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Vacation welcomed after<br>suffering from newspaper burnout

Oh yes, it’s time for a vacation. By the time you read this, I’ll be headed West for fun in the sun. I’ve been working toward these two weeks for a long time.

About this time of the year, I begin to get burned out on writing. I’ll make more mistakes, my stories may have boring leads, my headlines sound generic.

For the past three years, I’ve taken vacation during this time of year, late July, early August. My son is out of school, it’s a fairly dormant period for news events and sports consist mainly of youth soccer. So it’s a good time for me to take some time off.

It’s not easy taking time off from the one-man newspaper office here at the Canyon. The folks down in the Williams office have to cover for me and they happened to be down one person themselves because of a recent resignation. The publisher’s daughter, a bright college student, will be helping out Lynda Duffy, the new Williams editor.

Before taking off, I’ve tried to work ahead on several stories to appear over the next two issues. I appreciate the cooperation I received from those sources, including the school’s Sheila Breen and Bob Kelso, the music festival’s Chris Crossland and the National Park Service’s Jennie Albrinck.

The Aug. 13 issue will be Grand Canyon’s Back to School edition. There will be two pages of advertisements from those who support the school, along with various types of information in news reports.

Breen and Kelso have written guest columns. There will be biographies on two new teachers. The bus schedules and a teacher phone directory will also be published.

School begins a week earlier this year as classes convene Aug. 18. With new administration in place and all but one of the full-time teachers returning, it should be a good year.

As for Stacey and I, we’re headed to Laughlin this week for a couple of days. I always stay at the Riverside Resort because they have a child-care facility that Brandon just loves. The minute we get there, he wants to go check into the Kid Kastle. The Riverside also has a family-friendly bowling alley and multi-screen movie theater.

From there, we head to my parents’ house in Lake Los Angeles, Calif., a bedroom community just east of the Palmdale-Lancaster area. Dad just turned 64 a few weeks ago. I’ve grown closer than ever to him and stop in to see him whenever the opportunity arises. Besides, they always want to see and spoil Brandon.

After a few days in the high desert, we’ll be headed to Los Angeles to take a four-day cruise to San Diego, Catalina Island and Ensenada. Before we board the ship we have to venture over to the Los Angeles Airport to pick up Stacey’s two daughters, Molly and Dorothy.

We’ve all been looking forward to the cruise, although I’m a little afraid of becoming seasick. I once vomited on the Ferris wheel. Anyway, I’m going to try one of these wristbands that supposedly keeps motion sickness away. We’ll see about that.

Stacey, the girls and I will be snorkeling while on the visit to Catalina. That will be a new experience. Stacey and I will then try our hand at kayaking as the kids stay busy in the on-ship adventure clubs.

In San Diego, we plan to visit my brother at Mission Bay and go on his sailboat. We can have fun but not spend a lot of money on those on-shore excursions.

As many of you expect, I’ll let you know how everything turned out when I write my next column. As for now, I’m outta here!

(Brad Fuqua is editor of the Grand Canyon News).


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