Zion: our favorite National Park

Zion National Park, hidden in the Southwest corner of Utah, has to be our favorite National Park.  Although we have not visited in 18 years, there's something magical about this canyon.  It's the perfect park to enjoy over a couple of days.  The Grand Canyon or Banff are immense, nearby Bryce Canyon and Iceland's Þingvellir are too small.  Goldilocks would say Zion is "just right".

The tunnel entrance to the park, if you're coming from the east (for example, from Bryce Canyon National Park) is spectacular.  Although the southwestern entrance via St. George (for folks arriving from Las Vegas) is not bad either.  To quote from a National Geographic article "Unlike the Grand Canyon where you stand on the rim and look out, Zion Canyon is usually viewed from the bottom looking up."  The views looking up are unforgettable, particularly if you hike The Narrows, the one must-do hike in Zion.  Here are a couple shots of us hiking the Virgin River in The Narrows from our 1989 visit:

We have camped in Zion, in tents and inside an RV.  We have also slept in the park's lodge (don't expect anything more than 2-star service).  Whatever you choose you must make reservations way ahead of your visit because Zion is no longer a secret destination and the sparse accommodation options fill up every night.  It wasn't the greenest option (sorry planet) but we really enjoyed our little RV that we rented in Salt Lake City in 1989:

If you go to Zion, make sure to visit Kolob Canyons in the northwest section of the park.  There's nobody there (probably because there are no campgrounds or facilities) so you can enjoy a 5 mile scenic drive in relative solitude.  As you can see below from our last visit in 2000, the vistas are every bit as good as in the main park:

As you drive or hike throughout the main park you will be surrounded by "geology gone wild".  You can call the formations by their formal names like mesas or arches or use the local monikers of temples and thrones.

We do have to give a shout-out to Bryce Canyon National Park, since it is so close to Zion and you can experience its little splendor in less than one day.  So we certainly encourage you to visit the park.  Here we are hiking down into the main amphitheater in Bryce in 1989:

In summary, whenever anyone asks us what is our favorite National Park, we grudgingly whisper "Zion, but don't tell anyone".  The first rule of Zion National Park is you do not talk about Zion!  

If you visit you must hike *in* the Virgin River.  Try to be one of the first ones to arrive at The Narrows in the morning.  Make sure you don't mind if your footwear gets soaked and go in shorts or waterproof pants.  Otherwise you will be doing this while making dinner over a campfire afterwards:

Traveling with human's best friend

This short post about traveling with dogs can be summed up with an old Nike® ad: "Just Do It"

The pictures below show how our canine pals can make our getaway trips even more memorable.  We are not here to give you 10 travel tips for cruising with pets -- anyone can find those with their favorite search engine.  If you need to be told that dogs need water and should never be left alone in a car then maybe you should consider owning a pet rock.

We have never taken our dogs on airplanes (and I cannot imagine doing so) so we are only talking about long car rides.  It helps if you dog can sleep in car since it makes the trip for them shorter as well:

I do not recommend "doggie-downers" under any condition and that's all I will say about that. It also helps if your dog is friendly and patient with children, even when they get buried under piles of sand:

If your animal is not patient and you believe you might need tighter control than a leash it is better to err on the safe side.  Use something like a Gentle Leader (don't call it a muzzle!).  As seen below, they will still have fun:

No healthy dog has ever thought "I want to be left at the vet" instead of going camping, picnicking, hiking, and/or swimming:

Sometimes the biggest problem when traveling is OTHER dogs.  Particularly if they are not meeting on a neutral battlefield.  In this picture going up Stone Mountain in Georgia our pooches are having a grand old time.  But when we returned to the home of one of them it was "dicey" for the visitor.  So be careful in those situations.

The most memorable travel photograph with one of our dogs was camping in the backwoods of Kentucky.  All of us, including the pet, knew to look up the hillside ... except for the one human that didn't get the memo:

Last thing to mention is, if your dog ignores voice commands, then please try to keep your pet on a leash.  Not everyone loves to see a strange animal coming at them.  So whether you are hiking the swamps of Florida

or enjoying the hills of North Carolina 

or strolling around dog-friendly Asheville

or even going hunting for shark teeth and indian arrowheads 

keep that "runaway dog" under control.  No matter how cute he or she is.

This blog post is dedicated to our most excellent dogs of the past three decades:  Rossi, Salem, and Skittles (cameos above by Mulligan, Ally and Vanna).  We may not always know what you dogs were thinking, but you always let us know that you enjoyed traveling throughout the Eastern part of the United States with us.

Südwestdeutschland

Porsche Cars North America sent me on a business trip to Stuttgart, Germany in May of 2011 so I asked Mary to come along.  We were staying in Ludwigsburg for a week so we figured we could enjoy Southwest Germany over the weekend and do some sightseeing.  Some outdoor sightseeing.  The weather was glorious while we were there, so we did not spend much time indoors.

I went 10 feet into the Porsche Museum, just enough to get something at the gift shop.  We didn't even consider going to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.  Apparently these are must-see destinations in Stuttgart.  We bypassed them in favor of other attractions.

Mary spent one day touring the palaces in Ludwigsburg.  They have one tour in English, so book early if you want to understand the tour guide.  We found out early in Südwestdeutschland that it really helps if you can sprechen sie deutsch.  We got by because I memorized nouns for food and drink thanks to my workplace German classes and Mary still recalled her verbs from high school and college.  Hand gestures helped as well.

Here are some shots of the palaces:

In Stuttgart we spent a whole afternoon walking the length of Rosenstein Park to the Wilhelma Zoo and Botanical Garden.  We highly recommend it.  Buy some ice cream -- we felt out of place because we seemed to be the only ones not walking around with a cone in our hands.  There are many enjoyable sights throughout the park, from the many sculptures, to the rosegarten, to the dozens of young people carrying their beer coolers for what was probably their first drunken picnic of the season.

We've all been to Zoos.  No pictures of caged animals here.  I do consider it a 5-star zoo.  With one amazing surprise: a stand of redwoods! In Southwest Germany!  How curious.  Turns out the German royals planted sequoias between 1845 and 1865.  The giant redwood trees are just starting to show their glory:

The last city we visited on this trip was Heidelberg.  A short train ride from Ludwigsburg.  The main tourist destination here is Heidelberg Castle.  You can spend an entire day inside this centuries-old structure, seen here on the hill above Mary.

Think of the biggest fort you've toured in the southern USA and now imagine something much, much older and 20-50 times bigger.  I'm just going to copy paste from Wikipedia the words of the man for whom this blog is named after, Mark Twain, after he saw the castle around 1880:

"A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude."

These two pictures barely do the castle justice, but a tourist has to try:

Go see Heidelberg Castle in you are in the area.  You will not be disappointed.  The city of Heidelberg is also a treat, with much to see while walking around or sitting down for a meal.  Here are some pictures we took in and around the riverside:

I trust the photos showed how lucky we were with the weather in Germany that May in 2011.  We leave you with a picture of our last lunch in Südwestdeutschland, a quintessential German meal:

Yeah, the beer was already one-third gone.

Travel in style -- Porsche plug

What is your favorite way to travel?  I tolerate flying, never been cruising, and hiking is what we do once we arrive at our destinations.  But in order to get "there", at least here in the States where public transportation is often lacking, that usually means driving.

Well, if you're going to drive, there's no finer way to enjoy our roads than in a new Porsche.  I had the fortune of working at Porsche Cars North America from 2003-2011 and as an employee you can lease their vehicles at a decent rate.  Employees used to be able to enjoy the Porsche Driving Experience (PDE) at  Barber Motorsports once a year.  Apparently that's no longer the case, so if you're interested in racing Stuttgart's finest then go here instead: Porsche Driving Experience.

Enough promotions concerning my former employer.  Let me list all of the cars we were able to enjoy over the years.  Yes, we name most of our cars, a tradition started by our kids after they played the fabulous Putt-Putt games from Humongous Entertainment in the late 90's.  Over 8 years we drove 3 Cayennes

• Black Dog
• Blue Dog
• Ugly Dog

2 Boxsters

• Raven
• BABS (Big Ass Boxster S)

plus 1 Carrera (Sally) and very briefly one Cayman (Snowflake).  We also borrowed a Cayenne S and a Panamera for one week.  We took these vehicles all over the Southeast, driving up to Nashville, TN in one of the Boxters and down to Sarasota, FL in Sally.  I must say, some of the looks we got on the roads and some of the compliments we would receive at gas stations would make me feel a little sheepish.  I would usually reply with me "it's not mine, it's a company car" to which the retort would be along the lines of "Nice company!".

Here is the first Cayennes we leased, Black Dog, parked in our garage:

This was the first series of SUV's sold by Porsche in the USA and it had a couple of minor issues.  The one that annoyed most was the broken cup holders.  Yeah, I know, "First World Problems".  Black Dog was followed by Blue Dog:

To this day I wondered what our distant neighbors thought when they would see a new Porsche driving in every 6 months.

Here are some picture from the PDE.  The first year Mary talked me into going (yeah, I'm not a car guy).  The second year I was able to take some friends (on the right of the photo) thanks to my colleagues on the left.

It was quite expensive, so we only drove Sally the 911 for 6 months.

Here is the Panamera (before this series had been released to the public for sale) we enjoyed for a few days:

The 4-door sedans and SUVs saved Porsche the company.  It turns out that rich soccer moms don't like small 2-seaters and dads occasionally want trunk space beyond just storing golf bags.  But Mary loved her Boxters.  To this day she pines about no longer being able to drive somewhere with the top down.

All good things must come to an end.  I left the company in 2011 to join a hard-core software development firm.  Our last company vehicle was a Cayman, which is a 2-door coupe that is half-Boxster, half-Carrera.  So your journey in style ends with Snowflake:

North to Northwest

Back in 2006 we figured we could take one more family vacation before the kids eventually went off to college.  So glad we did because the four of us have not traveled together since that summer.  Ceci & Tony chose Seattle, where Mary and I honeymooned 20 years prior.  I wanted to take them to National Parks one last time and the Emerald City is one of the best launching areas in the country to do that.

We flew into Sea-Tac and immediately headed South, then West, to the Olympic Peninsula, so we could spend one night in Ocean Shores with a view of the Pacific.  This was the first week in June and we seemed to be the only guests at our hotel and in its restaurant.  The next morning took US-101 north to the Hoh Rain Forest.  If you don't mind getting wet and aren't afraid of the color green, and enjoy seeing sights like this

then add Hoh to your bucket list.  Put it this way: where else can you enjoy a rain forest without dealing with all those pesky wilderness problems you saw in the "Tarzan" and "Jungle Book" movies?  But you are going to get wet.  It's amazing we don't look more miserable in this shot:

The entire time you are on the Olympic Peninsula you are never far away from the Pacific Ocean.  Where else can you begin one day by exploring what washed up on the beach and then end your trip at eye-level to glaciers? Sit down, you Kiwis from New Zealand!

However, we didn't travel that quickly.  We spent 3 days in the Peninsula, spending one night in Forks.  "Forks?", Ceci exclaimed, as she added that her friend would be so jealous.  Turns out that horrible series, "Twilight", was set in the town of Forks.  In case you're into that.  Or into fishing.  The cabin we rented in Forks had a large sign as you walked in: "No gutting fish inside the cabin"

We will not bore you with pictures of Seattle proper.  You probably know that you should go to Pike's Market and get a dungeness crab sandwich.  Really, you should.  Then go up in the Space Needle.  Maybe take in a Mariners game.  Oh, I just read a blogger's guide.  Apparently there are some "must posts", like pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge or Times Square.  Fine.  Here.  It's not a good pic:

But we're here for the National Parks.  We did not visit the North Cascades because we didn't have enough time.  A bigger regret was skipping Snoqualmie Falls, right off I-90, which Mary and I had seen before.  I didn't know that future Ceci would one day binge-watch all of "Twin Peaks", despite my advice to stop after the 4th episode (the one with the dancing dwarf dream sequence).

Since the weather was fantastic at the end of our week in the Northwest the entertainment decision was easy: we're spending the rest of our time in Mt. Rainier National Park.  Seeing this volcano from your airplane window, or maybe from the Space Needle, does not do it justice.  If you have the time to drive to the park then you must go and enjoy the many hikes in this park.  It's endless fabulous views.

Just make sure to drive slowly and carefully through the park.  This little beauty was not on the road on our way to see Mt. Rainier.  But it tumbled down and was waiting for us on the drive back to see if we purchased the extra insurance on the rental car: