We hit the road for a week in N. AZ with my parents on the 25th of July.  We left the house at 08:00 in Saturdy and got in to their RV at Mormon Lake Lodge at 17:30 on Sunday.  Usually I do not mind driving at night but the US desert south west is my favorite place on the planet and I didn't want to miss anything so we stopped on Saturday evening in Las Cruces.  We left Las Cruses early on Sunday morning to finish the 1200+ mile drive.  It was an incredible drive. Beautuful scenery and 1:1 time together. We did have one tragedy though.  A Road Runner hopped into our lane and stood there staring at us just a bit too long to make his escape.  There was much mourning of the Road Runner comming from my wife's seat. I think that particular bird missed the day in school when they went over the Runner lessons.  A quick thud and then my rear view mirror filled with a cloud of feathers.  I felt pretty bad about the bird's demise. I am a bird guy.

On the 30th we celebrated our 26th anniversary.  I had not thought about it but it was pretty neat celebrating our anniversary in the State where we met.  Our son called from Germany in the AM to wish us a happy anniversary.  He sounded great. He has been in a great place personally for quite some time now.  That makes this dad very happy. 

We spent Monday all over Flagstaff and the surrounding forests revisiting all of mom and dad's college haunts.  Pretty cool since I remember some of them though from the perspective of a 4yo. Most of the day was spent crawling around the National Forest roads looking for the lava tube that used to be called Government Cave.   Everyone we spoke with looked at us like we were crazy.  As it turned out, only the old timers know anything about Government Cave.  It was renamed River of Lava Cave some time after my parents finished university and left N AZ.  We found it.  But... the rangers would not let us go in due to the Covid shut down.  What was cool about that is that the two rangers spent over an hour doing Q&A with my parents over the history of the cave and different stuff my parents experienced there in the 60s when it was just a cave in the woods that few people knew about.  Mom had an old pic of dad and I walking into the mouth of the cave and showed it to the rangers.  That got the Q&A back in the day stories rolling.  That happened several times during the week we were there.   Towards the end of the day we spent several hours with the USGS branch chief in Flag as dad and mom showed him different sites on terrain quadrangle maps.  I had some major young kid flash backs several times during the week.

 Dad worked for USGS during the Apolo program while he was in Engineering school so much of the trip was spent hunting down the test site locations where the USGS team, including dad,  trained the Astronauts using space suits, the lunar lander and lunar rover mock ups and the mobile moon labratory which USGS built in Flagstaff.   

On Tuesday we dropped down Oak Creek Canyon into the Verde Valley and then up Mingus Mountan to Jerome.  One of our favorite places due to the history and incredible views.  On the way back to Mormon Lake we stopped at Montezuma's Castle to see the cliff dwellings.  I remember climbing all over it when I was a young kid and had a number of fun times there when I was a college student in Flagstaff in the early to mid 80s.  Now it is a controlled site and you can't get closer than a hundred yards to it.  Still a cool place.  Unfortunately the Montezumas Well site is closed due to the Covid crisis.  The two sites are a few miles apart.  The Well is actually my favorite of the ancient native dwelling sites in the Verdy Valley. 

Dad is NAU class of 68 so we have some notable family history in the region.

On Wednesday we ran out to the South rim of the Grand Canyon.  Dad nor I were really interested due to visions of teamings millions of tourists which has been the norm for the South Rim for decades.  But ...... my wife really wanted to go and mom and my wife are two peas in a pod so off we went.  It turned out to be a great day.  There was just about no one there due to Covid.  At a time of the year when their would be multiple hundreds of thousands of people there on any given day there were only a hundred or so in the entire park. It was surreal.  It was great for the 4 of us to share that experience without having to fight the teaming millions for a spot to see the beautiful scenery.  We even walked right in for lunch in the lodge.  That never happens. I was able to slip away to corner a Native artist and buy some beautiful jewelry for my bride for our anniversary.  The native jewelers are some incredible talented people.  I got a signed one of kind set of ear rings and a neclace for my bride.  

On Thursday, our anniversary, mom took a down day so dad, DW and I went on a 4X4 adventure to hunt down the test site that was set up on the SP crater lava flow for astronaut training.  Unfortunately I shredded a tire on the razor sharp lava so we had to limp back to Flag on the spare and spent half the day at Discount Tire getting the replacement mounted. They had one in stock that was a match to the other three but the wait for an appointment behind what was easlily 50 people having tire problems was draining. We got back to the RV with barely enough time for dad and I to get showered to de-grunge after the great tire changing in the desert debackle and make the reservation time for our anniversary dinner.   It was a spectacular meal.  Mom and dad hosted us to selebrate our anniversary.  I know I have mentioned that I won the parent lottery, and I truly have.  It was a great night.  The jewelry was a hit by the way.

Friday was a repeat of Thursday.  Mom was not feeling well and wanted another down day so dad, DW and I headed back to SP crater to search out the mysterious lava road to the lunar landing test site.  Having proven that the OEM tires on our Jeep were not up to lava we took dad's 4x4 monster dually diesel truck with heavy duty off road tires on the second attempt.  After several hours of driving the lava face, scoping spots that looked promising as man made (D-9 bulldozer) tracks up the lava face with binoculars I finally found it.  Dad was like an excited kid.  After bouncing across a couple of miles of very rough terrain we parked at the base of the lava field face at the entrance to the road.  The road is to narrow for dad's monster truck so we hiked up the dozer path (about a half a mile) to the pad where the mock ups were placed for the astronaut training.  We found several material test holes that the Astro Geologists dug in the 60s to confirm material consistency and to gain insight into the environment in order to help analyze the seismic study data.  Dad was the one charged with settibng the seismic spread sensors and charges and capturing the return data from the seismic charge detonations. 

55 years after dad was doing time motion studies on top of the lava flow sweating in a space suit then training with the Apolo astronauts he said that it was pretty clear that no one had been up there since. It was extremely moving to be able to experience that with my stb 78yo father.  On the way back to Flag we drove through Sunset Crater national monument to hunt down the test site where the team trained the astronauts on performing egress and access of the lunar lander and rover as well as the experiments that they would perform on the moon.  The volcanic ash fields of the Sunset Crater site were chosen to simulate the lunar surface if the lander were to come to rest on the dusty lunar surface.  The blocky lava of the SP crater lava flow was chosen as a test site in the event the lander came to rest on rocky terrain.  There was a third site at Hopi Buttes which was used to simulate the terrain if the lander came to rest in the equivelent of a bad lands environment. The 4th site was at Meteor Crater which was chosen to simulate a lunar crater environment.   N AZ played a big part in preparation for the moon landings.  The day on the SP crater lava flow and Sunset Crater was truly a great day.  Seeing my dad re-experience some of the most exciting times in his live was truly moving. Good thing I am recovering from an eye injection which gave me an excuse for the watering eyes.  I had to shred another man card on this trip.

We had dinner Friday evening at Mormon Lake Lodge which is where my GPs hosted my dad's graduation party when he finished his BS at NAU in 1968.  My DW was all ears the whole week as mom and dad recounted their early marriage years  in N AZ and working on the Apolo project.  I am extremely happy to have had this time together with mom and dad and my wife.

Saturday AM we started the two day road trip back to Houston.  We had to get creative on the route since the Navaho nation has closed many of the roads that trasit their reservation lands due to Covid.  We expected to over night in Fort Stocton TX getting into our hotel at 9PM.  Due to rerouting a couple of times we did not get in to the hotel until 1AM. 

Back on the interstate at 0900 Sunday AM we sped East, you gotta love the 80MPH speed limits on West Texas interstates, and made it to our favorite Mexican restaurant in San Antonio for lunch at 1:00.  We discovered this place in the early 80s on a Rags family vacation and have been returning regularly ever since.  My wife loves it.  That means I love it.

We pulled into our drive way at 7:10 PM.

We are both  happily exhausted.

It was a great trip.

The kid turns 28 in 3 days, DW turns 45 in three weeks and dad turns 78 in 4 weeks.  August is a big month in the Rags clan.

And that is what I did over my summer vacation.