Spring and Summer 2016

Before we left Surprise for the summer we visited the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale.  This is a huge place and is rated as one of the 10 best museums in the US.  (I am aware of some schools that could have donated instruments to this museum but they were still in use.)  We spent hours here and could have spent days.  One exhibit had several instruments made by Stradivarius.  The last “Strad” that was sold at auction went for $12.5 million. When entering the museum, they gave us a device to clip on our belt.  We plugged our headphones into it and when we approached an exhibit the TV would show the instruments in use and we could hear them on our headphones along with other commentary.

















When we left Surprise we made our way to Southeastern Utah where Hovenweep National Monument is located.  This monument protects the ruins of buildings constructed around 900 to 1300 AD.



















































Southern Utah is one of our favorite places in the entire US.  It is desolate, unpopulated, beautiful and full of Indian ruins, rock art panels and bare rocks.  I like rocks.  I find them infinitely interesting.  Whether they are small enough to fit in your hand or are the size of a mountain range, every rock has a story to tell.


Near Mexican Hat, UT the Colorado River runs at the bottom of this canyon.






Yes, we have traveled the road below these cliffs.





Sometimes, getting to an overlook, ruin or rock art panel is a lot of the fun.













We were going to stay near Bluff for a few days.  We ended up staying two weeks.  Things like the ruins below would not let us leave.





Just Rocks






Comb Ridge runs for over 100 miles, starting in northern AZ and disappearing into a mountain range in  UT.





On the road to River House Ruins near Bluff.

































The San Juan River











Rock art has been dated from 7000 years ago to just a few hundred years. Many different years’ work can be on the same panel and newer work was sometimes added over older work.  No one knows what the meaning or purpose was.


























Along the trail to the ruins




















This area is called The Valley of the Gods.















Near Blanding, UT







Standing on top of Comb Ridge












One of our pastimes, when we are not running around in our Jeep, is reading.  I just finished a book about traveling in Australia.  I learned that they have 14 different kinds of poisonous snakes, one of which has poison 50 times more powerful than a cobra.  They have many different kinds of poisonous spiders.  The bite of one can kill a person in 15 minutes. They have crocodiles that are so large that they attack small boats to see if they can dislodge lunch.  If that does not work they will lie along shore, waiting for someone to walk by.  They have two kinds of jellyfish that make you wish you were dead if they sting you; and if the jellyfish are not there, the sharks are.  And last but not least, and I am not making this up, they have GIANT EARTHWORMS. These can be 10 FEET LONG and 6 INCHES IN DIAMETER.  They are so large they can be heard moving through the ground. They even have a giant earthworm museum.

If I had a trip to Australia scheduled, I could not get to a phone fast enough to cancel it.

But, I digress.  I will continue our trip to Utah and beyond in my next post.

Fall 2015

We decided to do a little sightseeing before we started our cruise.  We stayed at a RV park just north of Galveston, TX and after a bit of wondering around, we found the Johnson Space Center.

On our tour of the Center we saw the control room that was used for the first man on the moon mission.  It is no longer used but it is now a national landmark.


In this room is a mock-up of the space station that is used to train the astronauts that are going there.












The Saturn 5 Rocket:  it is difficult for me to imagine anyone having the courage to sit on top of this thing when it fired up.








One of the things Galveston is known for is its old mansions.

















It was time for our cruise.  Actually, we went on 3 separate cruises, one 4 day cruise and two 7 day cruises.  All were round trip out of the Houston/Bayport cruise terminal.  During all the cruises, we visited only one port more than once.  We stopped in Cozumel two times.  Our main objective on these cruises was to visit the Mayan ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula.  We were able to tour 5 of them.

Chichen Itza   A world heritage site.











There is not much doubt about what happened on this platform.  Notice that each of the skulls is different.


This is one side of one of their large ball fields.


This is the target that the teams would try to get the ball through.  Very little is known about the rules of the game.  The one thing that is known is that it was the captain of the winning team, not the captain of the losing team, who had the “honor” of visiting the platform shown in the picture above.











Chacchoben












Coba Maya






Small ball field with sloping sides.














One of our ports of call was on the Island of Roatan.  It has no Mayan ruins but it is a pretty place.


This small island was reserved for cruise ship passengers.




An example of why you should choose your cruise line carefully.


Back on the Yucantan Peninsula.  Altun Ha















Tulum 






This is a photo of our guide holding up 3 photos of the sun seen through windows during the spring and fall solstices and in mid summer.




























I can’t resist throwing in two sunset pictures, taken just in front of our winter quarters.





Where are we off to next?  Perhaps a trip down a river in Europe.