Jamestown The beauty of starting here, then going to Williamsburg and then to Yorktown is that you can see American history in a quick succession and be completely immersed in it. Located on the west side of the Peninsula on the James River, the settlement is located on Jamestown Island because it was not inhabited by natives and it provided isolation from same, plus it was far up enough along the river that it would not be visible to any passing Spanish ships. The trouble was the island was not inhabited because it lacked water while the river water surrounding it [View Full Entry]

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As I have been working on the Peninsula Town Center project in Hampton, VA and have fallen in love with the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, Jennifer came up for a long weekend of exploring the tourist attractions, dining, and shopping options. In addition to the natural beauty this area is also wonderful because of the significance in our country's history from early colonial times to the Revolution to the Civil War. We spent our time in Hampton Roads' Seven Cities (Chesapeake, Nor [View Full Entry]

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Canyon West & the Skywalk Scams At least we got to see a Joshua Tree, but I don't know if it was really worth the amount of dust and aggravation we had to deal with in getting out to the little circus the Hualapai Tribe has created at Canyon West. It is a tourist trap of monumental scale (literally) as I have never seen before. It starts with the fact that they didn't even bother paving most of the road to get out there so there is just dust everywhere and there is no way to keep it out of the [View Full Entry]

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The Lost Memory Card About 20 miles outside of Sedona, in the old mining town of Jerome, we fortunately stopped to check out the shops in town and I flipped the camera on to get ready to take some pictures since the view was great only to realize the miniscule micro-SD card was missing. I ripped into my briefcase, not in the laptop either. Uh oh. I had just been messing with it at l'Auberge, trying to download the pictures onto the laptop harddrive, wondering why the computer kept locking up when I referenced the F: drive. We called the bunch [View Full Entry]

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Montezuma's Well Probably the least known of the Sinagua locations we visited today, it is part of the Montezuma's Castle National Monument but located in a separate district of the park some 10 miles away from the main section. The Verde River cuts through what used to be a seabed and has received millions of years of calcium carbonate deposits. Softer layers below were eroded away by groundwater until finally the dome collapsed forming the sinkhole. It is 55 feet deep and about 75 feet wide and over a million gallons of groundwater flow through it daily, historically providing [View Full Entry]

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Running a few days behind here, when you're not taking the train on overnight trips it doesn't give a convenient daily time to funnel the days recollections into the blog. Museum of Northern Arizona Anne had highly recommended this museum so we went first thing in the morning and it was in fact a good thing as it explained all of the geological phenomena we had seen so far and explained all of the anthropological phenomena we would be seeing for the next couple of days. In addition today was a Zuni Festival of sorts so indigenous artists were displaying all [View Full Entry]

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Zion Supplanted Zion has been our favorite until today - so good is the usurper that I have devoted one entire entry to it's glory. We woke up early, around 6AM (thanks especially to the fact that Arizona does not follow DST), and headed out of Page about an hour after that. Scattered clouds in the sky, a cool 45 degrees, we knew it was a good idea to get to the Grand Canyon early. As we drove south on US89 just outside of Page, I saw the typical reddish-brown sign indicating a site worth visiting. I remained fearful as ever [View Full Entry]

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The Sacrifice Continues Generally in Northern Arizona, the average temperature this time of year is 82 degrees and there are 15 days of full sun, 10 days of partial, and 5 days of rain (less than 20 inches annually). We have unfortunately fallen into those last five days and well below the temperature range as the temperature hung between 40 and 45 degrees all day long. We continue to count our blessings for the sun and mild temperatures we have had - amazingly when you are outside of Ohio 45 degrees just doesn't feel as bad as it does back home. [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Zion After a day of driving through southern Utah and northern Arizona, we agee that nothing is quite as impressive as Zion Canyon. We crossed the famous mile long tunnel on Route 9 that was constructed as a shortcut to Bryce Canyon at the behest of the railroads. The tunnel was interesting only from a historic standpoint as it was not easy to construct and was the longest tunnel at its time. We had been told by our tour guides that when we crossed to the other side we would enter into a different world and we truly did. Gone [View Full Entry]

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Zion National Park I shot Josh over to the airport so I could return the Navigator and grab our convertible rather than doing the Taxi thing. As you can see we got a white Sebring, which is nice, not much trunk space which is to be expected and makes some funny noises (though barely perceptible) in the steering, we've waited for a wheel to fall off but after several hundred miles we're still intact! On account of the temperature drop from 105 degrees three days ago to 65 degrees today, we didn't put the top down much, and when we did [View Full Entry]

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