Jan’s having fun playing with a new iPad app called Paper that lets you easily draw pretty pictures with (virtual) ink, pencil, or watercolors. Here’s “Still Life with Pear and Kumquats”.
Sabriya’s having fun with the Paper drawing app too. She draws a scene from the “Surf’s Up!” episode of The Backyardigans in which Pablo (the blue penguin) goes surfing. Pablo’s catch phrase for the episode is, “Ho-daddy” (a surfer wanna-be).
Anya’s turn: She sketches a Miyazaki-esque watercolor drawing of Totoro.
Evil Secret Plans. There’s an (improv?) actor’s warmup exercise in which two actors alternate counting to three: the first actor says, “One”, the second actor says “Two”, the first actor says “Three”, the second actor starts over with “One”, and back and forth it goes.
The girls like playing this game, only instead of counting to three, they alternate saying the words in the phrase, “Evil secret plans”. They try to say these words in their evilest villain voice.
Anya: “Evil!”
Liya: “Secret!”
Anya: “Plans!”
Liya: “Evil!”
Anya: “Secret!”
Liya: “Plans!”
…
The U.S. government has made details of the 1940 census available online. After a bit of slogging through the confusing site and scanned microfilm, Jan was able to find the record for the family that lived in our house in 1940.
In 1940, our house was owned by the Wesly family: husband James, 53, and wife Maude, 43, and Maude’s son from a previous marriage, Em[something] Morris, 19. All three of them had completed high school. James was born in Canada, Maude was born in Wisconsin, and her son was born in Michigan. James worked full-time as a carpenter and heating serviceman, making $2,111 the previous year. The son worked full-time as a stockroom clerk at $1,000/year. At that time, the house was worth $3,750.
Happy Easter! Pictured are some Easter friends the girls received, sitting in front of a bird’s nest Bree found this morning, which is holding some eggs we dyed yesterday.
Bree is 4 and 3/4. She still says “o-tay” instead of “okay” and “tookee” instead of “cookie.” I don’t think that will last much longer.
Seattle to Moab, Utah. During the girls’ Spring Break, we’re all going to Moab, UT, for a week to visit Jan’s Aunt Chuckie and Uncle Ber and to explore the area’s national parks. Jan’s mother Lyn, brother Chris, and sister Skye are also joining us for the trip. We pick up Lyn in Seattle, then pick up Anya and Liya from the last half-day of school before break, and all grab lunch in Queen Anne before heading to SeaTac. We meet Skye at SeaTac – she’s just flown up from Oregon – then fly to Denver, where we meet up with Chris. Our connection to Moab is very tight, and we have to race through the terminal to catch our flight. Our checked bags are not so quick, and miss the flight – we’ll have to spend the first day in Moab without our luggage. The bouncy little airplane lands at the tiny Canyonlands Field north of Moab, and we drive into town to the Best Western hotel where we’ll be staying. We’re all hungry, and as luck would have it, the “Pasta Jay’s” restaurant in front of the hotel is quite good.
Moab, Day 1: Arches National Park. We drive to Chuckie and Ber’s house on the south edge of town. As we drive up to the house, we can see Aunt Chuckie peering through the window to look for us, and she runs out as we pull up. We have a nice family reunion, and all of us (especially sisters Lyn and Chuckie) are very happy to see each other for the first time in three years or so. We spend the morning catching up. Ber talks about a GPS mapping project he did a long while back to collect data on the county’s back roads – he and Chuckie are avid 4x4 off-road explorers – and he shows us the maps he compiled for that project.
We pack a picnic lunch, then drive up to Arches National Park just north of town. The scenery in the park is amazing, and every five minutes there’s a spectacular arch, butte, or pinnacle to gawp at. We make a stop at Devil’s Garden and make a short hike to see Landscape Arch. We also stop at the Delicate Arch viewpoint, and again at a pair of large arches called “The Windows”. The girls are all happy to scramble around on the area’s famed slickrock.
By 4:30 pm or so, the girls are done with sightseeing. Ber and Chuckie drive off with Lyn, Chris, and Skye to see a few more things, while we drive out of the park. Just outside the park entrance, we stop at an interesting thing we’d noticed coming in: a giant sand dune right off the highway. The sand dune is currently covered with kids scrambling up and sliding down. Our girls happily clamber out of the car and run straight up the hill. (We make our way up the hill somewhat more slowly – it’s more work than it first appears.) The girls run up and down the dune for the better part of an hour until dinnertime.
Back at the hotel, we’re walking through the hotel lobby. A hotel screen is playing a slideshow of outdoor activities guests can do in the Moab area, and we notice the slideshow includes an image highlighting off-road driving features: a huge photo of Ber driving his yellow jeep at a crazy angle up some rocks, with one wheel far off the ground.
We have dinner at the Peace Tree restaurant. Jan and Chris make a quick trip back up to the airport to retrieve our luggage, newly arrived from Denver.
Grandma adds lyrics to Liya’s pretty piano piece, “Let’s Waltz”, by William Gillock:
Liya, a moment ago you were laughing.
We had the best time we ever had.
Liya, I hope when you’re grown you remember —
You made your grandmother glad,
Oh so glad!
Moab, Day 2: Needles expedition. We all wake up early for the start of an off-road trip through the southeast corner of Canyonlands National Park, known as “The Needles”. Our driver and guide for the trip is Tom, a man with a long gray beard. Tom looks like, if he were in an old Western movie, he would play the role of the gold prospector. He’s a very nice guy, with an endless number of interesting stories about the area.
Our first stop, just outside the park, is Newspaper Rock, a large black rock surface covered with ancient petroglyphs. Driving on, we turn off the main road for a bumpy ride into Davis Canyon. Much of the time we’re driving up a dry, sandy riverbed. We make a short hike across the desert floor and scramble over some slickrock into a small sort of canyon in which we can see “The Five Faces”: a set of faces painted long ago on the rock wall.
On the walk back to the car, Anya looks up at a cliff and shouts, “There’s a petroglyph up there too!” It takes everyone else a while to notice a set of faint concentric circles high up on the cliff.
Moab, Day 2 (continued). We slowly make our way along some rutted roads back to the highway, and from there to The Needles visitor center. While Tom prepares a simple lunch, the girls have a great time climbing around on a giant knob of slickrock. We spot a little lizard before he darts into a crack in the rock.
We hit some more sites in the park – Cowboy Camp, Pothole Point – and make our way to Elephant Hill. There’s a long off-road trail that begins there, and Tom gives us a taste of it by driving up the broken road up the steep hill. About halfway up, Tom comes to a sort of large step in the road which he calls “my nemesis”. He makes one unsuccessful attempt to drive up, then gets out and starts piling up medium-sized rocks in front of the big step to make it easier for the truck’s big tires to climb up. The adults all pitch in. He gives it another try, and the wheels scatter rocks everywhere before the truck slides back. We pile up rocks again, and he makes a third try. This time, wheels straining, the truck crawls up the step and then continues up the steep road.
We come back to Moab to join Chuckie and Ber at The Branding Iron restaurant at the edge of town. As one might expect, this is a restaurant that doesn’t offer Lyn or Skye much in the way of vegetarian dinner options.
Moab, Day 3: Ballooning! We get up VERY EARLY before sunrise and head north out of town to meet up with Canyonlands Ballooning for a morning ride. A van drives us to a lot where crew members are unrolling a giant balloon. We watch them blow air into it, and when the balloon is mostly inflated (but still lying on its side), they let walk inside the balloon itself. It’s pretty interesting just to be surrounded by something so big and colorful. After we come back out, they fire up gas burners to heat up the air, and the balloon slowly tips upright.
Moab, Day 3 (continued). The eight of us scramble into the big basket, along with two other tourists and our pilot Lou. The ground crew lets go of the basket, and we smoothly lift up and away. It feels like we’re riding up in an elevator.
It’s a beautiful morning, mostly clear and not too cold. We drift north along the rim that parallels Highway 191. The balloon slowly fluctuates between drifting slowly down and – after a burst of flame – drifting slowly up. When we’re close to the ground, the bursts of flame are apparently loud enough to spook bunnies on the ground into running away – and at one point the balloon startles four antelope, who gallop away across the desert in a cloud of dust. Most of the time, though, the ride is completely silent.
Moab, Day 3 (continued). As we reach the airport north of Moab, we see a skydiving plane take off far below us, and watch it spiral up to finally let out a couple of skydivers. Lou can’t steer the balloon per se, but he can pick the balloon’s altitude, and sometimes the wind blows in different directions at different altitudes – so he goes pretty far up in hope of catching a wind that will take us closer to Canyonlands National Park. At 3500’, we encounter a wind blowing out of the northeast, which we indeed are able to ride much closer to Canyonlands and all the interesting canyons and formations along its eastern and northern edges.
We pass over Hidden Canyon, then Lou begins looking for a place to land. He eventually settles us into a shallow canyon called Bartlett Wash, radioing our location to the chase van. The van arrives just as we’re about to touch down, and the ground crew helps tug the hovering balloon basket into a better location for folding everything up. We touch down and scramble out. The crew begin the long process of folding up the balloon, and the girls are more than happy to help lean against (or sit on) the balloon to squeeze out the air. Lou serves a traditional champagne toast, with sparkling cider for the girls (except for Bree, who never likes fizzy drinks).
After the balloon ride, we spend the rest of the morning quietly, puttering around the center of Moab and grabbing brunch at the Jailhouse Café. The girls spend most of the afternoon in the hotel pool. In the evening, Angela, Skye, and Mom go out for dinner and to watch “The Hunger Games”. Jan and Chris take the girls out to eat at a little Mexican hole-in-the-wall called Mi Ranchito Mexicano, which turns out to have great carnitas.
Moab, Day 4: Rafting on the Colorado. Skye heads back to Oregon in the morning, while Mom takes Bree for the day. The two of them visit a rock shop, where Bree gets a free piece of dinosaur bone. Meanwhile, Jan, Angela, Anya, Liya, and Chris meet up with Red River Adventures for a day rafting trip. We board a school bus full of fellow tourists that heads east on Highway 128 along the river, all the way up to Fisher Towers. Our group of five is assigned to a raft guided by a nice woman named Kate, who gives the girls a quick lesson in paddling.
As soon as we set off, Anya’s competitive nature is revealed. She decides she wants our raft to always be in front of the other two rafts in our group, so she and Liya keep paddling even when Kate says we can rest. Whenever we come to a rapid, Kate pulls our raft over to the side. The rapids on the portion of the river we’re on are rated a very mild Class II, but Kate’s still obligated to let the raft with the group leader run rapids first. Once we’re through the rapids and all the rafts stop paddling, Anya and Liya once again paddle continuously until our raft is in front.
The water is too cold to swim in, and we’re not wearing wetsuits, so it’s rather bracing whenever one of us gets really splashed in the small rapids. We can see just a bit of wildlife along the way: a wild turkey flies right past us, and we spot several great blue herons. The gorgeous cliffs on both sides of the river are the real highlight. We stop for lunch on a sandy beach, then continue down the river. The girls make sure we’re always in front and, indeed, our raft is the first to reach the take-out point.
For dinner we go to a restaurant named Desert Bistro, which turns out to be right in back of our hotel. Dinner is fantastic.
Moab, Day 5: Island in the Sky. We have breakfast at a funky little café called Love Muffin, and spend the morning at the hotel pool. Chris heads to the airport to make his way back to San Francisco. After lunch, Chuckie and Ber join us for an afternoon off-road trip. Jan drives our rental SUV north out of town, with Ber in the passenger’s seat giving directions and pointing out interesting sights. He guides us onto a road that leads to Little Canyon, and Jan happily steers the SUV along the very bumpy road. Angela and Lyn, sitting in the back, aren’t quite so thrilled with the bouncy ride. We stop at a pair of natural arches called Gemini Bridges. Angela takes the driver’s seat now, and drives us back into Canyonlands National Park, this time in the northern Island in the Sky section. Ber guides us to a spectacular spot overlooking the Green River, and then to a place where we make a short hike to Mesa Arch.
Back at the hotel, we bid goodbye for now to Chuckie and Ber.
Moab to Seattle. Lyn leaves for the airport very early in the morning so she can catch a flight on to Michigan. The remaining five of us spend the morning doing some last-minute tourism: another visit to the giant sand dune on the north side of town, a stop at the rock shop for some souvenirs, and a last dip in the pool. We pack up. (We discover that, somehow, Anya has managed to lose one of her shoes, so she has to head home in flip-flops.) We take the bumpy flight back to Denver, and then split up. Jan takes Anya and Liya home to Seattle, while Angela takes Bree onward to San Diego for the wedding of Angela’s cousin Janet.
Jan asks Anya and Liya how they’d like to spend the day. (Angela is out of town with Sabriya for the weekend.) Liya says, “Let’s go to a museum.” So we head off to the Burke Museum, where Jan hasn’t been in years, and Anya and Liya have never been. The Burke is a tiny museum at the University of Washington. We walk through an interesting exhibit showing photos of families from around the world posing in their homes, each family posing with a table (or floor) full of the typical amount of food they would normally consume over the course of a week.
Afterwards we go for a walk around the U.W. campus, and end up in the University District. We shop at the University Bookstore, then have lunch at nearby Shultzy’s Sausage.
Today Bree asked Angela, “Do you know what hiccups are?” After Angela very seriously explained about tics in diaphragms, Bree suggested, “Or maybe it’s just your belly sneezing.”