropped below freezing at night and then warmed back up when the sun rose. It was strong, high-altitude sunshine, so even though the official high said 60º in the shade, it felt like 75º in direct sunlight. Wearing layers was key. That first day at the Canyon was when I realized that early October is a much better time time to visit than December: we would have been freezing our behinds off if we’d stuck to the original plan!

Sunday afternoon we met up with the other group members that wanted to hike along the Rim Trail east of the Village. Despite the altitude and not having slept much for the past two nights, the kids and I were bouncy with energy and eager to keep moving.

Once Elizabeth got past her initial amazement at the sheer enormity of the thing, she quickly transitioned to finding places where there was no railing or barrier between the trail and the abyss, and then finding a rocky outcropping to stand on where a fall would mean certain death, and then going out and standing on it, thusly:

I still haven’t decided whether I’m a bad parent for allowing this, or a good parent for encouraging her to live life to the fullest. Twenty years from now I’ll know which one it was, I suppose.

Luke found the Canyon actively intimidating. He was fine as long as there was a nice sturdy railing or wall between himself and the drop, but he wanted nothing to do with the unshielded outcroppings. I actually have very few pictures of Luke near the rim, and in the ones I do have he’s either on the safe side of a railing or wall (and if the wall is too low he still looks uncomfortable)…

…or there’s no barrier and I have a casual death grip on him to keep him in the photo.

Anyway. After the hike on Sunday we checked into our rooms to clean up for dinner. The group had reservations in the Arizona Room at Bright Angel Lodge, but it (and every other restaurant in the Village) was so crowded that we ended up waiting for an hour in the bitterly cold dark before our table was ready. The food was good though, and the portions were so huge that the kids and I took half our meals back to our room with us and had them for breakfast the next morning. And as we walked back to Maswik Lodge that night a small herd of deer walked fearlessly past us to graze on the Bright Angel lawns. I wish I’d had my camera with me, but I hadn’t brought it to the restaurant.

Again, some of us were ready for bed earlier than others. The kids and I were sound asleep by the time our roommate returned. This time I was so tired that I woke up briefly when she came in and immediately went back to sleep. But at some point after that she actually woke me up on purpose to ask me something. I was so groggy I barely remember it, but (as I learned the next morning) apparently she had become separated from the people she was walking back to the Lodge with, and while she was alone she had come across an elk, and the experience had unnerved her, and she felt the need to recenter herself with some Buddhist chants, and APPARENTLY I told her that would be fine. So, yeah. Chanting. In the wee hours of the morning. Even Elizabeth couldn’t sleep through that. It seemed to go on for hours, although it was probably more like thirty minutes. When she finally stopped and went to bed I fell asleep so fast that I never even heard the snoring, but apparently Luke wasn’t so fortunate: once again he didn’t get much sleep.

To describe Luke as “surly” the next morning would be a considerable understatement. As ordered, he did not say anything to our roommate, but once we were away from her and out with the group members who were hiking with us that day he complained bitterly about every little thing, and the unfairness of life in general. For the first hour or so he was just not much fun to be around.

But. Monday’s hike turned out to be insanely fun. We were following the Rim Trail to the west this time, which was woodsier and less populated, and led to a series of breathtaking vistas. Even poor sleep-deprived Luke eventually recovered his good spirits in the evergreen-scented air, and he fell in with a younger boy from our group who also liked to keep a healthy distance from steep drops. They kept each other company, while Elizabeth and I spent the day terrifying each other by walking out onto increasing dangerous rocky outcroppings.

The West Rim Trail also offered wonderful views of the Village.

And this is getting pretty long, so I think I’ll stop here and continue tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Read Part III Here

Categories: Family, Friends, Humor, kids, Life, Love, Road trip, Travel, Wildlife | Tags: Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Railroad | Leave a comment

Our Grand Adventure, Part I

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Debora

This week the kids and I got to cross two more items off our bucket list: traveling somewhere by train…

…and seeing the Grand Canyon.

When we first started talking about this trip, we’d planned to do it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The kids would be out of school, the garden would be in low-maintenance mode, and it wouldn’t be too hot to hike the Rim. I mentioned the idea to another mom in my hiking group, and she must have mentioned it to others, because pretty soon it had become an official group outing. This was awesome, for several reasons. One, I’m realistic about the risks of a single mom and two kids traveling by themselves, and a group feels safer. Two, it’s more fun to hike with other people. And the biggest reason, the lady who organized the trip did such an amazing job of planning and finding discounts, that we ended up doing WAY more fun stuff than the kids and I had originally planned, for hundreds of dollars less than our basic plan would have cost! It was unbelievable how inexpensive and FUN this trip was. The only downside was that the trip was scheduled for October rather than December, which actually turned out to be an upside, as we realized later.

We left Anza on Saturday morning. Most of the group were carpooling from the Temecula or Hemet areas, or taking Amtrak from Riverside CA to Williams AZ, but it made more sense for the kids and I to drive straight from Anza to Williams via Palm Springs, rather than detouring in the opposite direction to follow the others.

The weather was autumn-brisk, and this was our holiday trip after all, so we blasted Christmas music the whole way there. Trans-Siberian Orchestra makes the miles fly past, and the drive felt shorter than the six or so hours it took. We arrived at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel around 4pm, checked into our room, met our roommate (sharing rooms was part of the package) and then explored the grounds. We found a heated indoor swimming pool and a jacuzzi, and wished we’d brought our swimsuits. Then we found a gym, stocked with a dozen different kinds of workout and weightlifting equipment. We had it mostly to ourselves, so the kids had to try every single step-trainer, spinner, cross-trainer, weight press and treadmill in the place.

At 6:00 we met with the rest of the group for dinner. One of the really cool things about this outing was that nearly everything was covered by the incredibly low package price that we’d already paid, including dinner Saturday night and breakfast Sunday morning at the Railway Hotel Restaurant. It was buffet style, so no shortage of food. After dinner the whole group relaxed in front of the fire in the beautiful lobby, and discussed hiking plans for Sunday and Monday.

Brief tangent: the furniture in the hotel lobby was enormous. When I sat on one of the sofas there I felt like a child. Luke and Elizabeth looked like toddlers.

That fireplace in the photo is HUGE, but it looks normal-sized next to that giant furniture.

Anyway, so we planned our itineraries. Some of us really wanted to get out there and hike the trails, others preferred to make use of the shuttle tours, and some were looking forward to just relaxing and socializing in the Village. There were something like 23 of us altogether, so a bit of organizing was needed to make sure everyone had the experience they wanted.

Once all of that was settled, most of the group went out to enjoy the Williams nightlife. The kids and I headed back to our room, relaxed for a while and were asleep by ten, because we are party animals that way.

Alas, our roommate stumbled in very late (or early, really), puttered around noisily for what seemed like forever, and then finally went to sleep — and began snoring at such an impressive volume that all our hopes of sleep were shattered. Well, Elizabeth managed to doze off, but Luke and I buried our heads under pillows and blankets to no avail. I think I finally managed a fitful sleep sometime after four, because when the alarm went off at six it did wake me up. Luke apparently had the same thought, because he sat up and said in a surprised voice, “Wow, I DID fall asleep!”

One thing about Luke: if he feels that someone is in need of chastising, he ain’t shy. Until we’d gotten dressed and left the room I had to constantly shush him, because he fully intended to give our roommate a lengthy piece of his mind. Once we’d checked our luggage and were heading to breakfast, I was able to explain to him that some people stay up later than others, and some people snore, and it’s just the luck of the draw when it comes to matching up roommates, and she wasn’t trying to keep us awake on purpose, and under no circumstances was he allowed to scold her. He accepted that, though not particularly gracefully, and then we went to the restaurant and comforted ourselves with orange juice and eggs and sausage and fajitas and biscuits and gravy and muffins and pastries and yogurt and frittatas and toast.

After breakfast we gathered up our carry-on belongings and headed over to the train depot. Once there we were treated to the obligatory goofy Western shootout show.

Luke thought it was hilarious. Elizabeth thought it was amusing. I am a cantankerous old fart and was glad when it was over.

Then we boarded the train, and we were off to the Canyon! It took about two hours and 15 minutes to get there, and the scenery was wonderful.

We saw a herd of antelope in a meadow; there was wildlife everywhere. Near the end of the ride a guy came to our car with a fiddle and entertained us with corny jokes.

Being a cantankerous old fart, I enjoyed that about as much as I’d enjoyed the Old West show. Sorry Fiddle Guy, but your jokes are lame. Make funny jokes and I will like you.

Once we arrived at the Grand Canyon Depot on the South Rim, we caught a shuttle to Maswik Lodge, where we would be spending Sunday night. It was too early to check into our room, but our checked luggage had already arrived there and we were able to drop off some of our carry-on stuff for safekeeping. Then the kids and I walked up to the Rim to get our first look at the main attraction.

Technically, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen the Grand Canyon. My parents had taken me there a few times as a kid, so I had a vague memory of it. And to be honest, I was a little concerned that Luke and Elizabeth would be too jaded by the wonders of modern technology to be impressed by a canyon, however grand.

So we walked up to the Rim, and there it was, stark and colorful and impossibly vast.

It’s so big that you can only can only see parts of it at a time. As long as it took us to drive from Anza CA to Williams AZ, that’s how long it would take if you were to drive from the South Rim around to the North Rim.

I said, “Wow.”

The kids didn’t say anything for a long time.

We walked along the rim trail for a while, killing time until it was time to rejoin the group. I could see that the kids were not unimpressed — quite the opposite — but they seemed to be having trouble finding the right words to describe the sheer enormity of the thing.

Elizabeth finally found a comfortable context in technology. “It looks fake,” she decided. “Like a painted backdrop.”

“CGI maybe,” I nodded. “It’s gotta be special effects.”

“Yeah.”

Luke took longer to put his reaction into words. I think it was a couple of hours later; he’d been unusually quiet since his first glimpse into the abyss. “There is NO WAY,” he suddenly burst out, “that Paul Bunyon could have made that by dragging his axe along the ground. I don’t care HOW big he was.”

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Read Part II Here.

Categories: Christmas, Family, Friends, Humor, kids, Life, Love, Road trip, Travel, Wildlife | Tags: Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Railway | 1 Comment

Dolphins!

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Debora

Hello Internet! I’m not really back, I just have some pics to share and this is the easiest place to do it.

So yesterday the kids and I were on a boat. I got violently seasick and spent a good part of the day hanging over the rail making contributions to the local ecosystem, if you know what I mean. BUT! I also got to see literally thousands of frolicking dolphins! They were everywhere, the ocean was alive with them as far as the eye could see.

Luke and Elizabeth loved the rolling of the boat and didn’t get sick at all (oh to be young again and have a cast iron constitution), and generally had a great time, albeit for different reasons. Elizabeth enjoyed seeing dolphins and sea lions and pelicans and such in their natural environment, while Gadget Boy couldn’t get enough of all the nautical paraphernalia. Example: our boat passed near this adorable sight:

Everyone gathered near the rail to see the sea lions, and Luke said in hushed tones of intense excitement, “Wow, a real live buoy! I’ve never seen a buoy in real life before!” I’m not sure he even noticed the wildlife, but there were plenty of maritime gizmos everywhere to thrill his little cogs-and-gears heart, so he had a fun day too.

I was feeling hollow and wobbly by the time I got home, but I slept like the zebra* last night and woke up feeling really great this morning. Seasickness aside, I think all that salty ocean air must have been good for my lungs, they feel clearer than they have in weeks.

Not that I’m ready to go jump on another boat anytime soon. Blerg.

*Have I ever explained the zebra thing here? It’s a reference to the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. One time we had a cruise pilot that had a whole running stream of jokes about that scene where the lion family is nomming on the dead zebra. “Oh, look at all those lions protecting that sleeping zebra!” “We’ll just continue on and let him rest…in peace.” Like that. Somehow it worked its way into our conversational repertoire, so if one of us says, “Wow, I’m exhausted; I’m gonna sleep like the zebra tonight,” it sounds perfectly normal. To us. I fear that eventually as our conversational shorthand evolves we’ll become completely incomprehensible to random strangers, kind of like the Tamarians from Star Trek. “Shaka, when the walls fell.” “Darmok, on the ocean.” “The zebra, ‘asleep.'”

Categories: Animals, environment, Family, kids, Life, Travel, Wildlife | 6 Comments