Planes, trains, and buses

I spent most of the last two weeks traveling and as a result have not written about things that I normally write about, things such as meetings of the Commissioners, Park Board, and City Council. I missed the Taste of Jasper County and expected to miss the Birthday Bash for the Pool, but weather has delayed that by a week. Also the concrete structure for the SR 114 bridge replacement was set in place while I was gone.

My travel adventures were with my son and his family on a visit to relatives in Arizona and Nevada. The plan was to take Amtrak from Chicago to Flagstaff, Arizona, spend some time there before traveling to eastern Nevada, spending more time there, then flying from Las Vegas back to Chicago. They invited me to go along to help herd the cats kids. I was surprised to see that the train tickets cost more the the plane tickets.

Our Amtrak adventures got off to an usual start. Flooding had closed a railroad bridge at Fort Madison, Iowa, so Amtrak chartered five busses to take the passengers from Chicago to Kansas City, Missouri where we would board the train. The five busses did not travel as a group but each went its own way. Below is a picture of our bus at its one stop for food on the route.

 We arrived in Kansas City a couple hours later than the schedule and boarded a train. We were in the last car so as the sun rose over Kansas in the morning, I took a picture through the window at the end of the train.

 If the train had been on schedule, we would have passed through most of Kansas at night. But it was behind schedule and we saw much of the state. It seemed that flooding and water had delayed planting there as it had in Indiana.

 We were supposed to arrive in Flagstaff a between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm. Instead we arrived between 2:00 am and 3:00 am. We got a ride to a second son's house and settled in for a few days. We took some day trips. One trip took us to Sunset Crater National Monument and Wupatki National Monument. The latter is shown below. The monument features ruins of ancient Indian dwellings.

Another excursion took us to Sedona. Sedona is much lower in elevation than Flagstaff and as a result is much warmer. One of the tourist attractions there is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, shown below

 Another tourist attraction is a hiking trail at Cathedral Rock.

Sedona relies heavily on tourism and it features some very expensive homes.

 When time came to leave Flagstaff, we headed north to Page, Arizona. Page is about the size of Rensselaer but with a much shorter history. It sprang up as a result of construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. The Dam has tours and we took one. The tour led down to the generating room.

 There is a bridge over the canyon that carries the highway traffic. It looks small from the bottom of the dam.

 Of course we had to stop by the Grand Canyon. We visited the North Rim. The kids were not overly impressed with it. Perhaps if we had spent a few hours of hiking down into the canyon they would have better appreciated just how enormous it really is. Note the people on the unfenced overlook in the picture below. We did not visit that overlook.

 The toilets at the visitors center were out of order so visitors had to rely on a row of port-a-potties. I could not resist a picture.

 From the Canyon we headed north into Utah on the way to Cedar City. We made a quick stop at Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is located about 10,000 feet above sea level. There was still a lot of snow on the ground. This past winter was a very snowy one for the western peaks.

 The kids thought the view below was more impressive than what they saw at the Grand Canyon.

 After Cedar City the next stop was Baker, Nevada, gateway to Great Basin National Park. We were in Baker during its annual Snake Valley Festival, which has a small parade. Below is an unusual piece of farm equipment. The second section is a hay baler. Does any reader know what the piece of equipment that is in front of the baler does? I doubt if there are any in use in Indiana. (Hay is to Nevada as corn is to Indiana.)

 Great Basin National Park is home to Lehman Cave, a small cave that is very rich in cave formations.

On the road to Las Vegas, we stopped by Cathedral Gorge State Park between Pioche and Caliente Nevada. Its badland formations have some fascinating narrow slot canyons that are almost cave-like.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. The kids all said that they preferred the train ride to the airplane ride, which I did not expect. I know my grandkids a lot better than I did two weeks ago.

It will take me a while to catch up now that I am back in town. One interesting item I noticed is that SJC is trying to find a tenant for its Drexel Hall quarters. I am guessing that means that they plan to move their offices onto the campus.