Late last year and into this one, I had been sharing with people our ambition to take 25 vacations away from Phoenix in 2022. More than one person, on hearing this, asked for details and then said something that left me feeling that they had diminished the idea of vacations: “Oh, so you mean weekends away too.” Well, that’s obviously been nagging at me, hence this blog post.
What I’m doing is sharing one image from each day of those “weekend” trips that, to me, are vacations, albeit mini-vacations. The first photo, from January 7th, is of us crossing into California. The following image was taken at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. After the museum, we headed to a botanical garden we’d never visited and then had a seafood dinner sitting next to the harbor in San Pedro.
We may have had to drive home to Phoenix on this day, but there was still time to tour the La Brea Tar Pits Museum and the Hammer Museum. We even had time to catch lunch (and ice cream!) in Little Persia.
Two weeks later, on January 21st, we were on our way out of town again, this time passing through Nevada on our way to Death Valley National Park. Dinner was at the famous Crowbar Saloon in Shoshone, California, and we ended the night with a dip into the hot spring-fed pool near our hotel also in Shoshone, just outside the park.
Today, Saturday, was all about the long drive out to Racetrack Playa to see for ourselves the sailing rocks that mysteriously move across a dry lakebed. We’d waited years for this opportunity. We also had time for a stop at Badwater Basin and another one at Ubehebe Crater.
If you thought we needed to race back home, seeing it’s Sunday, you’d be wrong. We took a drive on the Twenty Mule Team Canyon Road, and Caroline got her Junior Ranger Badge for Death Valley. We walked out on the salt flat and even had time to visit Salt Creek, where we took our second long walk of the day. A late lunch was had with a bunch of donkeys in Beatty, Nevada.
Another two weeks pass, and then, on February 4th, we find ourselves at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in time for sunset with a luxurious dinner at the El Tovar restaurant.
Looking into the abyss after our picnic lunch on a remote corner. We walked 11 miles of trails today here at the Canyon, making for a perfect Saturday.
Breakfast at El Tovar, a five-mile walk out to the South Kaibab Trailhead, lunch back at El Tovar, and then we headed for the exit. This view is from Navajo Point at the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon, the last photo taken on this Sunday.
If it’s February 18th, this must be Douglas, Arizona, down on the Mexican border. After checking into our historic hotel, we went for dinner, and on the way back, not the same way we walked to the restaurant, we stumbled into Art Car World, where, although they had just finished hosting a private event, we were graciously invited in for a quick private tour.
It was a tough choice as to which photo I’d share for this Saturday, but the classic beauty of the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas just had to find a spot in this post. After a tour of sightseeing in town, we headed up a dirt road that brought us out to the Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge and a hike to an old mining operation. From there, we mosied over to Whitewater Draw, where we gawked at 10’s of thousands of Sandhill cranes; they were an astonishing sight.
After breakfast at our hotel, we revisited Art Car World to get a closer look at the cars before heading north with the hope of seeing more Sandhill cranes. Our destination was the Willcox Playa, which you see Caroline walking towards. Sadly, this place was bone dry and may not have had a single bird of any kind, but the views out here made it all worthwhile.
This brings us to this past weekend, starting on April 1st. You might notice that skipped over our nearly two weeks down in Mexico, but this post is about weekends only. We stopped in the ghost town of Desert Center, California, and learned that it was the place where Kaiser Permanente effectively got its start. We are on our way to Los Angeles.
Saturday started with an amazing breakfast at La Republique on La Brea before we walked over to LACMA for some art browsing. Lunch was at Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant, followed by shopping at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Santa Monica, a twilight walk at Venice Beach, ending the night with us witnessing our first Sideshow/Takeover when the intersection in front of our hotel was illegally blocked so a bunch of young people could have a 15-minute party watching muscle cars performing donuts as bystanders jumped from danger and even courted it by gathering in the center of the intersection.
It’s Sunday, April 3rd, and the end of another weekend, but before we go home, we walked across the street from our hotel to the Sun Nong Dan Korean restaurant for breakfast and then drive out to San Marino to visit the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Seeing that we were conveniently located in the north of Los Angeles, it was an easy drive east to Glendora for fresh strawberry donuts from the Donut Man before snagging lunch and coffee for the drive home to Phoenix, Arizona.
Four weekends, fifteen days, and a load of incredible experiences that sure seem to be the ingredients of great vacations in our book.