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.

TALIN’S GRADUATION AND MESA VERDE: MAY 17-19

Tuesday May 17 our grandson Talin graduated from Valley HS in ABQ something like 12^th in a class of over 200; he will start college this fall at San Diego State, as will his brother Tanner at Berkeley.  Smart, good-looking boys. When they focus on something they will both do great things. After the ceremony we celebrated at a tiny Mexican place which was really good (really authentic I would guess).

 L to R: Glen, Thomas, Jen (behind Glen), Glen’s sister Laura, Sally, Annie (Mike’s wife), Mike (Talin & Tanner’s grandfather), Mary, Tanner, Talin, waitress trying desperately to get us to finish.

However  the overabundance of green chiles disturbed my GI tract ecology for about three days.

Wednesday we put Sally on a plane to Atlanta and Jen and Thomas to San Diego, kissed Glen goodbye and hit the road north to Mesa Verde, driving  about 300 miles past the Four Corners into monument mountain country and shiprock, a huge storm front coming through with sandstorms and pelting rain, high winds. 

Lots of one-lane repair work on US 491 where you would sit for 30’ minutes, the flaggers wearing masks because of the sandstorm. 

At one of these I cut the engine and was playing with my camera, when wham! I had failed to put the Toyota in park and the wind blew us right into the car in front of me. Plastic bumpers, no damage.

We came in off the vast plains in the four corners area with monumental, lonely mountains

And climbed up to find a verdant high plateau like at Ruidoso—pines and juniper--cut with deep canyons.  Sort of the the ecological and geological reverse of the plains!

The storm front followed us all the way to Mesa Verde and as we approached the entrance, now at about 6000’, it started to snow. We drove into an increasingly dense, wet snow up to the gate; we knew we had a problem when we saw snow plows going the other way.  We are beginning to think that the camping we had planned (we had reserved a campsite)  was out of the question. I asked Mary if she would call me a wuss if we decided not to go tent camping in heavy snow? You can imagine the answer. Amazingly, they had rooms at the lodge and that’s where we stayed. Here’s our motel door:

What we got for the evening and next  2 days was furious wind and heavy snow and sleet broken by occasional bright sunshine.  Nevertheless, the Park is just wonderful.  Lois and I passed here in 1972—can that possibly be 39 years ago?—on our way from my post-doc in Oregon to my USDA job in Mississippi, and I never forgot the strangely compelling sight of the beautiful cliff dwellings, abandoned by the ancestors of the current pueblo peoples 800 years ago, about the time of the high middle ages. 

The Park does a masterful job of teaching you the anthropology and culture of these mysterious people, showing how they developed the pueblo architecture, community, agriculture, art, and it really is compelling, maybe because it is such an alien environment and you are awed by these people’s wonderful  ingenuity (no metals!) in surviving here, and even more, developing masterpieces of art and lifestyle.  The Park brochure says it well:

“The structures are evidence of a society that, over centuries, accumulated skills and traditions and passed them on from generation to generation. By the Classic Period, from 1100 to 1300, Ancestral Puebloans were heirs of a vigorous civilization, whose accomplishments in community living and the arts must be ranked among the finest expressions of human culture in North America.”

They are not just being polite to the current descendants. When you see the pueblos and the art that has been found there, you are just awed.  If you ever get the chance to come here, be sure and take the half-day guided tour by a park ranger. It’s $35 and that’s too high, I think it would knock out too many people, but it is great, the Rangers love their work and they are knowledgeable. We got a lady named Jo and she was just wonderful.

          

Spruce Tree House, the best preserved dwelling in the park, in the snow.

Cliff Palace, the largest Ancestral Puebloan dwelling in North America

Birds seen: spotted towhee, green-tailed towhee, black-throated grey warbler, mountain bluebird, robin.

SUN CITY, SANTA FE, AND ALBUQUERQUE

May 13-17

We interrupt our national park tour with a week of urban hanging out with relatives. A nice, restful break, actually. 

One of Mary’s greatest anticipations of the trip was a visit to see her far-western cousin Helen Alfenaar Jacobsen in Phoenix.  Helen lives in Sun City West, one of those massive senior-only developments.

Helen gave up her king bed for us and her dog Skeezix was happy to have a visitor.  I liked her. We came in late from Tucson, stayed two nights, and caught up on our sleep: a motel can never offer the secure sleep of someone’s home.  I rode my bike around a good part of Sun City West in the late afternoon Thursday. It was very quiet in the evening, no traffic. Saw lots of small rabbits and quail in the landscaping, then, up on a TV antenna, a huge owl. For this guy Sun City is a cafeteria.

Helen showed us around a bit, and fed us a great dinner. She and Mary talked for 12 hours straight.  They had been close cousins as kids, nearly the same age, but it had been many years since they had gotten together, they had a blast and Helen was sorry to see us leave. I think they will communicate more now.

Friday the 13^th we left Helen early (well, around 9:30) and drove I-40 to Albuquerque, about 9 hours at 70mph, not much fun, though we could see the beginnings of red rock country to the north.

We picked up my great friend and cousin Sally at ABQ airport

and ran up to Santa Fe for the weekend, staying in a B&B right off the historic plaza.  Spent Saturday doing museums and walking around Santa Fe. Sally’s main agenda was to see the Georgia O’Keefe museum, almost next door to the B&B, but they were for a closed for a couple of weeks for a changeover of all their exhibitions. What a crappy way to operate, why not change the exhibitions one room at a time?!

Santa Fe was neat, though, with a particular artsy ambience, lots of pueblo-inspired earth-tone architecture.

 Courtyard of Santa Fe Museum of Fine Art

Blocks and blocks of upscale shops and galleries. Shopping is not our cup of tea, though we enjoyed strolling around, and the eating was grand.

In the PM we drove up to Ghost Ranch—O’Keefe country and a Presbyterian conference center—and we believe this is the butte she loved to paint, complete with storm clouds:

Georgia O'Keefe's butte

Sunday we and Sally bopped down to Albuqurque, going by way of Las Vegas, NM where there is a great birding spot, Las Vegas NWR.  As we turn into the NWR, mostly open fields, I say “This looks like a great place for a Western meadowlark,” and Sally says “I would love to see one I have never seen any kind of meadowlark.” and just at that moment one sings right outside the car window.  I back up and there he is in all his glory on a fence post.  Great—I had seen one earlier but only at a great distance.  After that they seemed to be on every fourth fencepost.  Unfortunately that’s about all we saw, except for a western kingbird. The NWR is suffering from the same drouth-at-historic levels as the rest of the southwest.

At Albuquerque we hung out at the Hyatt with the Glen Wauchopes and his sister Laura, gathering for Talin’s graduation.

Glen, Thomas, Laura and Jen freezing on top of Sandia Peak

We did have one high adventure: there is a fantastic cable car ride up to Sandia peak overlooking ABQ.

It was COLD on top, still a bit of snow on the ground, very windy. So windy they shut down the tramway for a while. Did a little nature trail and saw (and heard—beautiful) a veery. The western veery has a little different song with less of the spiraling downward whistle we hear in the high Blue Ridge, but it was still the distinctive veery sound. Saw the sun set over ABQ and the Rio Grande.

Sunset on Sandia Peak: Albuquerque and Rio Grande below

TUCSON: SAGUAROS, THE ARIZONA-SONORA DESERT MUSEUM AND MISSION SAN XAVIER DEL BAC

The main reason we went to Tucson was to see the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is actually a zoo and museum up on a mountainside in Saguaro National Forest. This is the heartland of the saguaro cactus (pronounced sah-WAR-o), the iconic American southwest plant: it is wonderful to see them, and the Sonoran desert is in bloom and diverse and beautiful.

We couldn’t take Bella into the museum, and it’s against the law to leave her in the car, so Mary and I did the museum in turns. A wonderful mineral collection, snakes, an aviary, a hummingbird house, bears, mountain lions, javelina, coyotes, a huge collection of cactus. And birds everywhere, including the cactus wren

And the gila woodpecker, that nests in the saguaro. 

And a curve-billed thrush (I think—just discovered I have misplaced my bird book), with bright yellow eye

Also got a good look at a black-headed grosbeak. These guys all just popped up in the picnic area.  I could hardly get my sandwich eaten I was so busy with my binoculars.  I also took pictures of the white-winged dove and Bullock’s oriole and others but that was in the aviary, which seems to me to be cheating.

We left the Museum in the late afternoon and the GPS says we have time, before heading north to Phoenix, to see Mission San Xavier del Bac, considered (according to the guide book) the finest example of mission church in the southwest, and strongly recommended by Mary’s cousin Helen, whom we are going to see in Phoenix.  It was startling to see this large and blinding-white church standing up in the middle of an indian reservation of low adobe buildings.  Wonderful decorations inside. It still serves the locals. 

"The White Dove of the Desert"

You could also climb a steep hill to see a replica of the Lourdes grotto, but we decided to pass.

FROM CARLSBAD TO TUCSON MAY 10-11: WHITE SANDS

We left Carlsbad--after an incredible experience--and headed north up to Artesia (do they have an artesian well?) and then headed west on highway 82.  US 82!  We lived near it in Leland MS and in Tifton GA, 36 years’ association with this highway.  But we didn’t get very far, the road was blocked by the HP and officer Carlos Castaneda routed us north: one of several big wildfires was burning to the west. We could see the tan pall of it on the horizon.  So, we wound up going north to Roswell (no aliens visible) then southwest to Ruidoso, where we spent the night after driving into the sun for hours.

Coming into Ruidoso, after days dehydrating in the Chiahuahuan desert, suddenly you are in trees! Tall, beautiful pines (ponderosas?)!  Ruidoso is a racetrack town but season hasn’t started, thank you. Had a great dinner at a place called “Landlocked”: smoked salmon burritos with red berry sangria.  God  the sangria was good! Spent the night in a cheap motel, worst tile work I have ever seen in my life.  Had to walk Bella 200 yards to find anything non-paved, just dirt, for her to do her business.  Still, Ruidoso was nice.  Why the trees? Because it’s about 6000 ft. elevation!  Had no idea we had climbed so far.

Wednesday 11^th  we did White Sands National Monument, just as a visit.  I had planned to camp there but it turns out you have to haul your gear ¾ mile into a primitive campground, and after experiencing the sun at Big Bend I figured I’d wind up leaving Mary dead in the desert.  That didn’t seem wise.  So we booked a hotel in Tucson for that night and  toured White Sands for a couple of hours.

The main reason I had White Sands on the agenda was, our guide book said it was unique.  It is.  Interesting how life has adapted to living in blinding white dunes made up of fine grains of gypsum (CaSO₄, also known as drywall) . We took a nature trail out into the dunes and it was almost disorienting it was so white—we found it a little scary, but it was an adventure.

 We drove back into the heart of the dunes and here’s a picture of one of the picnic areas

If you are ever in the area visit this place it is different.

The White Sands visitor center was a WPA project from the 20’s a beautiful adobe mission style building. A small but striking little display of indian art.  And here is a story: I was standing in the shade at the visitor center watching tree swallows dip and turn when suddenly  a pair zipped down to a yucca stalk not ten feet away and they just sit there and stare at me. They are beautiful! Inky black backs and buff (male) and white (female) underneath. So I s-l-o-w-l-y bring up my camera hoping they will stay still long enough for me to get them and they just sit like statues while I get my lens cap off and the camera turned on and the lens extended. Fantastic! I frame them and shoot—and the camera refuses to take the picture. I have left the memory chip out. It is still in my laptop from when I backed it up last night. Jesus, a wonderful shot lost. So I go get the chip out of the car and put it in the camera and come back to the same spot in the shade; of course the birds are gone. 

But: they come back and pose again, in the same place! Here’s the proof.  I half  expected one of them to extend his claw to get paid for posing.

The Tucson Foothills Best Western gave us a free upgrade to a suite and we found some grass for Bella. Man did we sleep. They also had a great hot breakfast.

CARLSBAD CAVERNS: BAD START, HAPPY ENDING

You drive 20 miles south out of Carlsbad the town through the Chijuajuan desert and hang a right at “White’s City” a tourist trap in which all the facilities at the intersection are owned by the same guy. But no matter, you immediately enter the National Park and it’s suddenly a beautiful scenic drive up through a series of gentle canyons filled with blooming cacti.

But: we got to the park at 3PM and they tell us they close entry to the the caverns at 2—at least the most interesting tour according to our guidebook, where you start at the natural entrance and walk a very long series of steep switchbacks down, down, the equivalent of 80 stories, into the blackness. What a disappointment.  So, we take a short side trip to a picnic area called Rattlesnake Springs and it is such a pleasant surprise, a wonderful little spring that produces a cool oasis of majestic cottonwood trees in the middle of the terrible desert.  And, almost immediately, we saw:

A vermilion flycatcher, apparently the signature bird of this place.  Also saw a western kingbird, a turkey, white-crowned sparrow, grey-cheeked thrush.   The birds are crowded here, just trying to get to the water: they have had a total precip of 2” of snow here since last September. 

Then we went back to the cave mouth in the evening to watch the famous bat emergence: about a third of a million bats fly out, but almost none came out that night, something spooked them.  So damn, no cave tour, no bat flight, if it weren’t for the birds the day would have been a total failure.

But we persisted.  We drove back down again from town, this time in the the AM and took the walking tour.

You know--Carlsbad was not my highest priority for this trip.  I figured it would be interesting and it was on the way.  After missing it the day before we almost didn’t come back.  Now Mary and I agree it was one of the most amazing, awe-inspiring places we have ever been in our lives.  I have to say it should be on everyone’s bucket list.  The scale of the place (the Big Room is the size of 14 football fields), the unimaginable variety and beauty of the formations, the way it has been lighted, the cool darkness of the place when you know the sun is blasting away up above…we are still, 8 hours later, processing what we experienced.  It was also cool that my Nikon D90 handled the light conditions with aplomb (just used my pocket tripod and pointed the lens at wide-angle in the general direction of things, keeping the focus on infinity because the autofocus just couldn’t decide what to do).

Here’s a sample of what we saw:

That's Mary in the yellow jacket.

The colors are much more vivid than you could see with the unaided eye

You can see a handrail in the lower left and a blurred someone on the lower right...for scale

This is the "Rock of Ages" formation.  Mary in yellow jacket is above it to the left in the dark

A small part of the Big Room

Seriously: between Big Bend and Carlsbad the whole trip has already been worth it. And we haven’t even made it to Arizona yet—not to mention Talin’s graduation…