Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Trip to see cool things: Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Chaco Culture National Historical Park — if you ever thought you might wanna see it, go. You won't be disappointed ... you'll be blown away.

I wrote quite a bit over here about Chaco. One of its most impressive qualities is its size. These ruins are huge. Some buildings were originally four stories tall.

Four stories.

These Ancestral Puebloans were not rookie builders. Take a look:











Thursday, March 24, 2011

Trip to see cool things: Navajo Moument Valley

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is magical and beautiful. It's a place that I want to visit again, but next time, I want to ride a horse (I know, I don't ride horses, but this is a place where you can forget about the things you can't do) and stay all day.

Truly peaceful and serene. I want to be there right now even if I can't have beer there.







While visiting the popular John Ford's Point and seeing the view pictured on our tour book, a tour bus arrived. Almost immediately a young man on a horse rode out to the point. For two bucks, I could have take the same picture. Instead I stole a quick snapshot from inside our car. You can see the horse and rider in the distance.












Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A trip to see cool stuff: Grand Canyon Edition

Over here, I wrote about how we ended up driving through the southwest to see cool stuff. Our first stop was Vegas.

Our second: Grand Canyon.

It indeed qualifies as cool ... super, blow-my-mind-with-its-awesomeness cool.












You might notice (well, you definitely will notice once I point it out) that I'm wearing a necklace in this picture.

Yes, that's normal for many women. It is not normal for me.

For years now, I've been fighting the "it's nice, but it makes me feel like I'm trying to be something I'm not" feeling about wearing necklaces. Then while looking for nice Navajo pottery, Margaret saw this green turquoise necklace and I tried it on ... and never took it off.

You will likely see me wearing this necklace every day for the rest of my life. Because that's how I roll.