56 Candles in Chicago
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
When I woke up on the morning of Sunday, October 2, 2011, I found myself in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village at the Super 8 motel. Jamie was there with me and we were preparing to spend the day scouting film locations in other nearby suburbs. I also found myself to be 40 years old. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel much different. Jamie gave me a great and thoughtful card and some sour apple Big League Chew. Of course, she was also treating in all we did this Chicago weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
No matter how great any road trip is, they all have one thing in common: they must at some point come to an end. The last day for Bob and me to be on the road was Friday, April 1, 2011. We woke up in our motel in Phoenix, Arizona, wished each other a happy birthday for the fourth year in a row, and headed out on our last day’s adventures. I was rather excited for our first stop, mostly because it involved eating breakfast. We had stopped by here the night before, but they had been closed – so we decided to come back for our morning meal to Mel’s Diner. Yes, this was the location (exterior only) that was featured in the TV series Alice. 
The centerpiece of our entire road trip had been Bob’s desire to visit Monument Valley. When I last left you hanging, we were in the midst of an open-air jeep tour of the region on the morning of Tuesday, March 29, 2011, but we had yet to cross from Mystery Valley into the very familiar terrain of Monument Valley. This posting will complete the tour – along with sharing a few screen captures from some of the films that made Monument Valley famous. The following locations are all located just over the border of Arizona, whereas the previous ones were all in the southernmost part of Utah. 
The centerpiece of the road trip on which Bob and I had embarked was Monument Valley. Although I had been seeing some equally amazing locations that were all new to me, Bob had visited most of them at some point in his life and had been kindly obliging some of my ‘want list’. But for him, Monument Valley was a first time visit and he wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to see it. Not only was the area - which spans te Utah/Arizona border - gorgeous, but it had been used in dozens of Hollywood films over the years, so the locations would seem familiar to even the most casual film buff. 
Bob and I pressed on with our journey to explore the beauty of America – specifically Utah – on the afternoon of Sunday, March 27, 2011. We had departed Escalante and our visit with Mildred Kornman at around 3:20pm, and about fifteen minutes later, we were already locating attractive and interesting sites to behold. This self-described “View from the Head of the Rocks” gave us a look over the Escalante River basin and the Aquarius Plateau all the way to Navajo Mountain on the Utah-Arizona border. Even if the cell phone reception was nonexistent during this four-hour trek, the scenery was majestic.