Thought the moon looked pretty. I was on my way to taking Diane out to her birthday dinner with camera in hand.

--Rob

What do they do, exactly?

We saw this sign as we pulled into a parking area in the Everglades last June. Fortunately, we did not suffer any vehicular damage.

This time of year you are probably getting a bit more snow than this. Diane shot this photo of a snowman Nick made in El Paso, Texas, when we were there in 2004 for the Sun Bowl football game for my job.

Happy Holidays!

--Rob

Thanksgiving

It's not really a travel photo, but with Thanksgiving right around the corner, who can really resist pumpkin pie? :-)

--Rob

One of the first things that struck me about Las Vegas, on my first trip there back in the 1990s, was the garish carpeting in all the casinos.

Apparently, I'm not the only one to have wondered about this. In fact, David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has devoted significant time to studying the psychological impact of this floor covering, as seen here: http://www.dieiscast.com/gallery/carpet-essay/

Anyway, I decided to do a little photoessay of my own, the last time we were in Vegas:

Not my greatest shot from my DC trip a few years ago, but a reminder for those few who do pass by the blog to get out and vote tomorrow no matter which side of the aisle you stand on.

--Rob

Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada. (from wikipedia)

We passed through about two years ago on our way to Las Vegas for a 5-day vacation in the Luxor hotel. There was an enormous traffic jam so we jumped out of the car and shot a few pics while we were waiting. At the time, they were working on an bypass that will avoid this bottleneck.

And speaking of that bypass...it's done as of tonight:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/10/14/20101014arizona-hoover-dam-bypass-dedication-ON.html

--Rob

Yeah, it's kind of a boring shot, but I love clouds...and we don't get clouds like this in Arizona. Taken in Miami this summer before a big rain storm on the beach.

--Rob

With my day job I spend a lot of time traveling with a football team and really don't have much to do for the first quarter of any game (I edit game film) so I do what any fan would do. Run to the sidelines with my camera in hand. I won't post many football shots here, but this one was too good to pass up. Sadly, we lost the game, but it was damn close. Many more cool shots from the area to follow as we spent 3 days in Madison, Wisconsin before the game.

--Rob

Saddle-like airline seats? No way!

"The new airplane seat, to be unveiled next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, would give passengers an experience akin to riding horseback.

They'd sit at an angle with no more than 23 inches between their perch and the seat in front of them — a design that could appeal to low-cost airlines that have floated the idea of offering passengers standing-room tickets on short flights."

Read the full article...

Three Servicemen Statue shot next to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC 5 years ago. One of many memorials I visited during our trip to DC.

--Rob

Silence at the springs

I enjoy traveling with my family so much that sometimes I forget how much I also love traveling alone. It’s such a decadent treat.

Lately I’ve been craving silence and solitude in a huge way. The way I craved liverwurst when I was pregnant. (I know, right?) So I hopped into my car and headed up into the Tonto National Forest near the Mogollon Rim. In an hour and a half, I can go from beige desert spiked with saguaro cacti to lush pine forests.

Rim country is amazing. The Mogollon (pronounced “mo-guh-yon”) Rim is an escarpment (a big word for a big cliff) that stretches across the state of Arizona. The land at the bottom of the rim is about 4,000-5,000 feet, and it rises in an instant to about 7,000 feet. It’s an understatement to say that the views of the Rim and from the Rim are spectacular.


There is a hike just outside of Payson called Horton Springs Trail. At the top of the trail (about 3.5 miles with a 1,000-foot climb) there is a spring that feeds Horton Creek. I have hiked along this trail many times, but never, over the course of about 16 years, reached the springs. This was due to various reasons—weather, young child in tow, whatever. I decided that this weekend I would finish the hike already and see the springs.

Take a hike with me...

The London Eye. Diane has long loved this photo. I shot it in 2004 during our trip to Europe.

--Rob

Nothing quite like a sunset in Arizona.

--Rob

We live on the biggest beach in the world

sadly it lacks water. :-) Our recent trip to Miami had some awesome body surfing waves.

--Rob

A different side of South Beach

I don't know why this shot of a fence on South Beach appeals to me, but then again, I'm a sucker for well formed curves.

--Rob

Thinking about renting a house or condo for vacation?

We are home from Florida, and Rob is sorting through the thousands of photos we shot. Our goal of posting something profound every day during our trip didn't really work out, but our brains are out of vacation mode now and we're ready for some serious blogging.

I want to start out by giving a little background on the place we stayed. For the first time, we decided to rent a condo rather than stay in a hotel. I don't know why we have never done this before--we are a little slow, I guess. We rented a 2-bedroom, 2-bath beachfront condo for 9 nights for $1070. That's about $119 per night. We never would have been able to get even a single hotel room on the beach for that price.

Having a full kitchen meant we didn't have to eat out every day, which saved us even more money. Naturally we sampled the local restaurants, but just having the ability to eat breakfast and make cocktails at "home" saved us a lot of dough. The condo also had a much homier feel than most hotel rooms--orange walls, down comforters, even some books and games and beach toys.

There are, of course, downsides to renting a condo. The most obvious one is that you have to do your own cleaning--there's no maid service to clean your room every day and provide you with fresh linens, and you need to leave the place in decent condition when you go.

The other is that you can't be entirely sure of what you will get. We rented our condo through a site called http://www.vacationrentals.com (the specific listing is here: http://www.vacationrentals.com/vacation-rentals/62323.html). There are quite a few sites that list vacation house home rentals, including http://www.vrbo.com and http://www.homeaway.com/

The nice thing about these kinds of sites is that customers can post reviews. But even those are iffy--some listings (like ours) don't have any reviews on them. And even if there are reviews, of course, you don't know how reliable the reviewer is. They could be a good friend--or enemy--of the owner.

You can, of course, request references from a potential renter and call these people yourself. We didn't do that, but it's a good idea.

Rob had a good gut feeling about the owner when he talked to her on the phone, and we went with it. His gut did not steer him wrong. The condo looked exactly like the photos, had all the amenities listed, and really was right on the beach. We weren't smack dab in the middle of South Beach nightlife (we were further north, in Surfside) but that was fine with us--we wanted quiet, relaxing, and family-friendly. There were never more than a handful of people on our beach. And we loved being able to just go downstairs and jump in the ocean for a swim before breakfast. We didn't have to pack a big bag of stuff and plan for a daylong excursion.

We were on the 8th floor and the two balconies afforded us great views--the ocean to the left, and the city to the right.

If you are thinking about doing a vacation rental for yourself, try these sites for tips:

http://goflorida.about.com/od/hotelslodging/a/vacationrentals.htm

This one has a lot of information relevant to Florida, but also good advice in general.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2009-03-19-vacation-rental-tips_N.htm

Also, if you are interested in a property, you can check out "Vacation Rentals Watchdog" to see if other renters have complained about it:

http://www.vrwd.org/

We are in the air today...

...but one more picture from the shores of Miami. Many many more stories and photos to follow from our 9 days in South Florida!

Today we went to the Everglades

Many more to follow, Diane had the best picture today and you will see it soon.

--Rob

Day one in the Keys

We spent Thursday and Friday exploring the Florida Keys, a chain of islands off of Florida's southern coast. Originally we planned to stay on the Keys, but changed our minds and opted for Miami Beach because it's a better swimming beach. The Keys are an amazing ecological treasure, and they are fabulous for water sports, but they are not known for sandy swimming beaches.

They did make for a fantastic side trip, however. The Keys are full of funky, kitschy places like a set of gift shops on Key Largo with a giant crustacean out front.



We stopped for lunch at a little place along route 1, also known as the only real road in the Keys. There are a lot of parts of the Keys where you are driving down the road, and there is just enough room for a house or a business on each side of the street--behind which is ocean on either side.

Anyway, for lunch I tried the conch fritters. Conch (pronounced "conk") is a big deal in the Keys, also known as the "Conch Republic." You know those giant, spirally seashells you can put up to your ear to hear the ocean? Yeah, that's conch, and it's a rather big deal in the Keys, as evidenced by businesses named "Conch Cottages" or "Konch Kuts" (a hair salon).

Sadly, I was unmoved by this particular shellfish, as it was quite chewy. Kind of like octopus.



Of course I also had to sample some authentic Key lime pie. By the way, Key lime pie is NOT supposed to be green.

We had planned to spend the afternoon snorkeling off of Key Largo, but we missed the noon tour and didn't want to wait around until the 3:00 outing, so we decided to flip things around and explore the Keys on Thursday, snorkeling on Friday. This meant we needed to get down to Key West in time to catch the Hemingway House before it closed (it's open from 9-5, seven days a week) and to see the sunset, which is celebrated nightly there.

Here is a shot of Bunny in a mangrove swamp:



Driving the Keys is a pretty amazing experience. You can see ocean on both sides of you for a large percentage of the journey. You can also see little islands all along the way.





We stopped to see the beach at Bahia Honda State Park on the way to Key West. I had read that it has been rated one of the best beaches in the U.S. Although it was one of the better beaches on the Keys, we were not overly impressed. Miami Beach is much better in terms of swimming beaches. Still, we stopped for a dip before moving on.

I think that's enough for one post. I will write about Key West another day.

P.S. Happy anniversary Rob! The past 13 years have been the journey of a lifetime!

A few shots from today's visit to the Keys

Top Down: Diane floating, Sunset at Key West, The happy family enjoying the Key West sunset.

Miami skyline

The Miami skyline view from our Condo.

-- Rob

Today is officially "lazy day." Nick and I had a late morning swim in the ocean, and have spent the afternoon playing games and reading. I'm considering a nap before we head down the beach again when the sun's not so strong.

Our beach is not crowded at all. There were maybe 4 or 5 people there in the late morning.

Tomorrow we are planning to head down to the Keys. There will be snorkeling on Key Largo, and then we will head down to catch the sunset on Key West. We'll spend the night there and take our time coming back up here the following day. Rob got a new underwater camera for the trip, so I'm hoping we can get some great shots from our snorkeling trip!

--Diane

Miami Beach day 1

I am lying in bed in a room that overlooks Miami Beach. Life is good.

We spent most of today traveling. We left Phoenix at 8 this morning and flew first to Austin. On the flight, I pondered the irony of traveling from a hot desert to a hot tropical region, but having to bring a sweatshirt just to survive the freezing cold airplane. We flew Southwest because we got a good deal, but we did shell out an extra $60 ($10 per person per flight) to get the early-bird check-in. We didn't want to risk not getting seats together.

In Austin we had lunch at the exact same BBQ place (The Salt Lick) where I ate with Conrad on the way back from the URMA conference last year.

From Austin we flew into Ft. Lauderdale, picked up our rental car, and drove down to the condo we are renting. I've heard some horror stories about condo rentals, but Rob had a good gut feeling about this landlady and he was not led astray. This place is beautiful--two bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen, and right smack dab on the beach. After getting into the apartment and wolfing down some KFC we picked up on the way in, we raced down to the beach to get in our first swim before dark. The water was warm and the sunset lit up the sky in fiery orange.

Bliss.

We went out tonight to get groceries for the week. Sadly, the Publix doesn't carry hard alcohol and the liquor store was closed for the night. Luckily, a former guest at our condo left about half a bottle of tequila in the freezer, so Rob can still have margaritas tonight. I'm sure Coronas will be enough for me. Despite it only being 8 p.m. our time, I'm exhuasted.

We lugged our groceries up to the 8th floor in a bellhop cart that was sitting by the elevator in the garage. I'm so glad we didn't have to make multiple trips, although I did lose the rock-paper-scissors contest to see who had to bring it back downstairs.


Tomorrow morning I think I'll jump in the ocean again while my coffee brews.

--Diane (photos, of course, by Rob)

Florida Here We Come

This was shot years ago at my home beach in Northwest Florida (which soon will see balls of oil :-().

We however, are headed for the East Coast and Miami Beach in just 48 hours. And I cannot wait!

U.S. proposing new regulations on airlines

The Obama administration is proposing new rules for airlines that would require them to pay customers more for being bumped, be more transparent about baggage fees, and limit the amount of time planes can sit on the tarmac before returning passengers to the terminal.

Read more here.

These don't really address most of my biggest beefs with flying, but it's nice to know the government is at least trying to make the experience more pleasant for the consumer.

Ropes on the dock

Went to Boston with Diane and took a tour of the USS Constitution.

--Rob

Colorado coffeehouse

My wife likes Swedish horses, and I like my wife. Photo taken in Parker, Colorado where we were attending my younger daughter's high school graduation this past week.

--Rob

Travel blogging from the other side

I just discovered a very cool blog called ConfessInns: The Inkeeper Chronicles

The profile states:

"You are cordially invited to learn what really goes on behind the scenes of your ‘perfect stay’ and how a hotel really works. Meet the ever changing cast of characters that frequent The Inn, get to know their stories and pick-up some secret travel tips you won’t get from the friendly concierge… or anyone else."

The stories are well-written and very entertaining. And it's a nice reminder that when you stay at a hotel, you are dealing with real people who have to put up with your incessant demand for towels, your bizarre wake-up call times, and your dirty sheets. These folks aren't, like you, on vacation. My motto is be polite, tip well, and mind that karmic bank account.

--Diane

What does this have to do with travel, you ask...

Check out this site, which is really funny:

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

I don't want to spoil the surprise, so I'll post my commentary behind the cut...

Christopher Creek

I spent the first two weeks of August every year for 15 years looking at this creek just off the football field of Camp Tontozona. The team no longer goes there but there were some nice views to be had.

--Rob

May Day Memories

Reading the news about May Day rallies around Europe (and, this year, around the U.S. in protest of Arizona's new immigration law) reminds us of our own May Day experience from 2003.


Rob and I were visiting London and had spent the day tooling around town on a double-decker tour bus. It was mid-afternoon and we were tired. We were thinking about heading back to our hotel when we looked out the window and saw police in riot gear running down an alleyway.


We never spoke a word, but when the bus stopped at the next corner we both lunged off and hit the pavement running. We had no idea what the police were chasing, but we knew it was bound to be more interesting than anything we could find on a tour bus.

It was May 1, 2003, two months after the United States—with help from the United Kingdom—invaded Iraq using the justification that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.


Having grown up in the U.S., I always associated May Day with leaving baskets of flowers on neighbors’ doorsteps. But in many other countries, May Day is also International Workers’ Day, a day of political demonstrations. As we followed the police into Trafalgar Square, we found ourselves in the middle of one.


The focus of the protest, naturally, was our involvement in Iraq. We spoke to a few of the protesters, who were quite friendly to us in spite of our obviously USian accents. Although the police arrested a few people, there was, thankfully, no serious violence at this rally.




Near the end of the demonstration, Rob wandered off to get some good photos, while I stayed put chatting with one of the locals. It was 7:00, the hour the police had announced the demonstration had to end, and they made it happen by forming a line that no one was allowed to cross. Naturally, Rob and I were on opposite sides of the line. I hung out in the National Gallery for a while, until eventually the crowd dispersed and we were reunited.

A shot I grabbed near my hotel in San Diego one December morning.

--Rob

Orchid

An orchid in the Smithsonian Institution's annual orchid exhibition.

Okaloosa Island

Here is the beach where I spent many an afternoon swimming as a teenager.

--Rob

Important travel lesson learned the hard way #1: Do your research

When I was a carefree young graduate student, the thought of planning a trip in advance seemed ridiculously square. It went against the whole free-spirited aura I was trying to cultivate. As a result, I had lots of bad travel experiences. On the upside, bad travel experiences make for good stories. So sit back and let me squeeze you a bit of lemonade from the lemons life has handed me.

My husband, Rob, used to travel to Payson, Arizona for 10 days every August for work. Most years I would drive up there for a weekend and get a hotel room nearby. I would spend the days hiking the utterly gorgeous Mogollon Rim country, and spend the evenings hanging out with my sweetie.

One year, way back when I was in grad school, I invited my friend Kris to accompany me on this journey. We made the hour-and-a-half drive up from Tempe, spent the afternoon hiking, and met up with Rob when he was finished with work. We all drove into town, figuring we’d just pop in to one of the many motels along Payson’s main drag and get a room for the night.

Wrong.

A shot from an alley in Seattle, Washington. I liked the lines.

--Rob

Just when I thought flying couldn't get less pleasant...

Airline considers fee for lavatory use.

Doesn't it seem like that should be terribly illegal?

Tugboat at Woods Hole

Tugboat docked at Woods Hole, Massachusetts and yes, that is snow....brrrr....

--Rob