The Last Hurrah: the Grand Canyon

This has been an extraordinary trip across and around the country. We have seen so many amazing things. We have seen beautiful cities; funky small towns; scenes of tropical paradise; the mysteries of the bayou swamps; almost the full length of the western shoreline from San Diego to Seattle; the beautiful green of the Pacific Northwest; the wide skies of the mountain west; the most incredible tall mountains and deep lush valleys; the huge expanse of the southwestern deserts;  and canyons from the rim down and from the bottom up. But the Grand Canyon feels different from all of these. It feels like, and is, one of the Great Wonders of the World. It is so big and deep as to defy belief.  And the feeling that it gives a person, that one is very small and pointless in the extreme, and that time has no meaning, is a tremendous gift for the visitor. At least it is for me.

This is a place that can be happily visited in a short amount of time. You can drive along the portion of the scenic road where cars are permitted, and just get out at the overlooks, and have a real sense of what it looks like. Even visiting for one day, and watching the play of light and shadow across the huge chasm as the sun moves across the sky is stunning. But having more time to get used to the sight of it, and begin to see it more deeply, is an enormous gift.

After a day or two, you can cease seeing just the hugeness of the hole in the ground, and begin to see the detail of the mesas and outcroppings, and of the incredible history of the earth told in the layers of rock. I don't believe there is another place on earth where the very story of the earth is laid bare in such an observable and beautiful display. If you want to just behold the story of our planet, this is your place.

And visiting it is easy. There is a wonderful system of shuttle buses that allows you to walk the rim, or hike into the canyon, or ride a bike, and then get taken back to where you started out or where you want to go next. The lack of cars makes the huge number of people there a little less daunting. And unlike many of the national parks, the services available at the Grand Canyon are impressive. Grand Canyon Village is a real town. Quite a small town, of course, but a town where people (those people who work at the park) live. So there is a grocery store, a bank, schools, a post office, many restaurants and lodges, a medical clinic, and so on. It was so different from other places we have been. It felt like a wonder to be at a place of such remoteness and beauty, but still be able to just run to the store when we ran out of something. And to buy the New York Times! It was heaven. Of course, we had no cell phone signal or ability to access the internet, and no electricity in the campground, and it was freezing cold at night. But the grocery store and the newspaper went a long ways to helping us feel "in the world," even while the experience of being there is mostly outside of the "regular" world.

We did a bit of hiking into the canyon, which was fabulous. When we visited here with our kids a long time ago, it was in the summer and blisteringly hot. The air gets warmer as you hike farther down, so we hadn't been able to hike below the rim. This time we were able to hike into the canyon to a level that felt terrific, without the difficulty hot weather brings. Hiking into the canyon is deceptively easy. It is a problem, in fact, that hiking down feels so easy, because hiking back up is twice as hard, and it is easy to fool yourself about what you have before you. But when you get even a mile into the canyon, the views and the relative intimacy are just amazing.

 I have new respect for the people who hike down to the river. This can't be done, and then back again, in a day, but involves sleeping overnight at the bottom and returning the next day, or later, either back to the same place, or eventually up to the other side. Lots of people do this, of course, but having only done a small amount of hiking there, I am in awe of people who hike down the more than 5,000 feet to the bottom, with all the gear for camping on their backs. And then they must haul that gear, which I am sure weighs about forty pounds, UP another 5,000 feet (or 6,000 if going to the north rim) back again. The idea of a hike that involves a 10,000 or 11,000 foot elevation change, with a huge weight on your back, is just stunning to think about. In my one mile walk down into the canyon, I didn't quite make 1,000 feet of elevation change, and I didn't have anything on my back. Well, I'm old of course, but so are a lot of the people we saw, including people going all the way down. They have my admiration.

Th early hiking is pretty easy

The switchbacks help you get down pretty quickly. Feels deceptively easy!

Coming back up, the same paths don't look quite so easy. They are steep, and the sun is relentless.

Just walking the rim is a lovely experience. The views are astonishing, and every mile or even less, there is a place to get on the shuttle. And We had some lovely bike rides. You can put your bike on the front of the shuttle bus and bring it where you want to ride, or bring it back again. Riding along the rim, and stopping every now and again to gaze down at the canyon was great. And not having to ride all the way back was even better.

Biking along the rim

Just a view along the way

Sunrise and sunset are the main daily attractions at the Grand Canyon. We never saw the sunrise, since getting up early isn't part of our retirement behavior. But we made a point to be at the rim for the sunset at night. Each night we saw it from a different point on the rim, and it was always beautiful. Probably the best one was sitting outside the wonderful old El Tovar Lodge, which was built in 1905. There is a nice area there on the rim where a lot of people gather. It reminded me so much of Mallory Square in Key West. The setting is quite different, of course, but the gathering of people to watch it happen was the same. Here, though, there were people who looked for a place to sit down...and from wherever you are sitting it looks like they are stepping off the edge of the earth!

Can you see how it looks like they are just hanging off the rim? You can't see whatever they are stepping onto when they just seem to step out into space. We saw some people who wanted to settle down with their dog and watch the sunset. He took one look down and said, no way! They held him, and trusting soul that he is, he went along. But it looked scary enough, even to me.

The terrific thing about the sunset isn't the sun going down in the west, which is lovely, of course. It's the reflection of the sunset across the canyon, and on the rim in the east, and across the whole sky. Very romantic, very magical, and I would go so far as to say, unforgettable.

The last few rays before it gets dark, dark, DARK. And the night sky is glorious.

So it has happened: this part of our adventure is over. We will still be going from place to place, but the destination traveling, which was so centered on visiting the wonders of the national parks, is over. We will now spend a bit of time looking at places that might be suitable locations to wait out the Boston winter. Then, if all goes well, we will cross the country again, to go back home, in the Spring.

It has been great fun sharing our adventures, and describing the experiences we have had on the road. Thank you for coming with us.

Arizona Again: Wonders in Navajo Nation

When we left Zion National Park (Did I forget to mention that we had some of the best local beer of the whole trip while we were in Zion? A great small brewery called Zion Canyon. Fabulous!), we traveled to Page Arizona and the Glen Canyon Dam area. To get there from Zion, we traveled on the second of the two paved roads that cross the Grand Staircase/Escalante Monument. It is also, like the Escalante area farther north, an area that hides many of its secrets until you can get much closer. Many of the spectacular canyons we have seen are very dramatic to look at, even looking out the window of the car. But near Page there is a canyon that is a completely hidden jewel.

Because Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land, you must pay a Navajo Nation fee to visit it, and you must go with a Navajo guide. There is an upper canyon and a lower canyon, and each requires a guide. We were unsure which one to visit. Our Navajo host at the campground suggested the upper canyon, and a particular company. So, not knowing any better (I think it must have been his cousins or something), we bought tickets for an afternoon tour.  Later in the morning,  when we were lost and asked for help, another Navajo suggested the lower canyon, and a particular company. We ended up doing both, and we had wildly different experiences.

For our visit to the lower canyon, we went on foot with a young woman who was very open and friendly. She told us a lot about the canyon and its meaning to the Navajo people, and even a little bit about herself and her culture.  There was only one other couple on our tour, and their English was limited. So we really had a quiet,  and respectful, and wonderful,  time inside what is one of the most amazing environments you can imagine. It felt very close to holy. It was made more so by the fact that somewhere inside the canyon, someone was playing a flute. It was quite wonderful, and seemed well worth the time, the money, and the effort. I will count it as one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places I have been.

It is impossible to describe. And the pictures, especially from a cell phone, just can't even begin to illustrate it. The camera picks up some of the different minerals in the rock, so some of the colors look brighter in their differences than it looks in real life. Still, it is a more or less realistic portrayal of what you see.

Here are a few, to give you an idea.

Inside the Canyon

This is just looking up, from the floor of the canyon

This gives you an idea of the amazing shapes you see as you walk in the canyon

Doesn't this look like it is generated by a computer? But this is what it looks like!

This gives you an idea of how narrow the passages are. Sometimes you have to turn sideways to squeeze through.

The curves and patterns just go on and on. It is impossible not to feel shocked to see it

The camera picks up some different colors in the rocks. But the shapes, and the light, are there.

I couldn't stop taking pictures, and it is hard to pick which ones to post here

To get into the canyon, you have to walk down a few of these. Some are very steep.

                             It is hard to overstate how mysterious and hidden this feels.

At the end of the walk through the canyon, there were steps to go back up again

We walked out of there feeling STUNNED. One of the things we found out is that when the Navajos were forced out during the Long March, many of them hid in these canyons, which are completely invisible from the land on the surface.

We had already paid for the second tour, and would lose our money if we didn't go.....so, off we went, in spite of a feeling that the second tour would be unlikely to be as nice.  And...it wasn't. First off, they take vans of 15 people at a time (and four vans of 15 left with us), and after a half an hour ride, they herd you through the canyon, as if you were on kind of a conveyor belt. They tell you to take this picture, then that one. Take that one, and move along. There were so many people in the canyon it was almost impossible to get a picture that didn't have a crowd of people in it. It was rushed, it was crowded, and it was loud. It made me feel like crying, in spite of how beautiful it is.

I suppose if we hadn't had the other kind of tour, we would have been dazzled by the beauty of the canyon and wouldn't have felt so sad. As it was, I kept thinking that if the Federal Government had authority over this place, and they treated it like that, the Navajos would have said they were desecrating their sacred space. But it was the Navajos themselves. It was so sad. It was capitalism at its worst, and in a place that felt sacred.

BUT......this Antelope Canyon is one of the most amazing places I have ever been in my life. The canyon is so tight,  that in many places it was barely wide enough to put down your shoe to walk forward.  And the gold color when the sun was behind the rocks was DAZZLING. It is just an astonishing place on this earth. I only wish the pictures could show it like it really is.



Also in the Page area is another astonishing thing to see.

This is the Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado River.

This is the landscape at the edge, near the bend in the river. For perspective, that is Bob standing at the overlook.

This was another place in the Page area that is impossible to convey with cell phone pictures. The Colorado River takes a dramatic bend in this spot, and it has created an amazing "island" in the middle of its bend. It is so dramatically far down to the river, and such a surprise to look over the edge (very easy to get terrifyingly close) and see it.  It is also one of the most satisfying walks we have taken. It is less than a mile walk to reach this spot. And, without the intense summer heat, there was really no suffering involved in getting there. It was wonderful! Well worth the side trip. It turned out that Page was a little off our track towards the south rim of the Grand Canyon. But I'm so delighted that we went.


The Glen Canyon Dam is there as well.  When you spend a lot of time in this part of the country, you discover the good things and the not so good things about "progress." For instance, the town of Page didn't really exist until the Glen Canyon dam was built. Before the dam was built, the Colorado River was wild and untamed. It flooded on its own terms, and eroded or filled up the various canyons. It was not navigable, and truly, it just did what it wanted. The dam created Lake Powell, the second largest man made lake in the US. It created hydroelectric power for an enormous area in the southwest. It turned the area into a place where there are many recreational activities that would not have been possible before. It also completely changed the river and the ecosystem of the entire area, including the Grand Canyon.  It is, like most things that are called "progress," very complicated. The dam itself is pretty cool to visit, and we enjoyed a walk to an overlook to look at it.

The Glen Canyon Dam

And next, last but certainly not least, on to the great granddaddy of them all...the Grand Canyon.

Utah, the Last. Zion National Park

We were unprepared for the crowds at Zion. We have been to a lot of national parks, and we haven't seen anything like this. Perhaps because it is only 150 miles from Las Vegas, and therefore more accessible than most of the parks?  Also, it is pretty damned spectacular, so why wouldn't people want to come here? It is 10 or even 15 degrees warmer than Bryce, which means the weather is perfect now for hiking. And whereas Bryce has you standing at the rim, and looking down, Zion has you standing at the bottom and looking up. So a lot of the hiking is easier, at least if you want it to be. (At least you do the hiking UP first, and down second, which is easier.) And the elevation is lower. So, yay, Zion! Except that I think we did the hardest hike ever here.  So what are we doing wrong?

They make this particular hike sound really fabulous. (Which it is.) And then they tell you that it is not a hike for children, for people with a fear of heights, or for people who are not in good shape. Then they tell you that when you get to the top of the hike, IF you are brave or crazy enough, there is another half mile that you can walk, at your own risk, of course, and if you don't mind that you will have to hang on to a chain as you go up the rocks. Oh, and every year or so, someone falls to their death. Sounds great, right? How could we resist?

Well, the "regular" part of the hike just kicked my butt. Very steep, lots of switchbacks, lots of panting and waiting for my heart to feel vaguely like it intends to stay inside my chest and not go bouncing down the trail. Really hard. But really nice, too, with great views of the canyon floor, the incredible sandstone cliffs, and the beautiful river that somehow, tiny as it is, is supposed to have carved these amazing canyons.

Part way up. I'm stopping to remember what breathing is. Bob is indicating what comes next. 

We started to get higher, and looking down started to look cooler

I kept stopping "old people" when they were on their way back, and asking them how it was.....and...."are we there yet?"  I kept getting reassured that I could do it, and eventually, we got there! It was really amazing and beautiful.

This is the place at the end of the "regular" trail

These pictures are what I was looking at while I was waiting for Bob to come back down

Zion is amazingly fertile and green. The rocks are just STUNNING.

The red sandstone and the green trees are breathtaking

The dreaded chain

Then I saw the chain on the rock.....I started up...and then I started thinking about what it would feel like to go DOWN. Mostly I saw how many people were on that trail, and I started thinking about what it would be like when there were too many people, and some of them were going up, but others would be going down, and only one person can stand next to the chain.  When I thought about either being the person who had to step away from the chain to let someone go by, or being the person who would be causing someone else to step away, I decided....er....no. I felt sure it might make me too anxious. But Bob? He said sure enough, and off he went.

When I was waiting at the overlook, looking out at the view, while Bob was climbing, I had plenty of opportunity to observe others who tried to go up, but found they couldn't. I saw other people who returned from having done it like nothing happened at all. And I saw others who looked like they had just given birth and still felt amazed. It was a bit like watching the Boston Marathon, where you see some people go by like there is nothing to it....and other people who look like they are about to die. Basically, it wasn't for me. But Bob did the whole thing like a champ. Yay, Bob!

The triumphant return

Aside from the intensity of the crowds, Zion has been stunning. And on the second day we managed to snag a spot in the campground inside the park, so now we don't have to go in and out of the park, which can be pretty tedious with the traffic.  The shuttle system is great, since you aren't really allowed to drive in the canyon.  Meanwhile, back to the Big Hike:

On the walk down

You can see how the trail is pretty narrow

The trail is cleverly carved right into the rock

This a little bit of an idea about the bottom part of the trail. I could never get a good shot of the trail going up.

The following day we took a comparably long, but much more sedate, walk in a remote part of the park called Kolob Canyon. It was a walk deep into the canyon, and it was mostly through forest that was in the midst of its Fall colors. It was lovely. (However, my feet were hurting from the day before, so I probably was NOT the best companion.)  When you get to the end of the trail, there is the most incredible alcove. It is so deep and painted with desert varnish, and just so huge it is hard to get your mind around.  This part of the park, which is about an hour drive from the more popular part of the park, was just amazing, and not so crowded. In spite of how many people are here, Zion is really a wonderful place to visit, and especially so in such a beautiful time of year.

This is a bit of the alcove

I loved the trees against the red rock

Here is a bit more of the alcove

For perspective on the size of the alcove, here is Bob standing at the bottom

These are the magic sneakers I bought in Moab. I am sure they must be the reason I was able to do this hike.

Utah, Four: Say Now, Hoodoo, Hoodoo You Think You're Foolin?

Bryce Canyon is almost too weird and beautiful to feel real.  I have heard more than one person here say to someone else, "Do you think this is real?" And even though that is a bit dismissive of nature's wonders, it is easy  to see why they can't help but ask.  If it weren't real, that would be even stranger, but in any case, just looking over the rim causes a person to blink, and shake one's head, and look again. It feels very close to a religious experience just standing there. Walking down into the canyon and back up again, besides leaving me gasping for breath, is just magical enough to leave me feeling full of love and at a loss for words. She loves me like a rock.


We went to a lecture given by a National Park Service geologist about the Grand Staircase, and I think I understand it a TINY bit more than I did before. We are even starting to say to each other, oh
look at the Navajo Sandstone here, or, look at that manganese cap on that formation. But really, it is more like....duh....WOW.

Hoodoos and soon-to-be-hoodoos

Looking up from down at the bottom

We did manage to figure out in there somewhere that the reason this hoodoo formation occurs like this at Bryce, more or less alone in all the world (in quantity, at least), is because of a kind of  perfect storm of geology and weather. One of the things that makes the hoodoos happen is that sandstone is constantly eroding, so there is a kind of ongoing metamorphosis in these tall  formations. And Bryce Canyon has 200 days a year that are warm during the day and freezing overnight. So after it rains or snows, which happens a lot, the ice forms in the cracks in the rocks, pushing the sides farther apart. Then the next day, it melts, and the water continues the erosion.  And of course the huge thunderstorms here are an eroding force as well. So the rock formations are hills, then fins, then they begin to get thinner, then they break into somewhat separate pieces, then form spires, and so on. Or something like that. Heck if I REALLY get it.

This sort of shows what it is like before it breaks into individual parts

These are still big rocks, but they will erode into hoodoos

There are a LOT of people from other places here. We are sometimes surprised to find Americans! We have found this in all the national parks, but here it seems even more so. There are LOTS of Europeans. I would guess mostly Germans, but we have also heard a lot of French. There are apparently quite a lot of Japanese tourists here too, but we have also seen a lot of people who seem to be visiting from China as well. At a place like Bryce, you hear a lot of exclamations of all sorts. I have even heard MORE than one person say "Oooh la la," which was pretty close to the coolest thing ever.

By the way, we found out that Bryce Canyon isn't really a canyon at all. It is an eroding plateau edge. (So there.) But when Ebenezer Bryce, who was a Mormon pioneer, lived here, it started being called Bryce's Canyon, and the name just stuck.

Speaking of the pioneers, One of the coolest things we saw was a kind of river that was dug by hand by the Mormon pioneers to bring water farther down into the area. They dug along the path of one of the "rivers" that happen during flash floods, and now water flows there for most of the year, bringing irrigation water much farther down the canyon to farmers and ranchers. Also, it is quite beautiful.

The water picks up all the red silt

All kinds of cool stuff is evident here from the early settlers of Utah, but some funky stuff is left over too. At the end of a long day of hiking (four or five miles can feel like A LOT at this altitude, and it can take about an hour to hike a mile), we decided to treat ourselves to a drink at Bryce's historic lodge. One of our favorite things is to stay at a modest campground (and by the way, with a senior national parks pass, camping is 50% off, meaning we are camping at a national park for $7.50 per night! It really pays to hang around with old guys!), but then do some hanging around at the fancy lodges. So we went to the lodge and asked if there was a bar. They said no. So we asked if we could have a drink in the restaurant. They said only if you are having food...and that the food needed to be 60% and the wine or beer 40% of what we ordered. Hmmmm. So then we asked if there was a place outside the park to just have a glass of wine or a beer, and there is this whole "town" just next to the park that since 2007 has been called Bryce Canyon City, but really should be called Rubyville, because every business is connected and it's all called Ruby's something. Anyway, we found out that if you go inside their restaurant, there is a little liquor store (not always so easy to come by in these parts),  and if you get someone to come wait on you, and you show your ID, you can buy a WHOLE BOTTLE of wine. And take it with you and drink it however you like. Which we did.

So some things are funky, but it is part of the charm of this place. By and large, I would say that Bryce Canyon National Park is unlike anything else, and unlike any place else, and may just be the coolest place in the whole world.

We did four days of hiking and it still felt sad to leave. What an unusual, memorable place. Can you believe it really LOOKS like this?

Looking up from a walk at the bottom

One of the best parts is that the air is really clear and you can see for a VERY long way

At times, in the light, the hoodoos just GLOW. (Did I put that picture in twice?)

Sometimes it makes you think about big cities

It is amazing how much color variation there is

A convenient window

Bob surveys the landscape

Lots of times they look vaguely like people. It is fun to hear people say, oh look! I see this object, do you see it? And something's are named for the things they look like. There is one that is named for Queen Victoria. There is "Wall Street" in an area where the walls are high and the space to walk is thin. (It looks more like midtown to me, but whatever.) and of course, Thor's Hammer.

I never have known what John Fogerty was talking about in "Born on the Bayou,," but I can tell you for sure that we  spent some great days chasing down a hoodoo there. What a place.