How I Spent My Spring Break Holiday

I took a week holiday recently while my niece and sister were on Spring Break from school (sis works at an elementary school) and to spend time with Ernesto before he started culinary school.  My first adventure was a short trip "Up North" to beautiful Northern Arizona.  Since I live in the desert region of our state, it's always a treat to go up to the mountains to enjoy the pine trees, and cooler weather (in the summertime).  I took my niece, Emmi, with me (Mum was in Laughlin, Nevada on a trip and sister had a hurting back), so it was just the two of us.  Our first stop was in Sedona, Arizona for a "Pink Jeep" back roads tour.  So fun!  I've done this several times before but this was Emmi's first jeep trip.  When you see pictures of red rocks in Arizona, most likely the photo is from around Sedona.

Emmi and I stayed one night in Flagstaff, Arizona and drove west to Williams, Arizona to drive on the famous highway, Route 66 and to visit the Deer Farm.  Plenty of deer to pet and feed and lots of other animals to see like reindeer, goats, donkeys and a female elk (which is a cow).

An unexpected surprise was the weather -- there was a great snowstorm in Williams and Flagstaff, which was pretty exciting for my niece, who was born in Phoenix and doesn't spend much time in snow at all.  I've enjoyed quite a bit of snow this winter when I traveled for work and had to scrape snow off my rental car windows more than once!  It's not fun to scrape the windows with a credit card when the rental car company hasn't provided you with an ice scraper!

We visited a new tourist spot near Williams called Bearizona, which is a drive-through animal park.  There were lots of animals and lots of snow.  Thank goodness I was driving Ernesto's truck with 4-wheel drive, or we would have been stuck in the snow.  We saw:  Bison, big-horn sheep, wolves, burros, and lots of bears; even tiny baby bears in the incubator in the gift shop.  

 

This fence reminded us of sharpened pencils!

Next we headed back to Sedona and stayed in a fancy Bed and Breakfast, the Adobe Village Graham Inn B and B.  Our suite was HUGE and the view was lovely.  Low clouds and a sprinkling of snow in Sedona, too.

 

When we headed back to the Valley, we had a viewing party with sis, Mum, and our friend Heidi for the season 2 premiere of The Fabulous Beekman Boys on Planet Green channel.  One of our favorite TV shows about two gentlemen farmers who raise goats in upstate New York.  We picked the color RED for our party theme -- everyone wore red and we had a lot of red food (strawberries, tomatoes, red wine, red velvet whoopie pies, etc.).  On a side note, Mum and I went to Sharon Springs, New York last autumn (during our fall foliage road trip) where their reality show is based and we visited their Beekman 1802 mercantile and we met one of the stars, Josh!

Ernesto and I took a road trip on the motorcycle to beautiful Palm Springs, California.  It was about a five-hour drive and we stayed at a small boutique hotel called The Horizon. Built in 1952, it has a cool, swanky, rat-pack feel to it (think Frank Sinatra!). You can see our blue motorcycle in the parking lot in the background to the left of the patio.  The bathroom was glass-enclosed with a privacy wall outside but you still had that feeling of being "on display."  There were two showers, with one being OUTSIDE right next to the privacy wall.  Naturally, Ernesto used that one!  

 

 

We met up with our friends Martin and Benton for a Mexican food dinner and took the tram up the mountain the next morning to see the view.  There are lots of wind turbines for energy around Palm Springs.  I LOVE this city with the San Jacinto mountains close by, the manicured landscaping and the mid-century architecture.  Excluding the wind, it was a great motorcycle trip.

 

The end of my week was participating in our subdivision's community garage sale.  We got rid of tons of stuff and the leftovers went directly to Goodwill.  We made $441, which is pretty amazing since we sold so much stuff at only .25 to $1.  Some guy at one of my previous garage sales years ago told me that "Yard sales are the way we keep the earth in balance because people just keep moving the junk from house to house."