Christmas in the States

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I was concerned with my Dad's health, and now that we had a child whom the grandparents wanted to see more often, we decided to spend as much time in the United States as possible in the coming years.

So in addition to home leave that I earned every other year (i.e., 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994), we spent our 1986 and 1987 Christmas holidays and a post Christmas holiday in February 1989 with family in the States.

12 December 1986 Friday. We also traveled elsewhere within the States, since we were there. We flew from Brussels to Los Angeles, arriving at about 9 pm, which with the time difference was about 9 am the next day in Brussels. We rented a car and then headed for our nearby hotel. It was a long flight and we were very jet lagged so we just crashed.

13 December 1986 Saturday. We headed west on I-10, then took the exit north to Yucca Valley and Twenty Nine Palms. I filled up on gas and asked one of the other customers who lived in the town where Joshua Tree National Monument was. The person didn't know, so I drove about a mile down the road and there was the entrance. How can poeple be so clueless about what is around them? Once we got beyond where the Joshua trees were, we reached a high ridge that looked over a vast basin of empty desert. The drive through this part of the park is one of the most desolate in the world. We drove through this landscape and finally arrived in Palm Springs, which is an oasis in the desert. There we rejoined I-10 and drove to Blythe on the Colorado River that separates California and Arizona. We stayed at a motel there.

14 December 1986 Sunday. We continued east on I-10 until we got to the US60 exit which headed northeast to Wickensburg. We had lunch and then took Rt 89 north to Jerome, a ghost town that has been revitalized with artsy crafty stores. We walked around the town window shopping.

Then we were off to Prescott which is a nice town we considered retiring to someday. From Prescott we drove through Cottonwood until we arrived at Sedona.

Sedona is also a very artsy town, surrounded by the red rocks of the Mogollon Rim. We didn't consider retiring here because the real estate is very expensive and has too many New Age types.

From Sedona we drove thought the very scenic Oak Creek Canyon. The road is very narrow and winding so I occasionally strayed over the double yellow center line. Soon I heard a police siren, and I pulled over. The officer asked for my drivers license and registration. When he saw that I only had a Belgian license, he gave me a warning.

We continued on to Flagstaff, another lovely town on the Mogollon Rim, which placed it at about 8000 ft altitude. We were in cold country now, after having passed through hot deserts. We also considered retiring in Flagstaff. We checked into a motel for two nights.

15 December 1986 Monday. Today we took the circle route to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where we stopped for awhile for lunch and a walk along the rim. Then we drove along the rim until wwe reached the East exit.

Our next stop was Wupatki national Monument which has some old Indian ruins, but nothing compared to Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon.

So we continued until we arrived at Sunset Crater National Monuments. We walked up to the rim of the crater that was formed when an asteroid or large meteorite hit the earth. By then it was late in the afternoon so we returned to Flagstaff for dinner and the night.

16 December 1986 Tuesday. We drove east on I-40, passing through the Painted Desert and Winslow AZ, before we got off at Holbrook to see Petrified Forest National Park. We drove the entire road through the park stopping at each point of interest. We ate lunch at the Visitor Center and looked at their museum. The bathroom had signs about animals in the area being infected by the bubonic plague, so we were off without touching any animals.

We continued east until we arrived in New Mexico where we turned south to Zuni Pueblo to check out the reservation and see what jewelry they had to sell. There wasn't much to the place; too off the beaten path, I suspect. So we returned to Arizona and headed south on US191, Rt 61, and US60 until we reached Show Low where we checked into a motel for the night.

17 December 1986 Wednesday. Heading southwest we soon entered the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. There wasn't anything to stop for so to the gold mining town of Globe and finally reached Tucson where we stayed two nights. That afternoon we drove to Old Tucson which is an old movie set where many westerns were filmed. We watched a gun fight and other touristy things.

18 December Thursday. First thing in the morning we drove to Saguaro National Park just east of Tucson. We hiked a trail that had signs for the various types of cactus, but mostly the magestic saguaro. These cactii are only found in the Sonoran desert that includes northern Mexico. We learned from the ranger that they had a bad poaching problem as landscapers wanted to plant them in peoples yards.

Next we drove past Davis Monthan Air Force Base where thousands of miltary fighter jets and bombers and commercial jets are stored.

We drove to Tombstone, an old ghost town famous for the "Gunfight at OK Coral," that included Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and other famous gunfighters. We had lunch at an old saloon.

We then drove past Sierra Vista and over to the Mexican border at Nogales, but didn't enter Mexico. We headed north on I-19 towards Tucson, stopping along the way to see an old Spanish mission.

We arrived back at our hotel by dinner time.

19 December 1986 Friday. We had an early breakfast and watched as hot air ballons rose into the sky just to the west of our motel. It was quite a sight, with the baloons filling the sky to the horizon.

We drove many back roads to reach Organ Pipe Catus National Monument. We hiked a trail, but it soon got hot, so we drove to Lukeville, a very small border post, but again we didn't walk across into Mexico.

We drove north through Ajo and got on I-8 at Gila Bend. From there it was a smooth fast drive to Yuma on the Colorado River. We ate dinner and encountered many "sun birds," retired folks that bring their RV's south for the winter.

20 December 1986 Saturday. We stopped at the old territorial prison and learned about all the bad guys who had been incarcerated there. By 10 am we were on our way west, arriving in San Diego by mid afternoon.

We checked into the Hilton at Mission Bay where we had a great view of the marina and Pacific Ocean. That evening there was a Christmas parade of boats with colored lights strung all over them.

21 December 1986 Sunday. We toured San Diego, visiting the zoo. The animals fascinated Tamara.

22 December 1986 Monday. We drove up the coast to LAX where we caught a noon flight to Miami. My parents met us at the airport and we drove to their home in Lake Worth.

23 - 29 December 1986 Tuesday through Monday. We celebrated our 15th anniversary on the 23rd, and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on the 24th and 25th with Sue and Rob and their kids, Brendan and Alyssa, and with Rob's parents, Papai and Vovo, and with Carol and her friend Steve who she would marry in 1988. On the 26th we drove to Deland to visit my step-grandmother, Laura and had lunch at a nearby restaurant. Then we drove to Disney World where we stayed for two nights. On the 27th we spent the day at the Magic Kingdom. On the 28th we stopped at Kennedy Space Center on the way bak to Lake Worth where we relaxed until the 29th.

30 December 1986 through 4 January 1987 Tuesday through Monday. We flew from Miami to Pittsburgh to spend a week with Linda's family and relatives, and celebrated a belated Christmas with them at Uncle George and Aunt Marianne's home in Boardman OH.

5 - 6 January 1987 Tuesday and Wednesday. We flew from Pittsburgh to JFK to London and then Brussels.

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