Choosing Our Adventure

  When we left Las Vegas, we headed for the Grand Canyon by way of the Hoover Dam. We stopped at the Dam parking area and walked over the Dam road to use the Dam bathroom.  Yes, we made all the Dam jokes we could.   It really is an amazing engineering marvel from the 1930s.  And very high.  I'm not fond of heights, but the views were neat.   I totally wasn't joking about using the Dam bathrooms.   The two "Winged Figures of the Republic" were exciting to our nerdy kids as they feature in one of Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus books.  In the book they come to life and are named Hank and Chuck.  The kiddos liked seeing them in real life.    After the Hoover Dam we stopped for lunch at a Black Bear Diner.  This is a western states chain, but we had never been to one before.  Our Bear tried to blend in.   We ate large amounts of food and everyone agreed it was a great pit-stop.   T...

  Our original plan for this road trip ended with Disneyland, but as Dad had some leave to use and the kiddos would have a 2-day school week for Thanksgiving break anyway, we tacked on a few more adventures.  First we drove out of California by driving over the San Bernardino mountains.  The winding mountain roads gave us some awesome views.   And we stopped at Lake Arrowhead, which Dad had learned about from a college roommate many years ago and had always wanted to see.  It was a nice spot, but very, very cold.  Especially coming from the beach just a few days ago, the kids were giddy to see the remains of recent snow, but we weren't dressed for that, so we didn't hang around long.    We were thrilled to spend a few nights in Las Vegas staying with the aforementioned college roommate.  Mrs. College-roommate and I have been facebook friends for many years now, but this was our first time meeting in real life.  Homeschoolin...