GETTING HOME

OK, so the plan was to stay in The Canyons as long as possible but to get home by about June 1^st.  We did this by staying up to the last possible day then jumping onto I-40 and pounding it from Flagstaff to the US276 exit to Waynesville—I needed to take US276 from Waynesville, where we touched base with my Aunt Betty and cousin Anna Watson, then over Wagon Road Gap—just to get a Blue Ridge fix.

Basically 3-1/2 days at 75mph surrounded by 18-wheelers:  Grand Canyon to Santa Rosa NM to Oklahoma City (great seafood place: Pearl’s Fish Shack) to Nashville to home.  Right at 2000 miles.

 The TX Panhandle is possibly where hell is located, I have never seen such a godforsaken place. Hours pass at high speed and nothing changes, totally flat, brown, dry and dusty.  We also had a tremendous tail wind all the way, basically driving in a haze of dust with an occasional dust browning of the white-hot steel colored sky.  You begin to experience déjà vu, haven’t I just been here? This picture tries to capture the experience but…

5 miles ahead a truck in the dust; in the mirror 5 miles behind a truck in the dust—note the white haze of dust in the lower sky

At one place we saw a small abandoned shack in the middle of a vast desolate plain with a weathered “For Sale” sign; what a great picture! But we flew by too fast.

Finally we saw a sign for a Lake!  Possibly a mirage but we rode a few miles off the Interstate and my God, a small artificial lake surrounded by green trees! Nice shaded picnic tables (the sun is unmerciful but the place seems sheltered from the wind) , a few folks boating and swimming.  While eating out PB&J’s we saw turkeys, a coot, a red-headed woodpecker and BOTH an Eastern and Western kingbird, in the same tree (but at different times).  Well, it was the only water we saw for hours, the birds knew what they were doing.

Amazingly just about the time you leave the panhandle and enter Oklahoma you start seeing green plant life. At least traffic was light; however, as we got east the truck traffic crescendoed.

We had no motel reservations, it was just uncertain where we’d stop each night (basically we’d stop when I’d begin to go blind).  Being a Marriott Rewards person I would call their number a few hours out and ask for a Marriott property at our target town, trying to get a room for under $100—and which was also “pet friendly.”  In one case Marriott told me they had only one place that accepted pets and it was $135. OK, close enough.  We get there pretty late, both really tired;  they bring up my reservation OK—but they want to charge an extra $100 for Bella—this was not mentioned on the phone.  I give the poor receptionist hell but it’s not his fault—except this is so much more than any place we have stayed.  I tell them to stuff it and we go looking for another hotel.  The next place doesn’t take pets but the guy at the desk is very kind and solicitious, tells us that a nearby Baymont Inn takes pets. We find it (Mary sees it, thank God, I am driving in a mental fog) and the lady at the desk says she can get me a room with Bella included for approximately one third  what Marriott wanted; enough to make me question my brand loyalty.  Chili’s  is right next door, I order one of their 4-sliders plates and have one of the great beers of my life while waiting, go back to Mary and we eat a very late dinner with great joy and relief.  And the room was really nice.

Eastward, eastward as Oklahoma turns to Arkansas and Arkansas to Tennessee, and the landscape continually getting greener and the air getting wetter (of course the two are correlated) . When we hit east Tennessee we really feel like we are home.

***

We are home (have been for a couple of days) and I’m writing out on my deck.  Here’s what it looks like if I look up:

Oh, my.  Lush green trees. There’s an ovenbird singing and a pileated wood pecker yowping in the woods and I can hear Mary’s falls, a small cascade, below. The air is cool and the sun is merciful.  Yes, the air feels like I’m immersed in gumbo.  But oh God what a pleasure to sleep in our own bed. We had begun to get pretty homesick by the end.

What a privilege—to have been able to see some of the most beautiful and magical places in the world and yet return to our own place and be joyful to be here.  Need to cut the grass…

There is a 4’ black snake that we discover periodically around the property, but we haven’t seen him for many months, were afraid he was gone. Today I took the cover off our grill ( after a month) and there he was (or probably she), in a nest made amongst the control knobs:

Ah, the frisson at first sight; but a nice snake, a beautiful snake.  Welcome home.

Lagniappe: The Vermillion Cliffs

The adventure part of a trip like this is discovery and the unexpected. Finding a great little place to eat, like a Cajun-style fish place--in Oklahoma city!   Or Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah?  We just went there because we had time and it was close--it was wonderful.

This was the case with The Vermillion Cliffs.  We needed a place to stay 2 nights while we visited the  Grand Canyon.  The fancy lodge on the North Rim itself has to be reserved many months, even years, in advance. Our guide book suggested two lesser places, both built many years ago and much less grand, one at the crossroads that is the entrance to the GC and this other little lodge called the “Lee’s Ferry Lodge”, out on the desert much further away from the park entrance.    So we called and it worked out we had to spend our first night at Lee’s Ferry then move to the other, closer place the second night.

So we get to the crossroads, see our motel for the following night, and then turn east away from the road to the GC, in fact taking the road we would take 2 days later to head for Flagstaff.  And driving down off the plateau toward the vast desolate desert that we have so generously bequeathed to the Navajo nation, we had one of those Great Western Entrance experiences: rounding a curve and cutting through a gap, bam! Spread out for miles across the desert before us in a grand panorama in the late-afternoon sun: the Vermillion Cliffs: we had no idea.

There was a corner butte that I just loved:  massive, lonely, a Tolkienesque "fastness":

Note  the town of Vermillion Cliffs (all of it) at the base.

These rocks have a wondrous color any time of day. And hoodoos.

Our Motel was right at the foot of the escarpment, and had this look like an old worn-out movie set, a really old-timey western bar, pool table, grill and rooms.  It was SUCH a refuge from the brilliant blast of desert light outside, low ceilings, shutters closed,  worn dark wood, about 200 brands of beer, and a really informal atmosphere.  Food was, uh, hearty.  At one point I was trying to hurry Mary to pick something from the menu and the waitress told me to shut up and give her time. The sisters rule.  Rooms had cowhides on the floor and a horseshoe over the door.  God, it was perfect.

Lee's Ferry Lodge

A few miles east the highway crosses the Colorado River at Marble Canyon; the bridge built there is the only crossing for many, many, miles, its construction was a huge deal, opening up this entire area to the world.

Top: looking south from the original brdge, now a pedestrian crossing.  Bottom: looking north up Marble Canyon. Its a loong way to the next river crossing.

Now, actually, we saw all these delights again, on our way home after staying at the other lodge; but the fact that we stayed at the Cliffs and had time to walk around gave us time to really be there and experience them, as opposed to “windshielding” them on our way to Flagstaff.  There’s a lesson there.

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

Neither of us had ever seen it.  Last spring I had an American Chemical Society meeting in Anaheim, Mary went with me, and our flight home flew right over the South Rim on a very clear day, so  we did get to see it from a great vantage point. Amazing.  Really revved up our anticipation to see it from the ground.

The plan was that this would be the climax of our trip, the biggest “wow!” moment. But could it be, after Bryce, and Arches, and Zion? I remember years ago going to Niagara Falls and wondering beforehand if it would measure up to my expectations. Niagara exceeded my expectations! But here, again, I wondered if I might be just a bit disappointed--my expectations for The Grand Canyon were very high.

Well—the result was yes and no. Esthetic opinion: the Grand Canyon is not as beautiful a place as Zion. It is not as artistically ornate as Arches. And It is not as fantastical as Bryce. But for sheer oh-my-god-I- think-my- heart-is-going-to-stop-I-can’t-believe-what-I-am-seeing-I-can’t-believe-I-am-here the GC is the champ.  There are other places in the world with similar impact (the teleforique up to The Needle, the  Aguille du Midi on the side of Mont Blanc comes to mind), but seeing the GC is a life-changing experience.

I am a scientist, and I know too much about the cruelty, the massive amount of death, the pain and suffering that is built into our physical world to have much romantic sentimentality about “the beauty of nature.” But to sit quietly somewhere on the rim of the GC and watch the sun and cloud shadows play across the vast canyons with their changing colors is to be transfixed by sheer joy, and wonder.

We visited the North Rim, because it fit in with our itinerary, and because our guide book said it was quieter (less people) than the South rim. We will HAVE to return to see the South rim someday. But the North Rim is also up in the ponderosa pines, being several thousand feet higher than the South.

The view from the Lodge is hard to beat.

That's Mary in the green jacket.

But the prime viewpoint on the North Rim is Cape Royal, where there are a couple of nearly 360-degree viewpoints.  There is a “fin” with a hole in it called Angel’s Window, a narrow precipice with a handrail you cling to with white knuckles—it was very windy:

See the people on top?

I couldn't resist, up there I walked up next to a guy hanging onto the rail for dear life looking into the vast, intricate scene and said "Is this all?" He looked at me unbelievingly and then we both exploded into laughter, it was just so high and exposed and we were both full of adrenalin. 

And here is a sample of what we saw:

A couple more pictures:

Wish I had a large-format camera and a way to put a 6’ by 12’ print in the basement. Oh well. The deal is, if you have been there, then you can look at your photos  and even though they can’t possibly do justice to the majesty, memory will supply the “ohmygod.” This memory, I think, will never fade.

ZION!

Zion means “sanctuary” and these magnificent canyons, high in the Colorado Plateau, are not only monumental on a scale like Yosemite, but also filled with beautiful cottonwood forests with water and flowers. Not exactly lush as the Blue Ridge, mind you, but full of life.  So Zion IS a sanctuary and has been for men and animals and birds from the Puebloan Ancestors to today. 

Zion was our favorite experience.  I’m careful not to say “our favorite park” because we loved them all.  But it was the best experience because, first of all, to mitigate traffic in this immensely popular park (over 2 million visitors a year, I think), driving up the main scenic canyon is not allowed, there is a free shuttle bus system that will pick you up at stops in Springdale, UT—one right across the street from our motel. It drops you off in the park where you pay your way in (or flash your pass) and then another system picks you up and takes you up into the canyon, stopping at a series of breathtaking places where you can stay as long as you like and then catch another shuttle back or onward to the next breathtaking place.  Or take a trail.  On the shuttles you get a recorded message that is interesting and you don’t have to drive and fight for parking spaces at the various scenic points. They come around about every 15’ from about 6AM until after dark.  Fantastic!   

Actually: I was furious when I first learned (a) I couldn’t drive around myself, (b) Bella was not allowed on the shuttles.  What to do?  In fact the system is GREAT. The shuttles even have elaborate lifts for wheel chairs, and there were many an elderly person there who the shuttles were perfect for.  So we put Bella up at a great kennel called (no kidding) the “Doggie Dude Ranch” in Springdale, and she had such a great time there we weren’t sure she would rejoin us at the end of the day.

Here’s the kind of thing you saw when you would get off the shuttle at a stop:

There are condors in this area but we didn't get to see one

One of our favorite stops was a majestic grove of cottonwood trees with picnic tables, where you could sit in the shade of the treesand look up at the surrounding walls:

Y
ou could take great pictures without ever getting off the shuttle, just stick your camera out the window.  And therein is a problem. When I was a hiker and backpacker (30 years ago), I remember treasuring such contempt for those who would just ride through a park, stop at the scenic spots, take a picture, then move on.  But on this tour sometimes we had to do what I used to despise!  Of course you need to get out of the car—or shuttle—and get into the woods, see things on your feet.  At most of the parks we did that, but between my knees and Mary’s sensitivity to both heat and cold we are limited to no more than a few miles’ walk. But the Parks are great about providing easy, as well as epic hikes.  At Zion, where you can be down in the canyon in the shade instead of cooking up on the rim, we took a great hike up toward The Narrows, Zion’s most famous feature—a 2000’ canyon that narrows to a few yards wide and the only place you can walk is in the Virgin River itself. However, a good deal of rain and snowmelt had swollen the river to where The Narrows was closed to hikers.  But we did follow the river for about 3 miles up into the canyon. In spite of crowds of people—it was paved and you could have been on a sidewalk in New York—the hike was magnificent.  First thing, a wispy fall reminiscent of Yosemite:

 2000' Waterfall

Saw a canyon wren and many flowers in “hanging gardens” growing on the walls where there were seeps.

That evening we took a walk on the only path where Bella was allowed to go, walked along the roaring river and watched the sun set:

The only downer was during the day when 3 young guys got on the shuttle, hiking boots, massive backpacks, in from a week of hiking, tired but happy. Wish I could have gone with them.

We really hated to leave The Sanctuary.



GIMME A BREAK: KODACHROME BASIN

I’m sitting in an open pavilion containing a ping-pong table, hot plate, and sinks for campers, at a KOA in Cannonville, UT.  Still, the view is not bad:

Our plan was to spend three nights here and visit Bryce Canyon NP one full day and Zion NP one full day.  This would have added up to three of our greatest National Parks in four days.  Too much! We did Bryce yesterday and it was of course the place that defines “scenic.” But this morning we are so tired we are just hanging out at camp. We will pack up tomorrow, reserve a motel near Zion and give Zion a day and a half.

We got here day before yesterday after driving across what may be the most outrageously scenic interstate in the US: I-70 west of Thompson Springs starts out as flat desolation and then as you go west the geology just gets wilder and wilder.  This is the huge sedimentary seabed from the inland sea that used to occupy the center of the US, which dried and a piece the size of Nevada, roughly centered at the Four Corners, was shoved upward tectonically—to about 9000 feet above today’s sea level. It is called the Colorado Plateau and all the canyons and fabulous features of Bryce, Zion and the Grand Canyon are nothing more than cuts and carvings made by rainfall and river erosion, ice and sandblast  into that plateau, which has hundreds of layers of different hardnesses and colors.

Every 5 miles or so on I-70 you see a sign: “scenic turnout,” and you should, because each one throws some unbelievable panorama at you, with a sign explaining the geology. For example:

We eventually turned south on US 89.  Knowing we were going to be setting up camp the weather looked worrisome:

In the end we only got a few exciting drops after we set up. Meanwhile. before we got there we needed a place for our PB&J lunch and saw a “rest area” sign; turned out it was an amazing little place with nice bathrooms and covered picnic tables (nice given it looked like we were going to be rained on), hidden in the woods away from the road and next to a pretty creek (in this country any running water is beautiful to see).

Saw a western tanager almost immediately, also a spotted towhee and black-beaked magpie.  Rest area was apparently maintained by the “Hoover” community, though we never saw the community! It was so pretty after a long drive.  It was really appreciated, Hoover!

We arrived in Cannonville, UT and its’ KOA late afternoon yesterday, but in plenty of time to set up. We saw some glimpses of the rocks on the edge of Bryce and it was clear we would be in for a treat.

Overall the Cannonvile camping was a good experience; it would have been great if the wind had been just a little warmer:

 Picture of Mary freezing; I have pictures of Mary Freezing at all the National Parks...

Being aged (Bella too), we would have to crawl out of bed (which really was comfortable and warm, Mary admits) in the night and walk over to the bathrooms, taking Bella to the pet walk as well.  But the KOA was friendly, well-maintained, the sites spaced nicely among the trees and hills, and our gear worked very well. I had a prejudice againt KOA's, having been told that they typically really crowd the campsites together. Not true at the Cannonville UT KOA.

KODACHROME BASIN STATE PARK  VALLEY

After a very nice day just hanging out in camp but getting restless, in the late afternoon we ran down to a small UT State park called “Kodachrome Basin,” named (with permission from Kodak) by the National Geographic because of the colors. Turned out it was an absolute gem! We took a small nature trail (we could take Bella, this not being a National Park) and it was a chance to get close to the sticky-shoe rocks, which I and Glen and Neal loved to run around on in 1972. This time I carefully inched around trying not to inflame my knees.

Because we did this walk at our leisure, we had time to contemplate individual stone sculptures and made a game of naming them; for example:

An Old Couple Snuggling In Bed

The Buddha Speaks

The Monk Contemplates

The White House

The area is famous for its many stone columns; here is “Chimney Rock”

Note Mary at the bottom

Dead pinon pines make some nice scuptres too:

What started out as a little side excursion turned out to be a very fine evening, wouldn’t you say? The last thing we saw was a scrub jay.

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

Bryce is fantasyland.  Like at Mesa Verde, you drive on top of a plateau among the trees, stop at overlooks and look down into chasms that stop your heart.  At Mesa Verde the chasms were heart-stoppingly deep canyons with the occasional cliff dwelling up high on the cliff face—how did they keep their children from falling off? At Bryce Canyon the canyons are also deep, deep, but filled with thousands of rock sculptures called “hoodoos” in pastel colors:

These photos are beautiful (this is a place where it would be difficult to take an uninteresting picture!), BUT you cannot possibly do the heart-stopping experience justice with a photo: you have to be there (I expect Doug’s favorite place, Banff, where he has taken some eye-popping photos, is the same). The eye sees huge pieces of space in 3 dimensions, without the compression of a wide-angle lens. If you set your lens at about the right distance to see things at life-size the camera only sees a small piece of the scene in front of you. The only way to approximate reality is to take a really wide-angle picture and then make a very large print or project it onto a screen.

We were there on a blindingly bright day. There were snow patches at the higher elevations. At several overlooks ravens would invite you to feed them, and you could almost (but not quite) touch them:

What solemn, ponderous birds! Impossible to not take them seriously, even though they were mooching--but with such dignity!  Beautiful, glossy, very big, blacker-than-black birds with a piercing eye:

Nevermore! 

Bryce should be on everyone’s bucket list.  We are so grateful to have been there—this was Mary’s best place so far, she was almost as enthusiastic as me!

ARCHES, MOAB, AND THE SCOTT MATHESON WETLANDS PRESERVE

Mesa Verde to Moab UT, the gateway to Arches NP is a fairly short hop, giving us time to do some laundry in Moab—we were getting desperate. Moab appears to be made up entirely of some elderly tourists like us, living in uneasy tension with thousands of cyclists, rafters, hikers, kayakers. Everybody in town has some kind of rack on their car, hard bodies everywhere you look. Actually we kind of liked the feel of the place.

We arrived in town in time for lunch and saw a great picnic area, but: “No dogs, on or off leash.” So we asked and a very counterculture-looking guy told us to take a turn a couple of blocks away and we would be in the Colorado River Canyon.  Damn! This is so like the west, you can be a mile from an absolute gem of a place and not know it: here’s the view from our picnic spot.  

There were hundreds of violet-purple swallows, a beautiful bird.

Just outside Moab is a famous birding place, the, Scott Matheson wetlands preserve, apparently the only wetlands area like it on the entire Colorado River.  After doing the laundry and dinner we went there but it was too late, so the next morning I pulled a “Doug” (meaning leaving your wife’s warm side and bed at an ungodly hour to try to catch a few birds at the prime time)  here’s what it looked like:

There were 4 mule deer that practically walked into my blind.  The Preserve was good: saw a Western Tanager, Yellow Breasted Chat, and a Lazuli Bunting, all prime acquisitions.

Then we “did” Arches: a one-day driving tour with a little hiking.

When I told Mary I wanted her to see the Southwest, Arches was the main thing I had in mind. I had passed through here in June of 1972 with Lois and Glen and Neal, and it was the most magical place we stayed—camping in 100+ temperatures, but so beautiful.  Arches was pretty harsh then but this time we had days that were warm only, and cold nights.  It is well organized by the NPS but even this early in the season there was a lot of traffic and it was hard to find parking some places. 

Arches has striking, very individual stone sculptures, including some famous balanced rocks, and of course arches, all carved from a warm reddish rock which forms sensuous curves. A few examples:

The Three Gossips

The Great Wall

Balanced Rock (the rock is HUGE, the size of a house)

And of course, the arches, which people find irresistible:

Double Arch (note people under it)

Arch with person sitting under center

And the most famous: Delicate Arch which is on the UT license plate: a shot in context and up close:

Note the crowd of spectators.  Ah me. When I was 30 I knocked off the 3-mile trail to Delicate Arch in a couple of hours and it was one of the great hikes of my life, along narrow ledges on high cliffs with the occasional tiny cliff dwelling in a cave mouth. And nobody else was there.  Look at the crowds there now, and this is not the peak of the season. 

Mary did the Park Place trail, which goes along beside a high cliff that looks like the Manhattan skyline; I stayed with Bella because dogs are not allowed on most NPS trails

For lunch we took an unpaved road out into the desert to get away from the crowds (Mary rolling her eyes as I quote Sandberg about taking the road less traveled) and hit a small knoll with views of the rocks and the distant snow-covered mountains. The temperature was about 65, we dug out the PB&J and it was about a perfect picnic experience. Spent a little time on my much neglected horn.

Arches is still magic, a sculpture garden set in the desert. It was such a pleasure to share it with Mary.