Sunday, July 31, 2016


Sun and Gun

The Trip – Day 9
Valle, Arizona – Bakersfield, California
483 miles


The day after our visit to the Grand Canyon, we got up early, checked out of our quaint but breakfastless hotel and drove awhile before stopping for breakfast in Williams, Arizona. This small town contained some of the remnants of the old Route 66, the popular highway used in the days before the interstates to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles. Route 66 no longer exists as a continuous road, but pieces of it, with historical restaurants and buildings, remain in towns found along the interstates that replaced it. Today was to be a long driving day, backtracking in part almost 150 miles over the same roads we had traveled two days before. The land surrounding Interstate 40 through northern Arizona into California was not as spectacular as the land we had been seeing in Colorado and Utah, but still interesting in a not-the-midwest sort of way. The hills looked a little like a more deserty version of western Colorado, with large wind farms in some areas. The weather was hot – 103 degrees for much of the day – and the sun was, well, relentless...

Before our trip, people had told us about the heat and sun in the southwestern part of the country. It gets hot, they said, but it's a dry heat, very little humidity. And it's always sunny, lots of bright sunshine, they said, like it was a good thing. For someone like me who struggles with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder,* the constant sun was starting to get to me. The rain of eastern Illinois on the first day of our trip was a distant memory. Except for a very brief shower we drove through the morning of our Las Vegas adventure, there had been constant, relentless sun. My son, returning to the midwest after living in El Paso for two years, said one of his reasons for leaving Texas was the relentless sun. (He suffers from Reverse S.A.D as well...) During the travels of this day I finally grasped what he meant by “relentless”. The sun in the southwest just doesn't let up. It is blinding to look east in the morning, similarly blinding to look west in the evening, and it beats down unimpeded by clouds the rest of the day. The unfiltered intensity of the light out here was of a radically different quality than the east coast and midwest sun I already had a grudging relationship with. The 103 degree heat didn't help. Humidity or no, hot is hot. Fortunately, we were two days ahead of a heat wave. The roads we traveled today would experience 120 degree temperatures later that week. Relentless...
 
We entered California at Needles, south of the Mojave Desert. My first experience of the state was more heat and light with the addition of haze from wildfires burning out of control north of Los Angeles. We left the interstate at Barstow and stopped for lunch, again along the remnants of Route 66. With no reservations for a hotel that night, we pushed our mileage a bit further, deciding to stop at Bakersfield for the night.

When we don't have reservations for a place to spend the night, we usually look for an inexpensive chain hotel. The night before such a stop, I would look on Google Maps to see what areas of what towns have clusters of cheap hotels and see what prices and overall ratings are for hotels in those areas. We got off the exit in Bakersfield where my research the night before indicated a collection of places to sleep. We were about to pull into a Red Roof Inn when I saw a Motel 6 a little farther down the road. I suggested we go there instead. I had remembered the Motel 6 at this exit was very highly rated. We pulled into the parking lot and looked around. Like many hotels we found in the mild climate of the west, this one had outside entrances to the rooms, but looked clean and well-maintained. The room was beautiful – newly renovated, sparkling clean, with a refrigerator with a freezer for our cooler ice packs, a microwave, great pillows, a great showerhead, and a comfy mattress. There was a laundromat down the road, and we were able to wash nine days of dirty clothes efficiently. We finished our laundry, grabbed something to eat, then returned to our clean, cool hotel room. After a long, hot day of driving, and still recovering from the Grand Canyon hiking of the day before, we went to bed early and fell asleep quickly.

The next morning I woke up feeling well-rested. My husband, however, did not have the same experience. “Are you O.K.? Weren't you scared?” he asked me. “Didn't you hear the yelling outside our room and the doors slamming and the sirens at 2 a.m.?” I told him I had the best night's sleep of the trip. He told me he lay in bed afraid to move because of the loud arguing going on outside our door. Never heard a thing, I told him. We got up, packed the car, and he went to check out. He returned and told me things last night were worst than he had imagined. The clerk at the desk, very apologetic for all the noise that night, told him two men had been shot in the parking lot right outside our room. My husband was right to have been scared. I was right to have slept through it. We kept track of the news feeds on the shooting for several days. Both men survived, but the shooters were still on the loose. Ironically, I had just warned my adult children to think twice about going into Chicago this summer because of the violence. That same weekend Chicago would see 59 shootings with 13 fatalities. And here we were, in sunny California, far from the south side of Chicago, with a gunfight at our door...



*Seriously! See The Angle, “God of the Gray Day”, February 10, 2016


Traveling - It leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. - Ibn Battuta



Next:

Dancing in the Pacific

The Trip – Day 10
Bakersfield, California – Cupertino, California
Sea Cliff State Park, The Coastal Highway, The Road to La Honda
335 miles

Friday, July 29, 2016


Grand!

The Trip – Day 8
The Grand Canyon
48 miles





Throughout this road trip there had been a gradual building up of grandeur – first the distant sight of the Rocky Mountains, then Glenwood Canyon, Colorado National Monument, the ever-changing landscape of the Colorado and Utah roadways, culminating in the overarching...awe...some... heights of the red rocks of Zion. I didn't know what to expect from a canyon called “grand”. 

It did not disappoint. The Grand Canyon truly is grand. While the Kolob Canyons and the rest of Zion National Park overwhelms one's senses with its towering heights, the Grand Canyon overwhelms with its depths and distance and ever-changing canyons and colors. It took my brain a good part of the morning to wrap itself around the immenseness of what my eyes were seeing.

We arrived at the south rim early, got a parking spot, and started walking. Accepting that we were POACA*, we decided to stay on the relatively flat rim trails all day and not venture, even part way, down into the mile-deep canyon. The morning was jacket-cool, but the day would be in the 80s on the rim, in the 100s down in the canyon. The entire canyon was carved out by 277 miles of the Colorado River, but the “official” National Park sections consist of the somewhat remote north rim and the more popular, more touristy south rim, where we opted to visit. The south rim area of the park stretches over 30 miles along the canyon, with a mostly paved level trail running along 13 miles of that distance. A road also runs parallel to the rim, though parts of it are accessible by shuttle bus only. We headed west to that section of the park closed to cars but rich with overlooks. We had been so happy with the shuttle bus system at Zion that we left our car in the parking lot in the Grand Canyon all day and took the bus to various overlooks (There are many!) and walked between several of them along the rim trail. The park got crowded later in the day, but the Grand Canyon shuttle system was efficient, though the buses did not come quite as frequently as those in Zion. They also didn't make us feel quite as old, probably because there was more competition for the coveted front seats from other POACA**. 







The Bright Angel Trail
Though we did not venture into the canyon, we did go to a viewing area overlooking Bright Angel Trail, a popular hike down to the Colorado River. There are camping areas available in the canyon as the 15 mile or so round trip will take approximately 12 hours, and the National Park Service warns against trying to make the trip in one day. There is a small bridge over the Colorado River for those who have the days and energy to hike from the south rim to the north rim. + For us, it was enough to wander from overlook to overlook along the rim trail, just soaking in the magnificent ever-changing expanses of canyon and glimpses of river. In certain sections, we could see rafters on the Colorado River. One of the bus drivers told us that on a quiet day you could hear their screams as they go through the rapids. On the day we were there, the rafters could be seen, but not heard. My husband's paparazzi lens came through again, and we were able to capture several rafts going down the river in the canyon.


The bridge over the Colorado River down in the Canyon
Rafters on the Colorado River


View of Grand Canyon Village
The Grand Canyon has been a tourist attraction since the early 1900s and is one of the most developed national parks, with lodges, campgrounds, restaurants, markets, a train station, several museums and visitor centers. After a long day of walking and looking, we were hungry, tired, and knew the dinner choices were none back near our hotel in tiny Valle. We tried one of the restaurants in the park, in the Yavapai Lodge, and found it had great food, an informal setting and unlimited drink refills. Revived, we hopped on the shuttle again one last time before leaving, this time heading east to view the changing light in the ever-changing canyon as the sun dropped low in the sky. It was...grand... 


Evening sun in the Canyon
 
End of the day



* People Of A Certain Age

** I don't really have to explain this anymore, do I?

+ We personally know two people, ultra-marathon runners, who ran down from the south rim, up to the north rim, and back (!!!!!) in one day. They considered it a training run. Don't tell the park service...




...the Grand Canyon is a sort of landscape Day of Judgment. It is not a show place, a beauty spot, but a revelation. The Colorado River, which is powerful, turbulent and so thick with silt that it is like a saw, made it with the help of the erosive forces of rain, frost, and wind, and some strange geological accidents; and all these together have been hard at work on it for the last 7 or 8 million years. It is the largest of the 18 canyons of the Colorado River, is over 200 miles long, has an average width of 12 miles and is a good mile deep. It is the world's supreme example of erosion. But this is not what it really is. It is, I repeat, a revelation. The Colorado River made it, but you feel when you are there that God gave the Colorado River its instructions... - J.B. Priestley, from Midnight on the Desert



Nearly everybody, on taking a first look at the Grand Canyon, comes right out and admits its wonders are absolutely indescribable, and then proceeds to write anywhere from 2,000 to 50,000 words giving the full details. . . . When the Creator made it, He failed to make a word to cover it. - Irvin S. Cobb


Next:

Sun and Gun

The Trip – Day 9
Valle, Arizona – Bakersfield, California
483 miles

Wednesday, July 27, 2016


Just the Right Amount of Wrong?

The Trip – Day 7
Hurricane, Utah – Valle, Arizona
Las Vegas, Hoover Dam
381 miles



This day was to be primarily a heavy driving day. The Grand Canyon, our next national park stop, required some back-tracking, so we had planned to drive southwest from Hurricane, around Las Vegas, and then turn east into northern Arizona and continue to the small town of Valle, 30 miles south of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. As we left Hurricane in the early morning, I thought it would be fun to drive through Las Vegas rather than skirt around it, to drive down the iconic Las Vegas Strip just to say we had done it. Las Vegas was a small town (by New York and Chicago standards) and going through it shouldn't take much longer than looping around it. Neither my husband nor I had ever been to Vegas, our only familiarity with it being the movie Ocean's Eleven, the George Clooney/Brad Pitt/Matt Damon remake of a Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Sammy Davis, Jr. classic. My husband agreed to drive the Strip while I took some photos of the Bellagio out the car window to send to our youngest daughter, a big fan of the George Clooney Ocean's Eleven.

Approaching Las Vegas
Our drive along Interstate 15 got more deserty-looking as we approached Las Vegas. The city appeared in the distance, looking smaller and less gaudy than I had imagined (but, then, I have seen both New York's Time Square and the Wisconsin Dells...). I had carefully planned to drive through Vegas just past the morning rush hour, so I thought, not realizing that leaving Utah for Nevada would move us to an hour earlier, from the Mountain to the Pacific time zone briefly before we would be back again in the Mountain time zone when we entered Arizona. Needless to say, the traffic on the Las Vegas Strip was bumper to bumper, making for both excellent picture taking and an understandably crabby driver. The buildings and billboards and architecture of the city seemed surreal, like a caricature of itself to two people who had never seen it before (one of whom was presently not really seeing any more of it than the back of the car in front of him). We passed the Cosmopolitan, and I pondered what their television ad campaign - “Just the right amount of wrong” - said about the city as a whole. When we finally moved beyond the Strip and were heading back to the interstate, we passed by a young man walking aimlessly along the sidewalk, randomly throwing traffic cones into the lanes of oncoming traffic. Somehow it didn't seem that out of place, though I did think he had exceeded the right amount of wrong...
 
The Bellagio

The Cosmopolitan


Approaching Lake Mead
Back on the road heading east into Arizona, we came upon another “surprise
The Hoover Dam from the walkway
adventure”. In all my trip planning, I somehow missed that the Hoover Dam was on the route toward the Grand Canyon. The sprawling blue of Lake Mead appeared ahead of us, then a sign for the Hoover Dam viewing area. Of course, we turned off the highway and headed for the viewing area, needing something to cleanse our retinas of the sights of the city we had just gone through. The Hoover Dam was just the thing. After days of seeing God-created wonders, the man-made wonders of Vegas were decidedly underwhelming, but the man-made dam was an impressive sight. A viewing walkway and information area had been built overlooking the dam, parallel to the highway. It was extremely windy that day, so strong that I felt I finally knew what it meant to be blown off one's feet. The viewing walkway had high railings, so there was no danger of being blown over the rail, but we had to hold onto the railings to pull ourselves along the walkway against the wind. The effort, however, was worth it. The Colorado River, which we had first seen flowing through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, in Grand Junction, and would see the next day twisting through the Grand Canyon, was here held back by the huge dam, creating the very blue and enormous Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume. Built during the Great Depression for flood control, irrigation and hydroelectric power, the Boulder Dam, renamed for President Herbert Hoover, was also a major roadway until 2010 when the Hoover Dam Bypass was completed, much to the relief of travelers who could be delayed for several hours in the traffic congestion crossing the popular tourist attraction.


Hoover Dam and walkway panorama photo
 
We continued on after the dam through the arid land of northern Arizona to the small (Tiny!) town of Valle, an easy drive from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Valle consisted of a gas station, a convenience store, a Flintstone-themed campground, an airport (!) and our “hotel” complex, a neat but rustic, bare-boned western-themed collection of inn and motel rooms. Our outside-entrance second-floor motel room had a painting on the door of Clint Eastwood from one of his spaghetti westerns. The room was “quaint”, but it was clean and close to where we were heading the next day. 


Our room for the night
 



This morning I came, I saw and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind.
- President Franklin Roosevelt, at the dedication of the Boulder (Hoover) Dam, September 30, 1935

You of all people should know, Terry, in your hotel, there's always someone watching.
- Tess (Julia Roberts) to Terry (Andy Garcia), owner of the Bellagio, Ocean's Eleven


Next:

Grand!
The Trip – Day 8
The Grand Canyon
48 miles

Monday, July 25, 2016



Tax Dollars Well Spent

THE TRIP – Day 6
Zion National Park
50 miles 

We got up early for our Zion National Park visit, driving the scenic twisty 25 miles from our hotel in Hurricane to the entrance of the park. The websites for most of the national parks warn visitors that the parking lots fill up by 10 a.m., encouraging them to come early or come late if they want any chance of finding a parking spot in the park. We took the warnings seriously, getting to Zion (and the Grand Canyon and Yosemite) by 8 a.m. and finding ample parking.

The amazing shuttle bus amidst the scenery...

From May through November, Zion National Park closes its main road to all car traffic. It, instead, provides an excellent free shuttle bus service throughout the park, taking hikers to trailheads and sightseers to overlooks, or providing air-conditioned comfort to those who just want to look out the large bus windows and open sky-lights. Rarely do the words “tax dollars well-spent” flit across my mind, but spending the day using Zion's shuttle system, the words did just that. Buses promised to come every ten minutes. They came more frequently. There was taped tour-like information piped into the sound system, telling about the features of the park. The bus drivers would add their own color commentary between taped speakers and were a wealth of information. The only downside for me was the jarring realization that we truly were POACA*. There was a sign in the front of the bus asking that riders give up those seats for the disabled and elderly when needed. Whenever we stepped on a bus, people would jump up and offer us seats. We would decline. “We're fine, really...” “Ask us again at 4 o'clock this afternoon”, my husband would say.

Water hikers in the Virgin River
We rode the shuttle directly to the end of the almost nine mile road for our first hike. A friend who had previously hiked Zion recommended the Riverside Walk there, a relatively level trail along the Virgin River through a shaded canyon. At the end of the trail (for us), hikers who had water shoes and wading sticks would continue on for a nine plus mile round trip hike, walking in the shallow, rocky river as the canyon walls narrowed until they could touch opposite walls simultaneously. It looked like fun, but the estimated hiking time was eight hours, so we hopped on the shuttle and went to hike to the Weeping Rock, the Lower Emerald Pools and visited every overlook on the shuttle route. The Court of the Patriarchs was my personal favorite view, three towering 6,800+ft. rock formations, named by a Methodist minister for the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When we first approached them in the shuttle bus, they loomed so tall that their peaks could only be seen out of the bus's skylights. Again, ...awe...some... and impossible to fully capture with a camera.


The Court of the Patriarchs  

Weeping Rock

The Great White Throne
The day was hot, and Zion is a strange hybrid of desert and river valley, very warm in the sun, but cool and pleasant in the shade, with small trickles of water running down the canyon walls allowing for vegetation to grow. After a long day of short hikes, we rested under a huge shade tree outside the Zion Lodge. I fought the temptation to take a serious nap on the cool grass under the tree. I was surrounded by hikers who may have fought the same temptation, but had obviously lost...

The California Condor
The national parks all have excellent ranger programs, something we did not intentionally seek out, our main priority being hikes and scenic overlooks. But we encountered a ranger with telescopes set up to view a hole in a cliff face, an active nest of the rare California condor. (“Tax dollars well-spent” flitted across my mind again...) While we were viewing the nesting area through the telescopes, the condor came out and flew above the cliff, riding the thermals before returning to its nest. I used my husband's paparazzi-quality zoom lens to capture a rare close-up shot of the huge bird in flight.

It was late in the day, and we would still have the 25 miles to drive back to our hotel. We took one last ride on the shuttle bus, again refusing the front seats, and just sat back in air-conditioned bliss as we traveled the entire loop of the Zion canyon road without getting out once, just enjoying the views along the way one last time. Tax...dollars...well...spent...

*People Of A Certain Age


National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst. - Wallace Stegner




Next:

Just the Right Amount of Wrong?

The Trip – Day 7
Hurricane, Utah – Valle, Arizona
Las Vegas, Hoover Dam
381 miles


Saturday, July 23, 2016


Cathedrals of Stone

THE TRIP – Day 5
Richfield, Utah – Hurricane, Utah 
Kolob Canyons
157 miles



We had a short day of driving ahead of us before we arrived at a hotel near Zion National Park where we planned to spend the following day. A little research the previous night found a second, less developed section of Zion called Kolob Canyons that had an entrance and a scenic drive easily accessible from Interstate 15. This unplanned stop looked like a nice way to spend the afternoon. The twisty five mile road had many scenic pull-offs, with a parking area at its end and a trailhead for an even more scenic hike. We drove through towering rocks of rose-colored sandstone along a paved road of similar reddish hue. The roadside geological rock formations we had seen previously along the Utah highways paled in comparison to these rocks. These rocks were awesome, not in a “Hey, that's neat!” way but in a holy, magnificent, overpowering “...This...is...awe...some...” way. In a perfect world, I would have brought a lawn chair, found some shade, and just sat for hours, alternating between worshiping God and just sitting in silent awe in His presence within the walls of this incredible cathedral.  But I ended up doing a much abbreviated version of that, moving on from overlook to overlook, praising God and soaking in the ever-changing rock formations, marveling that the Creator of the universe was so inordinately fond of rocks and, of course, taking photos. We parked at the end of Kolob Canyons Road and headed out on the trail which led to an overlook facing south toward the distant north rim of the Grand Canyon. The path was lined with wildflowers, many of which I had never seen before, flowering cacti, and some cute, photogenic lizards. And the views continued to be ...awe...some... 

 


After our hike and return drive, we checked into our hotel and went to a local diner-type restaurant for dinner. Here we had the first of what would be three “Oneonta” encounters on our trip. My husband was wearing a tee-shirt from our alma mater, a small state school in Oneonta, New York. When we lived in New York, we regularly ran into people from New York who had never heard of it. Here, in a small restaurant in tiny Hurricane, Utah, a women from Utica, New York came up to us and commented on us being from New York, having recognized the Oneonta tee-shirt. Small school, small world...




As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” - Luke 19:37-40




 Next:
 
Tax Dollars Well Spent

THE TRIP – Day 6
Zion National Park
50 miles

Thursday, July 21, 2016


The Old Married Couple Meet the Kissing Couple

THE TRIP – Day 4
Grand Junction, Colorado – Richfield, Utah
Colorado National Monument National Park
223 miles


We had spent the night in Grand Junction and decided we would use the flex time the long first two days of driving had bought us to visit our first park, an unplanned stop at Colorado National Monument National Park. It was also our 39th wedding anniversary that day, so we planned to celebrate by arriving at the park early, doing some easy hiking, eating a backpack lunch and having a short afternoon of driving. Because we are POACA* the first thing I did as we entered the park was get a National Parks Senior Pass, a ten dollar purchase that is good for life. Yep, the rest of the parks on this trip would be free as were any we might plan to visit in the future.

Colorado National Monument, named for the monument-like rock formations in its canyon, had a long scenic drive as well as a number of both long and short hiking trails. We opted out of most of the long drive to hike a number of the shorter trails. We were above the canyon, on the rim, with excellent views of the monument rock structures. They had all been given names, some being Independence Monument, The Pipe Organ, The Kissing Couple. The Kissing Couple did in fact look like a man and woman kissing, he with a hat, she in a long dress and a bustle. We also walked around the Saddlehorn, another rock formation, quite different geologically from the monuments. Our last hike took us to the end of a slot canyon, where we walked and walked as the canyon walls got closer and closer together. The day was warm, but not hot, the park not crowded, the hiking pleasant and relatively easy. An excellent start to our national parks adventure.

Kissing Couple
Old Married Couple (39th Wedding Anniversary Selfie)

Monuments
The Saddlehorn
The Saddlehorn (detail)
In the slot canyon
Looking up from within the slot canyon
In the early afternoon we left the park, and headed into Utah, still on I 70. The Colorado Rocky-feel in the landscape began to change to a more desert-like feel. The views along the road were non-stop spectacular, but never the same. It was as though God didn't want to bore anyone traveling through the area, so He would change the color, height, or structure of the hills every few miles. Again we found rest stops that were just excuses to pull off the road and look and take pictures and look some more. We stopped for the night in Richfield, Utah, found a Super 8 and a fun restaurant restaurant right next door, R & R's Frontier Village, and had a nice anniversary dinner.


 
Just along the Utah roadside...Don't like it?
...Well, how about some rocks?
...Or maybe something like this?
...Or something like this?
There's a bunch of these around, too...
Darker?  Did you want darker?
Bigger, maybe?






This old thing?  Oh, just another rest stop...



* People Of A Certain Age

 
Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror. -Byrd Baggett


Next:

Cathedrals of Stone

THE TRIP – Day 5
Richfield, Utah – Hurricane, Utah
Kolob Canyons
157 miles