And then came Moab. . .Utah, that is.

The name Moab is a Biblical name for a land just short of the Promised Land.

The Moabites were historically regarded as the perpetual enemy of the Israelites, "God's Chosen People." Physically, the region was a green, verdant valley in the middle of a serious desert; an emerald in the sand, so to speak. Because of those similarities, our little town was dubbed Moab by Mormon settlers in the 1800's.

                                                                           -- Moab-Utah.com

Sunset in Moab, Utah

Our heart rates were finally returning to normal after traveling that breathtaking section of roadway through the Monument Valley. We were headed to Moab (MOE-ab), Utah our own ‘Promised Land’ where after an eight-hour day on the road, we were ready for our two night stay in this small town. We were heading to the Fairfield Inn and Suites, just outside town near Arches National Park for this segment of our Southwestern road trip.

Fairfield Inn is dwarfed by the surrounding cliffs - Moab, Utah

At the time we decided to stay there – about two days in advance of the trip -- we didn’t know much about this small town of less than 10,000 residents nestled tucked in alongside the Colorado River in Southeastern Utah. But a bit of on-line research had convinced us it was time to visit – and to give ourselves an extra night there.

Colorado River, Moab, Utah

During the 1800’s the area around what is known as Moab served as the Colorado River crossing along the Old Spanish Trail. That 700-mile-long trail is a historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California.

Moab Valley

The downtown, as with most tourism-oriented towns, is lined with galleries, restaurants and gift shops. There are dozens of retail outlets that focus on the out-of-doors, from selling gear for outdoor adventures to offering tours. The area is an outdoors paradise with whitewater rafting and kayaking on the Colorado River, canoeing on the Green River, mountain and road biking, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking and camping.

Working up a hunger and thirst:

The lone food truck in Moab, Utah

With only a single full day we packed as much into it as we could: a visit to Arches National Park, and during the afternoon we tried out the hotel’s pool area and then headed into town to explore its many stores and find a place for dinner. (There is no end to the food options.)

Moab - Margaritaville, Utah!

We chuckled at the headline in one of their tourist publications: “How to Get a Drink. . .in Moab, Utah”.  As it was a question that had crossed our minds as we set out on this route.

Utah, with its Mormon population and influence has long been recognized by travelers as a place than can be difficult to find and consume alcoholic beverages. But the times are changing even in this ‘dry land’.  The Moab Brewery – yes, a real micro-brewery in downtown Moab – is the only place in town you can buy full-strength beer to go.  Beer with an alcohol content of 3.2% can be purchased at food stores and convenience stores.

The Utah State Liquor Store is the only retail outlet that sells bottled liquor, wine and beer with an alcohol content above 3.2%. You don’t find the beverages with that alcohol content and above in grocery stores.

However, Moab now has two local wineries:  Castle Creek Winery, located at Red Cliffs Lodge, 15 miles from town on Scenic Highway (The River Road) and Spanish Valley Vineyards, just off Highway 191, south of Moab.  Both wineries have on-site tasting rooms and wine is available for sale.

La Sal Mountains - Utah

With only a day we didn’t have time to drive the scenic loop road that would have provided a close up view of the La Sal Mountains, a part of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, just 20 miles south of Moab. With peaks reaching nearly 13,000 feet this alpine ranges is the second highest range in Utah. We also had to put Canyon Lands National Park a bit to the north on the ‘next time’ list.  But we did visit Arches National Park and that’s a whole post in itself.

As always, the time you spend with us is most appreciated! And another big thank you to those who’ve shared our posts on FB with your friends and family there. Hope to see you back next week.

We’ve just returned to our Stone House on the Hill in Greece where we plan to spend the fall. I know a number of you are waiting for more road trip tales from here so as soon as we finish up with the Southwest trip tips and tales, I’ll tell you about some of what the Peloponnese has to offer! And of course, I've got tales to tell 'from the hill'. Safe and healthy travels to you and yours.

Linking up this week with: 

Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Travel Photo Thursday – 
Photo Friday
Weekend Travel Inspiration

Monument Valley: “Awesome ~ Simply Awesome”

AWESOME – adjective – extremely impressive or daunting,

inspiring great admiration, apprehension or fear.

“Awesome!” responded the young telephone sales clerk when I placed an order for curtains.

“Will that be all?”  We said yes and the young waitress replied, “Awesome!”

Neither of those things were awesome.  But on our Southwest Road Trip we found something that  really was:

Awesome is the Monument Valley that stretched from Northwest Arizona up into Utah.

We revised our route north while in Arizona's “Valley of the Sun” (as the Phoenix area is known), after reading a travel article in the local paper. The area sounded too good to miss - and it was! 

We were barely 25 miles beyond Kayenta, a small ‘census designated place’ of about 6,000 people (not even a ‘town’) in the Navajo Indian Reservation, when we come over a rise in the road and were met with an ‘AWESOME!’ sight – the kind that gives you goose pimples and a shiver even on the warmest of days.

The Monument Valley from Highway 163

We were traveling a stretch of Highway163 that cuts through the vast, remote Monument Valley, a region of the Colorado Plateau famous for its clusters of vast sandstone buttes (the largest reaching skywards for 1,000 feet). This area is part of the 16 million acre Navajo Reservation. The number of outdoor hiking, rafting, horseback riding and camping opportunities are endless. 

There are even two hotels in this somewhat lonesome landscape – The View Hotel and Restaurant and the Monument Valley Trading Post, both just off Highway 163. One warns that because of the remote location, Wi-Fi might be a bit lacking in speed and quality.

Monument Valley straddles Arizona and Utah

The Anasazi, the Ancestral Puebloans, are believed to have settled in this region in 120 BCE; the cause of their disappearance is still being speculated upon by historians. Then came the Navajo culture centuries before the Spaniards arrived in 1581.

Monsoon season made a lush green carpet on the valley floor

The Navajo Visitor Center is about four miles from the highway. As Monument Valley is a part of the Navajo Tribal Park, there is an entry fee required for those who leave the highway and spend time exploring by jeep, hiking or horseback. All tours can be arranged in advance or at the Visitor Center. 
Entry fee is $20 per car with up to four occupants.  National Park passes don’t work here.

Mind-boggling in size and shape - the Monument Valley rock formations

We’d considered staying at one of those two hotels but our last minute itinerary change brought us here the Thursday prior to Labor Day weekend when rooms were scarce and the few that were still available cost many more hundreds of dollars than we wanted to pay. So our 'touring' was limited to the time we spent driving the highway through this wild, usually-sunbaked desert. However, as I told you earlier we traveled in early September at the end of the area's monsoon season which made for lush green landscapes.

Monument Valley - Arizona and Utah

In fact rain clouds skirted past and drizzled on us before we left the area.

A two-lane highway bisects the Monument Valley

Highway 163 is a two-lane roadway – it was nearly empty on this Thursday afternoon.

A mitten perhaps?

The land and monuments are considered sacred to the Navajo. There is something about this place - even just driving through it - that makes you understand why.

Monument Valley

While normally road construction delays are a source of frustration, we welcomed the one we encountered just as we were leaving the area.  It gave us a chance to get out of the car, feel the strong desert breeze that was pushing the rainclouds above us and get one final glance at that magical, no, make that, “Awesome!” place – Monument Valley!

A long and not so lonesome highway leads to Monument Valley

If you are planning a trip here in the near future check out the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park website as it is full of information about accommodations, and guides that have been approved by the Tribe for hire.

Up close and awesome!

Monument Valley is 146 miles from Moab, Utah or 380 from Salt Lake City, Utah, 395 miles from Las Vegas. Rent a car and set out on a road trip – it is one you won’t forget!

Our destination that day was Moab and its amazing Arches National Park - an area that turned out to be equally as 'awesome' as here. We'll tell you about it soon. And, as always, we appreciate the time you spend with us and hope that your travels are healthy and happy ones. 

Linking this week with:

Through My Lens

Our World Tuesday

Wordless Wednesday

Travel Photo Thursday – 

Photo Friday

Weekend Travel Inspiration

South, then North by Northwest – An Autumn Road Trip

“To travel is to live”

- Hans Christian Andersen

It was time to travel.  We’d had the travel itch for days and the suitcases had been in various stages of packing for a few weeks. We’ve been in one place – our Pacific Northwest home – since early May – the bags unpacked and stowed away - an unusually long time to be anywhere for us. It was definitely time to hit the road.

[Sorry about the print size this week. Blogger and Surface don't mix well and makes travel n writing a bit frustrating when it refuses to enlarge the font size.}

A scene from Scottsdale, Arizona

We are kicking off the ‘travel season’ with a trip to the Southwestern United States – Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The road trip began following a flight to Phoenix, Arizona and a week spent living our ‘timeshare life’ there.

Not everyone thinks Arizona in August is the most desirable of destinations. It is still a summer sizzler and it is monsoon season in ‘The Valley of the Sun’ (as the greater Phoenix area is known). But we decided to take a chance on the weather.

An Arizona rabbit that thought he was hiding in the desert

Monsoon season in the desert has an average starting date of about July 7th and ends approximately September 13th. Our visit was near the end of the season which is determined by the number of days with an average dew point of 55 degrees or higher.

Storm clouds threatened but we avoided the Arizona monsoon

The monsoon is a thunderstorm that can sweep across the valley bringing heavy rain, wind and lightening. Flash floods often close roads. It can cause an event called a haboob, an enormous dust storm that can envelope the valley with dust and debris. An advisory handed out at check-in, warned that if a dust or rainstorm should happen while we were outside to move inside immediately. If we were on the road, we were to move well out of the way of traffic. 

How green the desert can be in monsoon season in Arizona

We made it through the week without experiencing a monsoon or haboob, but were excited to leave the desert’s penetrating heat behind us. Daytime temperatures reached  107F and that made outside activities somewhat limited. However, a travel bonus of the desert this time of year is the lush green desert scape that surrounds instead of the dusty barren brown carpet.

Sand dunes in northeastern Arizona

Of course that isn’t to say there weren’t places along our route that reminded us of Egypt’s pyramids (like the dunes in the photo above)  in Northeastern Arizona en route to Moab, Utah. Our ultimate Utah destination was Park City, a popular outdoors destination (home to the 2002 Winter Olympics Alpine and Snowboard events) southeast of Salt Lake City that sits high in the mountains - 7,500 feet elevation, in fact. In the winter skiers and snow enthusiasts flock here; mountain bikers and hikers the rest of the year.

Beginning in Phoenix, AZ then Moab, Park City, UT, and Las Vegas, NV

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”

- Lao Tzu

We’d not planned to visit Moab when we left the Northwest. Half way through our stay in Phoenix we read a newspaper article about Monument Valley and decided it was high time we see it. We cancelled our previously made hotel reservation, switched our route and headed northeast instead of northwest. And decided to spend two nights in Moab, just the other side of Monument Valley.

Mother Nature's canvass in northeastern Arizona

It took eight hours to drive from Phoenix to Moab; much of it on two-lane roads, punctuated with passing lanes every few miles. Elevations changed like a roller coaster, 4000 feet at Flagstaff, then 5,000 then 6,000 by the time we neared Sedona 30 minutes later. We passed or traveled through  towns named Kayenta, Tuba City and Cameron, the latter which proudly proclaimed itself, “Home of the WWII Navajo Code Talkers”.

Afoot and light-hearted

I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me.

    -- Walt Whitman

The desert landscape in Northern Arizona near the Utah border

The hours and miles passed quickly with such an ever-changing and stunning landscape. We congratulated ourselves on changing directions - and not being tied to an itinerary. After a summer of being bombarded with presidential politics on television, it has been good to be reminded of America's beauty, small towns and friendly people. While western Utah reminds us of Arizona’s vast flat lands, the monuments and mountains that make up eastern Utah are simply spectacular. We’ll take you on a pictorial tour of them next week.

Again, thanks for the time you’ve spent with us today. Wishes for healthy and safe travels to you and yours.  We hope to see you back here next week - please bring a friend!  Have you taken a road trip lately? Are you the type to change plans in the middle of a trip or must you follow a set itinerary? Tell us about it in the comments below or shoot us an email.

Linking up with:

Through My Lens

Our World Tuesday

Wordless Wednesday

Travel Photo Thursday – 

Photo Friday

Weekend Travel Inspiration

On the Road Again. . .off to “Play House”

Hail, rain, gray skies and gusty winds – the combination made a perfect send-off from the Pacific Northwest last week as we kicked off the first of our ‘travel season’ adventures.



Pinnacle Peak - Scottsdale, Arizona

 The High Plains Drifters, our nom de blog, when we head to the Southwest set forth on our journey last week. Our destination: our Phoenix/Scottsdale Arizona timeshare homes where we have taken up residence for the better part of this month.

Snoqualmie Pass - Washington State

Our route took us over the Cascade Mountain range then through Yakima and Walla Walla Valleys and past the Tri Cities, in all a nice long stretch of Washington State’s Wine Country.  No time to sample any though as we were headed across the Columbia River and into Oregon before stopping for the night in Baker City, Oregon. A town so charming that it is deserving of an entire blog post - one that will be forthcoming in future weeks.





Statue of Meriwether Lewis seeking directions from local Chief - Capitol grounds Boise

Our second night was spent in Boise, known as the City of Trees -- a most appropriate name for this city, the capital of the state of Idaho. We sliced through the southern tip of the state and headed for Utah.

We took a route through Utah and were blown-away (literally and figuratively) by both its vast beauty and emptiness AND its strong winds! Our third night was spent in southern Utah - Cedar City - where we were awakened by a storm in the middle of the night. The winds howled and shrieked from 2 a.m. on and as we left town we saw signs and dumpsters toppled by the strong winds. Luckily we missed the snow forecast to fall later in the day.

We undertook our journey at a leisurely pace, so we didn’t arrive in Arizona until the fourth day.

Saturday night was spent in Camp Verde, in northeast Arizona so that we could time our arrival in Phoenix to coincide with the early afternoon check-in at the Marriott Canyon Villas, our home for our first week.

Regulars here know that we’ve become sold on the timeshare-vacation-home approach to life.  It allows us to ‘live’ in Arizona in the fall and to move our Hawaiian ‘residence’ in the winter.

Our home - Marriott Vacation Club Canyon Villas - Phoenix, Arizona

Because we traded a studio week that we own at the Marriott KoOlina in Hawaii, we are spending our first week in a spacious one-bedroom condo at its sister Vacation Club here. Next week we will move to our Four Seasons timeshare home.

An Arizona Afternoon

I call our timeshare time, ‘playing house’ because we do spend our days much as we do back in the Pacific Northwest:  time at the gym, time writing, time reading, doing grocery shopping, cooking, doing laundry . . .plain old every day retirement living.

What we don’t do are chores and cleaning, repairs and upgrades – those things are handled by staff. Isn’t that a nice concept? All that in exchange for an annual maintenance fee which we gladly pay!

 In fact this ‘playhouse’ allows us the time to do nothing – a luxury even in retired life. We can hop in the car and take excursions on a whim (the kind we put off in the Northwest because we have chores to do.)

Sometimes we do nothing more than laze at poolside or watch the wild bunnies that scamper through the grounds. . .

. . .and that is far more fun than watching rain and hail fall up north!

On the Road in Nevada

Have you taken any road trips lately? If so where did you go? Let us know in the comments below or shoot us an email.

Happy and safe Travels to you and thanks so much for the time you spent with us today! Hope to see you back again next week! Bear with the looks of the blog until I get the hang of using our new Surface - that we purchased just before the trip. I've not yet downloaded Windows Live Writer so you are seeing a mishmash of blog layout. . .I had another mosaic that I managed to kill out or lose somewhere. . .oh, the joys of technology~

We are linking up with these fun blogs – drop by for some great armchair getaways:

Travel Photo Thursday – Budget Traveler’s Sandbox 
Travel Inspiration – Reflections En Route 
Travel Photo Monday – Travel Photo Discovery 
Mosaic Monday – Lavender Cottage Gardening

Travel Tip Tuesday: How to Hit a Travel Jackpot. . .

. . .or here are some of our latest tips for saving travel dollars.

Our destination earlier this month was Scottsdale, Arizona. So, why then, did we fly to Las Vegas --some 300 miles and a near five-hour drive away – to get there? 

Easy answer: travel deals!

Here is the why and what we did to save some money while extending the trip a few days as well:

Airfare: 

Altered the routing without sacrificing the trip.

The airfare was already significantly less to fly to Las Vegas than to Phoenix when an Alaska Airlines internet promotion offered double airline miles on the Seattle-Vegas route; miles that counted toward frequent-flyer elite status.

Result:  Saved money and earned airline miles by altering our routing.  The mileage assures us that we will be MVP’s in 2014 (which means seat selection advantages, early boarding and best of all, no baggage fees for up to four bags between us!)

Car rental: 

Got more and paid less.

Finding a reasonably priced rental car these days – no matter what the destination – is difficult, especially at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. By flying into Vegas, we also got a much better car rental price than anything we’d found in Arizona. 

The Las Vegas  Fox Rent-a-Car also allowed the addition of a second driver for no additional fee; meaning I could also drive without paying between $140 – $210 extra to do so. Our like-new Toyota Corolla cost $281 for two-weeks. (Upon the return because a computer snafu caused a huge line and much confusion, they refunded $100 of that price as well!)

Result:  We had a round-trip scenic drive that took us past Hoover Dam just outside Vegas and then through the picturesque towns of Kingman and Wickenberg, Arizona.

In addition to loving the wide open spaces through which the route took us, we also had an option of spending a couple of nights in Vegas after returning the car. . .a double win, in our book.



The Unexpected Bonus

So, how many credit cards are too many?

We fly Alaska Airlines almost exclusively and the frequent flier miles earned from this carrier has taken us round-trip to Europe several times on its partner airlines. (Our miles took us round-trip to Amsterdam in Business Class on this KLM flight to the left).

While awaiting our flight back to Seattle last week, we were approached by the “Alaska Airlines credit card man” offering us a signing bonus,you might say, of 25,000 miles, for applying  for the card.


Brushing off his offer, we told him we each already had an Alaska Airlines credit card.  To our surprise, he replied, “That doesn’t matter. . .get another one.  We have people who’ve gotten the maximum – five cards so they can use the companion tickets.”

One of the ways we earn Alaska miles is using their credit card: one mile= $1 in spending.  The other plus of their card is the $99 companion ticket offered each year in exchange for the card’s fee of $75. Those companion tickets come in real handy at times, for example:

The ticket prices to Honolulu, Hawaii in January are enough to topple a palm tree.

The ticket cost for our upcoming trip came up at $882 for the first ticket, $41.56 for taxes and fees; total $924. 

The companion ticket: $99 plus taxes and fees of $39.29 for a total of $138.29. (And for you skeptics out there, even if I add in the $75 credit card fee, the price barely tops $200 – a considerable savings indeed.)

Result:  We both applied for credit cards. We each will receive 25,000 miles (which gets us that much closer to a European flight) and also will have two more companion tickets to use each year.

It has been awhile since I put out a call for tips on travel deals from you.  Have any new tips to share? Add them in the comment section on www.travelnwrite.com or shoot us an email and I will add them in.  And then come back on Thursday when we'll take a hike through the real ‘Old West' !

Red, White and Blue Road Trip

Happy Birthday America!

While citizens and cities drape themselves in our patriotic colors on the Fourth of July – our holiday commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776  – we decided to take ourselves on an armchair Red, White and Blue road trip through America’s West:

Our trip begins  in Seattle, Washington, where sometimes that old song, “The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle. . .” holds true. On sunny days, Elliott Bay, on which Seattle is located,  is pretty blue as well:



Heading east across  Washington, we’ll spend a bit of time in Spokane, where red brick buildings stand tall against a blue sky backdrop.

A walk through the town’s historic district is a glimpse back at a segment of state history.

From there, we’ll go south through Washington’s wheat fields and agricultural lands. Our route takes us through countless small towns like, Rosalia, population about 600.


White clouds flit across those Eastern Washington blue skies providing a backdrop to its mid-century architecture, like the gas station below.

Then we cross the border into Oregon State – our destination  to Wallawa Lake and more hues of white and blue.


Just down the road a splash of red, white and blue wrapped history in the town Wallowa, population 807:

To the west a bit further, near Pendleton, Oregon, we are under those blue skies and white cotton-candy-like cloud formations:

Then south into the  state of Nevada , our route awash with blue and white –

Entering Arizona we see on the horizon a splash of red as the spectacular Vermillion Cliffs Monument area expands before us:

An even more brilliant red is found in the Navajo Tribe’s woven rugs. Artisans continue the tradition of their Native American ancestors as they blend color and design in these works of art. (These were for sale at a roadside restaurant in Northern Arizona.)

Our road trip ends  in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun where even the dessert blooms add to our patriotic palette of colors:

That’s it for this Travel Photo Thursday and for Travel Photo Mondays.  To all of you celebrating the Fourth of July, we hope your day is filled with family and friends and decked out in red, white and blue.

Travel Photo Thursday is at Budget Travelers Sandbox, hosted by Nancie McKinnon, and Travel Photo Monday is  at Travel Photo Discovery created by Noel Morata.

Hope to see you back again for Travel Tuesdays and our WAWeekend (that stands for WAshington)  featuring in-state destinations. If you've not yet become a follower or subscriber, hope you'll do so today!


The Western United States:

Note: This armchair road trip combines photos from three road trips we have taken through the West.