A Grand Place Indeed

What a day -- I'm EXHAUSTED!  I'm writing this from the Red Rock Motel, down from LuLu's Sleep Eeze Motel and Debbie's Hideaway Motel.  It's old school and Nick and I are both happy about something off the beaten path!

We got started at a humane time, headed out of Flagstaff and to the Grand Canyon.  This ones been on Nick's list for quite some time.  I had been when I was younger, but honestly had very little recollection of it.  Surprise, surprise.  :) 

This is a picture from when I was young (you should be able to click on it and have it enlarge), that little dot out there is my father, scary the crap out of us.  That littler dot behind him is my sister Melody, knowing her, she went with him to keep and eye on him and beg him not to do whatever he was about to do.  :)  She's always been worried about everyone.  :)

So, anyway, did a short jaunt around the South rim (North rim doesn't open until early/mid May).  And then we headed to Bright Angel Trail to start our decent down the canyon!  This one was tricky... it was all downhill FIRST!  The hike back up was BRUTAL and at the end.  :) 

  

Some pics from the South Rim...

An Asian tourist group is on the peak below.  They were all very brightly dressed.  I was interested in finding a few of the pieces they were wearing.  :) 

Hey!  It's us! 

From here it was off to the hike! 

I'm not sure what it is about hikes, but I love talking to people when we're out.  Maybe because I'm trying to slack off.  :)  But mostly, I think I'm finally out of a mode of some sort.  We met a lot of people today, from Iran, Amsterdam, New Jersey, Australia, France.  I love that about the places we've gone, there are people from all over the world appreciating the world.  You just can't beat it. 

I did get laughing, I had taken a picture of a couple girls and their dad. WELL, I thought I saw just the girls again while Nick and I were hiking, so I asked them if, "they lost their dad."  They were more then a little perplexed and advised that they hadn't.  Nick went ahead and informed me they weren't the same girls... we laughed 1/2 the hike and off and on thru the night about it. 

Awww... so cute!  He was working hard.

Awww... so cute!  :)  He was working hard too.  :) 

Awwww... so cute!  :p  He was working hard looking for food. 

These are my filthy ugly shoes!  They came in quite handy!  Pretty comfy for the walk.  Just not overly cute.  :) 

We stopped at Desert View Tower as we were leaving the Grand Canyon -- I got a little choked up here.  It was just majestic.

I think this about covers it.  Sign on the wall of the tower. 

From the window of the tower. 

Some pics from the drive from the Grand Canyon to Page, AZ.  The drive was just amazing.  I hung out the window with a camera for most of it.  And listened to Jim Gaffigan for the rest of it.  :)  It put a lot of these pics in the wrong order, but I'm sure you'll get the pic... no pun.  ;)

Exiting

Enter. 

Oops -- Colorado River that goes thru the Canyon -- taken from the tower. 

A shaddow of us driving down the road.  :)

Classic Nick Timmerman.  :) 

In Loving Memory of Costco

Well, the games have begun!  I do have to start at the beginning tho...

We had a 9:10pm flight out of CID that was delayed by 40 min... plus some.  So, not terrible, but we were at the airport at 6:45pm, so we were really hoping the flight would have been on time.  We board the plane and are wheels up around 10:10pm.  I tell ya, 10:10pm is about my limit on a Friday night.  I think working all week and up early just makes Friday a good night to go to bed.  It's really so sad, I'm only 32... but that's the way I feel about it all.  :)

SO, I'm ready to sleep!  BUT, we were on a booze cruise in the sky!  Holy mackerel.  From the young to the elderly everyone was raring to go.... and then the 5 drunk people got on the plane.  And the dull roar turned into quite the little party.  I will say, I was amused by them for the 1st 20 min... after that... I was on the verge of stabbing one of them.  They insisted on communicating across 10 rows in the airplane by screaming at each other and they all had to pee, I know, because I heard about it for 30 min straight.  The only woman with them was very outgoing and had a lovely laugh.. again.. for the first 20 min... then after that I wanted to stab my eyes out thru the back of my head as a friend of mine likes to say.  :)

Well, we finally made it to the airport!  It was a relief.  We waited for the airport workers to get the ramp to the plane (only took 20 attempts and 2 announcements from the pilot) and then we made a bee-line for our luggage and rental car.  The luggage belt broke down numerous times, but in all honesty, it felt about right.

When we had our car keys in hand we practically RAN to the rental car location... where we found a Crown Vic waiting for us.  "I guess I should have indicated to the rental place that I was 33," was Nick's response.  LOL.  Hilarious.  SO, we get in our black CIA/Cop car and make our hour drive to my aunts house.  we were planning on being to her home around 11... and it's after 12 at this point with an hour drive.  We both felt really bad. 

SO, we get to my aunts house, pull or CIA car into the drive walk up to the door and try to open it... no luck... so I give her a jingle and she says she's up and waiting for us... but oddly the dog hasn't barked.  hmmmm... well... we're at your front door... Do you have a little table at the door w/ a plaque that says, "Faith, Hope, Love."  -- "No."  hmmmm... Do you have a pool table?  --- "No."  hmmmm... I looked at Nick and told him we had to get out of there and broke into a sprint.  I wanted to just run up to her house, it was about 4-5 down, but Nick insisted we take the car. 

Well.. by 2:00am we layed our heads down.  And as Nick so graciously reminded me, it was 4:00am in Iowa City.  So, needless to say, things started off w/ a bang.  :)

It was nice to have a couple of days to get or strength back and to see family!

My aunt and uncle are very gracious hosts, and laid back souls.  They have two midgets are very beautiful and well behaved as well as 4 cats (they finallly came out today!) and an adorable Shar pei, Reggie.

Here's Reggie!

My Aunt, Uncle, Cousin and Grandma and Grandpa stopped over.  I hadn't seen my aunt, uncle and cousin for quite some time!  It was nice to catch up w/ them.  And it's of course nice to see Grandma and Grandpa.  :)

Grandpa (what a chick magnet w/ that hat and sunglasses:), me -- Look at my windblown hair!, and my grandmother, who like my mom, is an awesome laugher.  You want to tell grandma stories, she just knows how to laugh!  My grandpa spent about 5 min looking over our Crown Vic and asking me questions like "what year it was." lol!  Ha ha.  How would I know.  I probably could have sold it to him.  ha.  He was cracking me up!

My hair has been FANTABULOUS!  On a scale of 1 to moving here... I'm about at moving here.  My hair, as many of you know, has too much power over my days.  It has behaved swimmingly!  I literally did NOTHING with it when I woke up on Saturday and it could have been in a shampoo commercial, unlike most Saturdays where I could be in a help-the-homeless ad.  Definitely loving the climate!!

Uncle Don and Nick chilaxing! 

I stole Uncle Brad's long lens!  Nick was being fierce.  :)  Poor boy, he ran himself down pretty bad before we left, ended up congested and horse, but he's pulling thru.  He did take a few naps tho! 

Me and my aunties!  :) 

Aunt Lizzy, Uncle Brad and my cousin Kyle.  :)  

The reason this post is named whatever it is... I can't remember... something about Costco... IS my family talked about Costco ALL night.  There was general appal when they found out I had never been to one.  My Aunt Karen brought an AWESOME chicken pasta salad from there, I ate it for snack, breakfast and lunch.  YUM! 

Liz, pulled out this dress of my mom's that she said mom wore as a teenager.  My little cousin modeled it for us.  Lizzy couldn't believe mom could wear it as a teenager.  I could have wore it open, or taken yarn and wrapped it around a button gave it 20 inches and passed it thru the button.  I also could have hulked out of it.  Impressive Mom!

The collar was outdated, but past that, it was still a really cute dress.  My cousin wore it for 60's day at her school.  :)

Well, it was time to bid everyone a fond farewell, hopefully we'll catch them on the way back!

We headed to Sedona and then on to Flagstaff.  Both beautiful areas. 

I can never remember the name of anything, Chapel of the Holy Cross, is this church name I'm PRETTY sure.  :)  What an awesome location.  It was built in the 1950's and considered very cutting edge for the time frame. 

From the church parking lot. 

A classic Nick Timmerman shot. :)  He was applauded by a group of guys perched above for this shot. lol. 

Front of the church.  Very cool.  

The weather in Phoenix was beautiful!  It got increasingly cooler as we climbed up the mountain.  A little bit cooler was nice too.  It was about 83 degrees in Sedona (I'd guess 7-10 degrees cooler than Phoenix), and about 70 degrees in Flagstaff. 

Slide Rock National Park.  The place was packed!  It's a natural water slide that was packed with people sliding down.  It was FREEZING!  We watched a ~20 year old decide to get in and you could hear her screaming for miles.  Everyone was laughing.  She couldn't get out for quite a while because of the current and speed she was sliding, so there was quite a bit of screaming. :) 

Not sure if you can see the guy by the tree.  I caught him mid air as was jumping off the cliff.  Such a sickening sound when he hit the water.  He seemed happy tho. :) 

Beautiful white trees in the area. 

A photo Nick took from a look out. 

The Pre-Party!

Kim, this one's for you.  ;)

Mom, Aunt Cathy and I went and saw a play at Loras College last weekend.  It's the second time this year I've seen Mouse Trap and it was good again!  :)  We hit downtown Dubuque before the play.  I'd been wanting to get to a store called Calico Bean.  It was great.  They had a ton of everything.  This was a wall of colored sugars, sprinkles, etc.  So pretty.  They had a ton of neat things.  Reminded me a little of String Town grocery store in Kalona, but better prices.

My picture of mom and Cathy disappeared off my phone!  It was so cute.  They were ready an e-mail on mom's phone w/ their reading glasses on. 

Nick and I have been chugging a long this month. We're still really looking forward to vaca, so we've been largely worthless and trying to plan small pre-party trips to tide us over until lift off. 
We hit Pella this weekend, which has been on my list for a long while.  What a lovely hamlet. :)  We were both really impressed.  I've been wanting to hit the Tulip Festival, but I wanted to see the town before the festival.  It's difficult to get into shops and bakery's and move around during those times, so I wanted to take a trip there first. 

We made a quick stop off in Kalona for a bag of cheese curds and we were on our way!

The day was cold and rainy, but that's never really slowed us down.  It did result in a couple arguments over holding umbrellas.  Apparently, "hold my umbrella while I take this picture." doesn't necessarily mean the umbrella is going to be held over your head, it's just going to be held... off to the side... while I take pictures.  :)  Lord, bless him. 

Anyway, once we got the umbrella situation sorted out, it was all good. 

The tulips were already in full bloom and everywhere!  It was gorgeous.  I ran into a friend of ours who lives there a couple weeks ago, and she said that the tulips were ahead of schedule and that they would ship in the tulips for the festival if need be.  The Dutch take their parties seriously, I guess.  Nick also mentioned that Pella had the most millionaires per ca pita in the country at one point in the now to distant past.  The town seemed to reflect that level of money, but maybe I was making it up... hard to say.  It could have been all the dilapidated towns we went thru prior to getting there that made it look really good too.  :)

I had read about the famous "Dutch Letters," a pastry the Dutch are known for, so I was looking forward to hitting the bakery!  We got there and the line was out the door!  We probably waited about a 1/2 hour to get to the front of the line, but it was well worth the wait! 

Finally made it to the front! 

A 1/2 eaten Dutch Letter.  They're a little like a flaky croissant with a cinnamon paste in the middle.  Delicious!

From there we wandered down to a shopping area.  There were several cute shops, and a very cool bridge/canal area.  There were a lot of tourists around taking pictures.  Small tour of some sort was going thru.

Cool canal area. 

Classic Nick Timmerman.  :) 

Wearing some Dutch clogs! :)  

The midgets stopped by the other day! The girls love going thru my shoes. :)  

Everyone took a personality test while they were here.  T was working on his test. 

I've been scanning in some old pictures, and these felt appropriate given the ones posted above. :)  I shot everything in B&W back in the day... not sure that was my best move... but ahh well. 

My starter garden!! I planted some of them outside a couple weeks ago... Tomatoes and peppers yet to go in the ground... not sure what to do w/ them exactly.  :)



Jack being lazy.  :)