Posts Tagged “utah”

I believe we reached a new high today… 11,158 ft. high, to be exact. Between Vail and Georgetown, we passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel—the highest vehicular tunnel in the world and also the highest point of the interstate system. That was just a few miles ago, so I’m assuming we’re still pretty close to the same elevation. I can’t wait to drop down to a normal elevation. After the Rockies, it must flatten out, right?

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Our day began in Moab, where we had breakfast at Eklecticafe (a fun place with good food — another Utah haven with vegetarian choices, organics, etc. — we quite liked it except for some reason the girl at the table next to us decided to have an in-depth discussion with someone who worked there about her recent medical procedure complete with bloody, vomity details… kind of spoiled my appetite!!), then we visited Lin Ottinger’s Rock Shop:

(Scott, is this where the guy wouldn’t let you bring in your coffee??)

We went there because we had a coupon for a free dinosaur bone, which we got. Awesome! It’s our first rock shop trip (we’ve seen dozens along our route, but we’ve never actually gone into one).

Anyway, then we went into Arches National Park! It was very exciting!! We saw so many great things even within our relatively limited time. For example… the Three Gossips!

A place where an arch probably used to be next to Sheep Rock! (They all fall down eventually, you know.)

Check out Sheep Rock!! It was one of my favorites of the day.

Balanced Rock!

Windows!!

Double Arch!

Of course, the iconic Delicate Arch!

And Brian’s personal favorite of the day, Skyline Arch!

We saw one of the handful of whiptail lizards (the only wildlife we observed today) we got to meet on the short trail up to Skyline Arch:

Yay. We agreed that Arches was one of the most beautiful and interesting places we’ve been on the entire trip. We hope to come back and hike more of the trails!

After all that, we left Arches and went up to I-70. I think we better get used to looking at this sign:

We’re going to be seeing it quite a bit over the next few days as we head home. When we first decided to go on this trip, we thought we would be able to enjoy a leisurely drive both out west and back east. Of course, we didn’t really count on getting sick in South Dakota!! So, we have to be back by Saturday at the latest so I have a few hours to recover before I teach on Sunday. Fortunately, Arches didn’t take as long as we had allotted for it, and we were able to eliminate a couple of other places we had hoped to visit on the return trip. In a way, I think it’s fitting that Arches was our final planned destination before heading home, since Utah started it all for us!

We drove through Utah and entered Colorado again before the debate started:

Tonight we’re in Georgetown, Colo., at the “uniquely western-themed” Super 8. It’s a perfectly nice place, but the woman at the desk acted like she was doing us a huge favor by honoring our reservation (and we all know how I feel about sub-par customer service). Hopefully we won’t become ill from the secondhand smoke fumes seeping from next door into our non-smoking room! Lovely!!

We’re back in Utah! As you may know, Isabel and I are quite fond of Utah, so it’s always great to come back here… even if the last time we were here was just four days ago. We had to drive west to get to Moab, and I believe that will be the last time we drive west during this trip! Woohoo! No more evenings driving towards the sun. Here’s the log.

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We got up this morning in Cortez and drove to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is famous for the many ruins of cliff dwellings (structures used as homes, communal areas, ceremonial places, etc., built into the sides of cliffs) of the Ancestral Puebloans in the 12th and 13th centuries. It takes quite a while to get into the park (probably about an hour); the visitors center is about 15 miles from the park entrance, but because you have to drive a bunch of switchbacks and the like, it takes quite a while to get there, and then the cliff dwellings themselves are beyond the visitors center. So on our drive out, we enjoyed the diversion of seeing a deer convention:

There are many, many cliff dwellings within the park, but only a handful are actually open to the public. To see most of the major sites, you have to buy a ticket for a ranger-guided tour at the visitors center. We were able to get tickets to two different sites: Cliff Palace and Balcony House. Cliff Palace was first!

Cliff Palace is really interesting and beautiful. We had a great guide who was very passionate and informative. No one knows for sure what exactly went on in the cliff dwellings or why they were abandoned, but they think that Cliff Palace was probably used primarily for ceremonial activities due to the very large number of kivas (rooms used for religious rituals) in the site.

In order to get in and out of these sites, the Ancestral Puebloans apparently just scaled the cliffs with their bare hands. We didn’t have to do that, but we did have to climb a series of ladders and the like to get in and out of Cliff Palace. It was a mere preview of things to come!

Our next tour was at Balcony House. To get in there, we had to climb this 32-foot ladder:

Eek. It wasn’t too scary, though, as long as we followed our guide’s advice to look straight ahead (never look down!) while climbing. Anyway, this site was a residence for two families. At Cliff Palace, you stand around at an overlook of the site before taking the tour; not so with Balcony House (to see the whole site, you have to go to another trail), so it’s quite a bit more difficult to photograph, but we did our best!

Getting out of Balcony House was quite a thing. The guide (accurately) called it the “Indiana Jones exit.” First we had to crawl through a narrow tunnel:

(That’s not Brian, by the way; that’s just some bloke. Sorry, British guy we secretly photographed!)

After that, we had to climb more ladders and then scale this rock thing where you have to place your feet in toeholds and hold on to metal chains on the side so you don’t fall off the cliff (!!):

The fear and the high altitude just made the whole thing more intense, but we both survived!

After we recovered from that adventure, we went to Spruce Tree House, which is one of the few sites in the park where you can take a self-guided tour:

(To reach this one, by the way, we just had to walk down a paved trail… no ladders or rock scaling required.)

At Spruce Tree House, there is a reconstructed kiva with a roof and everything that you may climb into, which was very interesting:

We had a lovely meal at the Metate Room Restaurant inside the park and then left Mesa Verde and drove back through Cortez while enjoying this beautiful sunset:

Then we headed back into Utah — normally I would have a photo of the Utah welcome sign for you here, but it was so dark by the time we reached it that I couldn’t get a decent picture, but it looked just like this one:

Now we’re at the charming Days Inn in Moab, Utah, and we’re ready to enjoy one more national park before we have to start the journey back to DC. Check back tomorrow!

For being in the desert, we sure have seen a lot of rain. Today the storms hit on the drive from Flagstaff to Four Corners. Yesterday it was on the way to the Grand Canyon. I thought this area was supposed to be dry! The interesting thing about the terrain out here (fairly flat) is that you can see the thunderstorms from miles away. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to avoid heading into said storms because there’s only one road.

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We left Flagstaff this morning and drove on what I believe will be our only tiny stretch on Route 66:

Initially we thought we would travel more on 66, but things just didn’t happen that way.

Anyway, we made a quick stop at Sunset Crater National Monument on our way out of town. It’s a very interesting park where a volcano erupted as recently as the 13th century. Apparently there used to be a trail up to the actual crater, but it sustained significant damage from hikers and had to be closed. You can still take a short trail around the base of the crater, though:

While we were there, a ranger pointed out that we could see a snowstorm happening on the mountains in the distance:

We didn’t have any snow, but we did run into some very dark clouds and some rain as we drove through Arizona. We saw some really pretty scenery!

Then we arrived at Four Corners Monument! This is, of course, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah all touch corners. Nice!

With that, we were able to add two more states to our list:

After the rain and clouds today, we caught some truly amazing rainbows, too:

Now we’re at the lovely Days Inn in Cortez, Colo. Tomorrow: cliff dwellings!!

We left Kanab this morning and soon found ourselves in Arizona!

Same sign here as at the Nevada border.

We stopped in at the welcome center in Fredonia, Ariz., and got some really helpful information from the guy working there. He gave us some suggestions of place to eat; for example, he said, “Oh, if you haven’t had breakfast yet, you have to stop here to eat,” while pointing to Jacob Lake, Ariz., on the map. When I asked him the name of the restaurant, though, he looked at me like I was nuts. I soon understood what that was about — we drove through countless tiny towns in northern Arizona today that consisted of a single small complex with a gas station, a restaurant, a motel, and a gift shop (usually all in one building). But at the time, I thought it was weird. Anyway, he also gave us some great route and stops suggestions, so we were excited to get going! This welcome center also featured cats!!

We drove down Rt. 89 through some very pretty desert, then we stopped in Jacob Lake for a very nice meal before heading into the Kaibab Forest where the aspens have already turned yellow:

Then we headed into the North Rim of the Grand Canyon!! Shortly after we entered the park, we saw some wild turkeys (we’ve seen a few others in our travels, but they’re so speedy that I usually can’t catch them with the camera):

Now, apparently the North Rim doesn’t get nearly the tourism that the South Rim gets, and it doesn’t have as much in the way of services, visitor centers, etc. But it does have a couple of (relatively) easy trails with truly amazing views. First we went on the trail to Bright Angel Point (near the North Rim Visitor Center). It was actually pretty crazy with semi-steep hills and some scary parts where there really wasn’t much between our path and the 8,000-foot drop below. Yikes!

What you can’t see in that photo is how tightly I’m gripping the handrail. I don’t really think of myself as having too much fear of heights, but I have been surprisingly uncomfortable in a lot of these rustic (for me!) trails in high places. Eek!

This area was really beautiful, but the immensity is difficult to convey in a photograph. We had a kind of hazy afternoon today, too, which makes it hard to see!

Then we drove down the other part of the North Rim to go toward Cape Royal. On the way there, we saw a mule deer!

We also stopped at Roosevelt Point, where we read this:

Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see. –- President Theodore Roosevelt, speaking about the Grand Canyon at a speech there on May 6, 1903

I agree!

Here are some of the awesome things we saw on the Cape Royal trail. This is Angel’s Window:

It was formed by erosion and you can walk on top of it (if you look closely, you can see a railing and some people up there), which we did so we could see this:

You can see the Colorado River in the photo above snaking through the canyon; here’s a closer look:

At Cape Royal itself, you can see another beautiful view:

After that, we finally tore ourselves away and drove back up to Jacob Lake (the only way out from the North Rim) and headed down towards our home for the night, Flagstaff, Ariz. On the way, we stopped at the Navajo Bridge. It’s a pedestrian bridge (next to a vehicle bridge) over the Colorado River above Marble Canyon at the edge of the Navajo Indian Reservation.

It’s over 460 feet down!

After all the heights-scaling today, I only made it one way across the bridge. Brian had to walk back across by himself, cross the vehicle bridge in Pearl (which we had to do anyway), and come pick me up on the other side. Here they are coming to get me!

Haha. In retrospect, the bridge wasn’t all that scary, but I think I had just reached my heights quota for the day or something. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but because of the time of year, there are still a lot of tourists around the parks and the like, but many of them are retirees (unlike peak tourist season in the summer, when I think it’s usually families and younger people). A bunch of retirees today were totally making fun of me for my wussy-ness with regards to trails at the Grand Canyon (I did make it to the ends of the trails, but sometimes I was too scared to move from my spot at the center of platforms out to the edge of the railings). They kept saying how I was a lot younger than they were, and they were doing it. They really would have scoffed to see me wimp out on the Navajo Bridge!!

Anyway, we had a lovely dinner at the historic Cameron Trading Post in Cameron, Ariz. (another one-building town recommended to us by the guy at the welcome center this morning), and now we’re all settled in at the luxurious Motel 6 directly adjacent to the railroad tracks in Flagstaff, Ariz. Tomorrow, we’re going to the other side of the Grand Canyon!

Since we’re staying in the same town tonight as we did last night, today’s drive was basically out and back. As Isabel mentioned we went to Bryce Canyon which is north of our base here of Kanab. We’re now positioned nicely for our drive south tomorrow.

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We got an early start (for us) this morning in Kanab and headed up towards Bryce Canyon. First we drove through these crazy rock formations that have eroded so they look all windswept:

Also on the way, we stopped for breakfast at this place:

It’s called the Thunderbird Restaurant (Home of the Ho-Made Pies) and it has a really interesting story behind it; basically this couple came here to the middle of nowhere in Utah in the 1930s and started a gas station. Eventually the husband died, but the woman continued with the business and eventually built up the whole area with hotels and everything to serve the people visiting parks in this area — not an easy feat in a time when female business owners were rare. Kudos, Thunderbird Restaurant. They also had these zines at the tables written by a salty old local grandma in the late 1980s. And, of course, we sampled the ho-made pies!

We continued on our journey and discovered that just outside Bryce Canyon National Park, there is the totally awesome Red Canyon:

We were on a bit of a schedule today because we wanted to get back in time both to eat dinner and to watch the VP debate, so we didn’t stop to learn much about Red Canyon, but it was definitely beautiful.

Around the time we got to Red Canyon, we started being able to pick up the Bryce Canyon National Parks informative radio broadcast and were duly informed by the recording that we should “not feed, agitate, or attempt to befriend any of the wildlife in the park.” I wish you could hear the tone the speaker used because it was pretty hilarious. Brian teased me the rest of the day about how much I want to hug elks and bison now and how I have to be kept in line. We were also cautioned against inappropriate footwear on the trails. Remember, the wrong shoe choice CAN KILL YOU.

Bryce Canyon was really, really awesome. Brian and I both absolutely loved it even though we had a very short visit. Like Zion, Bryce features a shuttle system, but it’s already stopped running for the season (and unlike Zion’s, Bryce’s shuttle is not mandatory). We drove all the way down to the bottom of the scenic drive first, then we drove back up and stopped at viewpoints along the way. One of our favorite stops was at Natural Bridge:

Technically, it’s an arch. Isn’t it pretty?!

Another interesting thing going on at Bryce right now is that they’re conducting a series of prescribed wildfires (apparently natural fires aren’t happening quickly enough this year and they need to help nature along for the health of the plants in the area):

They had signs everywhere saying PRESCRIBED WILDFIRE; DO NOT REPORT. I guess they have a lot of people freak out when they see smoke in the park (understandable). We’ve really learned a lot this trip about how fires are an important natural occurrence and how they are actually healthy for the environment when they happen naturally.

Near the end of the scenic drive, we took a turn to go to Bryce Point, and then things got really crazy. Check it out!

It was absolutely beautiful, amazing, grand, overwhelming — neither my words nor these photos can possibly do it justice. I definitely want to go back when there’s time to go through some of the walking trails in the canyon. But today, we had to get back in time to eat at the Rocking V Cafe in Kanab, Utah. I’m glad we did that because we had a truly amazing meal there! Then we checked into our room at the Shilo Inn (we did move from the Super 8 ) just in time for the debate. We now have laundry in the dryer and are ready to move on tomorrow!

Out of the city and into the desert. That was the plan for today… and it was a success.

We actually sort of forgot that we wanted to see the Hoover Dam while out here (that’s what happens when you have a bajillion things to see and do… eventually one will get lost along the way). By the time we remembered, we were too far along to turn back. We decided that we would save that outing for the next time we visit Las Vegas. Below is the route that we DID take.

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Now we’re in the little town of Kanub, UT. Not long after we got here, Isabel stepped off a curb, turned her ankle, and collapsed epically into a heap on the ground. She’s fine, but it seems that the bad luck cloud that she picked up in Vegas is still following her. I thought what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas…