A nature trip in Arizona- part 1: Red Rock state park

Over the Memorial day long weekend, San myself and my SIL who visited from Melbourne, made a three day trip to Arizona. 

This trip had been planned months in advance to visit Antelope canyon. This was yet another "bucket list" trip. Our previous plans had all been cancelled or we could not get reservations to visit the canyon on usual long weekends. The tour is owned by an Indian reservation and they limit the number of people who can walk through it every day.

San tore her back muscle the previous week and was pretty much in bed rest when my SIL showed up. We were in two minds initially. Told her that it will be okay. It was a 3 hour flight and a 5+ hour drive from Phoenix to the hotel in Page, Arizona. If we took enough breaks and she sat with a waist belt and a pillow for the plane, car ride and rationed her painkillers.. it was doable. So the trip was on! 

Took the Friday off and flew into Phoenix. Got our rental car and started driving out of the airport at 10AM. Our plan was to stop by Red Rock state park for two hours and make it to Page by 6 PM for dinner.  Did not expect Friday morning traffic near Phoenix airport to be that intense. Everyone drives vehicles raised from the floor. Even cars seemed to be on some raised suspension! Folks follow some unwritten rule that larger the vehicle, less the obligation to follow driving rules. Felt like a rat running along the dinosaurs in a stampede of sorts.

Things got better once we were out of that area. We made a pit stop at Denny's. San and me both used to love Denny's. It was a go to place for us years ago. Could eat a pancake or waffle or engilish muffin anytime of the day! Their cheese sticks used to be amazing as well. Guess, Denny's is a shell of what it was before. The service and food quality was bad. Both me and my SIL had a queasy stomach after eating there. The worse thing was me telling my SIL about how good Denny's was and we ended up with that experience. Moral of the story : Don't live in the past. As a rule of thumb, food place quality goes only one way over time!

We made it to Red Rock state park a little after 1PM. They have a nice visitor center. It was a hot day and we decided to do the shortest trail to get a sample of the place. Walked a mile around a "cute" trail along the creem and took pictures from the vista point! 

The trail itself was nice and cool. We would have loved to walk around some more but San had to go through the paces slowly. The unanimous vote was to make a non stop dash to Page from there. 

We slowed down around Sedona and admired the cute shops and restaurants on the way. Had to make three stops. Readers please note that there are 40 mile stretches on the way from Sedona to Page where there are no restrooms! If you see one, stop. Don't think another one will come in 5 mins! You are welcome!

We made it to our hotel in Page by 7PM but our phones kept saying 8PM. I had panicked going "wait.. we drove an extra hour to get here?! How many stops did we do? I did drive reasonably fast". Apparently iPhones have a time issue in Page. They switch to Utah time. However Page follows Phoenix time which is same as CST.  Again, if you are a poor driver who is asked why it took an extra hour to get to Page, check the local clocks. You are welcome!

Decided to torture the two ladies by singing "Adi aathaadi" in a high pitch for a good hour in the hotel room and was eventually confined to the restroom. Think everyone in the hotel must have complained about some deranged lunatic screaming in the restroom. Eventually there was a knock on the door to tell me that "enough was enough" and "things are actually getting worse on every new try". They prefered driving with the sun in their faces for hours compared to being a forced audience for this singing etc... so called it a night. 

We were to spend the entire next day around Antelope canyon. We got plenty of rest to recover from the day of flying and driving. 

A few pictures from Day 1... 

just when we were asking ourselves "how do people live in this heat?" saw this.. 

apparently this is going to be a museum soon..

A gallery of photos of the park and other structures on our drive to Page.

A very different structure we saw right before we hit the town of Page.

A short video of the hike.. I provided humming bgm for the hike.. let us just say it was not a good idea.

If San was normal, and it was a cloudy day, we would have hiked the entire 5 mile trail to all the vista points. It was extremely hot and we were happy with the small hike.

This trip was being taken one step at a time.

The first step was to make it to Page without making San's back worse than where it was. That was done successfully!

An eventful weekend - A year of college, 25 years of marriage, Father's day

This week marks 25 years of our marriage.. the original events happened between 10th June to 16th June.

Everything we did and are doing in this time frame is being called a celebration! I am happy with that. 

We also had the kids finish another year of college and celebrated Father's day!

On Friday both San and me had to take the day off to go vacate the little one from her freshman dorm. Thankfully she goes to live in an apartment with three friends starting next year. 

Given so many schools along the coast all having graduation ceremonies this weekend( as well as dorm vacation deadlines the same weekend), we expected 101 S to be a zoo.. and it was!

Started driving before 5AM, made it to Santa Barbara by 9 AM, got the kids room cleaned out and van loaded in under 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for elevators on a 10 story high rise building where everyone has a cart with stuff loaded and waiting for one of two elevators.  The eleveatorshold two carts and two people max at one time, and serve a gazillion students and parents. 

Then the little one had to go study for her finals. We got her something from Chipotle, dropped her off at the library and had time to kill till she finished her finals. 

The kid suggested we go to Apna kitchen and hang out in State street. So off we went. The food and chai were excellent in this place. We also had some ice cream from a local ice cream place right near the restaurant that was downright yummy (McConnell's) . We still had time to kill.

Gandhiji providing some quality cognitive dissonance... 

There was a movie theater near the restaurant and we decided to sit down in air conditioning for two hours. My legs were killing me after that morning drive and I had to do the entire drive back. San was still recovering from her muscle tear!

We saw a Will Smith movie. I dozed off in the middle of the movie and it was too slow moving for a supposed action flick. Then I got a kick in the ribs right in time to see some action scenes. Apparently she loved it. At least one of us got paisa vasool.

Did I mention that we were the only two people in the theater for the entire movie!!! They ran a movie and trailers just for us!

We left the movie and literally picked up the kid right as she got out of the exam hall and drove back. Had a 20 min stop to eat the tamarind and curd rice that San had made. It tasted so good.. we had to gobble it up and start driving. We made it back by 11PM.

Legs are still recovering from driving 11 hours and walking around all day. That movie was a good decision!

Apna was interesting.. Gandhiji wearing coolers and endorsing beer... Kaliyuga is well and truly here was my thought. The bay area is overrun with "kudigara pappans".. something I tell my wife all the time. It is the times we live in. That is not the topic for this post.. so will leave it at that. The food was great! 

Jr. drove back from Irvine by herself without a stop! Was very worried but happy when she pulled into the driveway. The best 25th anniversary gift is that we are all in one place!

We went to an Italian place (Rollati in downtown San Jose) to celebrate this morning. The little one had scouted this one out. The food was delicious. Ate a full pizza and am in python mode right now as this post is being typed. Strongly recommend this place. Great food and great service! 

After this we decided (San did) to walk around SJSU as she was showing us where she went to school, her library, her cafeteria, where she had her graduation etc. etc. The kids have not seen this nostalgic side of San. Neither have I .. it was fun while it lasted. We did take a "bench photo" at SJSU. 

We wrapped it all up with a dinner at Sri's kitchen. The dinner was simple but great! Also ended up visiting my first ever job location which used to be a walk from this strip mall. The whole place has changed as have we over the years.

It has been a great week of "celebrating". Let's see what the next Quarter has in store for us.. 

In the middle of all this I did work on a collage for my dad to wish him.. not sure if he can see it properly! Pretty much all highlight photos of him (from the photo of his wedding) to the last one we took with him during our visit to Chennai in February on his 85th birthday. 

Spent a lot of time looking at pictures today! If anything, hope my kids keep taking pictures every now and then and store them!

This should go without saying.. but the credit for us rolling on smoothly for the last 25 years completely goes to Sangeetha. I was hired as the #2 employee of Sangeetha Inc. 25 years ago and the small startup has released two successful products and the company is still going strong under her leadership!

I lucked out big time in this birth!

Channel Islands National Park

It has been only 22 years since we started planning a trip to Channel Islands National park. San and me made a trip to Catalina island (before kids) and wanted to visit this national park and see the foxes. 

Finally we made it over the weekend. It also served another purpose.. to get some stuff from the little one's dorm room so we can vacate her a little easier in two weeks from her dorm.

We started driving at 4:40 on Friday evening and were stuck in horrible non moving traffic for almost an hour. Made it to our hotel at 11:15! This is a ride that is supposed to take under 5 hours. Woke up and pretty much made it to the Ferry. 

The Ferry ride was smooth, there was no sun to be seen, which turned out to be a blessing once we were on the island.

We saw a lot of dophins swim along the ferry on the way. We also saw a lot of Pelicans and sea lions. 

We walked close to a mile with all the camping gear to the campsite on Santa Cruz island. Then started a hike to Smugglers cove. It was 8 miles round trip and reasonable elevation.

The kids in the group decided to go Kayaking for 3 hours and did not join us on the hike! Apparently a must do activity, especially if you are camping overnight. 

The island is full of dandelions and what looks like a large dandelion (we have that here also on the hikes near Santa Cruz.. the purple flower that bursts out into this).. it was a nightmare for me given recent allergies. Handkerchiefs were not enough. Walked with a small towel around my neck to breathe through.

one softball sized weed thingy.. okay.. if you see the photo below you will get the idea.. the entire island is full of what we call weeds. That is about it. It is a weedscape.. and it is not great for folks with allergies. Claritin was being laughed at by these plants.. you could tell ! You can see regular dandelion in the foreground for a size comparison.

The views though are spectacular!

Given San's condition, was not sure how she will fare, but she walked slowly and steadily and made it all the way. Having driven the entire trip with only a 10 minute break the previous night and doing the carrying business, I was equally tired. So we crashed at 7:30PM. The rest of the group went on to chat, play cards etc. It was lights out for me. Woke up at 6 AM thanks to the birds and the water dripping on me from the inside of the tent (this tent did not have a lot of ventilation.. so while it kept us super warm, our own breath condensed on the inside of the tent walls!). 

the animals are tagged on the island ! Every raven had a number on it. #11 and 13 visited our camp!

Two galleries of photos from the trip..

 

Packed up everything after breakfast and we took the stuff to the loading dock. They have lock boxes where we can leave stuff and hike near the dock. So off we went on another 5 mile hike to the top of the bluff to see more views. San and some friends decided to skip this one and stayed on the beach instead. This was a steep climb at the onset of the hike.

Apparently the previous weeks folks spotted whales from the top. We were not that lucky. Had a great time with the group, doing yoga poses and walked back down to a cave. Sat there for a few minutes listening to the waves and it was time to say bye to the place and get back on the ferry. 

Did try to do a toe stand on that small piece.. given there is no room to put my fingers on the ground to bend down, it was a risky proposition. Removed my shoes and used all the balancing skills to get this there.. given recent family experiences, San would have left me on the island if I had done anything stupider (that a word?)

lifted off but only slightly, given the winds and the rough floor.. my photographer was really patient and waited for what was an eternity clicking away to get this one pic!

surprisingly the rocks inside the cave were not wet! Not easy to sit on, but dry!

With a stop at UCSB to grab stuff, we drove back again with a 10 minute break. We had lunch plans with the kid but she was too busy studying and we wanted to get back in time to celebrate a friends 50th and we made it in time. Thankfully no major traffic jams on the return!

It was a memorable trip. We had a lot planned for this summer but San's muscle tear put a ? on everything. Glad that we made it. 

and yes, the foxes in Channel islands are so cute! 

A video highlight of the entire trip.. (we celebrated two brithdays during this trip as well!). 

If you don't want to spend the night camping here, you can still hike to Smugglers cove and back if you get the first ferry in the morning and take the last ferry out!