Inspiration — Page 4

Adventure Day 14 – Petrified Forest

July 3, 2014 by Joe Hackman Leave a Comment

“Mom, Dad come quick. I see something beautiful!”

It was hard to resist, even though it was earlier than I have been getting up. My son was right, it was beautiful. He wasn’t looking at the sunrise like I had suspected but instead staring out a window to the west. He was seeing the results of the eastern sunrise on the hills, trees, and clouds in the sky. The three of us took in the view for a while. I decided to get ready and head outside to see how warm it was at this early hour.

I opened the door to walk outside and a rush of cool air hit me, I immediately closed the door and opened the windows to the RV. Recently we’ve been on lockdown, keeping the blinds closed, windows tightly shut, and AC cranking. Anticipating an impressive sky to the East I step back outside, this greets me:

Nature doing Inspiring Work.

I knew right away it was going to be a great day. Our plan was to head over and see the Petrified Forest. One of many National Parks on the Colorado Plateau. By the end of the day we would have done just that, and hiked many great trails and seen many great things.

Journey to the Petrified Forest

In spite of the cool weather, we knew it wouldn’t last long. The forecast was for the mid to high 90’s in the area. We enjoyed breakfast outside and packed up to head over to the park. Along the way, we drove through the town of Holbrook, AZ that reminded us all so much of the movie Cars that we’re pretty sure it was the inspiration for it. Thinking that we’d drive through it on the way back, we zipped through and didn’t stop to take pictures. We did manage to get a picture of the iconic Route 66 sign:

Iconic Route 66 Sign

We arrived at the Petrified Forest National Park from the southern side. After a visit to the visitors center and during our drive to the second hiking spot, we realized it’s actually a quite large park. We would ultimately not go back through Holbrook as the trip would bring us all the way up to highway 40. That little town in Cars got the shaft again, the shop keepers, gas stations, and citizens would miss out on our business as we took the “larger” highway back.

Entry Sign at the Petrified Forest

Sights around the Petrified Forest

I took so many pictures today that my Flickr Album for the trip ballooned to 530 images from 281 from all the other segments of our trip. To say I was inspired and awed by the Petrified Forest and in particular, the Painted Desert would not be an understatement. I truly loved it, but I know that even greater things are yet to come and the anticipation is half the fun.

Petrified Wood

Some of the amazing petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo

One of several amazing petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo

Painted Desert incredible color and textures, a treat for the eyes.

More about Family, Less about Work

The exciting thing about this phase of our trip is that work appointments are limited until we get further into Utah. That means that I’ll be spending more time with my family. We’ve already started building some great memories and in many ways, the distance and lack of encumbrance has also had a transformative effect on our thought process about life in general. Our possibilities have expanded and our perceptions have shifted. The lack of encumbrance plus the distance from our “home” has given us the ability to become much more objective, dream a little, and thrive. Who knows what’s next, we’re intentionally taking this a week or so at a time, never planning too far ahead.

Next up: Adventure Day 15 – Walnut Canyon and Relocated to Lake Powell

Adventure Day 13 – Goodbye Phoenix, Hello Meteor Crater

July 2, 2014 by Joe Hackman 1 Comment

After a few days in the summer heat of the Arizona Desert, you start to wonder how people adjust to the temperature. One thing that is very unfamiliar to me is running Air Conditioning at night. Just about everywhere I’ve lived with a few exceptions a year cools off at night to a comfortable temperature. RV Air Conditioning is loud, it even wakes me up throughout the night! So when I tell you that we were actually able to drive some of the days today with our windows down, it’s a big deal. I know the small things in life, right? Today we drove from Lake Pleasant to Meteor Crater RV Park. Along the way, we went from the desert to the high desert to the actual forest. Actual trees and not just the Mesquite and low bushy trees you see in the lower altitudes:

Trees and Clouds, a welcome sight.

Feeling the breeze without the drying bite that you get from hot desert air was fantastic, however, it was somewhat short-lived as we descended from the ~7,000 feet of Flagstaff down into the “lower” altitudes of the Colorado Plateau. We settled down nicely into the Meteor Crater Enterprises domain, at the Meteor Crater RV Park. The staff here are nice, and it is going to work well for a few days of family time.

USA! USA!

Wasn’t that an amazing way to end our World Cup hopes today? Again the critics of team USA beat back with a mostly great performance. Considering the cards stacked against our team I was very proud of the showing. That almost goal in the last minute of stoppage time that would have sent Belgium packing nearly gave me a heart attack. We started our day uncharacteristically early in order to watch the entire performance by team USA. Hold your heads high guys, and look at World. I see great things to come!

Meteor Crater RV Park

As I was saying the staff is nice here and it’s a decent park. The wind hit pretty hard after the team USA loss, obviously mother nature wasn’t thrilled with the outcome, either. We packed up to head 5 miles down the road to see the crater. The facilities are imposing and impressive as you drive up, and the crater itself is evident for quite some distance, we had spotted it long before we saw the signs. We had a nice visit and I had the camera going constantly, many of the pictures are in the flickr album for this trip. Now up to 281 photos and counting! One of my favorite pictures was a foreshadowing of things to come, a picture of some mesas in the distance. I’ve seen so many of them on TV for years, spotted a few from random flights but never gotten up close to any of the “great” Colorado Plateau varieties. Here are a few mesas, photographed from very far away, north of I40 east of Flagstaff. A sign of things to come!

Mesas, a preview of things to come.

Insights from Day 13

In the summer it might be worth-while to visit the forested areas around Flagstaff and stay cooler.
It’s good to mix things up on a long trip. The changes of pace are enjoyable and invigorating.
A business that meets more of its customer’s needs will leave them much more satisfied.

What will tomorrow bring?

We are planning to check out the Petrified Forest and look at some super old trees. I hope you’re enjoying your day, thanks for dropping by.

Next up: Adventure Day 14 – Petrified Forest

Adventure Day 12 – Last day at Lake Pleasant

July 1, 2014 by Joe Hackman 1 Comment

Today was a workday, I met with customers and prospects in the Phoenix area. I also caught up on some Emails and other business tonight to stay ahead of things. I did manage to take a walk before it got too hot early this morning. I did manage to get in a water gun fight with my son and a putt around the marina areas for some photo ops. The Flickr album for the trip has a lot more pictures if you haven’t checked it out recently, please do. Tomorrow we are off to the Flagstaff area, possibly due East of it. We have no reservation. 🙂

This is one of my shorter updates so far, darn priorities. The good news is starting this next week I will be taking many more pictures as we’re headed for the Colorado Plateau which encompasses some of the most stunning national parks in the West! Here is a picture I took this morning on a walk/ride with my son to tide you over.

Taking a morning walk/ride.

Next up: Adventure Day 13 – Goodbye Phoenix, Hello Meteor Crater

Adventure Day 11 – Checking out Model Homes and Fireworks

June 30, 2014 by Joe Hackman Leave a Comment

Today I was dozing on our bed in the garage. It’s one of those lift bunk bed things, about the size of a queen bed. I was dozing in and out of what felt like very deep sleep. The waking moments I had were filled with the third and final of the matrix series on DVD. Today we were either going to rent a boat and hit the lake or drive to check out some local model homes. Now that we are in a position where we’ll be shopping when we get back, we like to get ideas and the latest model homes from builders can be a good inspiration for us. So you might have guessed we opted to check out some model homes in the Scottsdale area. We checked out two builders, both were WAY north of Scottsdale. What was shocking is that in spite of being only a mile or two apart the models we looked at had a huge cost disparity. The more expensive one we actually liked a whole lot less than the less expensive one. I guess we watch too much Flip or Flop and similar shows, we weren’t sure about the granite in one. Doesn’t everyone use Quartz now? Just kidding… anyway it was nice to relax and I am not sure being on the lake would have been too kind to our skin, it was 106 degrees here today. We were also able to take a ride down the Carefree Highway again and leave all of our troubles behind. Thank you for that, Arizona.

WoW Fireworks?

World of Warcraft Fireworks?

On the way back from checking out some model homes we stopped at a firework stand. No these are not your California “Safe and Sane” variety. They had “California Candles” (Roman Candles?) and even a World of Warcraft looking thing. Some of them were huge, evidently, they last as long as 5 minutes and put on quite a show. We opted to not purchase any because we have yet to figure out where exactly we will be on the 4th of July, but I am pretty sure wherever it is we’ll probably be able to set off some cool fireworks. It seems like a lot of the rules and regulations are so much simpler than our home state of California. I noticed this with the speed limits, the only time they are different for trucks is on large downhills, the rest of the time everyone has the same speed limit with or without trailers it seems. They also had simpler fishing license rules, something we learned while investigating our boating possibilities. I am not going to lie though, the 100+ temps and not cooling below the ’80s at night is not my cup of tea so sorry Arizona, we won’t be changing our living arrangements on your behalf!

Evolution of the Mobile Office

I continue to tweak the mobile office setup. Normally just a small table would suffice but I’ve continued to tweak things to make them better. One thing that is absolutely positively essential is the combo washer/dryer unit. I am so glad we planned this all carefully, it would be a royal pain to have to use a laundromat to keep our clothes clean. That’s not exactly mobile office-specific but it definitely makes working easier when you have one less thing to worry about. The tweaking I’ve done is largely moving things around, mounting those command strip things in strategic spots, and making more comfortable workspace in the garage/office. It seems like such a simple thing but just having a calendar mounted on the wall has been nice. This calendar was given to me by one of my clients, I understand they are highly coveted in Oakland’s China Town!

Colorful and High Utility – Calendar

Insights and Ideas from today

Can’t stress it enough, a combo washer/dryer unit is a MUST HAVE if you’re going to be RV’ing for more than a week or so.
AC is 24/7 in Arizona during the summer.
One advantage of traveling in the off-season = you don’t need to make lots of reservations in advance.

Back to Business

Monday will be back to work for me, I am really looking forward to seeing some of my business contacts in the Phoenix area. It has been a while since I’ve seen them, so it will be nice to catch up and continue to get to know them better. It will be a full day then we hit the road for some more family-oriented activities. I can’t wait to see the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, Lake Powell, Bryce, and Zion!

Next up: Adventure Day 12 – Last day at Lake Pleasant

Adventure day 10 – Carefree Highway and Montezuma’s Castle

June 29, 2014 by Joe Hackman 3 Comments

Imagine yourself cruising along the highway without a care in the world. You’re on an epic relaxing vacation, unencumbered and fancy-free. You look up at a sign and notice you’re on “Carefree Highway“. Immediately Gordon Lightfoot begins to sing and you can’t help but share the song with your family, much to their dismay.

Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The morning after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you

If you’re a fan of the song, you’re welcome. If you’re not, you might need to get used to it, it’s catchy, isn’t it? What I learned, if you didn’t already know, is that Gordon Lightfoot wrote this song about a failed affair with a woman named Anne. We learn the oddest stuff while traveling… take for example that the type of limestone found at Montezuma’s Castle is unique to only that area and is found no-where else in the world. Or how the first non-natives that discovered the dwellings couldn’t believe they were created by Native American’s so they assumed it was made by the Aztecs, hence the name. They of course grossly underestimated the capabilities of the local people in more ways than one.

More about Montezuma’s Castle

Our visit to Montezuma’s Castle was fantastic, we were treated to not only the usual walk around and photo op but we also got to hear a presentation by one of the National Park Staff. The talk was great, and without spoiling it for anyone who might go see it themselves, the presentation gave us great insights into the success and innovation of the people who lived there. They had the resources to bring trade from very distant lands. One thing I loved about it was how the speaker did a great job of relating the human experience to modern times, teaching us all an important lesson about humanity.

Our Skilled Presenter

One of my Favorite Pictures

Michigan Manufacturer Dealer Cars Spotted on I17

We saw about 8 cars with black and white stickers obfuscating the lines and contours in the mountains on I17 today. They had black tape covering the emblems and I was unable to determine the exact make and model but we did manage to get a picture of one of them. Each car had a laptop and tablet PC on the dash, so there was some testing/proving going on for sure. Every car had a trailer hitch installed also, not in use when we observed them anyway. They all had Michigan Manufacturer plates. Here is a pretty low-quality picture if anyone wants to have a go at what they are:

One of about 8 Mystery Cars on I17 North

Highlights and Insights of the Day

The houses in Arizona North of Phoenix almost blend into the surrounding landscape.
Never underestimate ancient people’s capabilities.
Multiple Monitor withdrawal is a first world problem of mine. (14″ Laptop for a month, ahhhh!)

We’re going to rent a boat of some kind Sunday, in the meantime, I hope all is well with you. Thanks for following our story!

Next up: Adventure Day 11 – Checking out Model Homes and Fireworks