Arizona Vacation: Day 1

Wednesday started very early for us as we prepared to head to Arizona for a few days of vacation. The alarm went off at 3:00 AM and we all stumbled out of bed, more or less. Everyone got dressed and we packed our luggage into the van. The drive to Philadelphia was uneventful and we made it to the car dealer/off-site parking place in plenty of time. We were dropped off at the airport, got our luggage checked and headed off to the TSA screening line.

It was then that we realized we had contraband - four 6 oz. containers of yogurt! We knew that we'd have to eat it quickly and toss the evidence before we got to the x-ray machines. Of course when we got there there were no trash cans, and the lady running the machine was not pleased that we were handing her our trash. Oh well....

Our first flight left Philly at around 5:40 AM, headed for Houston. I watched the movie ("Dream Girls") while Randee and the boys slept. After that, I listened to some music on my Palm Tungsten E2 for a while. When they made the announcement that all electronic gear needed to be turned off, I put the Palm in my backpack and prepared for landing.

We had hit headwinds on the way to Houston, so our plane landed late, closer to 8:45 AM than our scheduled time of 8:07 AM. We hustled off the plane and headed for our next flight. Along the way we grabbed some food from one of the "restaurants" in the airport to eat on the plane. We got on the plane, settled into our seats and chowed down. While the plane was taxiing out to the runway, I reached into my backpack to get out my Palm. It wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere. Apparently, when I was putting it into the backpack, I missed and the Palm fell silently to the floor. Sigh....

Once I convinced myself that I shouldn't let this ruin my vacation, I asked Mark (who had the window seat) if he wanted to try tracking our flight with my Garmin eTrex GPS. He thought it would be neat, and once we got a fix he clipped the Garmin to the window shade, where it pretty much stayed until we got to the gate in Tucson. We took a few pictures along the way like the one on the left. We didn't start tracking until a little after take-off, and there were some drop-outs, but we managed to track most of the path from Houston to Tucson.

At the Tucson airport we picked up our baggage, got our rental car, and headed off to the Westward Look Resort. The Westward Look seems to be one of the few resorts in the area that doesn't have a golf course. However, it certainly does have a nice view to the west.


We relaxed by the pool for a bit, and then we decided to take a trek out to Mt. Lemmon, attempting some geocaching along the way. We didn't find the cache, but we did take in some nice scenic vistas on the way up the mountain. The road was very twisty, but nothing to worry about if you stayed at or below the posted speed limit (which was 35 MPH for most of the route). After driving up the mountain for about an hour (and hitting 9000 feet elevation) we decided to head back.

Randee and I had dinner at the resort's restaurant while Eric and Mark had cheesburgers in the room. This was about 9:00 PM local time, which was midnight for us. Quite a long day considering we started at 3:00 AM. Needless to say, the boys were a bit frazzled at this point and were quite happy to eat dinner while vegetating in front of the TV. We ended the day all watching "Whose Line is it Anyway" (the US version) and pretty much passed out by 10:30 PM. All-in-all, it was a pretty good day.

For anybody who likes to look at other people's vacations pictures, they are living over at flickr.

Technorati Tags: Vacation, Diary, Tucson, Arizona