National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 57 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Your landscape shots remind me of our trip to the Grand Canyon and petrified forest last year. I looked into the Annual Pass for the National Parks when we were looking at visiting 3 national parks in one trip in Oct - but when that changed to just Yosemite, I let the idea go. Hope you find that receipt!
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More great pictures!!!
Arizona doesn't observe Daylight savings time, so it can be tricky. I always have to try and remember when I call my sister to think about are they 3 hrs or 2 hrs behind us on the East Coast.
i know how you feel about the time zone in Arizona. I think my mother is sick of me asking what time it is there every time I call her. She has been there for 4 years and I keep calling at lunch time or dinner time. I'll figure it out soon.
I'll have to make a note of Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center as it sounds like it will be right on our way between some of the parks this summer and sounds like a worth while stop..... This is the first I'm hearing of it..... I'm off to note it in my plans *right now* before I forget...
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The Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center looks really interesting! I don't remember that from my past trip, but I'm guessing it was probably built after my last visit (that, or I just wasn't as "in to" history as I am now!).
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I'll have to make a note of Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center as it sounds like it will be right on our way between some of the parks this summer and sounds like a worth while stop..... This is the first I'm hearing of it..... I'm off to note it in my plans *right now* before I forget...
You're not the only one - I hadn't heard of it before our trip at all. It will be a good stopping off point for you.
The Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center looks really interesting! I don't remember that from my past trip, but I'm guessing it was probably built after my last visit (that, or I just wasn't as "in to" history as I am now!).
The center did look quite new to me, so it may be a new addition since your last visit out there.
Wednesday 14 September – part two: I asked for $150, not $5
There was also a nice viewing area of the dam itself and you could see the work that it was doing with the different levels of water. You could even do a tour here, which took an hour and cost $5. It’s a shame we didn’t have the time to do it, as I bet it would’ve been fascinating.
After a stop to get more stamps for the National Parks passport, we headed back to the car.
Our next quest was to get some gas, which we successfully found in Page. We also found a Wal-Mart there, so headed inside to get some lunch, so we wouldn’t have to worry about that when we got to Monument Valley. We managed to find two Caesar salads, with the chicken in separate compartments, so Mark could have mine.
I then went to use the ATM to get some money out and asked for $150. It gave me $5 and stopped. I grabbed a staff member and he immediately got someone to sort it out and they convinced the machine that it was OK to carry on giving out cash and I finally got the full amount, which was a relief.
After that little drama, we headed on our way to Monument Valley, joining the 98, perhaps the straightest and most boring road ever. Mark started to joke that perhaps we should count all the cars we see, as there were that few of them. Once again, we really were in the middle of nowhere. It’s fascinating how big the States really is and how there are just huge expanses of nothing-ness. I come back to an earlier comment – how on earth did so many people end up crammed into so many big and small cities, yet there’s so much space that’s never been developed?
We were fascinated by this, as the pipe seemed to run as far as the eye could see!
It was weird, despite all the massive amounts of nothing-ness, we had cell phone coverage for quite a lot of the journey, which was very bizarre. We went through similar scenery yesterday and had no cell phone coverage for much of the day, yet today, it was fine. Go figure!
We were about halfway into our journey to Monument Valley when the rain started. It was only light and nowhere near as bad as yesterday. I had seen on the forecast that yesterday, they had been talking about flash flooding danger in Monument Valley, so I was glad our plans hadn’t taken us there then! :
Fortunately, that lifted soon afterwards and we enjoyed the rest of our drive in the dry. It wasn’t long before we were starting to see signs for Monument Valley and were nearing our destination...
I love Zion, but I'm not sure a quick in and out tour will do it justice. Many of the most beautiful places are off the beaten path. Our favorite was the a road that entered the park from the other side of Springdale. On the drive up there were overlooks out to the canyons, a ranch with roaming cows and finally at the top a lake with landscape around it that reminded us of New England.
I was told the reason for no man's lands between population centers was the cost of water and utilities. It's why in the west you will often find clusters of fairly closely spaced residential areas.
Also, one of the things I do when traveling is get my cash at the cash register. Most places will give you a decent amount of cash with any purchase. So I buy something and pay with my debit card and get cash back. My bank charges $2.00 to use a "foreign" ATM and the other bank also charges a fee so I try to avoid those transactions.
Can't wait to see Monument Valley-we never made it there. Like you, we were not used to the distances between things in this area.
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At least the scenery remained somewhat interesting on the straight and narrow road. Glad the sun came back out; it sure makes those rocks that much more beautiful!
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The lake is beautiful. I would love to toru that dam too.
I think it's so weird that the ATM only spit out $5. All of the maround here do increments of 20, some wil ldo 10, but they have done away with most of those, so to get 5 is really strange. I guess it's not that way all around the US. I just assumed it was.
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We went through similar scenery yesterday and had no cell phone coverage for much of the day, yet today, it was fine. Go figure! 
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