All posts tagged: Travel

Meteor Shower Over the Grand Canyon

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We were fortunate to be staying at the Grand Canyon on the night of August 11-12, when the Perseids Meteor Shower took place over North America.  Had we been at home, we would have lamented the fact that we’d have to drive a long distance to get away from the city lights to hope to have a chance to see the meteors.  However, when Andrew saw a feature while checking his email yesterday, he stopped by the front desk to see if the park was planning anything special and yes! – we were going to be up at 2 a.m. checking out this celestial fireworks display. The Olympics have come along at a bad time for us, because we stayed up until 11:30 p.m. (local time) to see if the USA men’s gymnastic team would hang on to the silver team medal.  (They didn’t, losing in the last event and dropping to the bronze.)  So we got about 2 hours of sleep before the alarm went off, but everyone pulled themselves out of bed, put on …

A Magical Day at Acoma

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Yesterday was magical for the Browns as we visited Acoma Sky City, the country’s oldest continuously inhabited community, on a splendid summer day.  Acoma Sky City is a National Trust for Historic Preservation Historic Site and one of this country’s very special places.  Rising early we arrived at the spectacular Sky City Cultural Center – a center that blends with the land and was designed only after the community held a series of focus groups with tribal members ranging from age 4 to 96.  Every detail at the center has been thoughtfully considered, and we received a top-to-bottom tour from Center Operations Director Randy Howarth.  Randy was our host for the day and saw to it that we got to experience all that Acoma had to offer. Acoma Sky City – the spiritual home of the pueblo – sits on the top of a 357 foot mesa.  We joined a tour group that included some bikers from Belgium who were riding Historic Route 66 from Chicago to LA.  After riding to the top of the mesa, …

Petroglyph National Monument

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On our first day headed west, we spent most of the day in the air getting to Albuquerque, but did arrive in time to walk a bit around Old Town and then visit Petroglyph National Monument; Our time in Old Town was spent eating some good New Mexican food and taking photographs. We’ve included one above by Claire that we all enjoyed. After leaving Old Town, we drove out of Albuquerque a short way to visit the Petroglyph National Monument.  Most readers will know that Petroglyphs are Native American sacred art — images etched in stone that may date from 2,000 – 3,000 years ago according to the NPS brochure.  The landscape itself is amazing.  This is a 17 mile mesa created by volcanic eruptions which left striking basalt boulders.  The images were then etched into these boulders — some 20,000 in all with the majority made 400 to 700 years ago.  On our hike to the top of the mesa, we took countless close-ups of the petroglyphs.  These are wonderful works of art and …