Whine & Cheese

Travel Sickness

I know I said I would back off the vacation posts this week, but this is sort of on the periphery... so I am going to slip it in.  You may recall that my birthday car trip to Vegas was pretty dicey.  By the time we arrived at Sin City I was very headachy and had a good bout of nausea.  I chalked it up to a lack of food and my usual does of morning caffeine.... okay, paranoia at the time (it was the Cooper's first major road trip and post-accident), also made me ponder a carbon monoxide leak into my car... but with Todd unaffected, I had to discount that particular conspiracy theory.

It was still in the back of my mind going into this road trip... and sure enough I did start experiencing some of the same symptoms on our first leg -- the 8-ish hour drive to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  While things were not nearly as bad as Vegas (I made a concerted effort to eat and stay hydrated), I still didn't feel all that great as we entered The City Different.

Since Todd had his laptop and we had free Wi-Fi at our hotel, I googled around to come up with a quick self-diagnosis... long story short(er), I came up with motion sickness.  The next morning, I picked up a box of the Walgreens version of "dramamine" ... actually meclizine.  Long story still short(er), I took it before every lengthy drive for the rest of the trip and was fine.

I am willing to admit it is all (or partially) psychosomatic... but it worked, so it is hard to argue/complain. To my knowledge, it is something that I have never suffered before and, go figure (!!!), it has appears to occur in my beloved MINI Cooper (smaller car, lower to the ground?).

So while that particular issue was "solved," there was yet another worry.  Living at just over 1,000 feet above sea level here in the Phoenix metro area, there was the issue of altitude sickness.  Staying hydrated, "proceed with caution" alcohol consumption (pfffft!), and sun protection were things I read about over and over in travel books and even the MINI discussion boards.

Denver is very proud of their mile-high status.  Just one night in that city and there is no doubt that "one mile = 5,280 feet" will forever be seared into your brain.  Funny enough, Denver was the lowest altitude of any of the cities we spent a night in...  Santa Fe, NM is at 6,989 feet (a great trivia question/stat... since that makes it, not Denver, the highest of any state capital), Telluride, CO was 8,792 feet... and the MINI homebase at Copper Mountain, CO was at a lofty 9,720 feet... and there were more than a few occasions, we were 2+ miles above sea level!

Thankfully, we didn't experience any serious ill effects from the altitude... a very slight bit of sun overexposure one afternoon and a tad light-headed atop Mt Evans (at a whopping 14,2000+ feet)... as mentioned, I did regularly test the "alcohol at altitude" but at most, I think the thinner air only saved me one drink at best early on in the trip!

One More For The Road

All the vacation/road trip pix are finally posted!   

Man, that was almost as tiring as all that driving!   Ok, not really... but it took awhile to "narrow" it down to 119 "better" photos... and here is another one of them!

This is on the famed Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton... how it got its name is disputed, some say it cost $1 million dollars per mile (in the 1920s!) to it containing $1 million in gold ore... nevertheless, the views are priceless.  What you are seeing is a two-lane highway for both north and southbound traffic... yes, oncoming cars will be on that outer edge... and, not sure if you can sense it... but I would be very surprised if a slip off the road would be survivable! 

For those of living in the "city," it is often hard to imagine all the wide open spaces there are in this country.  Heck, I probably didn't realize it until I ventured off the East Coast at nearly 20-ish years old.   

In particular, on this road trip, it was just staggering to think of all the labor and ingenuity that it took to create these roads -- especially without the technology of today -- and in such remote locals and what had to be some extreme weather conditions.  I often sighed as I would round a corner and see how far we still had to go on a highway... but only to imagine what it felt like to those who were building it decades and decades ago!!

Besides, the roads... you look around... again it is just unfathomable that every light pole, every fence post, every electrical tower, every railroad track was put down by someone!

Okay, one last plug for my photos... choose your degree of interest:

All My Flickr Pix

The Complete Road Trip Flickr Set

The 2007 MINIs in the Mountains "Only" Set (included in the above)

Have a nice weekend... and we'll return to our non-travel obsessed blog entries next week!

Deep in Flickr-ville

Since I thankfully haven't returned to a work-related sh&t-storm, I am taking advantage of the time and uploading our Road Trip pix to Flickr... so I am pretty much blogging over there today!

As of this very moment, I have uploaded about 70 of 246 pics... and still have about 227 more pix to weed through!  I am trying to be selective... but what's killing me is coming up with titles and descriptions. 

After an hour+ of doing it, my mushed brain ends up giving this picture a title like... "Pretty"

So while it is very much "in progress" if you want to see what I am up to today... head on over to my Flickr page. 

I am done (!!!) uploading pictures from the MINIs in the Mountains weekend and created a special MitM set just for that.

All the pics (including MitM), are going into a 2007 Road Trip set... so far the above picture is my "official" photo for this set (between Silverthorne and Kremmling, on the way to Steamboat Springs... and snapped by Todd!)... pretty stunning (and albeit typical!) Colorado Rockies scenery.

I am not sure if I will get through all the pix today... but I should get pretty close.

Rocky Mountain Highs (And A Low)

We made it back into town late yesterday afternoon... the 9+ hour drive was a killer... the one on the way out wasn't so bad, but I guess that's how you tell whether you are at the start or end of a vacation.  Pretty beat this morning, so I will try to give you the "cliff notes" version of our week and probably fill in some details later. 

Looks like I have 472 pictures to go through!   We downloaded and viewed most of the them during the trip since Todd has his work laptop (which he thankfully didn't have to use for those purposes while we were away, though I am sure he is feeling the brunt this morning)... so I know there are some real nice ones... while I appreciate compliments on my pictures (though Todd took a lot of them while I was driving), thanks to the scenery its pretty impossible to not take a good picture.  Thank goodness for digital, because I doubt we would have so much to look at/sort through if it was the load film, old school camera!

Okay, let's see how quick I can do this!   Since I hate to end on a bad note, let's start with...

The Low:  Our trip ended under a bit of a dark cloud.  On Monday, Todd got a speeding ticket while we were out on a spontaneous afternoon drive.  Felt a bit guilty, since I told him he had to drive back and have some fun on this wonderfully twisty highway.  Long story, short(er)... he got clocked going twice the speed limit in a 25mph zone... sounds bad I know, but we still find it hard to believe... since due to the nature of the twists in the road won't let you go that fast (and it wasn't going through a town, school zone, etc)... there is a lot of altitude changes... and even more frequent changes in the speed limits...and needless to say we had never driven the road before... so we feel we kind of fell into a popular out-of-stater trap... worse of all, the police officer didn't cut any slack... a few hundred dollars... nope, a court summons for next month... in a town that is over 10+ hour drive away from Phoenix and even a 5+ hour drive from Denver.  The "alternative" to (pardon the pun) speed up the process was to get arrested... so just a big 'ole mess, that hopefully will be able to be resolved without making a return trip to CO.

Okay, onto the good stuff!

Mileage: Pulled out the garage with 5672 miles last Wednesday morning... pulled in with 8092 yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon... so for the arithmetically challenged that's 2420 miles tacked on in under a week!

Santa Fe:  A return to one of our favorite vacation spots of the past... didn't have much time with just one night in town... but we managed a nice dinner at a local favorite Horseman's Haven... walked around the Plaza after dinner (which was very much abuzz with lots of folks and free live music... on a Wednesday night!)... and once again had the best ever huevos rancheros at another local favorite, Tortilla Flats, on Thursday morning.

Denver:  Again, just one night... stayed at the very nice Magnolia Hotel in downtwon... when I booked the room, I decided to go for a suite...  while a tad pricey, it was huge and we really made us feel all schmancy.  Quite impressed with downtown Denver.  Mix of historic buildings and the "new,"  a wonderful pedestrian-only street of shops and restaurants, sport, concert and theater venues all walkable distances, heavily used public transit (including light rail)... I would say Phoenix could only wish for the same... granted we do have a lot of the same things, but in Denver it just seemed like people were around in their downtown!  Also, had a good time at the Rockies/Cubs game at Coors Field... at least know we know that Phoenix isn't the only ballpark where Cub fans outnumber and out-cheer the "home team."

MITM:  That's MINIs in The Mountains... the centerpiece event our vacation... with nearly 200 Coopers from all over the country in attendance.   Seeing another MINI is usually a rare occurrence, so it was blast just to see them everywhere!   We drove around most of Friday & Saturday on runs with other MINIs... first up to Mt. Evans, driving up the highest paved road in North America... over 14,000 feet... at the top it was in the 47 degrees and hailing... can't say we've ever experienced that kind of weather in August!   Saturday turned into a very nice, but nearly all-day run, with stops in Steamboat Springs and Vail.

Telluride:  As mentioned, in my special live report from a couple of days ago... we really loved Telluride.  It has a reputation of being snobbish and high-brow (Oprah and Tom Cruise are among its part-time residents)... but we certainly didn't see much evidence of that, even walking by a 1,200 sq. ft. "fixer-upper" house selling for $1.895 million... food prices were pretty affordable... very much a small town feel with very friendly folks... we did splurge staying at The Hotel Telluride, it was one of the places where you felt you were getting what you paid for... for the most part.

As I did with the NJ/NYC trip, it is probably more palatable to share the trip via pictures... so I'll let you know when good chunks of photos are available for public viewing!

Greetings From Telluride

We interrupt this week of all pre-posted blog entries for a special live report!

Greetings From Telluride!

The weather is here ... wish you we're great!

Todd very nicely forked over some $$$ for access to the hotel's WiFi service, so I decided to take a couple of minutes to say a quick hello (warning: I am in the midst of the alcohol consumption at high altitude experiment... we are now 5 days into our mile-high plus road trip, currently at 8750 feet!)

The above photo was taken just a couple of hours ago... sigh... we're in love!

In just a couple of hours in town, I've decided Telluride has all the necessities in life... high speed Internet, HD television service, and an independent bookstore with a super friendly dog walking down the aisles!  On top of all of that, it was a delightful 68 degrees with slight humidity... pretty much heaven on Earth!!

(Above noted alcohol "experiment" nicely suppressing any thoughts that the town is virtually snowed in for 4 months of the year and over-run by tourists a good deal of the time)

Now, just to figure out how to afford one of the quaint homes off of Telluride's charming main drag of Colorado Avenue... ballpark... about $2 million, give or take a couple of hundred grand!!?!

There's some more pre-posted stuff ahead for the next couple of days if if if before we get back to Phoenix.

Summer Vacation Plans: Part II

Another vacation countdown... only two weeks until our big road trip. I have hinted around (I think!) that it is MINI Cooper related...  so to make it "official"... we're heading to Copper Mountain, Colorado (about 80 miles west of Denver) for:

MINIs in the Mountains... Coopers at Copper... whatever alliteration you'd like! 

Even with our dry heat (which ain't so dry at the moment), taking a break from the hot desert (and having done "tropical" the last two years)... it seemed like a really good idea to head to the cool(er) Rockies.  This will be my first trip to Colorado (not counting those airport layovers) and our first time at a big national gathering of MINIs.  In just its second year, MitM is attracting owners from over 20 states and, as of this writing, 155 Coopers and 253 folks registered for the weekend event.

Not quite sure whether we are quite ready for the full-on MINI experience, we're skipping the first day.  If you think I am/was cuckoo about my MINI, believe me I probably don't even register on a Cooper craziness enthusiasm seismograph compared to some folks... we're talking seriously hardcore! 

So, MitM will be just part of our overall vacation... we'll be at Copper from Fri-Sun... and making few stops along the way.   Here's our trip map:

It looks like an innocent little loop... but folks, according to AAA, what you are looking at is about 1800 miles and 30 hours of drive-time!!  Plus, tack on at least a few hundred more miles for MitM... since the primary MitM activity (along with dinners, happy hours, vendors) is getting all those Coopers out caravaning around the twisty mountain roads for daily "fun runs." 

To give you some more perspective, my Cooper's odometer just passed 5400 miles... so given my meager average, that's like putting on 6 months worth of miles on my car in just one week!!

The yellow thumbtacks are the stops and our itinerary is:
1st Stop - Santa Fe, NM (541 miles, approx. 8 hours) - Overnight and some good NM food!
2nd Stop - Denver, CO (394 miles) - Rockies/Cubs game at Coors Field
3rd Stop - Copper Mountain, CO (77 miles) - For the weekend
4th Stop - Telluride, CO (287 miles) - Spending two nights
5th Stop - Home (500 miles, approx 9.5 hours)

The first and last days are definitely going to be killer drives... but we're looking forward to it... should be a fun and very scenic trip!