Atlanta

This week I ventured to the Atlanta area for my last work trip this year (and probably for quite awhile). I drove through Atlanta on my way from the airport to the call center and that was the extent of my "visit" to Atlanta. I did get to enjoy some awesome southern food at a cool diner. I had meatloaf that looked like it had been molded in muffin tins, a zucchini casserole, and sweet mashed potatoes. It was delicious! Unfortunately the diner was out of cobbler. :(

The big adventure of the trip was trying to get home. I left the call center a little later than I had planned and then ran into traffic just north of the airport. There was an accident involving a school bus and a car and they shut down 3 lanes of the 7 lane highway (and it caused a nice little backup). Once through that chaos I headed to drop of my rental car but had to get gas first. I had hoped there'd be a gas station near the rental car place but I couldn't find one so I had to head out to search for a gas station - fortunately my GPS came in very handy with this. I got to the rental car place, but because my car had a temporary license plate I had to go to the counter to get a receipt (very important to get reimbursed) and in the process managed to dump my purse upside-down. *SIGH* I almost left my blackberry underneath the car in the process.

So after the debacle I was definitely in a hurry to make it to the gate, since I knew I had two tram rides and a security line in my future. I checked in (at a nice little kiosk at the rental car garage) and had never felt so relieved to find out that my flight was delayed. When I arrived at the terminal I still felt the need to hurry to the gate but couldn't find my flight number on the Departures screens so I decided to just go to the gate printed on my boarding pass.

I managed through security, despite the guy behind me who pretended he was going to head to a different line and then conveniently realized, as he passed me, that his friend was standing in front of me and then cut in line without even looking at me. Grrrr. I caught the second tram to the terminal and came to find out that my flight had been canceled!

So I spent the next few hours wandering from gate to gate intently watching the standby lists to see if I'd get cleared for a flight. I was #20 on the list and there were a total of about 60 people. All of the flights were booked so it didn't look good. My co-worker and I finally decided to call our travel agent company to find out what the deal was if we had to stay overnight (we were confirmed on a 6:20 am flight the next morning). Thankfully they found out at the different airline still had seats on a 10pm flight that night. So after waiting through 2 standby lists on 2 flights we gave up and booked our flight home. Our original flight was at 5:20pm so the delay to the 10pm flight seemed like forever but at least we didn't have to spent the night at the Atlanta airport. I think I arrived home at 1:15am.

I had on my travel list to some day spend some time in Atlanta and Savannah. Right now, I have no desire to see the Atlanta airport anytime soon. Perhaps one day I'll venture back and hope for a less adventurous tour of the airport!

Urgent Care and the Grand Canyon

Unfortunately, my cold managed to get worse over the course of the day in Bryce and I ended up with pink eye. So, we had to take a detour from Bryce to the Grand Canyon to stop at an Urgent Care. The detour wasn't that long and fortunately since we were up so early we were still on schedule for our arrival at the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

We drove through some very beautiful areas. On the way out of Bryce we drove through the Dixie National Forest and red canyon. On our way to the Grand Canyon we drove through Kaibab National Forest, and some Native American tribal lands.

The north rim of the Grand Canyon is very remote. We felt like just kept driving and driving with nothing to see other than forest. Even once you reach the visitor's gate you still have to drive 12 miles before you arrive at the rim. The Grand Canyon definitely lived up to it's name. It was indeed Grand. The down-side to the north rim is that the hiking opportunities were kind of far away and I think both Matthias and I felt that Bryce was more beautiful. So, we didn't do much at the Grand Canyon other than relax and enjoy the view.

Bryce National Park

Today we drove from SLC to Bryce National Park. And when I say "we" I mean Matthias; I slept for at least half of the trip, if not longer. But when I woke up we were driving down a highway with mountains on both sides of us and not much else in between other than open road.

We arrived at Bryce and quickly bought our National Parks pass and hoped on the bus to head into the park. We stopped at the visitors center and watched a video about how Bryce Canyon was formed. Then we took the bus to Bryce Point for some amazing views of the canyon, hoodoos, and "windows". We decided to hike the Rim Trail from Bryce Point to Inspiration Point. It was a nice walk (~1.5 miles). We wished we could have been healthy enough to hike some of the trails into the canyon but it was not to be. The rim hike was nice though. We saw some deer along the way and watched the hoodoos as they changed shape before our eyes. We named many of them by their shapes - a chameleon, two guys playing chess, a woman carrying a child on her back. It was fun and beautiful. Inspiration Point was also a very nice view. We had planned to hop on the bus from there but figured out that the next stop was just another .5 mile on the rim trail so we set out to walk again, this time to Sunset Point. Sunset Point had a hiking trail that led down into the canyon and we followed that for a short distance just to experience it. We then took the bus to Sunrise Point and stopped in the lodge shop there for a cold beer and some ice cream.

After that we headed out of the park to our hotel. I will say that there were more German tourists at Bryce than there were Americans. It was hysterical. At every stop we were surrounded by German-speaking hikers. It was bizarre to be in the US but feel like we were in Germany, with me not able to understand anything. Even at the restaurant in town this was true!

Since we had hiked so much that day and I wasn't feeling to well we went to bed fairly early. We decided to take advantage of it and get up before sunrise and head back to the park. We went to Sunrise Point to watch the sun rise and cast shadows on the canyon.

Utah

I traveled for work again this month, this time to Utah. I was in a city north of Salt Lake. Utah is beautiful. I enjoyed some good food and wandered down to SLC on night to meet a coworker for dinner at a terrific place called The Red Iguana, featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. They have awesome Mole!

Unfortunately, shortly after my trip to SLC I came down with a horrendous cold. Just in time for Matthias to join me in Utah and for us to head out on a vacation in southern Utah.

Cleveland

Matthias and I ventured to Ohio this weekend to meet the newest Krejsa. On our way we stopped at Vickie and David's place in Pittsburgh and spent the night. It was great to see their new place and catch up. Friday morning we headed towards Amish country in Ohio to go to a furniture store. We spent quite awhile there trying to figure out what we wanted and ultimately decided to buy a dining room table with chairs, a corner hutch for the dining room, and a new bedroom dresser for me. We have to wait for them to make it and then head back up to Ohio in June to pick it all up!

We spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out in Cleveland with the family. We met Matthew and played lots and lots with Lucas.

Phoenix

So after a little lull in the traveling (and lots of hours shoveling snow this winter and stuck in the office this spring), I went to Phoenix for 2 weeks for work. Phoenix was so beautiful. While I spent almost every day in the call center for 10-12 hours a day I did get one Saturday off to roam around town. There were so many wonderful things in and near Phoenix to do but I had to narrow it down. So, I ended up going to the Botanical Garden, the Zoo, Tempe, and the Heard Museum. The botanical gardens were spectacular. It was filled with all kinds of cacti, which were in bloom in April. The variety of cacti and flowers was awesome. I got to see plenty of humming birds as well. There was also a butterfly exhibit. After several hours at the botanical gardens I went to the Phoenix Zoo. It was a decent zoo...very large (lots of walking!) and nice exhibits. It's considered a zoo and sanctuary which means that the animals aren't always "on display" and can choose to hide if they want. But most of them were out and about.

After the zoo I realized I had gotten a nice sun burn on my arms and wasn't feeling up to a whole lot more adventure outside. Since I was near Tempe I decided to drive through the area to see what was there. It was a nice area with lots of good restaurants, but I decided to skip a meal and headed out after a quick drive. Since I had started to cool down I decided to go to the famous Heard Museum (indoors!). It's a museum focused on american indian art, culture, and history and has the world's largest collection of Hopi Katsina dolls. When I was there they had a special exhibit on Indian boarding schools and their history. It was very interesting (and very refreshing to be inside!).

After Saturday, while I would have liked to explore some more, work kept me very busy and I didn't get a chance to see anything else. It was still a beautiful visit. April is definitely a good month to visit the dessert.