You can imagine my surprise when my sister in law picked up the phone instead. Apparently, at the same time I had my appointment, she had a renal colic at work and fought with tooth and nails to not get delivered into the Dusseldorf North hospital but rather into the one twenty miles south in our hometown. By sheer happenstance her sister was able to pick her up from work and drop her off straight at the emergency ward.

It’s rather apparent that my erstwhile chipper attitude chipped kinda. To say that I was worried was an understatement. After all, it’s only been a year-ish since last time she had to go to the hospital while I was away-away.

Having made the return trip in record time according to Deutsche Bahn timetables I made it to her hospital bed. She didn’t look good at all. They put her on a drip and basically on hold to friday morning as ultrasound and x-rays were without any findings. It figures that tomorrow is a holiday and thus hospital stuff is not up to really taking care of patients unless it is a life or death emergency. Bleargh.

So, there’s nothing but waiting until friday morning for them to give her a healthy dose of contrast agent so whatever there is or isn’t shows up on x-ray. Keeping my fingers crossed for it being ‘just’ a kidney stone….

Bugger it.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

6:10 AM. That’s ten minutes past six in the morning. That’s the time our flight was scheduled out of Phoenix to Chicago.

I leave it to your imagination when we actually had to get up and to the airport, check-in and what not, but let’s just say that bothering with sleep in hindsight was maybe a nice thought, but getting UP wasn’t half as easy as I thought when going to bed, and even back then I didn’t much cherish that particular train of thought. Remind me, why didn’t we take a direct flight???

Anyhow, we were more or less on time and just three hours later in Chicago…where already the weather was changing a bit for the worse. Gusts of wind and pouring rain didn’t give us a good sight from above during landing. But that was only the beginning. Thanks to the whole time-shift thing it was just after 11 AM, our connecting flight to Dusseldorf was scheduled for 4:15 PM, which, admittedly, gave us quite a lot of layover time to kill.

Again, wishful thinking. There was a HUGE storm over the north-eastern part of the US. Which in itself wasn’t that bad. The bad things started happening when we went to the gate to wait there…and they started talking about a slight delay before boarding…and then informed us that all of north-eastern US of A was closed to air traffic courtesy of that storm front. Icing on the cake? The view on the baggage carts next to our plane…in the open. Under pouring rain. Without any cover. Only in Dusseldorf we should learn that our clothing was a bit on the soggy side…and the books we bought sucked up some water as well, but as it were only books we didn’t want to have the trouble of claiming that damage with the airline….seriously, raising a storm over 20 bucks of damage? Ehhh. Ain’t worth it anymore. In hindsight though I am a tad chagrined. In Europe, they have to offer refreshments and food after 3 hrs of delay to the passengers. Neither of which happened and it WAS a Lufthansa flight. Hahummm.

Finally, at about 7:30 pm they let us board and we taxied to the runway. The start was a bit bumpy but alright, Mel soon fell asleep courtesy of her travel medication she’s taking for flights and, well, that was us leaving US airspace.

In summary, we pretty much were taken with Arizona and Utah. Nature’s great over there, but we really have to see if summer is survivable. The area offers job areas beneficial to both of us, let’s see what happens when the economy is getting up again in the US. Having the ability to ‘chill’ in Flagstaff for a bit when the heat and dry periods are getting to us is a definite plus as is the nature that we are totally not used to and which’d provide interesting trips for quite a while with all those National Parks right where we’d live at.

We really have to check out Arizona in summer!

SOON!

Right, so I don’t have it as a headline but write about it in my first paragraph. Contemplating how much of an improvement that is while continuing to write. Ummm. Yeah.

Soooo…today we scheduled the whole morning to explore the historic Downtown of Phoenix. According to the travel guide it’s supposed to be interesting.

Ummm, yeah, true, I should have given that one a good thought, nevertheless, I kinda was surprised. What I kept forgetting was the fact, that Phoenix itself was incorparted in 1881, so finding anything historic from my European kind of view was a bit much to be expected. So here we were at the Historic Heritage Square and saw the Rosson House, built in 1895, a mule barn from 1899 (aka ‘The Carriage House’), and a few other houses built between then and 1923. I’ve lived in older houses than that without getting a sense of history I have to admit. I will not comment on the old outhouse turned garden shed a friend of our family has in his castle in Bolzano. Let’s just say that it’s a castle-castle, medieval and had knights living there before they were made obsolete by gunpowder. You pull up your history books or Wikipedia and get a circa time period and, well, yeah. Didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, so sorry.

Mel and I just looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and headed back to our car after twenty minutes…where we found out that the joke’s been on us. We had to pay 20 bucks for parking, as the lot only took a lump sum from people for the day, you could get a discount though if you’d go to the Science Museum. What the…? So much for historic arrogance and the whole ‘my country is older than yours’ attitude, I wonder if we would have had to pay less if I would have snickered less in favor of being more humble. Instant karma, thank you very much.

What to do with the rest of the day though? We shrugged and decided to explore Phoenix a bit more, just look at the city (cities, it IS more of a sprawl after all) and check out the Ikea. Yes, we are bona fide Ikea addicts, wherever we have to move there HAS to be an Ikea in driving distance for us. Phoenix? Is on our list of possible places to end up at, so yay, Arizona!

The rest of the evening was spent packing, here’s looking at and thanking Mel for excelling at that. even if I jump on my stuff and compress it this way, she still manages to pack more efficient than I do which I don’t get. Magic, that’s the only possible explanation for that. I dunno how she does it, but she does it, so I bow to the Mistress of Packing Optimization. And no, she is not tossing stuff of mine, at least I never noticed. Hmmm. Maybe I should start an item list I check off after returning home from our next trip….just to be on the safe side…

Is it really already time to fly home tomorrow…morning? EARLY flight to Chicago, then a four hour stop-over before returning home to Dusseldorf. Did I mention the WAY EARLY morning already? *shudder*

It has to be said written though, that after all, both Mel and I did succumb to the gambling virus in Vegas. Only difference between us is that Mel lost everything whereas I quit while I was ahead after having successfully doubled what I took with me on my gambling allowance!

Alright, alright, both of us put a dollar in a slot machine, Mel lost her dollar, I won one, big deal…and yeah, it sucked as the only thing I got was a receipt to be taken to the cashier. Stupid machine didn’t even blink, whoop or holler when I one at the spinning reels thingy, it just said that I won. Maybe it would have acted differently if I would have scored the jackpot, didn’t feel inclined to try that though, so…nyah.

Still trying to make up my mind about Vegas. Definitely did not live up to my expectations, so it was a bust for this. But being there, I kinda changed my perspective and came to terms with that place…and think that I’d like to return there eventually. See more shows. Stay at the Bellagio…which better not suck…. we’ll see, we have other places in sight to visit first, especially for our plans to find somewhere to settle down. Which definitely is NOT Vegas, sorry.

Hoover Dam. What can I say there. It’s interesting. Definitely. Quite a feat building-wise…and rather intimidating. I wonder when they will finish that bridge, they’ve been working on that one for quite a while now. We contemplated taking a tour inside, but neither of us had a good feeling about doing it, so….we kinda just got out, took in the scenery, went a tourist-appropriate uhhh and ahh…and got into the car to head on to Phoenix. Yay us!

The whole scenery thing gets a bit repetitive after a while, after all, can’t expect much difference from red, dusty earth, pricklies, the occasional Saguaro and what not, not much variation there….but some odd small…I think they are best called ‘gatherings of houses’, as that’s all they qualify for.

Gosh golly darn, this is a travel day, if you expected a lot of content, I have to disappoint you, sorry. Look somewhere else, i.e. at not a travel day for an interesting read.

More news tomorrow. Promise

First of all, the hotel…as cool and trendy as it might be, is not growing on me. It’s just too crowded, too loud, too..desperate to come across as hip? I dunno, but, maybe it is just too much in a way. Inasmuch as the idea is a nice one, the little parts in itself are nice, the big total though is just to blinky, glitzy, noisy for me. I do kinda prefer the MGM Grand from what I’ve seen outside of their rooms…and have to admit that the Bellagio IS rather nice from the inside. Especially the lobby area with the piano bar just outside of it. Maybe I am too old for the NY, NY? Or just too petty burgeois, who knows. And no, don’t comment on it, thank you.

We scored tickets for Ka, the Cirque du Soleil show in the MGM Grand for a rather good price, still a heckuva lot of money though. Thus having made arrangements for our evening, we decided to go exploring. Man, it’s hot in Vegas during daytime…and it’s not even summer. Sheeeesh. We decided to hop on the bus and take a ride down to the ‘historic’ part of Vegas, yanno, the stuff you know from the older movies like the Golden Nugget and what not. It is a bit…I wouldn’t quite call it scary, but compared to the strip it feels a bit less save. More exposed and more…uhhhh.. no, I doubt I’d like to walk around there past nightfall as we did do yesterday around the NY, NY. It looked more authentic though in a casino kinda way, still, even here all the old one armed bandits were converted to the fully electronic kind with dollar bill and card slots, no quarters here, either. Feh. I swear, I am a seventy year old trapped in the body of a guy in his mid-thirties. Shaddup, you whipper-snappers!

The hike back to the hotel was a mix of getting back into the bus to the beginning of the strip, then hopping from shade to shade while looking at all the different hotels and then taking a train for one station back to the MGM Grand. The Bellagio really is growing on me, the Venetian did look kinda nice. Caesar’s Palace, I dunno, I expected more from it. Yeah, we were there during the week, so I guess all casinos were not at their peak, still. Treasure Island, hahumm…Paris? Puh-lease.

Seriously, what peeved me though all over the place was the fact that you nowhere really could get into the/a game. I wanted to first take a good look-see at a table, at the people playing there and at the guy hosting the game before I sat down and whipped out my wallet. I didn’t want to spend much on gambling, hence my wish to scour a bit first. But to no avail. People were odd, giving you weird looks when you walked by and….I dunno, not much for the vibe-thing but I always got the feeling, wherever I was, that this ain’t the right table for me. Blah. Figures, go to Vegas and don’t gamble a cent. Feh.

The Bellagio though…geeez. I could have just spent more time there. Screw the gambling, give me a table in the piano bar, give me a good player and I spend my time there nursing my drink of choice, thank you very much. That’s what I could get used to. People watching, there’s been quite a lot of opportunity for that in the lobby area, enjoy decently played music and nurse a drink, yeah, that sounds like me. They even had a good sample of virgin drinks on the menu, so, yeah, just the spot for me.

The more time was going by though and the closer the time for us to head to Ka though came, the more I started dreading it. I read up a bit on the whole show stuff and wasn’t quite sure that this was really my cup of tea. Plus, yeah, I was really looking forward to seeing some typical shows like…I dunno, Mr. Las Vegas maybe or Penn&Teller or another decent Illusionist, sadly though the shows were either sold out or the people dared to not be in Vegas but being on tour. Here’s looking at you, Penn, Teller and Newton….

Arriving at the queue in front of the theater…rather standing in line just shy of opening the doors, we were aghast to find out that they were rather adamant about not taking cellphones and cameras into the theater and them evicting people with items like these even only found on them, because we had a small snapshot camera and a cellphone with us. Time was too short to return to the hotel and we were just hoping that they’d leave us alone…which they did, even tough they were looking inside the bags. Whew. That would have sucked.

The show itself? REALLY knocked me out of my socks. Amazing. I get why having a theatre built for a specific show might be a good thing now. Before, I thought it a bit over the top, but coming out of it, it was just that good. What can I say, it did kinda turn around my whole experience of Vegas. Where before I would have happily left the place and not be bothered with having to watch one of the Cirque shows, I now was cursing my luck for not having the chance to stay a few more impromptu nights to accomodate MORE shows into our schedule.

Alas, it is getting a tad late. Mel is already in going-to-bed mode, we both forgot to have dinner though, so I guess I will scavenge for something to eat and drink, likely just a bunch of pretzels (healthy…*cough*) and pop for both of us, then some TV and mentally preparing for the drive back to Phoenix tomorrow morning. Hoover Dam. I am kinda looking forward to that one.

So…Good night, Vegas! You suck significantly less than you did last night…actually…I might even come to like you in a kind of way I am not too sure yet about….

More tomorrow

Finally, it was time to walk Balu. Which we had to do all by ourselves, as he has no run mates plus the only other dog that had no run mate, Cabbie, well, let’s just say they don’t get along at all. Being the gentleman I am, I let Mel go first with Cabbie, then followed her after a few minutes, giving her enough of a head start. Boy, was he great to walk. Uber-attentive, I didn’t even have to ask him to heel, he was just perfectly at my side. There were quite a lot of bunnies and little lizards on the path. Instead of barking and chasing after them though, he just froze and nudged his noise their way to get my attention. He must be under the impression of being a pointer dog in addition to being an uber-sized lap dog. Man, it sucks so bad that we neither have the time, nor the space nor the jobs to take him along with us. I am sure our cats would love him and vice versa. Especially Mel’s cat could sleep on top of him and would look just absolutely cute. Ah well, wishful thinking.

Only too soon lunch time came up, which in turn meant that we’d have to leave soon. Lunch at Best Friends was really good, even though it was vegetarian. The only chance to get meat there is by bringing it yourself to the camp grounds…or be of the four legged variety. A quick run to the gift shop left us with some more souvenirs…and all of a sudden we were back on the road, leaving Utah behind us.

Mt Zion National Park…impressive, as for a change you do not look down into the Canyon, but look up from the bottom of one. Again, a totally different color scheme…and quite a few more photo ops. Which I gladly took. Don’t tell me you’re surprised.

Eventually, we made our way into Nevada and approached Las Vegas.

Let me say this. It is a weird sight when you are still 30 miles out of Vegas and already see the silhouettes of the casinos ahead. And after a few days in a rather rural setting, the difference to the politely put lively atmosphere in Vegas was a tad overwhelming.

Now the hotel…hmmm. We had a reservation for a room with strip view. When checking in, we were offered an upgrade for 30 bucks a night for a spa suite, i.e. a larger room with a jacuzzi in it. We were all for it before we learned that we then would have no strip view anymore. We COULD upgrade to a penthouse suite in order to get both but…ummm. No, don’t even bother contemplating the cost for THAT upgrade. So we kept our initial reservation, after all, we both were tired and glad to finally get out of our shoes and simply kick back.

The lift next to the lobby took ages to arrive. And was full. The next one took even longer… and had a bellhop with his car thingy and a … woman in it. I use the label woman as broadly as possible. Think Paris Hilton as a brunette. both IQ-wise and with the same amount of luggage. We lost braincells while sharing the ride with them. Seriously, she chewed the ear off of the bellhop with a display of dimwitted conversation that we were glad when we arrived on our floor.

The room…was spacious, yeah. But apparently our definition of strip view did not match the one the hotel had. We could see the street in front of the hotel, the MGM Grand, and the Excalibur, but that was that. The upper side of the strip was completely blocked by the rest of the hotel. Oh…and I forgot to mention the rollercoaster…just in front of our window. It sure as heck was no quiet room. Sadly though, both Mel and I were too tired to treck down to the lobby again and raise hell with the clerk. In hindsight, we should have taken the, likely more quiet, spa suite.

We did force ourselves though to head out one more time, first to see the fountains of the Bellagio…which were apparently ruined forever for me thanks to the Mentos/Coke fountain clips online…as this was the first thing crossing my mind when the show started. GAH!

Heading back, we figured that dinner’d be a good idea and finally settled on Gallagher’s, an up-scale steak restaurant at the New York New York. I went for a Sirloin steak, their signature, Mel opted for the Filet Mignon. Gosh golly darn, we did have a bill of about 104 dollars, but I am rather reluctant to ever eat steak again, mine was just THAT good.

Another walk through the casino/restaurant part of the hotel…and we decided to call it a day, we really were worn out. Tomorrow though, we’d explore Vegas. Right now? We figured it a mistake to come to Sin City. The hotel sucked, the city was too fake and loud and what not…and we had too much fun in Kanab. 

A quick sum-up: A big ‘Thank You’ goes out to my buddy Marc for telling me about this place. Soooo worthwhile…

The trip there took us a measly 80 minutes, which is really nothing. At least distance wise. The way there though…oh boy.

We went from 39F to 86F, from 5.000 Feet to 9400 Feet and it was just oh so special.

The colors…unbelievable. I am excited to have some of them on camera though and am rather eager to share them. Especially after having them under my worktools for a bit to enhance some of them colors even more.

I’m afraid I really can’t blog too much about this, in fact I am almost finished, but it’s like describing a picture in words alone…and in art class I’ve been never good at that. It’s to be looked at, not talked about, as words can’t do it justice. So…take a look at the Gallery?

Dogtown

It’s beautifully located here in Kanab, Utah, in Angel Canyon. What I didn’t know is that Kanab is kinda Utah’s little Hollywood. A lot of classic Westerns, both movies and series, were shot here. Some even in Angel Canyon.

The tour we got was interesting, but I was looking forward to walking dogs through this place too much to really enjoy the tour that much…rather give it the attention it justified. Alright, at one of the cat houses we stopped at, I was kinda recruited by Vane, who waited for everyone else to walk past before making his presence known and demanding my attention…which I happily obliged

Unfortunately, as today is Sunday, the Cafe was closed robbing us of the chance to lunch with those people we saw on TV and who kinda inspired us to drop by on our trip and volunteer. Ah well. Soon lunch time was over, and we went to the Dogtown HQ for volunteer registration.

I didn’t get to go to Old Friends, as they already had enough volunteers for the day, so instead we just filled in where they needed us. When we arrived, we were told that all the dogs were already walked…and now it’d be too hot to walk them again anyway. If we’d feel like doing anything else?

While silently muttering into my beard and letting Mel doing the talking though, I noticed an intense stare though from one of the runs. A huge, fluffy German Shepherd mix was looking at me with his amber eyes. Just that. Looking. When I returned the stare, he got up, split his mouth into a huge doggie grin and started wagging his tail. ‘Do the dogs need grooming?’ I interrupted the Caregiver and Melanie, and, sure enough, minutes later found myself with a brush in the single dog run occupied by that shepherd mix, aptly named ‘Balu’.

We really got along, I brushed enough hair out of his fur to make a Jack Russel out of it…and he loved every minute. Man, if we’d live in the US, this’d be my dog, no doubt about it. He can Sit, Shake, Stay, Speak and a whole bunch of other tricks, he’s three-ish years old and convinced he’s a lapdog. And those eyes…just amazing.

So. Tomorrow, we head to another Canyon to look at…but Tuesday morning? I’m going to see Balu again. In a spur of the moment decision, I volunteered us (thanks, Melanie!!) for another half day and guess who gets to be walked by yours truely. We do have one piece of luggage still free for the flight back…but sadly, that ain’t gonna happen.

Man, I wish it were Monday night already…