Aliens in the Apple

Roadtrip: Lone Pine

Posted on 9 April 2013 by Franci

The next stop couldn’t have been more different from Las Vegas. Tranquil, rural, isolated, pretty much nobody around, right in nature, and no electricity! We stayed the night in a little cabin/tent outside a small town called Lone Pine, between the Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. To get there, we drove through Death Valley, a hot, arid dessert with amazing scenery and contrasts. We experienced quite a bit of contrast in elevation just by driving through — the highest point was 3040 feet (927m) and the lowest point was below sea level, so lots of ear popping going on.

We were very thankful that our car had air-conditioning. On the day we were there, the temperature was 120 F (49 C). We stopped at the Visitors’ Center and before we got out, we could see there was a bit of a breeze and thought it might be a bit more pleasant because of it… it was like stepping into an oven with the fan bake setting on! It’s so hot it sort of just stuns you while your eye balls cook. Believe it or not, people live there. (???!!!)

Let me just share something I thought was funny: we drove through a town called Pahrump a bit west of Vegas. It probably has some deep meaning, but to us it just sounded so funny. Imagine having to say “I live in Pah-RUMP.” Pahrump-pa-pum-pum! You’d just have to be known as the Little Drummer Boy! (Okay, end juvenile moment.)

We chose the most direct route to get to our next stop, which meant that it was also the least interesting route through the Death Valley scenery-wise. Nevertheless, I think we still saw some amazing things and a lot of variation.

On the western side of the park, we drove into a rainstorm. There were some breaks in the clouds and the light streamed through it in the most amazing ways, it was almost surreal.

Arriving at our cabin in the Alabama Hills was like one great big happy sigh of relief — to be away from the tackiness of Vegas, all the stress of having to organise a new car, and to be done with the hot up-and-down drive there. It smelled so good and fresh with the recent rain on the plants, and it was lovely and cool because of it.

The next morning we were on the road again, this time on our way to Mono Lake and Yosemite National Park, but we did make time to stop and clamber around some rocks in the Alabama Hills. Ben and the kids didn’t take long to disappear behind the rocks, and I enjoyed the time to take some photos of the rocks, lichens and wildflowers there.

Posted in Being tourists, Family, Funny things, Photography, The Roadtrip | 4 Comments

Roadtrip: Las Vegas

Posted on 19 March 2013 by Franci

I know there are people who love Vegas. I find this difficult to understand because we didn’t enjoy it at all! It was like a sleazy version of Times Square, but it had good, cheap accommodation that was en route to our next destination. And so we went ahead and booked a hotel that was touted as ‘kid friendly’ and hoped for the best...

It turned out that the only kid-friendly thing about our hotel was the pool, which happened to have a shark tank in the middle of it, with a water slide going through the shark tank. Now that was pretty cool! Marica was brave enough to go down by herself, once she got to the top after a long wait and heard that the rules said you couldn’t go down in twos.

We were a bit naive in thinking the gambling would be separate from the rest of the hotel. There were slot machines even in the hallways and poker tables next to the pool — people never had to go far to get rid of the money burning their pockets!

Our room was very nice and clean and tidy though, so nothing to complain about there. This is what the hallway looked like — I felt a bit like it was some sort of optical illusion.

We did have one very enjoyable experience, and that was at a Japanese restaurant one evening where the chef prepared the food right in front of us.

The chef built this ‘mountain’ out of onion rings, poured some flammable liquid inside, lit it and it turned into a volcano!

The other diners were really classy, as testified by the guy on the left. The woman with him seems not to mind what that implies about her.

Now, some people have told us that we should have stayed at a different hotel and then we would have loved Las Vegas. Perhaps. There were certainly plenty to choose from, and we did not stay at one of the more expensive hotels on The Strip (we didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg!). We did drive down The Strip in the evening to gawk at all the hotels and lights and then had an experience that soured or experience of Vegas even more — a woman in an SUV rear-ended our car. There wasn’t a huge amount of damage, but it was bent enough that the boot wouldn’t close, which if you remember the photo from the last post, was sort of imperative!

This meant that the whole next morning was taken up with Ben trying to get a new car from Hertz, who didn’t have one exactly the same (we had the biggest car in the ‘large sedan’ category) and it turned out that the one they gave us was just simply too small to fit all our luggage. So then after all piling into this too-small car, we headed back to Hertz and upgraded to an SUV for the last 8 days of our trip. Good things DO come out of Vegas! :-)

Once we had our new rental car, we were quite behind schedule for our next destination: Lone Pine, on the west side of the Death Valley.

Posted in Being tourists, The Roadtrip | 4 Comments

Kidnapped!

Posted on 6 March 2013 by Ben

I wasn’t, but Chuck Geschke was.

Let me back up a bit: for Christmas, Franci gave me a true geek book called Masterminds of Programming, which I reviewed in detail here. One of the interviews was with the creators of PostScript, a computer language used to control printers. PostScript was designed in 1984 and is still in widespread use today, especially because it shares a lot of concepts with the popular PDF file format.

Chuck Geschke and his wife

I’d known about PostScript for a while, but what I didn’t know was that its creators went on to found and direct Adobe. So I was reading the Wikipedia entry for one of the founders, Charles Geschke, and was intrigued by the heading “1992 Kidnapping”.

Sure enough, when he was 52 he was kidnapped in broad daylight by two guys after “their share” of his wealth. The fascinating kidnapping story is recounted in a four-part tale in the Los Altos Town Crier.

Franci and I both enjoyed it — it’s quite a story! The story gets you into the intensity of the situation, and how his faith and family (particularly his “negotiator” daughter) helped him escape a very sticky situation. Links to the article below:

Posted in Culture, Thought-provoking | 1 Comment

Continuing the roadtrip posts: A visit to Phoenix

Posted on 3 March 2013 by Franci

I know that I stopped our roadtrip posts rather abruptly last year, and for good reason, but I really do want to finish the posts before the baby arrives. That equates to six more posts over the next 3 months — surely I could do that?! :-)

Right, last place we ‘left off’ was the Grand Canyon. From there we traveled south through the Sedona area to visit Ben’s Uncle David and Aunt Renie and Grandpa who live in Phoenix. We drove through the most beautiful mountain setting (off the main highways) and stopped for a picnic lunch at a picnic spot there.

We could hear running water, and thought we should check out where the river was, and if we could get to it, so we crossed the road and scrambled down a bank and found this beauty.

We all played in the water for a bit — it was warm but not unpleasantly hot — and saw some people picking wild blackberries. We had some too, so yummy!

After enjoying the water for a good while, we hopped in the car again for the drive to Phoenix. What amazed me was how the scenery changed in a mere 3 hours’ or so of driving. From this:

to this:

In Phoenix, we had a great time catching up with Uncle David, Aunt Renie and Grandpa, whose warm hospitality made us feel right at home. It was good to get to spend some more time with Grandpa, playing Scrabble or just chatting. The kids warmed up to Great-Grandpa, and I’m so glad I got these adorable shots!

We got to swim a couple of times in the pool of some friends of theirs, which was delightful considering the intense heat.

Aunt Renie also gave us all, but especially the children, a real treat by taking us to the Phoenix Children’s Museum. It was very different from the Brooklyn Children’s Museum where we had been members during out time in NYC and the kids had a real blast.

(WordPress has this new feature where you can include a gallery of photos in your post, and I thought I’d try it for the Children’s Museum photos. Let me know how it works for you. If you click on one of the photos, it will open it larger.)

Great big climbing construction

A bathtub with wings!

This is where you leave your shoes. Can you spot the photographer?

The art room. There were lots of things made out of junk

Close-up of a junk mural

Robot made out of random bits

Cool paper flower

Book corner

Sand art lit from below

A room dedicated to building huts

Marica and Aunt Renie’s hut

Aunt Renie telling Marica a story

Can’t see me!

The adults enjoyed it too!

An interesting ‘musical’ ball frame thingy

Aunt Renie was also able to score some half-price tickets for us to the Musical Instrument Museum. She kindly watched the girls for us so Ben and I got to go on a little date — what fun! At the museum you walk around with headphones on that plays music from the display that you’re in front of. There was a TV screen with a video playing on it at each display that would talk about the different instruments, how they developed, the culture of the country of origin, and things like that. Very interesting!

There was also a room where you could try out some instruments for yourself. There was this band organ that would play a tune if you put in a coin.

And I was keen to try out a harp.

I’m not sure how I managed this, but I went through our whole 4 days’ visit there without taking a photo of Uncle David. Sorry, Uncle David! I did take a photo of their house, though, with Aunt Renie in front of it. Just pretend Uncle David’s next to her.

When we were loading the car, I remembered for once to take a photo of what the car’s boot looked like throughout our trip. No spare room! Ben had it down to an art by this time, though, so it didn’t take long to load.

Next stop: Las Vegas.

Posted in Being tourists, Family, The Roadtrip | 2 Comments

Why the blog has been rather neglected

Posted on 26 November 2012 by Franci

Those of you who have been following the blog for any time over the last 2.5 years or so will have noticed that there has been a marked drop in the frequency of posts here. The reason for that has partly been that coming back to New Zealand has made life busier in many ways and that the time to blog has diminished.

But given that I usually blog at night once the kids are in bed, you’d think I’d have just as much time as before, right? The only thing is that these days I often go to bed around the same time as the kids because I’m simply e.x.h.a.u.s.t.e.d! I might as well just get to the point here: we’re expecting baby number 3! He or she is due, Lord willing, on the 8th of June next year (making me 12 weeks along to those who are interested in these kinds of things).

There’s a fair bit of excitement around here, mingled with some very difficult days. It looks as if this is going to be another highly monitored pregnancy in regards to hyperemesis and high blood pressure, both of which I’m on medication for already. But, we had our 12-week ultrasound on Friday and little Blobby was looking healthy and normal and was actively doing somersaults and carrying on merrily, so he or she seems to feel unaffected by my misery, which is a happy thing.

I’m contemplating naming the kid Caroma, which is the brand of our toilet bowl. I’ve become very intimate with the view of the inside of our toilet bowl, and Caroma and I are getting very well acquainted – so maybe it would be a fitting tribute to name the kid Caroma. What do you guys think? ;-)

Posted in Family, Updates | 5 Comments

The Grand Canyon

Posted on 22 November 2012 by Franci

No tourist’s visit to the west of the U.S. is complete without a stop at the Grand Canyon, and we were no exception. We stayed in a little village (consisting mostly of the motel and gift shop) called Cameron for a couple of nights. From there it was only about an hour’s drive west to the Grand Canyon.

On our second night there, there was a spectacular sunset, with a storm brewing on the horizon. Ben had been wishing for a great big thunder/lightning storm during our trip, and this was the night it happened! We were able to sit on our balcony outside and witness the most amazing natural lights show either of us had ever seen on the plains behind the motel. The lightning just went on and on for about 2 hours, with lots of spectacular fork lightning too!

As we visited the Grand Canyon on a Sunday, we drove in early and attended a little Baptist church there in the Grand Canyon Village before heading off and doing a bit of sight-seeing. We were there with two little ones, so the possibility of any hikes down into the Canyon were (thankfully) non-possibilities, so we did some of the Rim Trail and took photos.

The Grand Canyon is named that because it is really grand. Huge. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. And simply too big for me to really be able to take in and comprehend. So big and amazing that after about an hour of looking at it, you’ve got brain frizz and just have to leave. I expect you get a better idea of it if you hike down into it, or do some rafting on the river, or even take a plane or helicopter ride over it, but as it was, it was “too lofty for me to attain.”

Of course, there had to be a few close-calls, didn’t there? What really struck me was that there were only a couple of viewing points that had any kind of safety barrier. For the rest of the trail, you could just walk off the trail, and jump off the cliff if you wanted to! That’s so different from New Zealand — there would be safety barriers everywhere and if not, oodles of warnings to stay away from the edge!

Posted in Being tourists, Nature, The Roadtrip | Leave a comment

Driving through Monument Valley

Posted on 7 November 2012 by Franci

After our time in Moab and Arches National Park, we traveled south to the Grand Canyon. What we didn’t realise was that our road would take us right through Monument Valley, a beautiful and dramatic piece of creation. There was some very heavy rain while we were driving, and we could see the rain coming down in sheets far ahead of us. It was really a spectacular sight, and one that we didn’t even plan on seeing!

(All the photos were taken through the car window, so their quality isn’t spectacular, but I think you still get a pretty good idea of how beautiful the landscape is!)