Paul Pressy took these pictures from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon near Williams, AZ, the “short route” to the canyon from Interstate 40, as he explained in a recent note, 59 miles instead of 87 miles from the Flagstaff exit, then another 23 miles from the East entrance to the rim. The travellers needed to be in California before dark that day, so the short route was the obvious choice, even if gas prices weren’t skyrocketing. For those who have more time to spend, Paul notes that there are bus tours to the Grand Canyon out of both Flagstaff and Williams.
As you can see (especially if you zoom in to read the sign) they made it to California just as the sun was setting.
By Christine Haines and Paul Pressy
Photo by Paul Pressy
As I mentioned in my last post, some friends of mine are driving from southwestern Pennsylvania to California. While the purpose of the trip is to attend a family wedding, getting there and back is at least half the fun and most of the two-week vacation, so they’ve made it a bit of an adventure and have agreed to blog it for SpinIt.
I received my first post from my friend Paul Pressy four days into the trip. He’s traveling by car, while two others are riding a motorcycle. His first observations are about the price of gasoline, which was about $3.95 a gallon when they left Pennsylvania.
“The gas prices were a lot less than we thought. In Missouri it was $3.46 a gallon and in Oklahoma it was $3.49, then in Texas it was $3.65. The price in New Mexico is $3.67 and diesel was averaging $4.48 to $4.59…..it doesn’t make sense,” Paul wrote.
Given that they are in the heart of our domestic oil country, I would have expected even lower gas prices, but hey, the motorcycle gets great gas mileage and Paul’s driving a little four cylinder, so they shouldn’t have to stop too often. When they’ve stopped for the night, they’ve found some decent prices.
“Hotels are averaging around $59.00 to $69 per night, that’s staying in the better ones and using your AAA discounts,” Paul said.
I’ve found that local hotel managers often offer an even lower price than you can get off the Internet, especially when combined with an AAA or AARP discount.
There’s a downside to that motorcycle fuel economy, as Paul notes.
“The weather is up and down. We drove through five rain storms, and were hit with hail in Shamrock, TX, Monday. Pick and “E” got really wet on all of them…we are now in Tucumcari, New Mexico,” Paul said.
While in Texas, the three stopped by a site Paul visited 45 years ago: Cadillac Ranch. Here’s a picture Paul took there, plus a link to the attraction’s Web site.
They have plenty more sights to see on this trip, including the Grand Canyon and who knows what else they’ll run across. I think they’re coming home by the northern route. Keep checking http://www.howyouspinit.com/travelfor updates, and enjoy the journey.
To share your vacation photos and observations, email
chris@howyouspinit.com.
This space is usually filled with information about places to relax or seek recreation on vacation, but not all travelers are vacationers.
When I asked a friend who has traveled all over the world what her most memorable travel experience was, she told me about her visit to Myanmar in October 2005 during her Semester at Sea experience as one of the instructors. It was memorable for her in part because it established a connection with people in a country that most U.S. citizens knew little about before the recent cyclone devastation thrust it into the news.
It wasnews items last fall about the persecution of Buddhist monks in Myanmar by the military government that struck home with Beverly Harris-Schenz. She had met some of the monks during her visit to the Southeast Asian county when she visited the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar (also known as Burma). International news now had a personal face.
“Young boys, who enter the monastery at five years old and often stay until manhood, have lives consisting of prayer, meditation, collecting alms, school work, and little else. They live simply:eating only the food that they collect daily in their black bowls, wearing bright orange robes and no shoes, sleeping on the floor in large, dormitory-type rooms without personal belongings. But despite lives of absolute deprivation, they are kind and gentle souls, almost always smiling. From them, I learned humility,” Beverly wrote in the e-mail accompanying her photos from Myanmar.
According to news reports, at least one Buddhist monastery near Yangon is being used as a refugee center and it is the monks, already living a life of austerity, who are distributing food and water to many of those left homeless by the cyclone.
I am sharing Beverly’s photos here with you so this cataclysmic event half a world away makes at least a small personal connection with your life.
Vacations are a way of escaping from routine, so in a way are creating and viewing art, so I guess this is still a vacation-related column–join me at The Artists Corner!
This weekend, April 25-27, artwork by seven southwestern Pennsylvania women will be on exhibit at The Artists’ Corner, 98 East Chestnut St., in Washington, Pa. A reception will be held Friday evening from 6-9 p.m., with an open house Saturday from 11 a.m. -2 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.
It’s the fourth annual exhibit by the four resident artists, Stephany Myers, Charlotte Davidson, Donna Jordan and Marion SFO. They have added two guest artists this year, Mary Lou Smith and Fort Cherry High School junior Harley M. Davidson. The exhibit will also include a memorial showing of art by Betty Jane Walter Scheeve, 1917-2007.
This is a rare opportunity to see inside The Artists Corner, which is on the fringe of the Washington and Jefferson College campus, without having to press your nose against the glass. It’s not a gallery, and the women who create there don’t make their living from their art.
“It’s really a working studio. We just have a show once a year,” said Myers. “The Artists’ Corner really grew out of a desire of a bunch of artists just wanting to get together for camaraderie, to talk art. When you have a family, you have to clean everything up in time for dinner.”
Myers said Davidson found the building with reasonable rent and the artists claimed their space nearly five years ago.
“This is our fourth annual show. We’re planning to have 150 more,” Myers laughs.
The women work in a variety of media, including oils, acrylics, water color, pastel, pen and ink and photography. Myers said she’s going to be trying her hand at sculpture when she gets some free time.
“I take a lot of seminars and a lot of classes, because you can always benefit from them. That’s how we all got together, because we all have an interest in advancing what we do know and add new skills and chat with people,” Myers said. “I don’t ever remember not making art. When I was a little girl, we lived along a creek bed and I was always drawing pictures of the creek. Those are my earliest memories.”
Myers said she stuck with her art until college, when her views didn’t mesh with what was accepted as “modern art” at that time.
“When I was 50, I decided to get back into it. I found an instructor who was into realism and got rolling with it,” Myers said. “When you’re raising a family, you find other ways to express yourself. You sew, you bake, you do other things to make the house look nice; but now that we have time, we paint.
“I am a firm believer that the more you give your brain to play with, the better it works for you in the long run.”
About five or six years ago at a festival in Perryopolis the reenacting unit I belong to, the Redstone Living Historians, learned about the 18th Century Market Fair at Fort Frederick in Big Pool, Maryland, from one of the fort’s volunteers.
The next year the unit headed to Maryland for the weekend and came home with our vehicles stuffed with our purchases. We’ve been going back every year since, taking young reenactors to buy equipment and clothing and taking shopping lists for friends who couldn’t make the trip. It’s nice to be able to try on the period clothing, feel the quality of the fabric, comparison shop among vendors we normally only deal with on-line, or by catalog, and not have shipping charges.
This year’s event will be held April 24-27. The nearest hotels are in Hancock or Hagerstown, Md. and you might want to make reservations now….the event draws a crowd.
Since the event attracts hundreds of reenactors and even more spectators from all over the east coast, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with old friends. I’m used to seeing friends from the reenacting community there, but last year I even ran into a childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in 30 years who had brought her history-buff sons to the event from their home in eastern Pennsylvania. We were both buying homemade bread from a cart operated by a woman who, like members of the Redstone Living Historians, volunteers for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation in Virginia. The world gets smaller and smaller by the moment.
Even if you don’t know a soul at Market Days other than the folks you come with, it’s a great time. In addition to more than 100 18th century vendors such as tinsmiths, woodworkers, gunsmiths and fur traders, there are performers balancing on low-wires, juggling, and playing everything from water glasses to fiddles. Of course, you can also tour the fort and talk with soldiers garrisoned there, as well as touring the encampments outside the fort.
One of my favorite parts of Market Days is the children dressed in period clothing. No one has to tell them how to reenact history — hand them an 18th century toy and they are automatically historically correct!
