I’m sure by now you’re all adjusted to the new year. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday break and had the opportunity to spend lots of quality time with friends and family, like I did!
My family and I rang in the new year by going on a good ol’ fashioned American road trip. A long one.
We started off by driving down to Petaluma, CA and we spent a couple days in that Bay Area. My younger brother, London, had never been to San Francisco before. So, we naturally took him to see the Golden Gate bridge, walked down Haight Street, ate at Ike’s Place, and took him to see Candlestick park for the first (and last) time.
Then we headed down the coast towards Malibu, where we stayed and enjoyed the beach for a week or so while my dad taught a course at Pepperdine University.
Afterwards, we headed East to Arizona. We spent some quality time with my older brother and his family in Gilbert before going to one of my favorite places to visit – Sedona! During our time in Sedona, my parents relaxed and enjoyed the town, us kids adventured out to the Palatki Indian Ruins. There are some really interesting cave art and cliff dwellings left over from thousands of years of Native American activity. We also went to the Boynton Canyon Vortex for a little hike. At night we drove to the Airport Vortex to take some night photos, and I swear we saw an alien! Whatever you want to call it, it was an unidentified flying, glowing object.
We topped the trip off by driving up through the immaculate Grand Canyon, a must see on any Western America road trip. From there, we made out way up through Utah, so we could visit with more family before making our way back home. It was a fantastic break before diving back into school again – which is about all my life consists of right now.

I didn’t know about the Palatki Indian Ruins by Sedona when I went over 10 years ago. I will have to go back just to experience those. Your trip sounded great and I am happy you got to go with your family. Happy New Year. By the way…how did you make the peace sign by your name with your laptop? I would like to sign my posts with that. 🙂 Inge
Thanks for reading! There are more Indian Ruins just a few miles from the Palatki that you can visit when you’re there too!
And honestly, I just google “type peace sign” and copy and paste one. haha 🙂
Sounds and looks like a great trip! Glad you had fun and welcome back!
I did, and thank you! It feels nice to actually find the time to post something!
I was beginning to wonder (and really hoping it was so) that you had stopped blogging