Our good friend Fish (aka the “disgruntaled Mr Fish“) is moving to Florida. His girl Linda already made the trip down there and soon enough he will be joining her to live in “America’s Wang”. Before he goes, we have the pleasure of a house guest for a few weeks.

Now he really is a great guy to have as a roomie. But, last week he seemed a bit down. I think he misses Linda. So we pulled out the old Nintendo and he immediately gravitated toward Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy number 1 - that is.

There have been over a dozen of these games, but this is the original. The highlight of 1990, I literally hadn’t played the game since I was 10. It took a minute to blow the dust out of the cartridge. Afterwards it started right up.

It didn’t take long for Fish to become engrossed in the game play. After watching for an hour, the same can be said for Sam and I. Despite the 8-bit graphics, the game really delivers. It has a fun story, a massive world and an entrancing mono sound track.

The whole thing brings back fond memories of growing up part of the Nintendo generation.

We just spent the last two weeks down in the southwest. I wrote some trail logs of our adventures, but it may take some time to post those on the web. For now, I just wanted to get a quick synopsis and some photos up.

I flew down to meet Sam in Reno, NV. After a night in the crazy neon of the downtown casinos, we took off and headed west along highway 50. Later, we would learn that this road is nicknamed “the loneliest road in America”. Between the small towns, there are just hundreds of miles of desert and rolling mountains.

Our first stop was the Great Basin national park on the other side of the state.

From there we headed down to Zion and spend several days slot canyoneering. Afterward, continued down toward the Grand Staircase, Glen Canyon, Lees Ferry and then the Grand Canyon.

We then turned north and went up to Bryce Canyon and the Kodachrome state park.

On the way back, we passed the Bonneville Salt Flats and the 1000-spring senic byway.

Whew - I get exhausted just thinking about how much we packed in. (more…)