Antelope Canyon is located on Navajo land outside of Page, Arizona.  These slot canyons are carved into the Navajo sandstone from water erosion.  The canyons feel dimensional, multi-colored and organic.  The sunlight flooding in at some spots make the place seem mystical.

From Arches NP we headed down to Glen Canyon to visit beautiful Lake Powell.  We based ourselves at Lake Powell’s Waheap campground, and checked out several different sites around Page (the main town). 
There is a turn-off right next to the dam, where you can park and walk down vermillion sandsone rocks to a small fishing/swimming spot called The Chains.  We were told frozen anchovies were good bait for catching bass or rainbow trout.  The water is so clear we could see the fish swimming just below us.  These fish were probably 14″ or more.  But they wouldn’t bite.  Finally I caught a fish, but it was only a 5″ rainbow trout that we sent back into the water.  After 4 hours fishing, all we got were strange sunburns where we mis-applied our sunscreen.

While at Arches NP we took a hike through the canyon fins in search of arches.  There are no marked trails on the Fiery Furnace walk, nor are there any trail maps to lead you through the sandstone labyrinth.  We took a 3 hour guided tour with a ranger, and although it wasn’t a tough trail, it was enjoyable.

What an incredible location!  This is the Devil’s Garden Campground inside Arches National Park.  There are only 20 sites or so that are first come first serve.

This campground offers both rv sites and tent camping.  Tent camping is located off a trail and is private.  If you are tent camping, this is the place to do it.  There are several trails that surround the campground.  They are all easy, short hikes.

The above photo was much of our view of the lake.  Sadly, the mountain pine beetles have done their damage on the pines at Steamboat Springs Lake.  The park is in the process of cutting down the dead trees, and are planning to replant 18o0 trees this year.  The loss of the trees also means, there is little shade or shelter.  We stayed two nights; our first evening we got drenched in a hail and rain storm, and the temperature dropped to 36′F.

 The morning however, turned out to be sunny and beautiful.  We spent the day fishing without any luck.  The night would have been perfect, if not for the swarms of gnats everywhere.

Before we officially set off for our camping adventure, we stopped off in Fort Collins, Colorado to visit with my brother’s family.  It was filled with non-stop activities that Kyra and Aiden are involved in…swim meets, tennis practice, soccer games and baseball games.  The week culminated with a pinata party, as Kyra also turned 8 years old and celebrated with 10 of her closest girlfriends.

We wrapped up our visit with family by camping in the Poudre River at the Big South campsite, a small campground, about two hours northwest of Ft. Collins.  The Big South is situated between the Cache La Poudre River on one side, and the main road on the other.  Eventhough camping road-side doesn’t sound appealing, this campsite still offers a good amount of privacy once it got dark.

It’s hasn’t been that long since we’ve been back home following out trip around the world, but we’ve gotten the summer travel bug.  So we’ve decided it’s time to start our next adventure and explore the great American Southwest.  Concentrating on the Four Corner States, we’re planning on hitting Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico over the next few months.  We’re looking forward to seeing some of the U.S.’s best national parks like Zion, Bryce, Arches and the Grand Canyon.

We were planning on tent camping until Christine found these great little Scamp travel trailers while browsing eBay.  Neither of us had ever seen one of these before, but aparently they were quite popular in the 70s.  Check out the Fiberglass RV website to see some cool pics of all kinds of small vintage RVs.  Only 13′ long and made out of fiberglass, they weigh just over 1000 pounds and are very easy to tow.  We found a guy in Illinois who renovates these little guys and are now the proud owners of a vintage 1978 Scamp travel trailer.  Fitted with a small stove, fridge and AC, we won’t exactly be roughing it, but we’re looking forward to being self contained as we go back on the road.

This is a review of Earth Class Mail.
Click here to visit the Earth Class Mail website.

One question that keeps coming up when people find out we traveled for a year is “How do you get your mail?” Initially, this was a big concern for us. When we went on vacation before, we would have a neighbor come by and pick it up for us or have it temporarily held at the post office until we came back.

This time, neither of these options were going to work for us. Being out of the country for an entire year, we knew there would be important mail that we needed to see. Bank statements, IRS tax information, investment notices, birthday cards from long lost aunts. We really needed someone to open and sort our mail for us.

We briefly considered having our mail forwarded to our parents. But we thought of the amount of mail we got in 1 day. Not just the important stuff, but the junk mail, the catalogs, the magazines. We multiplied that by 365. Did we really didn’t want to dump all of that on them? Plus, even though they may be able to tell us when something important arrived, we wouldn’t be in any one place long enough for them to send it to us.  Having them try and figure out the scanner to upload copies over their dial up connection? Forget about it.

Luckily Christine found Earth Class Mail.  Earth Class Mail is a brilliant solution for the problem of what to do with your mail while traveling.  In a nutshell, they set up a virtual address for you which is a PO Box in one of 20 different cities.  You have all of your mail forwarded there.  They scan the front and back of each item and send you an email when you have new mail.  You login to their site and browse through scanned images of your mail and decide which items you want to read. They open them, and scan the contents into a pdf file.  You can then either archive it for when you get back, or have it shipped somewhere.  You can also have it shredded or recycled. Here’s an example of the interface.

So how did it work for us?  

On the road it was a life saver.  The need for access to physical mail really is sometimes necessary.  When tax time came around and we were in the middle of Africa, we just had all of our forms and year end statements forwarded to our accountant.  When we needed to see the receipts our property management company was sending us for managing renters in our house, we just logged in and downloaded the pdfs.  When we were called for jury duty, we were able to respond that we couldn’t attend rather than get in trouble.  We even got to see birthday cards from our relatives.  It really couldn’t have been any easier.

One complaint I do have is that when we signed up in July of 2007, they were promising a check depositing service.  It took until sometime in 2008, but they do have one in place now, Unfortunately, it is only for business use, not individuals.  This would have come in handy for me, since I was doing freelance work and receiving checks.  Having the the ability to have them direct deposited into my bank account would have been the icing on the cake.  Not a deal breaker, though.  I just had the checks shipped to my folk’s house to deposit.  You still have to pay the shipping, but still better than having them sit at the post office for a year.

Security

What about security? After all, strangers are opening your mail with credit card numbers and SSNs.  Take a look here. On their website, Earth Class Mail goes into great detail about all of the security measures they have in place to prevent identity theft, including no recording equipment or even a pencil in the mail room. So far we haven’t had any issues.  To make myself feel better, when I see something that I know I don’t need opened that has sensitive info in it, like your Social Security statement, I don’t have it scanned and just archive it for a later shipment.

Costs

I read other reviews that complained about the price.  I admit, things do add up, but I personally don’t mind paying for convenience.  The pricing structure is a bit confusing.  Basically, the advertised price is for 2 years, paid up front.  I think most travelers only need a year, so that makes it a few dollars more a month.   We went with the “Value Plus” plan which is $22.95/month for 1 year. That gives us 5 recipients and 100 pieces of mail a month.  You get get the cheaper plan, but keep in mind this only includes 1 recipient and 35 pieces of mail a month.  This might work for an individual, but not for a couple, like us

Our plan includes 100 pages scanned per month, which has been fine.  We’ve never gone over it.  But just know that you can’t scan tons of stuff, or entire magazines or you will be charged $.20/page extra.  I’ve read some people complain about that not being clear, so watch out  There’s also a $25 setup fee and something new that’s a bit annoying, a monthly storage fee for items archived more than 1 month.  This is a recent addition for 2009.  I guess they are running out of storage space.  We trash a lot of mail now, but while we were traveling, we archived anything that seemed remotely important and didn’t have it shipped until we got back.  Storing 200 pieces of mail would have been another $10 a month, so if you get lots of mail and plan or archiving it for a while, factor the storage cost in too.

Conclusion

We actually like Earth Class Mail so much that we’ve been back in the US for 6 months now and we are still using it.  I personally love being paperless.  I no longer have filing cabinets full of paperwork that I keep “just in case”.  I just have anything I want to keep scanned and save the pdfs on my computer.  It takes a bit of time to get used to the security of not having a paper copy somewhere, but I am all for it now.  My favorite part though, is that the pile of junk mail has gone to zero.  I was surprised at how much mail I just shred or recycle.  It’s like a delete key for your postal mail.  No more credit card offers and catalogs all over the coffee table.

This is just one of the cool tech things that made our lives easier traveling around the world.  I’ll review some more of them later.

If you are thinking about trying Earth Class Mail, you can click the link below and get the first month free.
Earth Class Mail: Sign up for your First Month Free!

Now that we’ve had time to settle back into life in the States, we finally gathered our best pictures and made an awesome book using Blurb.  If you’ve never used Blurb before, it a great and easy to use service that lets you design your own books.  Just sign up and download their software, which has various templates and layouts for you to use.  Christine did a great job pouring through our thousands upon thousands of videos and came up with a fantastic looking book.  You can preview it here:

yobosayo.net

By Christine Lee

Book Preview

After almost 3 months on and off in Philadelphia, Mike and I loaded up the car and headed west out to Colorado.  Our plan is to spend a month in Colorado and SKI!  We’ll also see my brother and his family throughout the month, so it should be an awesome December.

The Wolverines have had a terrible season, but Kelly and I aren’t fair weather fans.  Despite the fact that Kelly had bronchitis, she managed to fly out to meet me in Ann Arbor for a bit of nostalgia on campus, and a raucous football game.

Although we have returned from our trip around the world, we aren’t quite done traveling…

We headed off to England for Heather’s wedding the first week of October…three days in Manchester for the wedding, 1 day in Henley, 3 days in London.

(Heather and Patrick right before the ceremony)

(a tour around Henley-on-Thames where Hedda grew up)

(Mike crossing Abbey Road, while friends watched in cyber-space)

Two days shy of 13 months on the road, we made our way back to the US, and back to Philadelphia attempting to settle back into some sort of routine.  It’s difficult to try to summarize the last year…it was obviously the opportunity of a lifetime–traveling, sightseeing, meeting new people, understanding other cultures, taking a year off from work, and spending lots of time together.  But how do I wrap up the year in a nice little package that sounds witty and yet profound–I’m not sure it’s possible.   Instead I will leave you with a few of my top ten…

TOP TEN PLACES:
Okavanga Delta, Botswana
Patagonia (El Calafate/ El Chalten/ Torres del Paine)
Bulungula, South Africa
Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique
Petra, Jordan
Galapagos, Ecuador
Tofo, Mozambique
Pammukale, Turkey
Molunlong, Lesotho
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

TOP TEN CITIES:
Cape Town, South Africa
Istanbul, Turkey
Barcelona, Spain
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Oaxaca, Mexico
Cinque Terra, Italy
Cagnes Sur Mer, France
Havana, Cuba
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Cartagena, Colombia

Top 10 things to bring:
mosquito repellent
pony-o’s
afterbite
Lonely Planet travel book
Blackberry with international data plan
flashlight
a knife
a book
more money than you think you need
an open mind and plenty of patience to live/travel at a slower pace in order to appreciate every moment.

Tourism is a big industry for Cuba.  Thousands of Europeans and Canadians visit every year, but US citizens can not.  Technically, it’s not illegal for Americans to go to Cuba, they just are not allowed to spend any money in the country.  This sounds a bit crazy, but it’s one of the ways the US government tries to keep American dollars out of the hands of the Cuban government.  Cubans, however, do not discriminate between tourist dollars.  In Cuba there are two systems of money; the Cuban peso (or CUP) is the currency used by Cubans, and the Convertible Cuban peso (or CUC) which is used by tourists and those Cubans in the tourism industry.  One CUC = 24 CUP= 1.34 Euros= .80 US Dollars.  When traveling to Cuba, bring any currency other than the US dollar, as there is a 10% tax for exchanging dollars.   Even though the typical Cuban makes about $20 dollars/month, it’s not cheap to travel in Cuba due to the Convertible Cuban Peso exchange rate.  Lodging at hotels are expensive, and the cost of transportation is exorbitant.  Bus travel to and from destinations is costly, but even more so are taxis within the city limits.

Maybe 5 or so years ago, the mojito drink made its way into mainstream American bars and restaurants, ushering in a whole new cuisine to go with the drink.  We must have talented chefs in the US because Cuban food is delicious in America, but not in Cuba.  There is little variation available in Cuba–rice, black beans, cabbage salad, and fried chicken/fish/beef.  And no spices–not even salt and pepper.  I found Cuban food to be very bland, and after a week of eating the same thing, we had to break up the monotony and eat pizza at El Rapido, Cuba’s fast food chain.

As I mentioned in a previous post it was suffocatingly hot, I was delirious from the heat–making sightseeing and anything related to being outside unpleasant.  But we suffered through the heat, and walked around Havana, an ethnically diverse city and the largest city in the Caribbean at 2.5 million people.   Regardless of their dire straits, Cubans aren’t bothered by much, they live life to its fullest–dancing and celebrating where-ever and when-ever they can.  Grand buildings and colonial homes built during the height of Spanish rule can be seen as a reminder of the grandeur that was once Cuba.  These buildings, regardless of missing a ceiling or an exterior wall, are fully occupied.  It’s not uncommon for 3 generations of the same family to be living under one roof.  The houses crumbling, the vintage cars stalling, and the people really just living in the moment bring feelings of nostalgia for the past, despair for the present and hope for the future.

From Vinales, we headed back to Havana then onto Trinidad, about six hours southeast of Havana.  It’s a small colonial town first settled in the 1500’s.  It wasn’t fully until the 19th century when Trinidad was at it’s peak providing sugar to most of Cuba.  Unfortunately, Trinidad did not continue to flourish, and the once beautiful colonial buildings have fallen into disrepair.  Trinidad is also on the tourist path, and live music and dancing takes center stage every evening in the Plaza Mayor.  Here the locals mix with the tourists teaching them how to dance.

We side tripped out of Havana to Vinales, a three hour bus ride southwest.  It’s a small town with one main road, a main square with a church.  There are nearly as many tourists as town people, and most of the Cubans are in the tourist industry.  Groups of people meet you at the bus stop selling a room for the night.  Almost every house off the main road looks identical, and each has been converted into a casa particulare, a room for rent in a house occupied by a Cuban family.  Because there are very few hotels in Cuba, many tourists stay in casas particulares.  We stayed at Casa Rosa, complete with air conditioning to battle the heat.  During the day the temperature was in the 90’s and humid.  Probably the hottest place we’ve been–ever.

The ‘Vinales Tour’ the next day brought us to all the best sights in the area; starting with view point overlooking the valley, a primitive mural of evolution painted on the side of a rock, a visit to a cave, and my favorite, a visit with a local farmer.
The farmer we met ‘owns’ four hectareas of land which has been in the family for four generations.  The farmer is completely self-sustaining with his fields of potatoes, taro, corn, sugar cane, rice.  He also grows avocados, tangerines, oranges, mangos, and coffee beans (which is left out to dry for months, and is very, very  strong coffee).   Lastly, each farmer by law is required to grow a minimum amount of tobacco.  November to April is the only growing season for tabacco, the government buys the dried tobacco leaves for $600 dollars for 3 tons of tobacco (or something insane like that).  Since there is no private industry, the government owns everything, including the tabacco industry which is one of Cuba’s largest money generators.  So, it buys the tabacco from the farmers at a favorable price for itself, barely covering the cost of the labor for the farmers, and sells it’s Cuban cigars for huge profits.