#30 Virtual Road trip Day 8

For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

Day 8

This day was a very busy day in Tucson!  We started out our day with Saguaro National Park.  Here I watched some videos including the video they show at the park.  I also checked out the NPS photo gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5gf9_c4qlv_DmCL72k8daQ

Photos & Multimedia

https://www.nps.gov/sagu/learn/photosmultimedia/index.htm

 

The next stop was the Pima Air & Space Museum.  I enjoyed watching their flyover video.  They also had videos about some of the planes they have and a couple of virtual tours of the planes outside.

 

https://pimaair.org/about-us/news-and-media-center/

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.1390114,-110.8681212,3a,75y,303.42h,82.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAfASMMlULEPHJpgcGTqIiw!2e0!3e5!7i13312!8i6656

 

Pima Air & Space Museum | 360-Degree Tour

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNuBic6pIU

 

After this was a stop at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  We visited this place a long time ago, but mostly I just remember it being a really hot day.  Their website has a lot of short videos of nature plants and animals.  I liked the Meditation Monday videos the best.

 

https://www.desertmuseum.org/center/edu/dtdo/video/

 

 La Parrilla Suiza was one of the restaurants I remembered from our trips to Tucson.  

So, for dinner we made enchiladas suizas.  These reminded me of this place because the food was more like food from Mexico City.

This was our last part of our time in Arizona, but there is more to come from New Mexico.

#30 Virtual Road Trip Day 2

 For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

Day 2

We started the day off with lunch at subway.  We have in the past stopped at the subway in Grants, NM a few times. 

I had the American club sandwich.  Our first stop after lunch was El Malpais National Monument about 20 miles from Grants, NM.  We have stopped at their visitor center in the past but never made it to the actual monument. 

 We checked out their photo galleries.

Photo Gallery

https://www.nps.gov/elma/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

I watched a few videos; 

El Malpais National Monument - Part 1 | New Mexico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S84-WWF5tVc

 

The BEST Activities at El Malpais National Monument | Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmclZ3etfVQ

 

Hiking El Malpais National Conservation Area

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue5W5H5xFCw

I didn’t really like the video in the cave.  I did like the hiking videos and all the scenery. 

  

Next we stopped at El Morro National Monument which is 14 miles away.

We watched a video and checked out their Photo Gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WF3t3GnTUM

 

Photo Gallery

https://www.nps.gov/elmo/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

And watched an interesting  video about Juan de Archeluta

https://www.nps.gov/elmo/learn/photosmultimedia/multimedia.htm

Then we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park.  We used to stop here for a rest stop and once changed a tire in their parking lot.  

I really enjoyed looking at the photo galleries. 

We also watched the video they show at the visitor’s center.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zTbY4Tl2CQ

Then we made it to Flagstaff for dinner.  We had Italian night because I figured there has to be a good Italian restaurant in Flagstaff. 

We made grilled chicken and gnocchi with Daves Gourmet Creamy Parmesan Romano Pasta Sauce and with garlic bread.  Then we called it a day

 

# 21 Denali National Park photo galleries

Since I’ve been stuck at home I decided to look for virtual tours online.  I thought something in Alaska might be interesting to see since I haven’t been there and most likely won’t be able to visit.  So I decided to check out the Denali National Park website and their photo galleries.  Here’s some of what I found.

 

Denali (formerly Mount McKinley) is North America's tallest mountain at 20,310'

 

Landscapes in Denali and Denali Panoramas

These galleries had many interesting pictures of Denali, lakes and the surrounding landscape during the different seasons.

 

Aurora Borealis

There were quite of few photos of the Northern Lights.  This was really interesting to look at since it looks so abnormal.  I especially liked the pictures with a road and green in sky.

 

Alaskan Wildflowers

This was interesting to see the type of flowers that grow there.

 

People in Denali

These were not my favorite pictures and I’d rather see scenery instead.

 

These galleries did show Biking, Trail Hiking, Off-Trail Hiking, Volunteers and a Park Ranger in wheelchair leading a hike.

 

 Wildlife in Denali

There were Photo galleries of many different animals including Dall sheep, Moose, Caribou, Canada Lynx, Snowshoe Hares, Foxes, Bears, Beavers, Wolves, Squirrels and Porcupines

 

I really enjoyed the silhouettes of moose, caribou and sheep as well as the Wildlife in the snow.

 

 

 

I also Enjoyed looking at all the birds including grouse, ptarmigan, cranes,  geese, ducks, swans,  hawks, eagles, falcons, owls,  ravens, gray jays and more.

 

 

This was an interesting adventure, and even though it was just looking at photo galleries and not actually being there it was still a lot of fun.

 

If you want to see these galleries for yourself, you can visit this link.

 https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

#11 Bird watching Gilbert, Arizona and Chandler, Arizona

Awhile back I decided that bird watching might be a fun thing to try out, so while in Arizona we did just that.  The first day we visited the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona.  This was a little bit of a chilly and cloudy day.  This preserve has multiple ponds and trails with plenty of benches and places to watch birds.  

On day two we visited Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler, Arizona. This day was excessively hot with not so much shade. The ponds here were harder to get to and watch for birds.  At both places I got a bird list which I didn’t really use while there. I also got my camera ready and looked for and tried to take pictures of as many different birds as I could.  Then when I got home I compared my pictures to pictures on allaboutbirds.org and used my bird lists to identify the different birds.

Here are the birds I got good pictures of and could identify. (I think)

 American Coot

 

 Cinnamon Teal

 

 Great Egret

 Least Sandpiper

 

 Black-necked Stilt

 

 Gadwall

 

   American Avocet

   Canada Goose

Mallard

Gambel's Quail

 

Snowy Egret

 

 Great-tailed Grackle

I had a lot of fun spending time outside looking for birds, taking pictures and then trying to identify each bird. Bird watching is definitely something I would enjoy doing in the future.