Totally Busted

 While we were traveling around Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, a good friend called us and she was going to be in Phoenix Az for a month house sitting for some friends and we should come on down…we shrugged and said ..Why not?

Hindsight is a funny thing, the chain of events that followed this one decision…changed our lives forever…

But I digress…

You know...every major change in our lives has lead us into something greater than before and all our big shifts in life were not without some type of emotional upheaval ..but every single time, when we come out on the other side...we are better, stronger...

When my world is rocked, like it was..it takes me a long time to get my feet under me again, and this time has been no different!

Sharing our adventures with everyone has been a pleasure, and while I welcome with open arms any new adventures...I find myself questioning the choices I am making because of the trauma I endured before and after Hurricane Michael…

When last we left off we were in Las Vegas heading for Arizona. Things kinda went south after that and our lives changed drastically 

Esprit caught fire in Phoenix and Pierre was hurt really bad..he severed his Achilles Tendon and had to have emergency surgery to repair it. When he was in recovery the Doctor told me he had a long recovery road ahead and he was not going to be able to recover properly in an RV..that I needed to get him somewhere where he could go to physical therapy and have more room.

At that time our house in Panama City was empty…we had no renters…so I called a good friend and flew him in to Phoenix to help get everything back to PC

we arrived in PC 10 days before Hurricane Michael hit

I didn’t even know there was a Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico!!

When we arrived in PC I was so busy with getting everything done…Our belongings back in the house and making the house comfortable for Pierre..he was on crutches and could not walk…we also had no TV.. I was not even aware of the storm!

I’m going to stop there! 

I still can’t talk about what we went through! 

I still have a lot of heart ache..PTSD..and anxiety just thinking about what happened days before and after Hurricane Michael hit! But I am going to say…just surviving a cat 5 storm with winds clocked over 200 Mph…for over 5 hours showed me just how strong and powerful I am.

It was a year of hard back breaking work just to get our house, Esprit, docks and property back to livable, but..Pierre and I did it! We survived a 200mph hurricane! 

but…the storm really effected me …so negatively ..in fact..that I just couldn’t live in that house anymore, so we decided to go back to Texas. We bought 12 acres and I tried…I promise…to settle down…nope…didn’t even come close! 

So we went back on the road again and sold our place in PC. 

So, I know in my heart that this glitch in our lives will be the beginning of something even greater and we'll be back to living our dream in no time, of that I am certain. We have committed ourselves to a life less ordinary, a life where adventure is the rule and not the exception.

Hoover Dam

 Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam , formerly called the Boulder Dam is in Black Canyon, on the Colorado River and on the Arizona-Nevada border. It was constructed between 1930 and 1936, it is the highest concreted arch dam in the US. It incompasses Lake Meade one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. The dam is used for flood and silt control, domestic water supply, hydroelectric power and agricultural irrigation. Hoover Dam is named in honor of Herbert Hoover, the president at the time.. 

Las Vegas Baby

Sin City…it’s history…

Las Vegas was founded as a city on May 15, 1905, when 110 acres of land were auctioned off by the railroad company. In 1941 the western-style El Rancho Vegas hotel‐casino, became the first themed resort on the Strip. This was followed by the Last Frontier (1942), Flamingo (1946) and Thunderbird (1948) hotels and casinos. Soon organized crime followed and Las Vegas's embrace of Old West-style freedom…gambling and prostitution…provided a perfect home for organized crime. Beginning in the 1940s money from drugs and racketeering built casinos so they could be used for laundering money. Soon it was known as Sin City, because with the mob being in charge and two of the most notorious men (mobsters) Benjamin “bugsy “ Siegel and Meyer Lansky, running the city…Sin was rampant …but Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky weren’t the only mobsters running amuck around the streets of Las Vegas. Plenty of gangs from NY, Chicago came flooding in to grab a piece of the action! Along with them came visitors to partake in what the casinos offered: luxury and the thrill of fantasies fulfilled. 

Today Las Vegas boasts over 150,000 hotel rooms, over 300 weddding a day and MGM Grands bronze lion is the largest bronze statue in the US! 

We only stayed a few day in Las Vegas, we went to Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, the strip (of course) and some more sights Las Vegas has to offer. I only lost $5!

Bryce Canyon Utah

 Bryce Canyon National Park, is a sprawling reserve in southern Utah, it was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after  Ebnerzer Bryce, who homesteaded this area in the area in 1874. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views. We hiked The Rim Trail...this 4.5mile trail spans the rim of the amphitheater, and sends you down to the river bed and back up it offers you incredible scenery. 

 

Parowan Utah

When we left Yellowstone we decided to visit our friends in Parowan Utah, now If you’re looking for some Southern Utah history, Parowan is where it all began settled in 1851, Parowan is called the “Mother Town of the Southwest, because of the many pioneers who left from there to start other communities in southern Utah. 

It is a quaint and beautiful place and we loved our stay with them. 

They took us to Parowan Gap this is a sacred Native American site where there is a land formation called a “wind gap,” , at one time a river cut a notch 600 feet deep through the tilted rock layers, here you can walk the “gap” and see the all the petroglyphs on the huge boulders and rocks. 

It is thought that Ancient Native Americans created petroglyphs by pecking and scratching the top layer of brown desert varnish, this reveals a lighter colored Navajo Sandstone underneath. 

There were a huge variety of petroglyph images, there were geometric shapes, lizards, snakes, mountain sheep, bear claws, and human-like images.

 One of the best-known petroglyphs presents itself as a large “V” and is referred to as the “Zipper Glyph.” According to the Bureau of Land Management, a Paiute tribal member in 1940 told a newspaper editor that the Zipper Glyph illustrated a map of travels with marks indicating the time spent along the route. In 1990, two archeologists studied the area extensively and suggested that the Zipper, with its regular marks along each side of the V, represented markers for a sun and a moon that would correspond to the four seasons. For example, the sun sets at the middle of the V at summer solstice. Further study revealed nearby ancient cairns and rock markers corresponding with equinoxes, cross quarters, and other annual solar events.  Markings for the seasons would allow early inhabitants to plant and harvest crops during appropriate seasons and know when to prepare for the winter cold.

Experts have long debated the origin and meaning of the Zipper Glyph and other petroglyphs. 

While studying many images, we were delighted how these ancient people had connected the movement of the sky with the seasons. Other images are believed to represent clan signs, maps, directions, ceremonies and songs. I bought a book on petroglyphs and used this as a  references to the images and symbols.

Scientists believe that Parowan Gap houses some 90 panels and 1,500 images, dating as far back as 5,000 years. The formation also includes intact dinosaur tracks nearby, and of course I love dinosaurs so we had to see this!!