For those of you who have never been to Moab, Utah – and I suspect that is most of you – this post will give you a sense of a very unique place.

I first went to Moab in the late 1980s.  Moab is located is the southeastern part of Utah, close to the Colorado River, in a pretty valley bordered by stunning red sandstone cliffs.  For many years Moab was a sleepy, rural small town in the middle of nowhere until a uranium boom put it on the map in the 1950’s.  The boom was followed by the inevitable bust, and the town languished.  Those who stayed enjoyed beautiful views, a slower pace of life, and a mild influx of tourist dollars from people who wanted to see two of the most beautiful and under-appreciated places in America – Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.

 

When I first went there I thought it was just another wide spot on a rural road to nowhere, a place to gas up and continue your journey to your final destination.  I’ve seen dozens of those and they all looked the same to me.  After visiting Arches NP and taking a couple of off-road jeep tours I came to appreciate the special qualities of this part of the state.  I soon found myself coming to Moab, a four-hour trip, for weekends of bike riding, four-wheeling and photography.  I came to love the stark beauty of the red cliffs and unique landscape in this part of the country.  The Colorado plateau is stark, stunning and severe – it is also spiritual and special to those who can appreciate it.

 

Today Moab is approaching places like Park City and Sedona as hip and chic places to hang out, shop, enjoy arts and the outdoors.  Moab draws a different crowd – younger, less affluent, more inclined to go for a bike ride, off-road adventure or river run than play golf or rub elbows with celebrities – but the atmosphere is similar.  The main street in Moab has an eclectic mix of bookstores, café’s, curio shops, galleries and restaurants (as well as the ubiquitous franchise outlets), so there is plenty do see and do for those who don’t want to or can’t enjoy the opportunities to hike, bike, and explore.

 

This is the place we took our family for Memorial Day Weekend in The Camping Machine.  The boys were very excited to get out for our first camping adventure of the season.  We left early Friday morning to beat the inevitable exodus from our city that was to follow later in the day.  Where we live it is common to see the freeways out of town fill up with RVs and other recreational vehicles beginning shortly after noon every Friday.  It begins even sooner when a Holiday weekend approaches.  When I was single I would see these vehicles leave town and wonder where the campers and RVs were going.  In my mind they were all going to fun and exciting places, getting away from the city for a breath of fresh air at the lake, in the mountains or on the desert.  I hoped that someday I’d be one of them, heading on the highway, looking for adventure or whatever came my way. 

 

Today we were one of them, proud members of the RV Nation.  Destination: Moab.

 

We had beautiful weather as we pulled The Camping Machine into Moab and our campsite at the Moab Valley RV Park.  We set up the campsite, hooked up the utilities and organized the living space before packing the boys off to the pool for a swim.  It seems strange to come all the way to Moab to swim in a small campground pool, but when you travel with kids ages 7 and 5 swimming is what they like to do.  The water was extremely cold – I don’t know how the boys could stay in so long, but they had a great time as MBW and I froze.  We were icicles by the time the boys were ready to get out.   

 

We grilled brats and hot dogs for dinner, made s’mores for dessert, played life-size checkers and mini-golf at the campground playground and went to bed.

 

The next day we went into Arches National Park.  Arches has the largest concentration of natural stone arches anywhere in the world.  Delicate Arch is the unofficial symbol of the state of Utah and is featured on one version of the state’s license plates. 

The park draws tourists from all over the world, and we happened to enter the park just ahead of a busload of tourists from Germany.  When we got out at one of the first major scenic areas we were nearly trampled by German-speaking men and women racing to get photos of each other in front of one of the larger arches in the park.  MBW said, “What’s their hurry?  It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

 

She has a point.

 

The highlight for the boys was Sand Dune Arch.  This particular feature is an arch hidden between two massive sandstone walls, or ‘fins.’  Because it is virtually enclosed between two towering walls, the sand created by the wind and rain eroding the sandstone rock features has gathered at the base of this arch, creating a giant sandbox.  It is a perfect place to bring two boys and their sand toys to sit and play amid the splendor of nature.  Much as I’d like to say we were the only ones to think of this idea, we weren’t.  So many families decided to do the same thing it prompted one visitor to say, “This looks like the National Park Service day care center.”

 

After a picnic lunch in the park we went back to the campsite, changed clothes and went into Moab.  It turns out Memorial Day weekend is when Moab holds the annual Moab Arts Festival.  While this arts festival is nothing like the Park City Arts Festival, the Sun Valley Arts Festival or the Jackson Hole Arts Festival, it did feature live music, some interesting characters and some interesting art.  MBW bought a silver bracelet.  I took pictures.

 

Sunday we went south to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.  We made a stop at Newspaper Rock State Historical Site, a large rock panel covered with Native American petroglyphs.  This is one of the largest and best-preserved rock art panels in the United States.  The artwork is thought to be a combination of Anasazi, Fremont and Navajo images.  No one knows for sure what the images mean or what stories are told here, but it is thought that it was a way to communicate with others passing through the area.

 

After leaving Newspaper Rock we entered Canyonlands National Park.  This is one of the more remote and least-visited National Parks in the United States.  It features beautiful, stark vistas of sandstone rock formations and more Native American rock art and structures.  We explored a cave that had been a temporary dwelling place for Native Americans and, later, cowboys who passed through the area.  The boys thought it was very cool to stand in a cave where ‘Indians’ and Cowboys once stood.  Despite the hot, dry desert conditions the area features beautiful and abundant plant life uniquely suited to the harsh desert climate.

 

By the end of the day we were all hot and tired.  It was early to bed for the Camping Machine family, and come Monday morning it was time to go home.  Breaking camp is one of my least favorite activities, as it means it’s time to go home.  But we had a wonderful trip and it makes my day when, as we’re pulling out of the campsite, my son says, “That was so much fun!  Let’s come back here again!”

 

We will.  You can count on it.

We arrived safely in Moab and are settled in the campground.  Boys having a great time.  Internet access is very slow.  May not be able to post photos until we get home. 

With two days to departure we are preparing for our first camping trip of the year.  As this website and blog are pretty new, I thought I would share with you the post I wrote two years ago on my other blog that describes how we came to own The Camping Machine.  Following is the post (as I'm having trouble linking to the old blog from this site).  Here is the post:

It started in February 2004. It was a cold, snowy weekend and we were looking for something to do with the kids. My wife had been talking to one of her friends earlier in the day, and this friend happened to mention they were going to the RV show. My wife said, “Maybe that would be something to do this afternoon.”

So we loaded up the truck and went to see RVs. 5th wheels, Motor Homes.

Chris and Tommy loved it. When we walked through the door into the convention center Chris stopped dead in his tracks and said, “Look at all these Camping Machines!”

Thus the name was born. We spend a couple of hours there that day, and over the course of that time I thought maybe this would be a fun way for our family to spend time together – get one of these ‘camping machines’ and explore our part of the country. After all, we live in a place with fantastic access to mountains, lakes and National Parks within a day’s drive. What better way to spend quality time as a family, away from the city, TV, video games and the normal routine?

I spend the next year doing research on RVs, tow vehicles, and the whole camping lifestyle. The more my wife and I talked about it the more we thought it would be fun to give it a try. I spend hundreds of hours online (rv.net is a great resource) looking at trailer specs, reading message boards and asking questions. It took some time but I started to understand what would be a good fit four our family, our travel plans and our budget.

This past February we went back to the RV show. Three times in two days. We narrowed our selections to four models. The week after the show I went to the dealers and looked at each one more carefully. Two weeks later we ordered the one we liked best from the factory.

Today we picked it up and drove it home.

Our two boys couldn’t be more excited. We ate lunch in the Camping Machine – in the driveway. We ate dinner in the Camping Machine. In the driveway. And right now they are both sleeping in the Camping Machine. In the driveway.

And I’m writing this in the Camping Machine. IN the driveway. Before I, too, will go to sleep in the Camping Machine. In the driveway.

My wife is in bed already. In the house.

Maybe next weekend we’ll go camping.

Well, we did go camping that weekend.  The first year we only got out three more times, but last year we got out seven times.  Not bad considering we also had youth soccer, T-ball and other family obligations.  Plus, here in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, our season is short – basically Memorial Day to Labor Day.

It’s interesting how we came to be a Camping Family.  As a boy I did not go camping with my family.  We just didn’t do that.  My wife did not go camping with her family when she was a child.  We don’t have many friends who are serious campers.  So the whole thing was very new to us.

But because we live in such a beautiful area with virtually endless possibilities for outdoor recreation, and because my wife and I are committed to spending more quality time with our kids doing things outdoors and less time in front of the TV, we looked into the whole RV/Camping thing as a way to honor our commitment. 

Even more than that, I want to make sure we make the most of our time together while our children are young and live with us.  It is hard for me to believe my boys will turn 7 and 5 this summer!  Where did those seven years go?  I am afraid the time will fly by and before we know it, the boys will be off to college.  So our investment in our travel trailer, or rather our Camping Machine, is to make sure we get out and do things together.  Get out on the road and see places outside of our back yard.  Make those memories as a family so that when our kids look back on their childhood they say to themselves, “We sure did a lot of fun things when we were kids.”

So there it is, the context for this website and this blog.  It’s not about the Camping Machine.  It’s about our family and what we do together.  The Camping Machine is one way, a fun way, for us to grow together as a family, see new places, have fun and spend time in the great outdoors.  Plus, in my humble opinion, it makes an interesting hook to the website – I am a marketing guy, after all.

I hope you’ll check in when you can for updates and dispatches from the road.  Please feel free to leave your comments in the guestbook.  I am working to improve the technical aspects of the blog, so in the future it should be easier to leave comments.  Thanks again for reading!

Last weekend was a Major Shopping Event for me. Now many of you might find a Major Shopping Weekend a very exciting thing, and I might too, if I were shopping for home electronics, books, or camping equipment. But alas, this weekend was one of those ‘have to do it, can’t put it off any longer, let’s get this over as quickly as possible’ Shopping Events

I had to buy new eyeglasses and new dress shoes.

To set (or re-set, since I’ve been one so long) the scene, I do wear eyeglasses. I am nearsighted, have been since second grade. I have worn contacts in the past but for the past several years I’ve stuck with the glasses. I would have kept the glasses I’ve had for the past three years, except they broke in half last week and my backup pair is so old the prescription had gone out of date. They gave me a headache when I wore them.

My dress shoes are even older than my glasses were. There were holes in the soles. When the parking lot was wet my socks would get damp. That really didn’t bother me – it doesn’t rain that much here, and I like wasting money on new shoes about as much as I like flushing $100 bills down the toilet. I was willing to keep the shoes for a few more months, at lest until winter set in. But when I told my wife I was going to go choose new frames and get a decent, current pair of glasses, she insisted on coming along. “And you’re getting new shoes,” she said. “That’s that.”

So off we went to the mall.

Of course it was a beautiful day, the type of day it should be criminal to be inside a shopping mall. I mean, really, the Activity Police should be at every entrance of the mall issuing citations for Unconscionable Waste of Sunshine to everyone going in. But no such luck today. With MBW leading the charge I mope my way inside.

To the franchise Eyeglasses outlet we go. The manager, young enough to be my son, was very helpful. He showed us several frames that were, in turn, “Edgy, Hip, and very Mod." After hearing these descriptions I said to him, “You are very nice and helpful. But I’m 46 years old. I’m getting gray hair. There’s nothing edgy, hip or very mod about me. I just want to see clearly and not look like a dork. Do you have a section for guys like me?”

He looked at me and said “You don’t look a day over 40!”

I said, “Do you work on commission?”

After some further searching we landed on a pair of frames that, with the correct lenses,will allow me to see clearly. I can’t tell you if they look good, and frankly I don’t really care. At this point in my life I’ll settle for not looking bad. They said the glasses would be ready in about an hour. We said we’d come back then to pick them up.

As we left the store MBW said, “Now let’s go get your new shoes!”

I turned back to the manager and said, “See you next weekend!”

That earned me a sharp elbow to the ribs.

This is where MBW is in her element. Shoes. Preferably women’s shoes, of course, but really any shoes will do. She pored over the displays. She knew all the brands. After what seemed like months of consideration, she selected half-a-dozen styles for me to try on.

The poor sales associate needed a dolly to wheel all the shoes out of the back room.

After I tried on the first pair and took a few steps I said to the clerk, “These will do just fine. Box them up and charge my card.” MBW simply glowered at me and favored me with another sharp elbow to the ribs.

45 minutes later I had dutifully tried on each of the selected pairs of shoes, some twice. We settled on a pair of black dress shoes that she liked, and fortunately for me did not hurt my feet too badly. By the time we went back to pick up my glasses and leave the mall I expected it to be next week, or certainly well after dark. But what seemed like a weekend stay in the county jail was really only about two hours of agony.

So today I go into work with my new glasses and shoes. The first thing MBW says to me when I walk in the door at the end of the day is, “Did anyone notice your shoes?”

“No,” I say.

“Did anyone comment on your new glasses?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you feel bad?”

I wanted to laugh.

Instead, I said, “I’ll get over it.” She gave me a hug, and then I said, “The best part is these new glasses allow me to see how truly beautiful you are. I am the luckiest guy in the world to have such a beautiful wife.”

What happened next made the pain and suffering at the mall all worthwhile.

It’s Great to be The Family Man.

When you dine out with young kids you know you’re in for an adventure. If you go out in your own city, presumably you plan ahead – choosing a restaurant you are comfortable with. One you know will provide good food, good service, a place where your kids will be comfortable.

When traveling it’s a different proposition. At best you’re making a selection based on a recommendation from someone you trust, preferably a local or someone who should know – a business associate, a concierge, or at least a respectable looking bellman or desk clerk.

At worst, you pull into the first place you see because your kids are grumpy, cranky and they have to have something to eat RIGHT NOW.

Of course that’s what happened to us. After flying most of the day, a hectic plane change in Cincinnati and getting just a little bit lost driving to the beach, we checked into our hotel, threw our stuff in the room and walked out the door looking for food.

To put the rest of this story in perspective you should have a bit of gastronomical background of The Family. My wife and I are not ‘foodies.’ We don’t eat out all that often. When we do it is usually with our kids (yes, I know - we should get out more, just the two of us. That’s another post). What that means is that we usually end up at a ‘casual dining’ chain restaurant. You know those menus.

If it says gourmet burger, I feel like I’ve had a gourmet meal.

My wife is a bit more sophisticated, but my point here is that we’re not food snobs, looking for every opportunity to complain about our meal. If we get what we order, it’s cooked halfway decently and we don’t get sick, we’re satisfied.

One other thing. I have no idea how this happened, but somewhere along the way Chris picked up a taste for seafood. Particularly crab.

So as we’re walking along Atlantic Avenue, Chris spots a restaurant with a crab in the logo and he announces, “I want to eat there!”

As soon as we walked in I knew we were headed for trouble. The décor was faux fishing vessel. That tacky memorabilia hung predictably from every wall. Fake lobster pots hung in fishing nets from the ceiling.

And honest to God, there’s a guy behind the bar with a white beard and some kind of outfit that’s supposed to be fishing garb. At first I thought he was a painted wooden carving, part of the décor. Then he moved. And when he saw me staring at him, he glared at me with eyes that had seen and survived years of terrible Nor’easters. He was The Captain. And we'd be eating his catch.

The only authentic ‘fishing boat’ aspect of the décor was the smell.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

If it were just the two of us we would have turned around and walked out. But if you’ve traveled all day with kids, and they’re hungry, walking out of a place with food is simply not an option, unless you’re the type who considers a mutually destructive exchange of nuclear weapons a viable solution.

So we go in and sit down.

I should mention that I know we’re not the type of patron most servers want to have seated in their section. Frazzled parents with two little boys are not the most desirable customers. Knowing this, I go out of my way to be polite and courteous to the server. It’s the right thing to do, of course, but I also want to re-set their expectation. I’m not going to be difficult, and if I have a special or unusual request I will be gracious and understanding.

I’m just a parent – not a jerk.

Our server is an older woman, very nice, but it looks like she’s served too many hard years with The Captain. This is a job and she needs a paycheck. Still, she smiles and is very personable. She’s not just mailing this in. I smile and banter just a bit.

We order a kids burger platter for Tommy. Safe choice and he’s happy. Then we make the fatal mistake.

The seafood buffet.

It’s our own fault. We should have looked first. Because if we had, we would have left the place and let the nukes be exchanged.

Because honestly the buffet looked like it had been nuked. Three days ago.

But we’re committed now, they have our money and the kids had eaten all the breadsticks our server could bring. Chris has got to have crab. So we go through and choose as carefully as we can. A bit of this, looks okay, maybe just this little piece of that, absolutely none of whatever THAT was…until we reach the end.

It’s didn’t taste all that bad, honestly, but it was very disappointing. To me and my wife, at any rate. Our first meal on our vacation and it did not set the best tone for the rest of the trip.

On the other hand, I left plenty of room for desert. Which was chocolate, and that’s all I needed to know.

So we’re wrapping up this disappointing meal, our server brings the bill and asks how it was. Tommy jumps right in and says, “It was great!” Our server smiles at him and I second his statement. She didn’t lay out the buffet. She was very nice to us.

I paid the bill, gave her 20% and we walked out the door.

Two things.

One - As we left, Chris, who is becoming a very polite boy, says, “Mom, Dad, thanks for taking us to that fancy restaurant. That’s fun!”

Chris, we do need to get out more.

Two – Sometime after three o’clock in the morning, The Captain had his revenge. His catch is on its way back out to sea.

It can only get better from here on out.

Some of you may have had this experience, but if you have not, be aware of this.

As I mentioned earler this week I built this website and wanted to incorporate my Blogger blog into it. I am an internet neophyte and used Web.com to build this site. Overall the experience was pretty good. If you have visited this site before you can see it is clearly the work of an amateur, but it is coming along and I learn something new each time I play around with it.

The latest attempt was to have my blog display on this page. According to Blogger you can do this. Beth was kind enough to send me an email with the specific Blogger instructions on how to do this.

So this evening I tried to do it, following Beth's instructions exactly, and it did not work.

I tried several times, to no avail.

I called the Web.com customer support line, and have just gotten off the phone with them after almost 45 minutes. The net of it is, I cannot display my Blogger blog on a page in my website.

So now I have to either figure out how to build teh site in Dreamweaver, which I own but don't have the first clue how to use, or transfer my site to some other host, change templates and start all over.

It's a bit of a bummer.

Any thoughts?

It was a dreary, rainy afternoon in our part of the world last weekend. Didn’t feel like May at all. My wife was enjoying a (well deserved) afternoon at the day spa. I’m home with my two sons, Chris and Tommy, and we’re all bouncing off the walls.

I’m the first to admit I’m not good with the kids when we’re stuck indoors. Let me play outside and I’ll go all day – we’ll go to a park, ride scooters, throw balls around – anything outdoors and I’m ready to go. But when we’re stuck indoors I just don’t have the skills my wife does to invent things to keep the boys entertained. I usually resort to pillow fights or other rough-and-tumble activities which, more often than not, result in someone getting bonked on the head.

But that afternoon divine inspiration struck. I said to the boys, “Let’s color some pictures!”

They both thought that was a great idea, so we got out the crayons and paper and sat down to draw.

My thought was I would give a little art lesson. That would provide some structure to the activity and I thought they might like learning how to draw some of their favorite things – a fire truck, a monster truck, the Camping Machine.

Who am I to teach an art lesson, you ask? Well, while I’m no Rembrandt, my undergraduate degree is a BFA and I did attend Pratt Institute in NYC for a year. I can draw a fire truck that most people would at least recognize as a wheeled vehicle of some sort. And anyway, I’m talking about teaching two boys, age 6 and 4.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

So we sat down to draw, and I said, “Daddy will show you how to draw a fire truck.”

“Great, Dad,” was the reply.

I gave a simple play-by-play as I drew a rectangle, with little circles for wheels, a square for the cab and a squiggly hose. Chris and Tommy diligently worked away on their versions.

Chris finished first and said, “Take a look at this fire truck!”

It was a random scribble.

Tommy said, “Mine too!”

His was also a random scribble.

Last time I saw a fire truck, the basic shape of the thing was primarily rectangular, with wheels that were, as near as I could tell, round.

Maybe they just aren’t getting it.

“Let’s try again,’ I said.

So I drew another one, more slowly, more carefully. Actually it was excruciatingly slow and painstaking. And I was very precise in my explanation of how, exactly, Chris and Tommy could do the same thing.

This time Tommy finished first. “Dad,” he said, “I think I got it!” He showed me his page – a wild, crazy mass of scribbles.

Chris had gone extreme. Far more scribbles. This time he used multiple colors.

“Dad,’ he said, ‘you’re truck is kind of boring. Look at mine. See how fast it’s going?”

“Look at mine, Dad,” Tommy said, “It’s spraying water on the fire!”

So I took a good look at their drawings. I took another look at mine.

And the light bulb over my head finally turned on.

Chris and Tommy did, in fact, draw fire trucks. They drew them the way they see them, a flurry of activity, full of excitement, adventure and motion. They captured the essence of the experience that seeing a fire truck race down the street means to them.

I drew a box with two circles.

We did accomplish the one thing I set out to do that afternoon. An Art Lesson was definitely given.

Instead of being the teacher, I was the student.

My four-year old son has asthma. Each night before bed he takes medicine from his inhaler and also a pill. It has helped him a great deal this past winter – he hasn’t had any of the congestion or the wet coughing he had last winter.

My son takes his medicine after we’ve read the nighttime stories but before we brush his teeth. Tonight I gave him his medicine while my wife got our six-year old boy ready for bed. As usual, the four-year old took his medicine without a fuss.

After the medicine went down we began to play tickles. I had him laughing pretty good and he was having fun. Lying on my back on our bed, I lifted him directly above me. We were both laughing at this point when suddenly he stopped, his eyes grew huge, and he threw up.

Right into my open mouth.

I’d like to tell you that it happened in slow motion, that I saw it come out of his mouth, flowing down toward my face, knowing with horror what was happening but absolutely unable to do anything about it.

But it wasn’t like that.

One instant we’re both laughing and having a fun moment, the next instant my mouth is full of vomit that is not my own. If you’ve ever thrown up, you know what it’s like to have that taste in your mouth. It’s disgusting. You want to brush your teeth for 20 minutes and drink a gallon of Listerine.

Take my word on this one. It’s much worse when it’s someone else’s puke.

Of course, it didn’t ALL go in my mouth. There was plenty on my shirt, the bedspread, the pillows. Oh, and yes, there was some on his ‘blankie.’ And that’s what he noticed. I’m choking, gasping, trying not to throw up myself, and my son says, “Dad, wash my blankie! It has throw-up on it!”

 

Priorities.  It’s all about priorities.

Tonight after work my boys wanted to go to the new subdivision where new homes are being built. The roads have just gone in, smooth as glass with virtually no traffic – perfect for learning to ride a bike or a scooter. There are also several large pies of dirt, perfect for climbing and sliding.

We got there shortly after 6:30 p.m. and spent all of five minutes riding bikes and scooters. After that it was all about the dirt. We spent the next hour climbing up, sliding down, throwing, digging, pushing and running around big piles of dirt. The boys had an absolute blast. By the time we were done we were all filthy, and they could not have been happier.

Finally it was time to go home. The boys piled into the back seat, still laughing and talking about the fun they’d had. I turned on the radio for the short ride home, and happened upon a classic hit from the 80’s. My boys were oblivious to the lyrics, but I couldn’t help but smile as I drove home, listening to Foreigner sing ‘Dirty White Boy.’