Vacation Planning

Fred and I will be leaving for vacation on Saturday. It's a three week vacation. We'll go to Dallas-Fort Worth for a few days and visit my family, take a two week tour of the great Southwest and end with another few days visiting my family and assorted friends in DFW.

The closer it gets to the vacation, the more excited I'm getting. This is the most equal planning I've ever done for a vacation. Fred is not helpless by any means, but it's become a very "couple" activity for us to sit at the computer and look at hotels and car rentals and to look at the map and plan the route. We make joint decisions and we'll each pay roughly half. I'll be doing a lot of driving. Fred would rather not drive.

Three weeks seems like a lot of vacation, doesn't it? Of course my new office mate, Mary, thinks that it's not enough. I have 25 vacation days every year. Mary came from a company where they got 37. I would love another twelve days. I think that would be just enough without being too much. Maybe my goal for my next job will be to find the one with the most vacation days.

Some of the highlights of our trip are: The Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns and The Dallas School Book Depository. Last night I booked a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. It's an hour and it's got piped in classical music to go along with the scenery. It should be fabulous. Apparently they don't go into the canyon on these tours because the wind currents are pretty fierce. I asked about the crash/accident records. The girl on the phone didn't have statistics in front of her, but she told me about the wind currents and said it was pretty safe. It better be.

When I was 15, my family did a car tour of the Southwest going all the way to San Francisco, through Las Vegas and hitting all the big name tourist destinations. We even had the car overheat in the middle of Death Valley. Anyway, one of the big things was to get to Carlsbad Caverns before dusk and see the bats fly out of the cave. My father drove like a madman (thought I was going to write "bat out of hell"?) and we got there just after the cloud of bats was done. It was disappointing for us all. Mostly for my father. Pains me even now to think about it. So when we were planning the trip, Fred wanted to make sure that we got there on time as he didn't want me to relive any adolescent disappointment. Loving the Fred.

The Dallas School Book Despository is just a really cool exhibit for an historical event. I really wish I could figure out how to post pictures. (I have a mac if anyone would like to throw out a suggestion.) If I could post pictures, I would post the picture my mother took of JFK and Jackie minutes before he was shot. It's a pretty fabulous picture, just blurry enough and clear enough. After she took the picture and got back to the office, someone told her that he'd been shot. Spooky. Anyway, that's a cool exhibit. You can stand right where Oswald stood and see the Grassy Nole and all that. I recommend.

Plus, we're going to see some friends from college. It should be a nice trip. I'm excited. Texas should totally be a mind bender for Fred. It probably won't be. He's seen a lot in his life. But for me it will be a little trippy seeing him seeing where I grew up.

And it's going to be very hot.