These are blog posts about or by Sue.
Last night we attended a Christmas Eve service with 9,200 people we didn’t know. But they weren’t really strangers. It was the Washington National Cathedral’s Christmas Eve Eucharist, and it unfolded with pipe organ preludes, youthful choristers, and a procession complete with bishop, Cathedral dean, and vergers. There was the goosebump-inducing descant of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” There were enough people present in the Cathedral – although…
Our camping experiences date to Girl Scouts and, for me, a few miserable outings in high school. That was quite awhile ago. But we thought trying again might be an antidote to my desire for a small RV. The two-night outing to Trap Pond State Park near Laurel, Delaware, was only about 25 miles from our house. We would not starve. We could try out some of the…
November 2 – For two retired women, visiting five National Parks (plus Monument Valley) in 10 days was probably a bit ambitious. Now that the trip is over, we have some insights: Our favorite parks were Bryce Canyon, Zion and Arches – close but roughly in that order. A revised itinerary would probably omit Canyonlands and Capitol Reef and spend more time exploring the other three. We did…
Wednesday, October 25 – Driving through southern Utah, the landscape changes are often immediate and stunning. From a rolling sea of slickrock to high-altitude pine forests to towering red rocks, it’s hard for us East Coast flatlanders to absorb. Approaching Zion National Park, the rocks again change to red – and so does the road. Jagged, majestic peaks jarringly transform the landscape. We were on the Zion-Mt. Carmel…
October 25 – The most wondrous 2.5-mile trail I have ever walked was breath-taking, in more ways than one. The one must-do hike for me on our Utah National Parks itinerary was a combination of the Navajo Loop and Queen’s Garden trails at Bryce Canyon. An elevation change of 320 feet did not sound like a lot, but what goes down must come up. Starting at Sunset Point,…
October 22 and 23 – You are still miles away, near the hamlet of Mexican Hat, when you first spy the iconic buttes. Cars and RVs start pulling over for pictures; some tourists wander onto the highway. It’s the famous Forest Gump view of Monument Valley. We booked a premium cabin at The View, on Navajo Tribal Lands, in Arizona. The balcony and picture window had an unobstructed…
(Sue and Lee Ann spent five months planning a vacation to the five national parks in Utah, plus Monument Valley in Utah/Arizona. Everyone should visit the American West. Here is what we saw and did.) Saturday, October 21 – At 7:45 a.m. I was standing in line outside the Poison Spider bike shop across from our motel in Moab. There were skinny young guys in baggy shorts holding…
Click on the photos to make them larger. [AFG_gallery id=’5′] We had Lincoln for the day. It is a joy to be able to see things from her perspective. She laughs all the time and makes us laugh. In fact, she has not cried at all the past couple of times we have babysat, other than for 15-30 seconds as her mom is leaving. We try to limit…
Jackson, Wyoming – June 8, 2016 Then there were the Grand Tetons. Floating down the Snake River, which was still turbid and swollen with snow melt, we called out jokingly about “rapids” ahead. It was calm enough to eat our lunches on board. I don’t think we even got wet, and I regretted leaving my Nikon on the bus. The young, jagged peaks of the Grand Tetons were…
Sunday, June 5, 2016 – Billings, Montana Probably no other scene of American history is more embedded in my psyche than Custer’s Last Stand. It’s a mythic story that has intrigued me since I read a children’s biography of George Armstrong Custer – no doubt a sanitized version of his life and what actually happened on June 25, 1876. Over the decades, my knowledge of the Battle of…
Saturday, June 4 – Rapid City, South Dakota Today was a day trip out of Rapid City to visit the Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. It was our first trip together as a group of 48, and I detected a lot of New York accents as we passed ponderosa pines and quaking aspen trees. Was my stereotype coming true? The Crazy Horse Monument…