California oddities

So, there are two weird things that have struck me while here this week.

1) The hotel I am staying at (Staybridge Suites - nice) has exit signs high on the walls but also down near the floor. In fact, there are many more exit signs near the floor than those high up. I am guessing this is so that in a fire if you're crawling along the floor you can see the signs. Good idea. I have never seen this before, so I am wondering if this is some zoning thing or if the hotel chain does it at all their hotels?

[Click pics to enlarge.]

2) All the nearby hills are cut through with various drains, I am guessing to help carry away the runoff during the mudslide season (as opposed to the wildfire season, which is now). I was walking to the restaurant last night and noticed this one running up the hill toward a parking lot. It would seem normal in that situation, something to help drain off the lot. But if you click on the pic and look at the top of the ditch, you'll note it's closed off. And there are no other pipes or ways water can enter that I could see. So the drain would simply drain itself! Very odd, and I still don't have an explanation.

Vacation traditions

I haven't posted anything yet about the family vacation to Colorado because I've been working on the photos (I took over 200 pictures - Les took over 1,000!). Anyway, it was a great time and I will post more about it later. But one thing that Les and I kept talking about during the trip was how vacations are a time for creating family traditions, and different traditions than those at home. And of course part of that is passing along some of the traditions we picked up from vacations when we were growing up. And I think we started a new one last week.

We don't have cable at home nor are the TVs hooked up to antennas. We let the kids watch some movies on video, but that's about it. They get enough TV when they visit their dad's or grandparents (typically three weekends out of four between the two). The first night we were in Colorado we stayed in a motel in Idaho Springs and let them watch some Nickelodeon, but not for too long. The next three nights we camped so there were no TV watching opportunities then (at least not the way I camp!) Then on the fifth and sixth nights we stayed in a housekeeping cabin in Buena Vista (an old vacation tradition) and then motels in Idaho Springs and Colby, Kansas on our way home.

Starting the first night in the cabin I decided we weren't going to watch "kid stuff" on TV and instead turned it to Turner Classic Movies. And guess what? The kids watched them! I'm not saying they necessarily sat there enrapt the whole night, but they watched and made comments and in general seemed to enjoy the old movies. So for the following three nights that's what we watched as well. This month TCM has every day dedicated to a different star, so in four days we had Clark Gable, Gloria Grahame (who I like a lot), Sidney Portier and Deborah Kerr movie nights.

Here is a list of the movies we watched in whole (red) or parts of:

12 Wednesday
6:30 PM	Love On The Run (1936)
	Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies. Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-80 mins, TV-PG, CC
8:00 PM	Red Dust (1932)
	A plantation overseer in Indochina is torn between a married woman and a lady of the evening. Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor. Dir: Victor Fleming. BW-83 mins, TV-G, CC [Jon and Erin liked this one - I did, too, especially Jean Harlow's "floozy with a heart of gold" role.]
9:30 PM	Mogambo (1953)
	In this remake of Red Dust, an African hunter is torn between a lusty showgirl and a married woman. Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly. Dir: John Ford. C-116 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS [mmmm - Grace Kelly]
11:30 PM	Test Pilot (1938)
	An irresponsible test pilot's wife and best friend try to get him to grow up. Cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy. Dir: Victor Fleming. BW-119 mins, TV-G, CC [Jon liked this one, too.]
13 Thursday
6:00 PM	Bad and the Beautiful, The (1952)
	An unscrupulous movie producer uses everyone around him in his climb to the top. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. BW-118 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
8:00 PM	In a Lonely Place (1950)
	An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-93 mins, TV-PG, CC [Great movie with a downer ending. Introduced Erin to "film noir."]
9:45 PM	Big Heat, The (1953)
	A police detective whose wife was killed by the mob teams with a scarred gangster's moll to bring down a powerful gangster. Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-90 mins, TV-14, CC [Another good movie, with all the kids becoming Gloria Grahame fans, I think.]
11:30 PM Greatest Show on Earth, The (1952) A circus ringmaster and an egotistical trapeze artist vie for the love of a pretty acrobat. Cast: Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, James Stewart. Dir: Cecil B. DeMille. C-152 mins, TV-PG, CC [The kids liked this one, but we ended up turning it off halfway through 'cause it was late.] 14 Friday
4:00 PM	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
	An aging couple's liberal principles are tested when their daughter announces her engagement to a black doctor. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier. Dir: Stanley Kramer. C-108 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
6:00 PM	To Sir, With Love (1967)
	A substitute teacher changes the lives of the slum children in his class. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson. Dir: James Clavell. C-105 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format [Erin proclaimed this was her favorite. I probably thought the same thing at 13.]
8:00 PM	Raisin in the Sun, A (1961)
	A black woman uses her late husband's life insurance to build a better world for her children. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee. Dir: Daniel Petrie. BW-128 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
10:15 PM	Lilies of the Field (1963)
	An itinerant handyman in the Southwest gets a new outlook on life when he helps a group of German nuns build a chapel. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Lisa Mann. Dir: Ralph Nelson. BW-94 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
12:00 AM	Buck and the Preacher (1972)
	A con man helps a group of former slaves survive the perils of the wild West in their search for the promised land. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee. Dir: Sidney Poitier. C-103 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
15 Saturday
8:00 PM	Affair To Remember, An (1957)
	A romantic shipboard romance inspires a couple to promise to meet six months later. Cast: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Richard Denning. Dir: Leo McCarey. C-115 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
10:15 PM	From Here To Eternity (1953)
	Enlisted men in Hawaii fight for love and honor on the eve of World War II. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra. Dir: Fred Zinnemann. BW-118 mins, TV-PG, CC [Everyone seemed to like this one.]

So, what vacation traditions do your family enjoy?

My kind of weather

Missouri's actually had a relatively mild summer this year, with lots of days in the high 80s and low 90s (which is better than the high 90s and low 100s). However, I prefer it (much) cooler than that. So besides the beautiful mountains one of the reasons I am looking forward to heading back to Colorado for a week starting tomorrow will be the weather.

Here's the weather we're leaving for the next ten days:

Here's the weather we're going to:

Mmmm...Nice...

Colorado vacation day 10 - July 19

All good things must come to an end, and this vacation was no exception. It was a good trip because there were multiple times during it where I had to calculate what day of the week it was, and that's always a good sign that the holiday is a good one! Not much else to say that the journal doesn't already say:

Up & out from Kim's by 5:50 or so (MDT), home by 7:30 (CDT). So 13 hour drive home - nice & relaxed. :o)

I even took pictures of the drive home! How queer is that?