Vive la FrugalMoon
It is probably with a small amount of confusion that you, our (small group of) loyal readers, are viewing this posting. First, you may be asking yourselves -- "I thought they had given up on blogging already, why are they putting us through the agony of reading yet another FrugalMoon posting?" Answer: we don't have one. Second, you may be asking yourselves -- "Is that the Eiffel Tower in the background of the video that they posted below?" Answer: below.
In any case it's been a while. First we were going to do a entry around the New Year, with highlights from our trip to Quebec City right before Christmas. But we got lazy, so we didn't. First, a brief update on our lives. Alison is in her second semester in the MsW/PhD program at the Boston College School of Social Work. She is enjoying being back in school, although it has been quite an adjustment from working for the last few years and traveling. Benny is working at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and then in the fall he will begin as a student full time at Northeastern University School of Law. In our personal lives, not much else is new, except that we are still enjoying our new roles as Uncle Benny and Aunt Alison to our beautiful, intelligent, wicked smaht, cute, (and funny!) niece Ella, who we are excited to see in a few weeks for Passover.
But now, for the explanation of the Eiffel Tower. For Ali's spring break from BC we took a week long vacation to the Southwest (Nevada, Utah, and Arizona). After traveling for 5 months, we were afraid that a week-long vacation would feel short. Luckily the vacation felt like it went on forever--in a good way. We flew into Las Vegas, and the next morning left for Zion National Park. For those of you who were misguided enough to actually keep up with our blog from our world travels, you would know that we spent a large portion (although not all) of our time in cities and towns, both big and small. So despite having spent five months traveling, going to US national parks gave us the opportunity to see the types of wide open spaces and grand vistas that we were not always able to see abroad.
What we were not prepared for on this trip was the cold. Although we certainly didn't expect hot weather in mid-March in the high altitudes of the Southwest, were were at least hoping for warmish weather, and decided to splurge on a convertible to enjoy it. However, the morning we left Zion and began driving to Bryce Canyon National Park, it was clear that we were not going to get the type of weather that we were hoping to. Picture us, driving along the highway in our little convertible through a snow storm. When we got to the town of Bryce, UT, virtually everything was closed, except for our hotel (Ruby's Inn) and its restaurant. Because of the snow most of the park (and hiking trails) were closed, so we elected to stay only one day at Bryce. Although our time there was short because of the several feet of snow on the ground, the experience did afford us the chance to see Bryce Canyon's pink and tan cliffs frosted with beautiful white snow.
Because of the cold weather we elected to head south to Arizona (instead of continuing on our original plan to Arches National Park, which was also snowy). We spent the next couple of days in Sedona, AZ. About an hour south of Flagstaff, Sedona is a bit touristy, but a beautifully situated town in the middle of red rock country. We spent our time there trying to take in at least a hike or two a day. Although the evenings were cold, the warm days allowed us to spend most of our time outside enjoying the beautiful surroundings. If you haven't seen our pictures yet from this trip, you should definitely check them out. Also, on a side note, we did manage to catch The Bank Job on this trip. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's a well-executed, entertaining heist movie with a bit more interesting back story than most comparable movies.
We ended our trip with a visit to Grand Canyon. Unfortunately we had only one night there, but we did manage to book a room in the park, which was worth it. We spent our only full day in the park hiking the South Rim Trail, which was amazingly underutilized, with most visitors electing to use the shuttle bus. On the way back from the Grand Canyon we took a detour at Seligman, AZ and instead of driving on the Interstate elected to drive on historic Route 66. We'd be lying if we said it was that interesting or special (maybe the other stretches of the road are more interesting), but a diner with excellent burgers (for Benny) and homemade root beer made the experience worthwhile. After Route 66 we made a brief visit to the Hoover Dam before our final stop -- Las Vegas.
We only spent a few hours in Las Vegas at the beginning of our trip, so at the end of our trip we decided to spend a full day there. After losing close to our entire (small) gambling budget at the blackjack tables, we elected to play at the 5 cent slots, where we actually managed to turn a profit. Other than gambling, we spent our time walking the strip, soaking in the totally absurd architecture (and people), and enjoying our last day of warm weather. For those of you who have suffered and actually managed to read through our entire blog, the Eiffel Tower that you saw in the video was (not surprisingly) in front of the Paris Hotel & Casino on the strip, overlooking the totally tacky (and totally engrossing) Bellagio fountains.
That's it for now -- although we don't imagine we'll get too many complaints if we don't post for a while!
