Mike and Darlene’s Weekly DEAL!

Hello Everyone, and Happy Friday!

We hope you’re all having a wonderful summer, we sure are enjoying ours! We climbed a 13,626 foot peak here in Colorado yesterday, and what an exhilarating experience. There’s nothing like the views from the top of a mountain!

Except maybe the view from the deck of a ship! We’re featuring a view and scenery cruise this week, as it’s almost Panama Canal season already, and time to prepare if that’s the destination you’ve been looking for. We’ve gone TO the Panama Canal, but have yet to make the complete transit from one coast to the other, and we’re seriously considering the cruise we’re featuring this week for ourselves:

It’s aboard the Celebrity Constellation, a mid-sized ship, accommodating just a little over 2,000 passengers (small enough to get through the locks), beautifully appointed with the Aqua Spa, and the Persian Garden for those times when you’re looking for the ultimate in relaxation, Ocean Liners Restaurant when you want to indulge in Celebrity’s amazing cuisine, and The Conservatory, a flourishing, breathtaking garden featuring the exclusive collection of world-renowned floral designer, Emilio Robba. These amenities, along with Celebrity’s other great features, the casino, the gym, sports deck, theater, lounges, dancing, and more, will make for a great home-away-from home for the 14-night Panama Canal transit cruise.

Our cruise starts in Miami on November 22. If you have the time, schedule a pre-night in Miami and enjoy the vibrant atmosphere of South Beach. On the way to the Canal you’ll visit fascinating Cartagena, Columbia, a place we’ve visited and found to be a fun and really interesting place (with great food!). You’ll transit the Panama Canal on day 6, seeing first hand what an amazing technical achievement the Canal really is, and also enjoying beautiful jungle views along the way.

 With great food in mind, on day 8, you’ll visit Puntarenas, Costa Rica: As one of the country’s leading fishing ports, Puntarenas is the perfect place to enjoy fresh seafood, including ceviche de corvine – bits of fresh fish marinated in lime juice with onions, peppers and spices. This port is also a great place to see wildlife, and it’s also very high on the list of places to visit by world-class surfers.

 You’ll also get to experience the beautiful bays and beaches of Huatulco and Acapulco, Mexico, and the great rock formations of Cabo San Lucas, before reaching your final destination of San Diego, CA. (Another fun place to visit, you might want to stay an extra night or two!)

 The price is right too! On this 14-night cruise aboard a world-class cruise-ship, you can book an interior stateroom, including port fees and tax*, for only $1254.17 PP. Book an ocean view and the fare starts at a low $1454.17 PP, and you can enjoy a private balcony room for only $1854.17 PP, again, including port fees and tax. And if you are a senior (age 55 or over) you can save up to $150 PP for an ocean view, or get an upgrade to a Concierge Class Verandah stateroom and save up to $100 PP!

 *Fares include port fees and tax, airfare and insurance are additional. Fares are subject to change and availability.

 Currently, there are also resident rates for certain states, so if you don’t qualify for the senior fare, give us a call and we’ll see if your state is on the list.

 Call us soon though, it really is time to book your fall/winter cruises, cruise sales are picking up and the ships are starting to fill a bit faster than the last few months. That means prices will start to creep back up, so now’s the time to book your cruise. Give us a call at 1-800-267-7613 and we’ll find the best promotion we can to save you the most on your next vacation!

 Until then, have a great weekend…we look forward to hearing from you soon!

 Mike and Darlene

Hiking Day

Get Out the Map

Hiking Day

By Mike & Darlene Jordan      

            For the summer, anyway, we’ve decreed that Thursday will be hiking day.

            Why Thursday? Well, between the cruise business and the advertising business, Thursday is the day when all deadlines have been met, it’s a slow day on the phones, and it’s usually a day, unlike the weekends, when trails are less crowded.

            We both love high mountain hikes, so off we went on Thursday for our first major hike of the season: 13,626-foot West Spanish Peak. We had started this hike before after accidentally discovering the trailhead while out on a sightseeing drive on the “Highway of Legends” a few years ago. We chose this hike because it’s fairly close to home and because we had dinner plans for the evening and would be home in plenty of time—we thought.

            The trail guide describes the trip as a 3 and a half mile trip each way, so we did the calculation that, even if we only walked one mile per hour (much slower than we usually walk on a hike), then we should easily be home by 4:30 or 5:00 at the latest.

            It was a beautiful morning and the trip over La Veta Pass was gorgeous as usual; the recent rains have kept everything so lush and green. We arrived at the Cordova Pass trailhead above Cuchara at 9:15 with plenty of water in the camelback and lunch in the day-pack and off we went down the excellent trail.

            The trail to timberline is about 2 miles and is an easy and beautiful walk. Even if you’re not into mountain climbing, this portion of the hike is worth the trip. It’s mostly along a ridge, has very few ups and downs, and is in the shade of the San Isabel National Forest almost all the way.

            Along the route there are a few breaks in the trees where, on one side of the ridge, you’ll see virtually forever out onto the Eastern Plains into Kansas and New Mexico, and on the other side you’ll see astonishing views of the Sangre De Cristo and Wet Mountain ranges and, of course, the goal of this hike, West Spanish Peak. The mountain looms through the trees as you get closer to treeline.

            The mountain is so big it looks like it’s only a few steps away, and after just an hour and a half we came out of the trees and were ready to begin the last mile and a half up the slope of the peak.

            Now, if you’ve ever climbed the high peaks of Colorado, you know that most trails wind around the mountain or switch back and forth to make the climb a little easier on the lungs. Not this one. This one climbs almost straight up the face of the mountain; and we do mean up. Still, it didn’t look that far.

            Nothing on a mountain peak the size of this one ever looks “that far.” One has to look at the people who are actually hiking ahead of you. If they look like tiny ants and they’re less than a quarter of the way up the hill, you know you have a long climb ahead.

            We started up the face of the mountain. The trail had virtually disappeared and we had to navigate via the rock cairns that marked the way up the rocky slope; and we do mean rocky. The mountain is covered with talus (fairly large rocks) and scree (much smaller and looser rock) which can make finding a foothold difficult. This would have been only a small problem, except that we were now beginning to look at the clock. We were only halfway up the mountain when it became obvious that it would take us more than twice as long to climb the last mile as it did to walk the first two miles.

            Intrepid never-say-die hikers that we are, we continued the climb and reached the summit, irritated only by the group of about 30 kids from a church camp with whom we shared the trail on the way up; not only because they were noisy (which they were—very), but because most of them passed us on the trail like we were standing still.

            The views from the top of West Spanish Peak are indescribable. The most incredible part is seeing virtually all of the “dikes,” the geographic formations that emanate from the Spanish Peaks. You see a couple of them close-up when driving from La Veta to Cuchara, but from the top you can see that they virtually surround the peaks like spokes on a wheel.

            The trip down the face of the peak was even harder than the trip up. Controlling descent in the loose rock was treacherous, and we both found ourselves on our bottoms more than once. Our time calculations were now out the window, and we neglected to rest as often as we should have. We were late for dinner, but the trip was exhilarating and challenging.

We’re ready to go again.

            Until next time…Get out the Map!

Working Vacation…Part 3

The Working Vacation…part 3
By Mike & Darlene Jordan 
It’s hard to believe that a little conference in Dallas and the associated visit to Texas that we weren’t particularly looking forward to was turning into a rather fascinating trip. Just a tiny bit of planning was paying off.
We had had a late night at the Gladewater Saturday Night Opry, but had big plans for the next day in Tyler. Tyler is known for its rose garden, and now we know why. Only a few blocks from our B&B there is a fantastic park full of roses; roses of every color and description, bed after bed of them. We were actually about a week late for the fullest blooms, but we were not disappointed. In addition to the roses were numerous other flowers, plants and trees; most of which we would never be able to grow at our climate and elevation. We spent a couple of hours at the garden, and probably could have stayed longer, but the temperature was climbing fast.
Our next stop was Tyler State Park, about 24 miles north of Tyler. We didn’t really expect much there, but were very pleasantly surprised by the beautiful lake and surrounding lush trees and greenery. It was obviously a popular spot on a hot summer day, but not too hot for a couple of hikers from Colorado to make the 2-mile trek through the woods around the lake.
Note to those who want to explore and shop the small towns in Texas: they roll up the sidewalks early, and there’s almost nothing open on Sunday. We had to drive all the way back to Tyler to find something to eat…and that was at a chain restaurant. There’s nothing wrong with chains, but we can eat there any time. When traveling, we prefer a local establishment.
After another night at the Rosevine Inn in Tyler, it was off to the tiny town of Spur where our objective was to find some details about Darlene’s family. Now, we’ve never been much into genealogy, but we have visited the Mormon Family History Library in Salt Lake City, where Mike accidentally found a wealth of information about his family, and Darlene has a renewed interest in her own background. It’s fascinating what you can find if you just “turn over a couple of rocks.”
After a night in the only motel in Dickens, Texas (dirt cheap and worth every penny), 10 miles north of Spur, our first stop in Spur was the cemetery. We like walking around cemeteries anyway, speculating on the details behind the few facts listed on headstones, but looking for family history made it doubly interesting. We knew her grandfather was buried there, and we found a number of plots with her family name, including uncles and aunts—but no grandfather.
A visit to the local funeral home provided information as to where he and his wife should be. We located the plot where an uncle was buried, but there was still no stone for her grandfather. The director of the funeral home contacted a gentleman who met us at the cemetery with some burial records and witching rods.
We looked at each other. Witching rods? The man carefully walked the plot and we saw the rods come together in two places, fairly far apart, where there were no stones. “This one’s a female,” the man said as we looked at him, slackjawed. “It’s possible that any stones that might have been there have sunk into the ground.” He promised to return and use a prod to determine for sure if there was a casket or a stone.
Our next mission was back to Dickens to the county courthouse, where we were allowed to peruse the huge books of birth, death, and marriage records dating back to around the turn of the century. While there, we discovered land purchases made by Darlene’s grandfather and her father dated in the 1920s. Totally by accident, she even found the death certificate of a brother she knew had died in infancy before she was born.
Armed with hints from our visit to Spur and Dickens, Darlene has now been able to use online resources to shape the beginnings of a family tree.
The whole point of this exercise was to take what would have been a drab (at best) trip to a business meeting and turn it into an interesting and memorable journey.
But, man…is it hot in Texas.