The Airline and car trip to Amboise France

June 7 and 8, 2019 Friday and Saturday Days 19-20

The big day. The grandson had been told that he was flying to France with us and not his parents, but I do not think it registered. After we got to the airport and parked the car he clung to his dad, but as his dad left he seemed to accept that he was going with us and he calmed down.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 7:20 pm. We checked the stroller because we were given bags by the daughter-in-law with clothes, food, toys and games for the grandson. A full service pop up baby store, but as a result the grandson had to walk through the airport. However he moved well, albeit slowly. There was a playground near our gate and that amused him for a while. When we boarded we discovered that one of our seats was not with the other two. No one around us was willing to change seats and the flight attendants were not willing to assist with a seat exchange. We were finally able to get two passengers in the rear to change seats so we could all be together.

The grandson was a pretty good passenger. He watched videos, listened to music, ate (the airline provided free food only to children) both the food we brought on and airline food, and watched a movie on the seat back. We watched Bambi three times. However even though his bedtime is typically 8 pm and we flew for about 6 hours, he largely did not sleep until the end of the flight.

We landed in Reykjavik shortly after 6:00 am local time to change planes. As we were descending I was struck by the absence of trees. There was no jet finger, but as we descended from the airplane onto the tarmac and then into the terminal the grandson kept going. Moving slowly, but no whinning or complaining. Our layover was less than 2 hours so we quickly purchased some food and found a playground in the airport for the grandson. Due to the grounding of the airline's Boeing MAX 737 we were put on a flight operated by EUROAir for the flight to Paris. Each airline had their own flight crews in the cabin. Again for was served on the plane to the grandson, but not to us. He kept eating and did not sleep much. More Bambi, he seemed to enjoy that movie.

As we were in the descent to Paris airport the grandson had a big sneeze, a lot of snot came out of his nose and he ate it before we could wipe it off. He then got a weird look on his face and then suffered projectile vomiting.  He then seemed fine. Hard to clean up since we could not get out of out seats and landed. He asked my spouse if she was OK. We cleaned him up and changed his clothes in an airport bathroom. The incident did not seem to negatively affect him.

We landed in Paris after a 3 hour flight, By now the grandson was moving on fumes. By the time we got off the plane, walked through the terminal and picked up all our luggage it took over an hour, in part because the grandson was moving at a glacial pace. Then it took us several tries to get a car seat for the grandson that fit him and that we could secure into the car. So it  took us a few hours to get out of the airport and then 3 hours to drive to our daughter's farmhouse outside Amboise. As usual in France the tolls on the interstate are very high. The grandson promptly went to sleep in the car the minute we started driving.  

We arrived in the early evening and the grandson was swept up by the three granddaughters. He quickly integrated himself and engaged well with the group. We took a small walk and the grandson saw the cows and picked a flower for his mom. We were provided with a very nice dinner and quickly went to sleep in the bungalow for a much needed sleep.

Pre Trip Activities

June 4-7, 2019  Tuesday through Friday Days 16-19

This part of the trip reflected the foundation for our journey. Our oldest son was having a week long celebration of his wedding that took place the prior year. In deference to their friends around the world, the celebration was going to take place in France. Our second son and his wife, with two very young boys were understandably wary about taking their two youngsters on two trans Atlantic flights, so we volunteered to take one of the on the planes. Hence we wanted to spent some time with and reacquaint ourselves with the two and a half year old grandson before the long airplane trip to France.

All went well and by the end of the week we were able to embark on the airplane trip with minimum fuss. But leading up to that there were many activities, but one enduring theme, construction equipment. The small, residential street outside my son's house was being torn up to install new gas lines. Hence it was being swarmed by small construction vehicles: front loader, bulldozer, dump truck, grader and back hoe. Most days after his parents left we started the day with our grandson  watching the equipment operate either by watching from the front stoop or walking down the block to observe whatever was operating. In the late afternoon on several occasions when the employees had left we climbed onto the parked equipment. Endless fascination with the equipment which replicated the behavior of his dad and uncles when they were young children.

Driving

Tuesday
By mid morning I pulled the grandson away from construction viewing and we walked down to Lake Nokomis Triangle Park, a .4 mile journey that proceeded very slowly. We have been to this park with the grandson several times during prior trips and it has been interesting watching him get bigger and moving up on the hierarchy of playground equipment. His first stop was a back hoe that he could not operate the last time we visited. Then he did a tour of the swings, climbing equipment and slides. He also liked the zip line but could not hold on by himself. he weather was nice, but there were not many people there. Virtually all of the adults there seemed to be moms, few dads or nannies. We forgot to bring any snacks, so after about two hours we had to leave. The grandson was pretty tired so we had to wheel him back. Lunch and then a nap that was way later than his normal schedule and took a long time to go down.

Working

Spouse took her ring, purchased in India, into the repair shop to insure that the stone, which had popped out in Cheyenne remained in the setting.

In the late afternoon we went on the equipment that was parked on the street. Dinner with the parents (son and wife) and then an early evening.

Wednesday

Following the construction equipment viewing habit, we left in mid morning for the Lake Harriet neighborhood to visit the Wild Rumpus bookstore, in part to get some relief from the heat but also because the store was strongly recommended. It was in a small neighborhood commercial zone and lived up to expectations. It had a large collection of children's books, as well as those for adults, but also had a large fish tank, other animals and a very creatively decorated bathroom. We purchased a book for the grandson for the trip and after about 2 hours we walked a short distance to the Great Harvest Bread Company for lunch. This is a chain, it has outlets in SLC and we also saw some in Wyoming, but it is very good. Fresh delicious bread samples and good sandwiches. The grandson is a good eater and he consumed a full grilled cheese sandwich and drink. Then we walked back across the street to Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream Shop. Very good, but expensive ice cream that we ate out on the covered patio. It had a turtle themed playground. We then drove home and frantically tried to keep the grandson awake so he would take a nap at home. Only partially successful.

Post ice cream turtle ride

After the nap in the late afternoon we went with the grandson, his mom and the younger grandson to McRea Park and recreation center for some time in the wading pool.

In the early evening we went on the equipment that was parked on the street. Dinner with the parents (son and wife), her mother and other daughter and then an early evening.

Thursday

Another morning construction equipment day, but this time we had to walk a bit since most of the equipment had moved down the block. About 9:30 we drove to Lake Nokomis beach. It is only a mile and a half away but I still got lost going there. The grandson went in the water and I took a swim. Nice temperature and uncrowded beach. We left after 2 hours to avoid the mid day sun and had lunch at home. Followed by grandson's nap and wife's trip to retrieve her ring.

After dinner we took a walk through Minnehaha Creek Park and bumped into my son's mother-in-law who lives nearby. She gave us a tour of her new and newly remodeled house. When we got back home about 9:30 all were asleep.

Friday

Packing day. The grandson and we were leaving on a 7:20 flight to Paris on Icelandic Air via Reykjavik. We packed in the morning, repositioned the cars, took a walk in the park and left for the airport about 4. Our daughter-in-law packed two bags for us with all we could need: diapers, extra clothes, food, toys, videos and books. The grandson seemed to understand that he was going on the plane with his grandparents and that his parents would meet him the following day in France. However after we had checked in and checked our luggage and it was time to go through Security and leave his dad, he grabbed on to his dad's leg and cried for him to not leave. The dad left and he promptly recovered. We passed through security without incident and found a playground in the airport which helped to pass some of the time. We boarded and took off on time.

Ready to travel

Total Eclipse, August 2017

The Eclipse Trip August 20-22, 2017
Airplane vs. automobile? Time saver vs. flexibility. I opted for the former since I had just come off two long driving trips to the Pacific northwest.

A mid-morning Southwest flight to Salt Lake City via Oakland (Southwest had very few non-stops LAX to SLC. In prior winters, they had 7 or 8 a day.) Parked the car at the airport in Park One which I used to do regularly, but have not done in years. It now has a dozen electric charging stations, but they appear to all be in the valet parking area.) The flights were full and on-time. Even handed out peanuts and on the first flight they appeared to be handed out by a father and son volunteer team. They were not wearing airline uniforms.

A problem arose when I went to pick up my car from the off-airport, Fox Rent a Car, via Priceline. There were no cars. The Manager explained that about 25 renters had not returned their cars per their reservations. I wondered if some people decided at the last minute to stay for the eclipse, or more devious, always intending to view the eclipse, attempted to avoid the awesomely inflated car rental rates by stating that they intended to return the car before the eclipse. The manager promised to honor the reservation by renting from another company and absorbing the difference. So, we got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the Budget counter at the airport. The clerk there claimed to have no record of our reservation, but said that she had a car available for $350. I could not reach the Fox people, nor anyone at Budget since none of their phone numbers get you to a live person. So back on the bus back to Fox. They checked and verified the reservation, but could also not reach Budget by phone. So, this time the Fox clerk (who was on temporary assignment form Las Vegas) came back with us to the airport. The Budget clerk claimed that she had not received the reservation and that reservations normally take 50 minutes to appear in the system (this had now taken more than 1.5hrs). The Fox clerk took us back to his office and gave us a big black Jeep SUV. I suspect that someone else did not get a car.

Because I delayed searching for them, and when I did late in the week all locations were sold out, we did not have the special glasses needed to view the partial eclipse (You could view the total eclipse without glasses without harming your eyes). Making one last chance we stopped at two 7-11s outside the car rental site. The first was sold out, but at the second we got the last two pairs of glasses, albeit at an exorbitant price. Dynamic pricing, but it made the experience much more enjoyable!
We drove up to Layton toward our reservation at the Comfort Inn. I feared that it too would be a problem, but there were no issues, other than John Oliver’s show came on at 9:15pm.
We got up at 5:30 the following morning to make sure that we got up to southern Idaho in time for the “Great American Eclipse”. By now radio, TV and the newspapers were filled with eclipse information. At least it drove Trump off the news, at least temporarily. Ate a quick breakfast and got on the road, I-15 by 6:45. To my surprise, the drive did not present much congestion. There were a few occasions when traffic slowed, but that appeared to be caused primarily by the presence of a police car in the median.

As we approached Idaho Falls after 9 we began to see groups of people hanging out in parks and open spaces. We decided to go to Rigby, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Idaho Falls since it was squarely in the middle of the path of totality. After driving through town and not seeing an obvious public restroom, we parked at South Rigby Park by about 9:45. There were a few thousand people there, but it was next to the Rigby Rodeo Grounds, and not crowded. There were lots of dogs, mountains of food, and more photography equipment than is probably in the Kodak Museum.
At about 10:05 the moon began to move over the sun. At first it looked like a small bite had been taken out of the sun but the dark spot steadily grew large. I was surprised that there was no noticeable decrease in light until near the end of the process, although the color of the light began to be whiter and wintry. By about 11:20 the sun was just a crescent and the air was very noticeably colder. Right on time, at 11:33 there was a flash of white light and then darkness. The sun was completely obliterated by the moon. Surrounding the sun was the corona, a very white, almost cloudy protrusions of varying shapes and sizes from the sun. We could now take our special glasses off. It was cool, but not life altering or he most momentous event in one’s life as some speakers on radio had said. The crowd oohed and awed, but no wild shouting or emotional outbursts. The dogs did not seem perturbed.

It was over quickly, 2 minutes and 17 seconds, but it seemed quicker. The sun’s partial reappearance was marked by a flash of white light, that was a signal to put the glasses back on, and quickly the sun appeared as a small crescent. It took almost 1.5 hrs. for the sun to fully reappear.
The crowd quickly thinned out, and the highway adjoining the park, which had almost been deserted, quickly became a slow-moving parking lot.

Hoping to wait out the heavy traffic before starting our drive back to Salt Lake City we ate a picnic lunch at the Park. That probably was a mistake since when we did get on the road at 1:30, we quickly encountered heavy traffic, to the point of gridlock. I got off the main road to circumvent downtown Idaho Falls and the highway intersections. I took some back roads and encountered some traffic, but once south of Idaho Falls the only alternative to I-15 was state route 97 which was a single lane gridlocked mess. I-15 quickly got very crowded to the point that there were several 5-10-minute stretches when traffic did not move at all. It took 3 hours to go 30 miles. Traffic lightened up after Pocatello, but after the I-15 84 interchange there again was heavy traffic. The trip took 7 hours (twice as long as going up there) and we did not get back to Salt Lake until 8:30 and as a result my plans to have a night in Salt Lake City were dashed. We walked around the Mormon complex before it closed at 10 and then had difficulty finding a restaurant open at that hour. Fast food again. 
The Salt Lake Plaza Hotel was very nice and we used its shuttle to return to the airport in the morning. Uneventful flight home. A lot of time and effort to see the total solar eclipse, but it was worth seeing, once. I do not understand those people who chase these events all over the world.

Bryce Canyon National Park

August 5-6, 2017 Hoodoos to Home
This is the second half of my trip back from Glacier National Park after dropping y spouse off last night at the SLC airport.

Got up early, about 7, after a good night’s sleep. Started the day with an OK, typical Hampton's Inn breakfast. Nothing wonderful, but filling.  I got there early so there were still grapefruit slices in the fruit bowl. By the time I left there were lots of people down for breakfast, but contrary to my prior Hampton’s Inn experiences, the staff came out with lots of refills.

I had thought about going on the Mormon Temple tour, there was room on the 9:00 tour, but I decided that I would rather get to Bryce National Park. So, after leaving a thank you note from the Volt to the Prius, I left the hotel by 9 and headed down I-15 with a fully charged battery. Drove about 3 hours on the highway and then turned off on to route 20 and the route 89. Climbing most of the way. The route seemed vaguely familiar, but while we visited Bryce in the mid-90s, I think that we came from the south after visiting Zion, so I do not think I had previously driven on these roads. Stopped in Panguitch, a small town at the rest area and for gasoline.  Gas was expensive. As I continued to the park it began to rain, initially lightly and then heavily. I did not think that it rained here in the summer, let alone much at all, but for a while it was really coming down. I imagined walking around the park in my poncho. The last road was route 12 and it took about 4 hours to get there.

Before I got to the Park I entered Dixie National Forest. I stopped in Red Canyon. The rock formations were striking. There were lots of tall, colorful, spires and other fantastic forms of rocks that are called Hoodoos. These are part of the Claron Limestone Formation and are created by the repeated freezing and thawing. I learned that the red, yellow and brown colors came from iron oxides while manganese oxides create a lavender tone. I parked and took a short hike. Up, around and through the rocks. Also saw some bristlecone pines, but not as many as I had seen in the CA. forest. I ended up at the Visitors Center. It had some beautiful, but expensive paintings of the area. There are some hardy plants out there, including the bristlecone pines.

As I turned into what I thought would be the Park, I first entered Bryce Canyon City. A large collection of hotels and restaurants that were surprising to be found inside the Park, but convenient. I saw a sign warning that parking was limited in the Park and advised taking the shuttle. So, I parked in the satellite lot and after showing my senior pass and getting my map, I hurriedly boarded the shuttle. To my dismay the shuttle began a circuit of the hotels in the city before entering the park. I ate lunch on the shuttle from my accumulated collection of fruit and leftovers.

Studying the map while on the shuttle I realized that it only went about a quarter of the way into the Park.  Turned out not to be a problem since by now it was about 2:30 and there was a lot to see and do in what turned out to be the northern quarter of the Park.

I exited the shuttle after about 10 minutes in the park at stop #4, Bryce Point.  After short walk out to the point, I gazed out in amazement into a wild topography of shapes, forms and colors. Bryce is misnamed as a canyon. It really is a series of horseshoe shaped amphitheaters that have been carved into the edges of the Paunsaugunt Plateau by the tributaries of the Paria River. I thought that a comment I saw on a plaque by Mormon settler Ebenezer Bryce that was “a hell of a place to lose a cow”. The Native Americans’ name for the area translated to “red rocks standing like men in a bowl-shaped canyon.”

There are hiking trails that descent to the floor, but I opted for the Rim Trail. It was a relatively flat trail that wound its way along the amphitheater affording spectacular views of the rock formations. Even though the trail was largely at or above 8000 ft. I had not difficulty with it, but I did walk through some light rain. I took too many pictures and by the time I reached Inspiration Point my phone/camera was almost out of power, so I had to forgo many pictures.  Parts of this trail marked a water shed boundary between water that flowed ultimately into the Colorado River and water that flowed into the Great Basin. The latter has no outlet to the sea so all that water either is absorbed into the ground or evaporates. I walked about 2.3miles until Sunset Point.

I needed power in my phone to make a hotel reservation so, missing Sunrise Point and trails down to the floor, I left the trail at Sunset Point and caught a shuttle to the Bryce Canyon Lodge.  There, as I charged my phone I learned that the Lodge was built in the 1920s by the Union Pacific Railroad which was interested in stimulating tourism and competing with its competitors who were building Lodges in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Canyon Parks. The UP-tourist Park loop encompassed Bryce, Zion and the North rim of Grand Canyon Parks. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood who designed the Lodges in the parks mentioned above. Its lobby was smaller than those I saw in the other lodges, but it had a huge stone fireplace and it had a large brick porch that was equipped with lots of chairs and benches that I used while my phone charged. I purchased a long sleeve tee shirt on sale in the gift shop. By now it was after 5 and I decided that I did not want to drive too far, so I made a reservation at the Virgin River Hotel and Casino where I had stayed before, just across the state line in Mosquito, Nevada. The usual $27 hotel room on Booking.

I got back on the shuttle before some more rain and headed out of the Park at about 6:15. I decided to take what I thought was a scenic short cut to get back to I-15 on the road to Nevada so I took route 14 into the mountains. The road was scenic, but it was windy and many ups and downs. I got as high as 9900 ft. at Midway Summit and passed Duck Creek and stopped at Navajo Lake. By the time I emerged at Cedar City I had a scenic, but slower experience.

Driving on I-15 through Arizona I passed through Virgin River Gorge. This is a beautiful, spectacular stretch of road, but even at that late hour it was over 100 degrees. I got to the Virgin River casino hotel at what was 8:15 due to the time zone change, so I thought that I had some time to use the buffet that closed at 10. I got a first-floor room and after waiting for a lady to move her car from the front of my room, I tried to plug in my car, but came up about 1 ft. short.
After I was seated at the buffet I was told that I had only 20 minutes to eat because they were closing. Apparently, the buffet stayed on Mountain Time. Probably a blessing in disguise since it limited my eating, but I felt robbed of the benefit of the buffet.

November 6
Got up early and swam in the hotel outdoor pool. Even then it was in the80s. After the swim, I checked out the breakfast buffet. No one stooped me so I just sampled some eggs and ice cream, which I did to get to eat the prior night. I got out by 9:15 and stopped for gasoline at the same station we had stopped on the way up 8 days earlier. The tank read 416 miles and it was only 366 miles to LA so I tried to drive straight through. I had to stop to go to the bathroom in Barstow, CA. and while there I refilled my water bottles with ice. It was over 100 degrees all the way home until I got near to LA. When I got home I parked at a charging station and immediately headed to the ocean to immerse myself in the cool waters.