A QUICK RV TRIP THROUGH THE WEST

We just returned from a quick first tour of the West, making a loop from Nevada to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and back to Nevada. The weather was unseasonably cool and the winds were high for almost the entire trip. We even got stuck with the latest snow ever recorded in Utah - several inches worth. Some spring flowers were out, but the insects were few and we didn't end up with a single butterfly. We cut the trip short after eight days when both kids got very sick in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Two vomiting kids in a small RV isn't the pleasantest experience so I drove all day from Colorado to get back to Reno by 6PM, Monday. We will be off to resume the trip after the kids recuperate and V has had her ballet recital. The weather should be a lot warmer in a few weeks too. Here's the route we took and a video of what the wind picked up in New Mexico. Below are some photos of a few of the places we visited.
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MESA VERDE

We stayed a day at Mesa Verde in Colorado to see the Anasazi ruins. We planned a two day visit, but the kids got very sick and we had to cut that short. The famous Cliff Palace seen here is quite a bit smaller in reality than it appears in photos. Anasazi dwellings from small to large are to be found on the cliffs throughout the surrounding canyons. Like so many of the locales of the Colorado Plateau, the landscape around here is absolutely spectacular.

PETRIFIED NATIONAL FOREST

We drove through the Petrified Forest in eastern Arizona and had fun on a windy and sunny day. The small museum at the park was excellent with very interesting displays of the fossil forms that have been found in the park, including phytosaurs, aetosaurs, and metoposaurids. Too cool!

METEOR CRATER

We drove a few miles off highway 40 to take a look at Meteor Crater in Arizona.

THE GRAND CANYON, SOUTH RIM

On our first day at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon we took an easy mile-long hike to little visited Shoshone Point which A captured in the photo above. (Click any of the photos for much larger views.) The following day we hiked a mile down into the Canyon on Bright Angel trail. V took out her camera to snap photos of the squirrels that tried to take our lunch. These little guys are very aggressive along this busy trail and frequently bite tourists. That's V's video of the squirrels below.

CHESS

After math, the kids get a few minutes of chess instruction. Here they're starting a 5-minute blitz game using a chess clock. We've tried a number of ways to make games between them more even, either by reducing Alton's material or by giving Verity a certain number of hints during a game. When they play complete games like this (rather than exercises and end game positions) my primary focus is to teach them positional play (proper piece development, King safety, pawn structure, etc.) rather than having them worry about all the tactical moves that they're missing. Better tactics will come with experience.

FIELD BAGS

On field trips, the kids and I each carry a field bag with the following: collapsible insect net, killing jar, digital camera, general field guide, sketch book, notebook, mechanical pencil, pen, eraser, sharpeners, and hand lens. This lets us take photos, sketches, notes, and collect and study insects wherever we go. The insect nets are from a Polish company called "Paradox" and are of a much superior quality and design than those of our leading U.S. company "Bioquip".

We always have the equipment in the field bags which makes preparing for trips a little easier and the chance that we'll forget something smaller. Having the bags color coded comes in handy too!

ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY

Here are the two games that we're using to cover early Greek history, "Hellenes" and "Perikles", along with Donald Kagan's absolutely fantastic "The Peloponnesian War" and the DK title on Ancient Greece. Once you pick up Kagan's book, you will not put it down. I also have had the kids watch some documentaries from the History Channel on Ancient Greece, including an excellent three parter on the history of Sparta which they enjoyed (having previously only seen "300" and "Meet the Spartans"!). PBS has it's own excellent, well produced three-hour documentary on ancient Sparta with wonderful views of artifacts and the locales discussed.

Both Hellenes and Perikles center around the Peloponnesian war, but are completely different. Hellenes is a 2-player card-driven wargame that largely focuses on units on the map (which is attractively illustrated on the gameboard). The units are colored wooden blocks whose identities and strengths are hidden from the opponent (see an earlier post for a photo of the game in play). The basic mechanics are largely straightforward, but some time needs to be spent playing in order to gain enough familiarity with the game that it starts to have some flow. A and I have played the first scenario (431) completely two times and have found it quite challenging for the Athenian player to stay on top of things. Maybe the Athenians should stay away from raising taxes. I think the designers did a good job creating a relatively simple game that manages to place the players in a strategic situation that has the flavor of the one that Kagan describes. It's fun when the game parallels parts of actual history. At one point, for example, the Athenian player invaded Pylos in hopes of drawing some Peloponnesian units away from Attica, which, as it turned out, is what the Greek general Demosthenes did in real life.

In contrast to Hellenes, Perikles is a much more abstracted game which centers around a political system for gaining temporary control of the six Greek city-states represented (or, failing that, the Persian forces). It's for 3-5 players and A and I have played it a few times with K.

These photos are of several games that we played of "Commands and Colors: Ancients", a game that focuses on individual battles rather than whole wars. Here we're playing three scenarios from the Punic wars which A consistently won commanding the Romans. It's a relatively easy card driven game that A likes. If we ever find the time to turn it into a miniatures game it will be that much more fun to play.

Looks like Little K popped in for a look. Unfortunately, he's destroyed more than one of our games in progress.

To the delight of the kids, I have made playing board games a part of their home school curriculum. Each school day before lunch, A and I (and sometimes V with help) play a 30 minute session of a historically oriented board game. The idea is to have the kids involved in some way in the history that we're covering in class. V is too young at the moment to get a whole lot out of most of the games we're playing, but it's been a great success for A who is now old enough to play and appreciate pretty much all of the titles in my collection. Here we're playing our first completed game of "Hellenes" with A controlling the Peloponnesian League against my Delian League. This first game took almost two weeks to play in half hour increments which gave us a lot of time to go over the history and geography of the Peloponnesian war. We even did a little review of the Greek gods that are involved in a small way in the game. I ended up winning it largely because A confronted Athens directly rather than by first promoting revolts in my outlying allied city-states, as Sparta had done historically. In our second game, which lasted only two sessions, we played the same sides. Unfortunately for me, I raised taxes too early and A had four of my allied city-states in revolt by the end of the second year of play, ending up with a decisive victory - a good thing since he's happier that way. Way to go A!