...getting better and better at it at the same time, our opponent pool keeps shrinking and shrinking to the point where we have very little competition left in our small town of 622 people. We were thinking of taking a road trip down to San Diego until woke up on the road one day, ready for an easy three-hour drive home. But we wouldn't make it home for another 24 hours.
At milepost 65 my sister said what's that smell. And I noticed the temperature gauge hit H and the hood was steaming.
We waited at the side of the road in the rain for a tow. The mechanic at the shop in Grants Pass fixed an air pocket in the coolant and sent us on our way. Ten minutes later we were stuck on the side of the road waiting for another tow in the rain. Soon, we bagan missing playing every afternooon, rain or shine. We waited for five hours in the shop's lobby hoping that any minute we would be on the road home. My sister was down to her last pair of underwear and my son was out of diapers.
Instead we had to spend the night in the pepto pink hotel behind the shop and wait for a new radiator and hoses to the tune of $500.
But the next day we hit the road and made it home in about 3 hours with nothing more exciting than a few slow spots.
I did some backcountry hiking at Grand Canyon National Park. We spent 4 days and 3 nights hiking through a small part of one of the largest canyon systems on this planet. We estimate that we hiked about 30 miles with a roughly 6,000 foot elevation loss and then gain. We hiked down the Bright Angel trail, and took a left at Indian Gardens for a little hike out to Plateau Point, and then to the Horn Creek campground for our first night. The next day we hiked along the Tonto Platform to the Monument Creek campground. The third day saw four of us take a day hike down to the Granite Rapids on the Colorado River and back, and then all of us hiked around to the Hermit Creek campground. The last day saw us hiking from the Hermit Creek campground up and out to Hermit's Rest on the rim.
Day three was supposed to be an easy day. We were going to leave our gear up in the Monument Creek campsite, hike down to the Colorado river with daypacks in the morning, and then leisurely hike over to the Hermit's Creek campground in the afternoon. Rachel decided that she wanted a break, so she stayed at camp while the four of us hiked down. The first pictures are near the campground, and you can see the monument for which it is named. Once we descended the switchbacks just past the monument, we got into the Vishnu Schist, a very different kind of rock than we had hiked through up to that point. The weather had been spectacular up to that point, but the clouds started to come in that morning. On our hike down, it really started to pour, and we took shelter under various rocks. Jason wasn't happy with the location he had initially chosen and se decided to climb up into a little overhang where I took his blurry picture.
I didn't get any pictures of the Cathedral Stairs because I was too busy hiking up them. However, we took another leisurely break, and then ran into Dave who had hiked back to tell us that it was getting late, and asked if we wanted him to take some of our gear for us. He and Jason had worked out an elaborate (and switchback intensive) system for this luggage transfer scheme. However, none of us were willing to give Dave a whole pack, so Rachel and Jani gave Dave some small heavy things and he sped off along the trail.
We spent ten or fifteen minutes waiting around at the very dark and empty Hermit's Rest thinking happy thoughts, until Jason and Dave pulled up with a hot pizza for us to eat. We threw our gear into the trunk and headed back to the lodges. We had a celebratory dinner at the Bright Angel lodge restaurant. It was really cold up on the rim, and my poor camera was having problems, so I only got this one picture. It's goofy because it caught part of a cushion in the foreground with its flash, which again screwed with the brightness and tonal ranges of the photograph. That's okay, we were all pretty ragged after four days hiking in the canyon, and the character of this photograph probably matches our state. Then I argued that there were there are a few different ways that a road trip can be pulled off. The first way a road trip can happen is just to let it happen. Some of the best trips I’ve been on have been totally impromptu trips. This includes just starting off in a random direction and taking turns here and there as you see interesting things along the way. Helpful things in this type of road trip are using historical marker signs, signs pointing to cities you have not seen, and signs leading to different attractions.
Another way you can handle traveling is to plan every single stop and not deviate from the plan. This can be a very cool way to travel in that you can plan a theme for your trip. For example, you can set out on a planned road trip to see all the national parks or state parks in your state. By planning what you want to see, you can plan the places you want to stay and even the places you would like to eat. One advantage to this type of planned traveling is that if the traveler only has a limited time off work or for vacation, he/she knows exactly where they are headed, and what they plan to do when they get there. It also gives them a chance to know the amount of time it will take to get back home, in order to be back in time to resume work or whatever other plans there may be. It also helps to determine how much a trip will cost. This can be an advantage for people of limited financial resources wishing to go on a drive.
One last way is to do a combination of both and plan some parts of your road trip, but also be flexible with the deviations from your path. If the traveler has an extended amount of time for which to explore on a road trip, constructing a basic plan and then allowing flexibility to change or add to that plan is the best way to take a road trip America. This method of traveling, in my opinion, is the best because it gives you a guide of your plans, but it also allows you the opportunity to change in case something looks interesting that wasn’t planned. In the same way as a planned trip, you can plan a theme for your trip; the great thing is you are not restricted to only see things you planned to see. And even then, you might not find anyone to play against.
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