Grand Canyon Vacation Pics

Jeremy Zongker — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:29:03 +0000

We were very happy to be leaving Vegas and heading to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at the Hoover Dam along the way, which was kind of neat, but Jeanette and I both kind of expected more. It looked like a slightly bigger version of every other dam to us. The dam tour took 2 1/2 hours, so we skipped it and just went on.

We arrived in Flagstaff around 5pm and figured we’d eat some dinner and have plenty of time to see the Grand Canyon, but failed to account for two things. #1 Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings so the sun sets an hour earlier than we were thinking and #2 I takes nearly 2 hours to drive to the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff. Our hotel has some nerve putting “Grand Canyon” in it’s name. We figured it was a 10 minute drive.

We skipped dinner and went straight to the canyon and arrived about an hour before sunset. We really had to rush to see what we could, but feel like we covered a good chunk of it considering. It would have been nice to spend an extra hour or two there. We finally ate dinner a little after 9 at what I assume is the only restaurant in the park. Took nearly 45 minutes for us all to get our food so it was pitch black out by the time we left. We pulled over on a turnout at one point to get out and look at the stars which was real nice. We had to leave the hazards on so our eyes couldn’t fully adjust but it was still pretty impressive. The drive out wasn’t much fun in the dark, but thankfully we made it back safely.

[See image gallery at www.zongker.net]

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Phoenix Vacation Pics

Jeremy Zongker — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:16:36 +0000

It was 109° when we visited Phoenix and it felt like it, so don’t give me that dry heat nonsense. We visited the science center and Chase Field while we were there which were across the street from each other downtown. We figured parking would be an issue as well as traffic after the game, so we parked near our hotel and road the commuter train in to town. Worked great for the trip in, but the ride back felt like a NYC subway at rush hour.

The science center itself was pretty neat, but there seemed to be one adult for every 6-10 kids and they tended to shove themselves in front of us at every exhibit which really sucked the fun out of it. The baseball game was great! I found a tip on foursquare that if you stand by the organ during the 7th inning stretch they’ll put you on the jumbotron. Sure enough it worked, Katrina and I made it on there, but unfortunately we didn’t get any pics of it.

Here are the pics and videos. Sorry about the blurry/shaky videos, I’m still getting the hang of using the zoom and focus rings at the same time while holding the camera steady.

[See image gallery at www.zongker.net]

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Grand Canyon Vacation Pics

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Phoenix Vacation Pics

Videos