We enjoyed our brief stay in Las Vegas but very excited to head on to our last stop….San Diego.  We were up bright and early ready to roll out.  We decided to take  one last picture  and that’s when Frank saw it……a very large bubble in the back tire.  Boy did Frank make a great catch.  This could have been very disastrous but we took the rental car to the airport, which happened to be very close to us, and got ourselves a new rental car.  We were sad to say good-bye to our car (especially Diana and Gale, our GPS) but we were happy to get our new car.

We had a very short 5 hour drive today but it seemed a bit longer because it was pretty much all desert.   We finally made it to our last destination, California!  We are all checked in and ready to attend the ISTE conference and pick up some cool technology integration ideas…..of course we are super excited to go trekking in California as well.

Well, the Trekkers did it.  We got up at 4:15 this morning to watch the sun wake up over the beautiful Grand Canyon.  You can see how it was worth waking up early.   We spent the morning observing at all the different rock formations and even had some elk visit with us.  Although we didn’t want to leave because we felt like we were on top of the world,  we headed on towards Nevada.  When we reached the state sign….we also reached the Hoover Dam.  Wow….what an amazing structure.  We drove into Nevada and saw…….a whole lot of desert.  It got up to 104 degrees so we decided to use the air condition for this stretch of the road.  we saw a couple of small brush fires being put out.  We finally reached Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was a tiring but very eventful day.  We started out early from Albuquerque, New Mexico,  with a wonderful sunrise.  Before leaving New Mexico we went to see the Rio Grande and stopped to see lava flows.  We admired the beautiful landscape, especially all the Mesas. We finally arrived in Arizona and proceeded to shop at the Navajo shops.  We learned a ton of information from the Native Americans running the shops.  We then went to the Meteor Creator National Park.  This is an amazing site!  If you ever decide to visit, be ready to be blown away…..literally.  The wind was so strong it was even blowing Big Dave around.    The Petrified Forest was our next stop.  We were amazed to see all the beautiful trees which have turned to stone. The colors were amazing.  We also stopped to visit a very old Pueblo village.  We were going to visit White Walnut Canyon National Park but missed the closing time by 25 minutes.  We were bummed because it really looked beautiful with lots of cave dwellings.   Our last stop…..the Grand Canyon.  Holy Cow….I’ve heard how beautiful it is but you really need to see it in person to fully appreciate this wonder.  We arrived to see the sunset and plan to start our day to an amazing sunrise tomorrow morning.   Keep on trekkin’    

We have been busy exploring all the great things Nashville has to offer.  We started at the capitol building then made our way to Centennial Park.  We were really impressed with the  park.  There were so many activities taking place promoting fitness.  The best part was seeing the Parthenon!  We then made our way to downtown Nashville and heard a ton of bands playing.  We arrived at our hotel very tired.  Looking forward to seeing Oklahoma City.

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