The LA Angels of Aneheim...in Orange County...California...Home of Disney Land...and Micky Mouse

We finally made it to the coast! We're in LA staying with my good friend Abby. She took us on a little driving tour of the area - we saw Venice Beach, Sony studios and some other sites, Pete and I will be on our own all day Tuesday to do some really touristy things and meeting my friend Chuck in Hollywood Wednesday for more super-tourist activity!


We went to an Angels game last night - the park is beautiful and PACKED for a Monday night
It was an excellent game too - the Angels were leading 4-1 and the Asstros came back and pulled ahead to a 9-4 lead (bummer) THEN the Angels caught up!

Love these pictures - major league smog (there's mountains in there somewhere!) and the sun setting through the ball park.

The score was 9-9 going in to the bottom of the 9th and we thought we might be in for extra innings when Chone Figgins hit an RBI triple to score the winning run from first base. That triple gave him 6 hits for 6 at bats during this game! He said in a press conference later that he's never even done that in a video game, much less real play! It was a great time and our Major league park of the summer... checked off the list!

Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree national forest in Southern California (new state for us!) is by far the prettiest and most peaceful part of the trip. We spent two days there and had an extremely relaxing time. We had our own Joshua tree right in our campsite. This is really high desert country so we spent most of our day trying to stay hydrated and in the shade. We got a tip from one of the rangers when we arrived about this campground called Jumbo Rocks, and you can see why! She said that there might be some afternoon shade here. We were really happy, there were very few people around all weekend and we could just relax and let the desert sort-of wash over us.




We found a little alcove where we could put the tent and get a little shade from the "trees" (really more shrubs) inthe afternoon and the jumbo rock in the morning. It was the perfect place. Because there was really no thought that there would be any rain, we left the rain fly off of the tent and had a view of the sky when we woke up in the morning, but more spectacular was the view of the night sky. Our second night there, we went to a star party - members of the local andromeda club hauled out their GIANT telescopes and set them up for us to look at planets and galaxys. It was pretty cool to see saturne so clearly that it looked fake! But later that night looking through the roof of our tent we could make out several constelations AND a swirly galaxy. Beautiful. We hated to leave, but there were those seveal hours of the day where you couldn't do anything but follow the example of the lizards and hide in the shade!

London Bridge

Yes, someone actually bought London Bridge and moved it to the desert in Arizona. So now, instead of spanning the Thames, it spans the Colorado River. The joke was still on the buyer, he thought he was getting the Tower Bridge! We thought we might camp in the little town where the bridge is, but it was too hot to even think about setting up camp and there was no cover to be found anywhere, so we took our pictures and moved on. We drove until the sun was starting to set and then found a place on the Colorado river to camp for the night. It wasn't glamorous, but it was just for one night and we COULD walk down and put our feet in the river. The last picture is Mojo at London Bridge, that's how hot it was, he just walked in and lay down in the water.

Sunset Volcano - Wupoki Ruins

We camped a night outside Flagstaff, it was a beautiful park with tall Ponderosa pine trees, but because it was at the base of an old volcano, the ground was completely covered in black cinder. It was very strange, kind of like black sand. But we had a beautiful site.



You can't climb to the top of Sunset Crater anymore, but we were able to climb to the ridge of the Tempe crater, a half mile hike, straight up in this sand-like cinder. But we made it. It wasn't what we expected, I suppose it has been dormant for almost a thousand years! But you can see the lava flow and also, this black basin is the actual crater of the volcano.






The highlight of this stop was the ruins. Unlike Homolovi, there are actual structures in this park. This one, they had even reinforced so that tourists could explore in and on the actual ruin site. It was very cool.

Ruins and Jackson Brown

We left Albequerque and headed West. We didn't think we could make it all the way to Flagstaff or Sedona so we picked a park on the map - the Homolovi state park. It was chilly and a little drizzly, but it was the desert, so we thought it would pass. We had a very nice site with a nice view, we got set up in the wind... again. But we were able to have a fire and it was a great fire that took the chill off a little! The rain didn't stop and as the fire died down we moved into the tent to play some cards and try to stay warm. It rained half the night and didn't get any warmer, luckily we have two furry little furnaces to keep us warm! It was good and warm once the sun came up though and we had a little bit of time to explore the Homolovi ruins, we saw some pot shards and lots of amazing rock formations.



























Then, because we were there, we had to stop in town - here's a picture of Pete "Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona" He has some of me too!


We drove on to Sedona/Flagstaff, the parks here are a little crazy so we're staying in Flagstaff today we'll check out an old volcano crater before continuing West.

Albequerque continued

It wasn't all baseball in Albequerque, we had a strange campsite, it was very small, but it was secluded and felt a little like we were camping in a tree! The puppies loved it though and hung out in the trees (or whenever we got up, in our chairs). We went out exploring and saw Albequerque's Old Town, an open square with lots of shops and street venders and live music. We also happened on a dog park so the puppies got to run around with some of the Albequerque dogs.


On our way out of town we stopped at the Petroglyph national monument and saw a couple carvings. But the trail was a two hour hike and it was pretty hot in the sun so we moved on toward Flagstaff.

Albequerque Isotopes

So finally we're in Albequerque! Being the Simpsons fans that we are, we have long wanted to see an Albequerque Isotopes game. It's a great park, unlike Colorado Springs, there's actually a view of the mountains. It's beautiful. They have a great Mascot, named Orbit. It's some kind of space dog and very cute. We met up with the sister of a good friend of ours, she was a blast. The Isotopes were playing our own Memphis Redbirds, so it was fun. We got to see John Rodreguez, Skip Schumaker and Rick Ankiel, along with a lot of player that we have seen work their way up through the ranks. Also, milwaukee is no longer unique in racing mascots, this park featured a race between Taco, a hot pepper and a green chili. There was a lot of animosity between the Taco and the pepper, so it wasn't always a clean race.

We saw two games in Albequerque, the red birds lost the first one and won the second game. Both games were a blast.

Roswell, NM

We made the long drive into the desert to Roswell New Mexico, home of the UFO conspiracy theorys and sitings. In 1948, there was a supposed crash of an alien space craft on a sheep farm outside Roswell. It was followed by a supposed mass government cover-up, then movies, a TV show and lots of fun.



Aside from being the UFO capital of the US, Roswell is beautiful. We found a campsite at Bottomless Lake state park, a gorgeous spot. We set up camp as the winds continued and had dinner watching a beautiful sunset over the lake. Then we spent a nice day reading and relaxing and moving around the campsite trying to stay in the shade. We took a swim in the ice-cold bottomless lake and when the sun moved behind the tent, and things cooled off a little, we headed in to town to explore the UFO museum. Again, the word of the trip... Cheesy, but a lot of fun and some interesting things.















Another night free of Alien sitings and with Dog as my co-pilot (ha ha) we're off to Albequerque.

Meade Lake - Four states in four hours

We packed up and headed out on a driving day - just half way to our next stop - Tutumcari, NM. For the day though we just drove to Meade Lake, KS. A beautiful park, we had a secluded site surrounded by trees and a great lake. We set up camp and then went for a swim in the sun-warmed sand bottom lake. It was the perfect end to a fairly uneventful day.


Reluctantly we packed up our Meade lake site, had another quick swim and headed to New Mexico. This was our four states in four hours day, we drove through the rest of Kansas stopping shortly in Liberty Kansas to see 'Dorothy's house' from the Wizard of OZ, cute a tourist trap, but worth a few minute stop! We drove on through the pan handle of Oklahoma and the pan handle of Texas (stopping to pick up groceries and lunch since it was all we did in Texas! and on into New Mexico.


Some friends had told us we had to stop in Tutumcari NM and we ad found a state park outside the city on the map, but were never able to find it in the car! We wound up IN Tutumcari for the windyest night we've spent yet. We had a great view of the mountain, but the wind was crazy and exhausting. Neither of us got much sleep as we watched the tent whip around and waited to be blown back to Kansas (or OZ). But it never happened, it's a good tent and OK City must have been quite a storm.

Tomorrow... Aliens!

Witcheta Wranglers

We had originally planned to go to Amarillo to see the Dilla’s play a game, but they weren’t home, wo we looked to see who else might be around and not too far out of our way. The Witchta Wranglers fit the bill. The were only two and and half hours away and they were home against the Midland RockHounds.

The camping wasn't great outside Witcheta, but it wasn't expensive and most importantly, it was drama free! The site didn't have much privacy, we felt like we were camping in someone's front yard, but we were able to wash and dry all of our wet things from OK City.

The game was a blast, it was at a wierd time, 4:00p, we were sitting in the campsite listening to the Cardinals/Astros game, a crazy game with lots of back and forth scoring and homeruns, we were listening to the game on the car radio because we were out of batteries for our boom box. We forgot to start the car and as we jumped into the car to rush to the game, I turned the key and heard 'click, click, click'. We had killed the Car battery. Luckily, a guy checking into the campsite right at that moment gave us a jump start and we were off to the game, and were in the park if not in our seats for the first pitch.

The Wranglers lost, but it was still a fun game. There is a chicken on the scoreboard, and every time the opposing team fails to score, it travels across the scoreboard to lay an egg in thier score. The concessionairs were also great lots of fun jokes and interesting sales calls "Ice Cold Beer and Peanuts - the baseball Happy meal, free joke included" and it was true, we bought a beer and some cajun peanuts (whew! spicy) and got a free joke!

After a break from the drama (and the weather, we're off to New Mexico. No Baseball for a little while, but lots of nature and a state that neither Pete or I have ever been to.

Oklahoma City - Red Hawks

Oklahoma City was a little further than we expected, we actually camped in Norman, OK at a state park about half an hour from downtown OK City. The state park was a little strange, the only tent sites they had were hike-in sites, so we hauled all of our crap (and it’s a lot after 8 years of camping) down a hill to a beautiful site overlooking another lake. We failed to anticipate the effect of a wide open area like a lake if there were weather!
We went into Oklahoma City and just as we hit town it started pouring, we went to the park and they told us that although the game (Okalahoma City Red Hawks vs. Utah Bees) had been delayed, it would be played. So we bought our tickets and headed over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial on the site of the 1995 Oklahoma Federal Building bombing. This is a beautiful monument with a small chapel on one side and a long reflecting pool between two doorways marked 9:01 and 9:03 the minutes before and after the bombing. There is also a field of chairs that are lit from the inside representing every person who was killed in the bombing. The monument is beautiful and we would have spent more time exploring it except that the sky suddenly opened up on us. So we headed back downtown.

An hour late, at 8:00 on the nose, the game started. The park is very nice, reminded us a little of Memphis, but it was generally a nice park. We took an inordinate number of pictures of a rainbow just outside Center field and the beautiful sky. You would hardly have guessed that there had been rain.

The Red Wings became our first home-team loss of the trip losing 7-4 to the Bees. But we didn’t care because the Cardinals whomped the Astros so we were happy… for the moment!

We got back to the campground and were greeted by the Ranger who told us that they had just gotten a huge storm and it had blown our tent down and they were concerned for the dogs inside the tent. We were extremely nervous for our pups from listening to their tales of destruction, they told us that several of the poles were broken. When we got to the tent, we saw what had happened, the wind off the lake had blown the stakes of the wind/rain screen right out of the ground. It blew into the tent, filled with water and dragged the tent down on itself. The pups, Mojo in his kennel and Puja curled up in a chair were the only dry things in the tent. They are not dumb dogs! When I emptied the water off the tent, the whole thing popped back into shape, there was a fewpieces of torn Velcro, but no broken pieces. It’s a good tent. Unfortunatly everything we owned was soaked, so we tried to find some lap blankes and tarps to fashion a bed for the night and the next day headed to somewhere dry with laundry service!!