Summer 2011 Road Trip: AZ/NM/TX/TN/KY

On Friday two of our friends from Tucson met us in Flagstaff, and the four of us spent the afternoon in Sedona. We did a hike near Bell Rock, walked around the shops for a while, and had dinner at a Mexican cantina with amazing views.

 Bell Rock

 This yucca plant sprouts this tall flowering stem shortly before it dies, so that it can spread seeds. The stem can grow up to a foot each day!

 Our view from the restaurant

 We tried a grilled cactus appetizer. It was pretty good!

We all camped in Flagstaff again, then drove to the Grand Canyon on Saturday morning. When we arrived, we picnicked at the Visitor’s Center, so we wouldn’t be hiking on empty stomachs! We loaded up on water, then took a bus to the South Kaibab Trail for a hike. The views were like nothing we’ve ever seen! The Grand Canyon is an absolutely amazing sight! In fact, it almost looks like a backdrop! We hiked 1.6 miles to Cedar Ridge, which is the first stop on that trail.

We spent about 45 minutes just roaming around that area taking pictures, then turned around for the hike back up. A couple of us had mentioned hiking further down, but it’s a good thing we turned around, because the hike back to the top was tough—especially in the heat and the sun!

By the time we got back to the visitor’s center we were all tired and hungry again, so we stopped for some more food, then headed to the campsite to set up.

We hung out for a while, then went back to the visitor’s center for an easy sunset walk along the canyon rim. We stopped in a geology museum, which had some interesting information about the canyon’s age, various types of rock, and the erosion process. We ended the evening watching the sunset over the canyon, which was gorgeous!

 We could've found a spot with better lighting for this picture, but it's the only one with all four of us.

 

Back at the campsite, we built a fire (our only campfire of the trip!) and we all roasted hotdogs for dinner, then roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. Delicious!

*   *   *

On Sunday we got up and packed up camp then headed to Bright Angel Trailhead for an early hike before our friends had to go back home. We hiked for about 45 minutes before  we had to say goodbye and turned around to get back to the top and on the road, then Eric and I hiked the rest of the way down to the first stop, which was about 1.5 miles total, got some photos and refilled our water, then made the grueling hike back up.

 We saw an elk on our drive out of the park! Just relaxing in the sun!

We left the Grand Canyon around noon and drove to Santa Fe, where we camped for the night. The camp management was nice enough to let us use their grill to cook the rest of our hot dogs, since the dryness and danger of fires in the area was high enough to temporarily prohibit the use of our gas burner.

*   *   *

We woke up on Monday, burned out of our tent by the heat, and headed straight to the Hampton Inn to get a hotel room for the next night. After six nights in a row of camping, we decided we deserved a bed and a room with air conditioning. We checked in so early that the desk clerks offered to let us have some of the complimentary breakfast that was still out that morning. Of course, we took them up on that!

We cooled off for a while in the room, then drove in to downtown Santa Fe to explore for the afternoon. There were plenty of fun little shops and boutiques to browse. We also found the Loretto Chapel and saw the famous staircase that was built in the late 1800s by an unnamed carpenter working with only a hammer and saw and hot water to shape the wood. He built a spiral staircase to the choir loft with no metal nails, no center support, and originally no railing. He left without asking payment, and no one knew who he was. The people of the church believed he was Saint Joseph himself answering the prayers of the nuns. Even the wood he used had to be given its own name, because it could not be otherwise identified with an existing species. The staircase was beautiful and incredibly impressive.

 Front of the Loretto Chapel

 Staircase to the choir loft

 All the buildings in Santa Fe were built of adobe and very colorful!

 

Around 2:00 we found a tapas bar and had some lunch—queso de cabra with crostini, strawberry gazpacho, crabcakes, and crème brulee—delicious!

We continued walking around downtown for the rest of the afternoon. We bought a gorgeous painting from a west African street vendor, found some clay bowls handmade by a potter in Santa Fe, and on the way back to the hotel we got a great deal on two small handmade Mexican rugs.

At the suggestion of the concierge, we had dinner at Adelita’s, a Mexican restaurant about two blocks down the road, then we called it a night.

*   *   *

We woke up on Tuesday in our nice air-conditioned hotel room, had breakfast, and spent the day driving to Abilene, Texas, where we decided to camp again.

It was H-O-T in Abilene! It was 103 when we set up our tent around 8:30, and when we laid down to go to sleep at 11:30 it was still 91. We had to read until our eyes couldn’t stay open anymore, because it was too uncomfortably hot to fall asleep otherwise, and we slept with the rain flap off and the windows open to let what little breeze there was circulate through the tent.

*   *   *

There was a bit more of a breeze when we woke up on Wednesday morning, which felt amazing at that point. The heat was also only in the 70s. We packed up and drove two hours to Dublin, Texas, to visit and tour the Dublin Dr. Pepper Bottling Plant. We looked around in the Old Doc Soda Shoppe until the tour started. We learned about how the plant still uses Imperial cane sugar, as per the original recipe, in their product, and were even treated to a free Dr. Pepper! Because the machines at the Dublin plant are several decades old, they can only bottle using the antique 10-ounce bottles, which are no longer manufactured. Apparently the only way to get a case of Dr. Pepper bottled in Dublin is to find a full case of the antique bottles (24 total) and trade them in to the plant—in person. Then they’ll give you another case full of DP. So… if you see any of the antique bottles and want to sell/trade/give them away, let us know! :)

 

 Sodas bottled by Dublin Dr. Pepper

 Different types of Dr. Pepper bottles

On the conveyor belt

 Apparently, for one week every year, the town's name of Dublin officially changes to Dr. Pepper, Texas, to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Pepper.

After the tour, we spent some more time in the Soda Shoppe, had some lunch and a real Dr. Pepper float (they mixed the syrup and the water right there at the counter!), and bought some memorabilia and a couple cases of the real thing. Then we were off to Dallas to have dinner with one of Eric’s best childhood friends and her fiancé. They hadn’t seen each other in eleven years!

We ate at a delicious restaurant, St. Ann’s, then Eric and I headed over to the Meyerson Symphony Hall. That morning a friend of ours had tracked down a couple of tickets for us to see Ben Folds in concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It was a fantastic concert! Very different from the Ben Folds show we saw in Cincinnati last November, with just his band. We both really enjoyed it!

After the concert we decided that neither of us felt like melting in a tent for another night, and we didn’t care to spend money on a hotel room in Dallas, so we just started driving to get out of town. Incidentally, we ended up driving through the night until we reached my parents’ house in Nashville around 9:30am on Thursday.

We spent the weekend hanging out in Franklin with Eric’s family celebrating his grandmother’s 80th birthday, then we spent a few days with my parents, and we finally made it back to Lexington at 8:00 on Tuesday night.

 Mileage count when we got home

It was an amazing trip—all too short! But we are glad to be home—for another week. Then our lease is up and we’re headed to Massachusetts to a new place to call home!