The Blogette of Dr. D

We left Jeff’s house this morning and headed for the Monument Rocks (chalk cliffs) near Oakley, KS.  Last night, we set our alarm an hour early to compensate for the change to CST and to allow daylight time for viewing the Monument Rocks.  Jeff and La asked when we’d be getting home, and we told them we were planning to spend today and two more days in Kansas, arriving home Friday night (this is Wednesday).

Some of the chalk cliff formations.  (Thank you, Google.)

We stopped in Colby for lunch, at the turn-off to Oakley . . . Maybe it was because the weather was cold . . . Maybe we’ve been traveling too long . . . Maybe we’ve spent too many years driving directly east and west on I-70 when we visit Jeff’s family . . . Whatever it might have been, Ted and I suggested to each other that maybe we should just go home.  We calculated what time we’d get home (around midnight because we hadn’t left Jeff’s house as early as usual), decided we could live with it, and hit the road.

We had a wonderful trip around the Southwest.

…States visited:  9  (Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas)

…Miles driven:  6,070

…Days away from home:  31

…Time zone changes:  6 (CDT to MDT in New Mexico; MDT to MST in Arizona–they don’t do daylight time; MST to PDT in Las Vegas–a 2-hour time difference; PDT to MDT in Utah; MDT to MST in Colorado–daylight savings time ended; and MST to CST in Kansas.)  At one point, we were so unsure of what time it was and which devices were showing the correct time, that I actually called the hotel desk to ask what time it was so we could set our alarm for the correct time!

…Significant sites visited:  10 national parks; 5 national monuments; 3 national sites (VLA, Hoover Dam, Kitt Peak Observatory); 2 state parks; and 1 UNESCO World Heritage Site.

…Highlight of the trip (if we have to choose only one):  the mass ascension of 550 balloons at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

…Fun we had:  infinite.

Following our Royal Gorge Route train ride, Ted and I returned to Pueblo, where we are spending the night.  Pueblo’s Riverwalk and Historic District were a 5-10 minute walk from our hotel, and we had plenty of time to explore them–a little.  It was Sunday afternoon, and not much was open, but it was good to be outside and getting some exercise, even though it was only 42 degrees.

Pueblo’s Riverwalk is not in the San Antonio Riverwalk class, but it was pretty.  It looks like it might be a new development, so maybe it needs some time to attract more businesses along the Arkansas river.

Here’s another view of the Riverwalk.  They’re hard to see in the shadows, but on the left walkway, there’s a couple walking.  The lady is wearing a red jacket.  Now look in the previous picture and find the lady in the red jacket.  Same lady.  That couple was walking in the opposite direction as we were, so we saw them coming and going both ways.

I’m not sure of the reason for this mural, but it was fun to identify the people depicted by the artist.

Nearby was another mural including the omnipresent Southwest chili pepper.  We see them depicted everywhere, including on personalized license plates and in souvenir shops.

Here’s a view of the main street through the Historic District.  There were some architecturally beautiful buildings in this area.

This sculpture was near our hotel (the building in the far left center of the photo).

We enjoyed Pueblo’s Riverwalk and Historic District, but were ready to come indoors to warm up after an hour in the 40-something temperature.  We decided to relax in the hotel’s seating area with a cup of hot chocolate.  These are the good times!

Today, Ted and I took a two-hour train ride through the Royal Gorge.  Trains always run along the rivers in the bottoms of canyons, so I didn’t have to worry about heights.  The Royal Gorge Route Railroad is a “heritage railway”–one that preserves railway scenes of the past.  The route follows the Arkansas River between the 1,000-foot tall granite cliffs of Colorado’s grandest canyon, and is described as “America’s most spectacular rail journey.”  When Teddy Roosevelt rode this route, he called it “the trip that bankrupts the English language.”

The Royal Gorge Route departs from the Santa Fe Depot in Canon City, CO.

The first car of the train is named “Theodore Roosevelt.”  Each of the 10-12 cars had a different name.

Here’s that good-looking couple again!  We had tickets for a vista dome car, so our views were wonderful.

There was an open-air car for unobstructed viewing.  The train moved slowly, so it was a safe ride, but it got cold in the shadows between the canyon walls.

This is the Royal Gorge Bridge–955 feet above us.  We could see people walking on it and looking over the sides.

The holiday village is ready for the Santa Express in December.

Can you see the man’s face in the center near the top of the canyon wall?  He is called “The Guardian of the Gorge,” and his name is Cliff Rock.

We saw about a dozen whitewater rafters navigating the Arkansas River.

Near the top center, look for the red dot.  That is three joined cable cars crossing the Royal Gorge.

We just managed to squeeze this enjoyable two-hour activity into our trip.  The train schedule is down from four runs daily in the summer to one run each on Saturday and Sunday, and next weekend is the last trip until spring.  For Ted and me, it was another highlight of the wonderful vacation we’re having in the Southwest.

Ted and I started our day with a visit to the Taos Pueblo and ended the day in Pueblo, CO–in other words, we went from pueblo to Pueblo.  (Insert groan here.)

The Taos Pueblo is over 1,000 years old.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is an active, living community, not a reproduction of pueblo life.  All of the pueblos belong to the community, but the homes in the pueblos belong to individual families.  Living in the pueblo means having no modern amenities–no electricity or running water.  Residents usually have a propane stove for cooking and heating.

In 1847, the Taos Pueblo revolted against the U.S. Military and won.  The Taos Pueblo people have never been conquered, and have maintained their culture and tradition.  Tiwa is the native Taos Pueblo language.  It is an oral language and could disappear quickly, so the tribal elementary schools teach Tiwa and English.  Tribal high schools require an additional foreign language, so tribal members are fluent in at least three languages.  The Spanish brought Catholicism to the tribe, and the church in the pueblo is Catholic, but tribal members also practice their native religion.  Yesterday, we were unable to visit the Taos Pueblo because the tribe was celebrating a native religious holiday.

Here is a portion of the wall that surrounds the Taos Pueblo.  It was originally 13 feet high for protection.

The white arch is the entry to the churchyard.  This is a Catholic church.  Only the far end of the building (crosses on the roof) is the church; the other part is pueblo homes.  More homes are in the right background.

There are currently four resident families in the pueblo, numbering about 25 people, but there are another 1,500 tribal members living on tribal land outside the pueblo.  As long as they are living outside the pueblo wall, they may have a modern lifestyle.  Tribal members pay federal taxes, but they have their own tribal government.  Most people use their pueblo home as a second home:  they live outside the pueblo walls, but return to the pueblo for religious holidays and community events.  Many of the homes are shops, selling food and handmade items to tourists.

This is the largest building in the Taos Pueblo, and has five levels.  Each doorway is a separate home.  The homes are small–about 12 feet square with low ceilings.  Food is prepared in adobe ovens or on propane stoves.  The adobe walls in all the pueblo buildings are 3-5 feet thick to keep the interior cool in the summer and to keep it warm in the winter.

Originally, pueblo homes had no doors.  Ladders were used to climb up to the roof and then to climb down into the home through a “skylight.”   This provided protection from intruders.  Today, the homes have doors cut into them.  Many are painted blue to ward off evil spirits.

This is a view through a series of drying racks.  Meats and vegetables are hung on the upper crossbars to dry and preserve for future use.

Adobe ovens are used for baking.  Cedar wood is burned inside for about an hour to heat the oven.  Then the wood and ashes are removed, the to-be-baked goods are put inside, and the door is covered.  The inside baking temperature is 300-400 degrees, and each oven can hold 25-30 loaves of bread.

The center structure is another multi-story pueblo.  Smaller pueblo homes surround it.  To grasp the size of the pueblo homes, subtract 3-5 foot thick walls from the exterior measurement.  The stream in the foreground comes directly from the mountain and is untreated, but it is so clean that it can be used for everything–washing, cooking, bathing, etc.

The center building with the bell tower was the original pueblo church.  The U.S. Military destroyed it during an attack, believing that the pueblo residents were hiding in it.  (They had actually hidden in the mountains.)  The original churchyard area is now used as a cemetery.  There is an oven in the center of the picture and pueblo homes on the left and right.

After our visit to the Taos Pueblo, Ted and I had lunch at a microbrewery in Taos.  Local restaurants are always interesting.  This one had a “painting” made of beer bottle caps.

I apologize for the blurring, but you get the idea of how creative a beer-cap artist can be.

Ted and I have been driving scenic roads whenever we can.  Today, we followed New Mexico SH64.  It was curvy, mountainous, and beautiful.  I think our average speed was under 40 mph, but we were in no hurry and the views were worth it.  Part of the highway was named the “Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway,” and quite a bit of it was the historic Santa Fe Trail as well.

Winter is getting closer, and it’s becoming a challenge to find fall colors on the trees.  Picture yellow-gold leaves on these trees.

Here’s a village nestled in a valley.

To quote Sting, “Heavy cloud, but no rain” to spoil our views on SR 64.

The Santa Fe Trail continued on I-25.

After visiting Roswell, NM and Hooper, CO–two sites where large numbers of people have reported sightings of UFOs, Ted seems to be getting into the mood.  He thought he saw a UFO in the sky today.

Oh, those funny meteorologists!

Ted and I are back in New Mexico today.  Can you believe that, after waiting so many years to check New Mexico off our “states visited” list, we’ve been in the state twice on the same road trip?!

On our drive to Taos, NM today, Ted and I drove over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  There’s a parking lot at one end of the bridge, sidewalks along both sides of the highway, and an overview area on each side in the center of the bridge.  We parked and headed for the overview areas.  Ooops!  As soon as the bridge left solid land and went over the gorge, my knees felt weak and I had to focus on looking at the sidewalk and the road–I couldn’t look down, because the gorge is so deep.  I stood with my back to the view and checked out the more distant view across the bridge.  Ted had to take the pictures again, just like at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

Keep in mind that Ted couldn’t get the top and the bottom of the gorge into the same picture.  Also, it’s always a lot farther to the bottom than a photo makes it appear.  This gorge was very deep–800 feet.

When we arrived in Taos, the first thing we noticed was the traffic.  A two-lane highway runs through the city and it was clogged in both directions.  We picked a place to eat based on the large number of cars parked in front, and had a nice lunch.  Then we put our car in a public parking lot and set out on foot to explore this colorful and quaint town that seems to epitomize the architecture of the Southwest.  Taos is a popular skiing destination and also a cultural center.  The streets are lined with art galleries.

This is the city square.  It is surrounded by adobe shops, of course and, like all city squares, traffic goes one way around it.

Here’s a little corner of shops in the historic district of downtown Taos.

I found an unusual interpretation of the pictographs on the hand dryer in a rest room.

This guy seems to have a permanent parking spot on the main street of Taos.  Honk if you agree.

The weather was very nice, so Ted and I stopped at a cafe in the historic district and enjoyed an afternoon snack outdoors.

What a lovely surprise at the end of the afternoon when we checked into our hotel.  Ted finds hotels through his AAA travel books and through Google, so we’re never sure exactly what they will be like, except that they’re clean and have basic amenities.  Sometimes we find out the hotel is geared toward hunters (signs advising guests not to clean game in the room), and sometimes they’re more luxurious than we expected.  Our Taos hotel is 0.4 miles from downtown–walking distance–and encompasses nine acres!  It’s very Southwestern in style and has beautiful grounds and luxurious rooms.  We have a jet tub and a fireplace in our room, and there’s not a game-cleaning rag in sight.

This is the view toward the entrance where the valet met us.

Guest rooms are clustered in small buildings scattered all around the property.  Here are some rooms with a view of the Secret Circle of plantings and water features.

This is a view of the section of the grounds called the Mountain Green.

We had hoped to visit the Taos Pueblo today, but it is closed for a ceremony.  The Pueblo is an inhabited, active community, and people in town told us that, yes, every now and then they close for some private event.  They are re-opening at 8:00 tomorrow morning, so we’re going to stop on our way to Pueblo, CO.

In mountainous areas, winter weather forecasts regularly mention “snow in the higher elevations.”  We saw fresh snow on the ground in many places today, because we’re spending a lot of time at the higher elevations.  With the exception of five days below 5,000 feet (Las Cruces, NM; Tucson, AZ; and Las Vegas, NV), Ted and I have been spending our days at elevations of 5,252-11,318 feet since October 13, when we arrived in Albuquerque, NM for the Balloon Fiesta.  We can climb several flights of stairs and/or walk vigorously uphill without puffing, so I’d say we’re acclimated to the thinner air.

Clean fresh snow on the high mountaintops.

Clean fresh snow at our traveling elevation too.  There was ice on the lake surfaces this morning.

There’s not enough snow at the ski resorts yet, so the snow machines have been busy making the ski runs usable.

We drove through Leadville, CO today and saw some very colorful houses.  I remember learning that, in Alaska, people like bright-colored houses to cheer them up during the long, dark winter.  Maybe that’s true in Leadville too, because there are a lot of houses painted in cheerful, bright designs.

This house is decorated in shades of blue and green.  It’s hard to see, but the second house to the left is done in shades of red and pink.

This homeowner chose blue, purple, and pink for his colorful facade.

The UFO Watchtower near Hooper, CO was along our route today, so we stopped for a visit.  After all, we’ve already checked out the UFO history in Roswell, NM.  The Watchtower was started as a joke by a lady who bought a ranch, then found out she couldn’t successfully raise cattle on it.  She knew that UFO watchers would sometimes visit her ranch after dark, so she decided to make money by building a gift shop in a saucer dome with a viewing platform.

The San Luis Valley, where the Watchtower is located, is revered among flying saucer buffs as one of the best places in the world to see UFOs.  Twenty psychics have visited the site and have identified two large vortexes and outlined them with rocks.  The vortex area is known as the “Healing Garden,” and tourists add items to the clutter in the stone circles.

A cautionary sign at the entrance to the Watchtower area.

The viewing platform sits beside the gift shop.  The gift shop is only open on weekends this time of year, so we couldn’t purchase any alien-type items.

There are two concentric stone circles here.  I could only get an (almost) semi-circle in my photo.  The stone outlines are a bit hard to see through the clutter.

Here’s the Healing Garden from ground level.  Name an object (preferably junky), and there is probably at least one here–ballpoint pens, single socks, a baseball, Mardi Gras beads, etc.

A recovered spaceship?

The highlight of today’s travel was Great Sand Dunes National Park.  We visited this park on a trip with our kids in the middle ’80s and had a good time in the sand dunes.  (Except Kari, who got an asthma attack–probably from the dust or from the 7,500-foot altitude.)  It’s the only national park I can remember visiting that has no “stay on the designated trail” signs.  There are no trails in the dunes, and the Park Service has apparently decided that tourists can do no harm to the sand.  We didn’t even see a sign telling us not to take any rocks or sand particles out of the park.

These are the tallest sand dunes in North America.  The dunefield covers thirty square miles and sits in isolation among the mountains and the desert.  It looks a little out of place–like someone put it here and forgot to pick it up and put it where it belongs.  Star Dune is the tallest at 750 feet; High Dune is 650 feet.  Wouldn’t it be more logical for High Dune to be the tallest?  Who named these dunes, the government?

Here’s a long-range shot of the Great Sand Dunes with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind them.

Here’s a picture taken at the base of the dunes.

To appreciate the size of the dunes, use the people walking on them and in front of them as a scale.  You might have to zoom in on this picture to see the people on top of the tallest dune.  There are five people up there.  Three people are on the right of the peak, and the figure on the left at the peak is actually two people standing close to each other.

Tonight:  Alamosa, CO.

Tomorrow:  Taos, NM, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ted and I started our day by taking the pedestrian bridge from our hotel to downtown Glenwood Springs, CO.  It was a 5-minute walk vs. a 30-minute drive through the construction zones.  We still had to face some of the dreaded orange cones, because they indicated the crosswalk for us to get to and from the bridge.

Does this look like a crosswalk or a barrier?  There are two lines of yellow tape strung along the cones; therefore, it’s a crosswalk for pedestrians, but a barrier for vehicles.  This is nothing compared to the number of traffic cones at two of the corners we had to drive around yesterday.

Glenwood Springs is an old town and looks very historic–except for the modern-day traffic that is backed up waiting to turn at the corner in the picture above.  Traffic was lighter today and there were no traffic cops.  I have no idea what made yesterday so special that everyone wanted to clog up the streets.

The back-up continues to the right of the photo.  Somewhere around the distant rise in the road in the left center of the picture is the corner where these cars can turn left.  If we could have gone straight here yesterday, we’d have been at our hotel just across the bridge.

Our goal today was to visit the Railroad Museum.  Admission is $2.00 and the docent will start the two model trains whenever visitors ask to see them run.  It’s obviously not a world-class museum, but the depot is an interesting building and the museum is housed in what used to be the Ladies’ Waiting Room, so it sounded like an interesting way to spend a little time.

The red-roofed building is the still-active train depot as seen from the pedestrian bridge.  The Colorado River is flowing on the left, and the historic Hotel Denver is on the right.

This is what greeted us at the museum door.  Today is Wednesday.  The “season” seems to end in this area the last weekend in October, so a lot of businesses have reduced hours.  On the bright side, hotels are cheaper.

We could see through the windows.  This is the entire museum.  The tracks for the two model trains are visible on the table in the right center of the photo.

Moving on, we had a delicious lunch at a restaurant in the Hotel Denver and then walked around and admired the beautiful historic 4½-star hotel.

Here’s a view down the hallway from the lobby.

This is the seating area across from the check-in desk in the above picture.  On the other side of the front door is a similar room with a grand piano.

We drove I-70 through the Glenwood Canyon and had more scenic mountain views most of the way to Vail.  Here are some that were a little different than what we’ve been seeing every day.  The snow on the mountaintops is fresh.

We had a very enjoyable afternoon in Vail, despite temperatures in the mid-40s and a wind advisory.  Vail’s bus system is free and has a bus stop at our hotel door, so we took the bus to the town of Vail and then to Lionshead Village.  After returning to the hotel to freshen up, we took the bus back to Vail for dinner.

The town of Vail was built as the base village for the massive Vail Ski Resort–the largest ski mountain in Colorado.  The town has Bavarian-style architecture and is pretty and charming, but pure tourist-y.

Some of the Bavarian-styled shops in Vail.

I thought this was the prettiest shop.

This is my picture postcard view of Vail from the covered bridge in the town.

Notice the snow fences on the roofs of the buildings.  Some buildings had signs warning passers-by to watch out for snow falling from the roofs.  No danger of that today.

There are sculptures everywhere in Vail.  Most are very art-y, but this one of Uncle Albert was more playful.

This sculpture is a memorial to the ski troopers.  The ski troopers fought in Kiska, the Aleutian Islands, and Italy in WW2.

A few trees still have leaves, making this a pretty little park.

At night, the twinkle lights come on.  I assume there will be many more twinkling in the next few weeks.

This is a skating rink.  No ice on it yet, but man-made snow already marks the ski trails on the mountains.

One of the sidewalks in Vail had a puzzle stamped into the blocks.  Any readers who like to work puzzles have probably seen the type that instructs you to change one word to another in x-number of moves, changing one letter at a time.  The sidewalk changed bird to hare in eleven moves.  If you’re challenged, try it.  The solution is at the bottom of this post.

And then there was pie.  As Ted and I were selecting a restaurant for our dinner and reading the reviews, we saw this one.

Guess what we had for dessert tonight.  Warm fried blackberry pie with fresh blackberries, covered with cinnamon sugar, and topped with vanilla gelato and shaved white chocolate curls.

I asked the waiter how they make this pie.  Partially bake a pie crust circle so it will hold together.  Add mashed blackberries and fold the crust over to make a semi-circle, then crimp the edge.  Bake it a few minutes to set the crust, then deep-fry it until done.  Cover with cinnamon and sugar, and add the trimmings.  It was a delicious dessert choice and unlike any pie we’ve ever had before.

During the afternoon, we saw a store with a green cross on it and remarked that, in Europe, a green cross indicates a pharmacy.  Sure enough, a sign indicated that this store sells “natural medicinals” and provides “recreational sales.”  Oh, that’s right–we’re in Colorado and it’s legal here.  Then, this evening, we saw this in a different store window.

Define “high”–8,150 feet or natural medicinals?

Glenwood Springs and Vail were fun.  Here’s the puzzle solution:

Bird-bard-lard-lord-load-toad-road-read-head-herd-hard-hare.  Each word was stamped in sequence in a trail of sidewalk blocks.  Clever!

Today was an easy day for us–not too much driving, and not much to do.  Our drive on I-70 from Grand Junction to Glenwood Springs, CO was very scenic all the way.

We had a hard time getting to our motel in Glenwood Springs.  We needed to leave I-70 at Exit 116, but it was closed due to construction of the SR82 overpass, which connects north and south Glenwood Springs.  We had to take Exit 114 and follow detour signs.  The exit took us to the south side of I-70; our hotel was on the north side of I-70.  It was crazy!!  Traffic was heavy, many streets were one-way, and there were at least half a dozen traffic circles–some two in a row–at which we had to determine when to leave the circle.

Traffic cops were stationed all over (two were in Hallowe’en costumes–Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West), and the roads were filled with orange and white traffic cones that either:  (1) outlined a path to follow; or (2) blocked entrance to a path.  With everything else going on, it was even hard to determine what the traffic cones were trying to do!  We finally made it to our hotel–nearly an hour after leaving I-70.  This road project has apparently been underway since early August and won’t be finished until late November.  Ted and I wondered if the traffic cops are on duty all day every day.  We bet they are.

Glenwood Springs is named for its hot springs.  Our hotel has a hot spring pool and spa, and it was very tempting to get into the warm water and just relax after maneuvering our way through the traffic snarls.  Unfortunately, the air temperature was only in the 50s, so we chickened out of getting wet and warm and then having to shiver our way to the locker rooms.  The people in the picture below were braver than we were.

We planned to visit the Railroad Museum this afternoon, but it’s on the other side of I-70 and wasn’t going be open very long after we fought our way back to it.  A little research showed that it’s only a 0.4 mile walk one way from the hotel, and there is a pedestrian bridge over I-70.  That bridge is open.  Our new plan is to visit the Railroad Museum in the morning before we leave Glenwood Springs.  We’re adaptable, but if you’re planning to visit Glenwood Springs, I suggest waiting until the road project is finished.

We left Moab, UT this morning via scenic highway 128.  Scenic.  Definitely scenic.

Highway 128 is apparently popular with bikers.  We passed a lot of them.

Every curve (the road was 45 mph and all curves) had a beautiful view of red rocks.

The highway follows the Colorado River, so we had pretty river views along the way as well.

The fall colors we’ve been seeing over the past week have been gorgeous.  The trend continued along highway 128.

Our first destination in Colorful Colorado was the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, near Montrose, CO.  We visited this national park many years ago with our kids on a Colorado vacation, but decided it was time to see it again.  This canyon was named “Black” because it is so deep, so sheer, and so narrow that little sunlight can penetrate it.  It has been described as “impenetrable” for humans and shows no evidence of human occupation except at its rims.  The Black Canyon is so steep that the Gunnison River drops an average of 96 feet per mile over its 48 miles in the canyon.  One two-mile stretch drops 480 feet.

The overlooks were perched on the tops of the steep, sheer canyon walls.  It was so far to the bottom (at least 1,500 feet in most places) that I was too scared to go all the way to the edge of the overlooks.  The heights didn’t bother Ted, so he took all the canyon pictures for us.  You can tell how far back I had to stand to feel comfortable.  I’m a coward, I know.

We could hear the river at all the overlooks, but it was sometimes difficult to see.  At one spot, Ted had to look straight down to see the river.  I didn’t get close enough to see that view, but this one was visible from farther back.

This is one of the trails we took to the overlooks.  I always walked as far from the outside edge as I could, and I never, never looked down.

Here are some views of the rock walls of the canyon.  I took the first and fourth pictures because I could see the canyon from my safety zone.  Ted took the second and third photos from the overlooks.

This part of the canyon is called the Painted Wall, for obvious reasons.  It is the highest cliff in Colorado at 2,300 feet–almost twice the height of the Empire State Building.  That’s why I was always afraid to look down.  What if I’d fall?  I know it was emotion over logic, but if I tried to look straight down to the bottom, my knees felt weak and I got a nervous feeling.  At this point, the Gunnison River is at 5,000 feet elevation.  Add the 2,300 feet of canyon wall, and Ted and I were standing at 7,300 feet above sea level.

Even though I kept my distance from the edges of the overlooks and the trails, I still enjoyed re-visiting the Black Canyon.  I’m glad Ted was able to take some very nice pictures of it for us to enjoy after our visit.

  Canyonlands–number five of Utah’s Mighty 5® national parks.

Ted’s and my first stop in Canyonlands NP was the Mesa Arch.

We’re not far from Arches NP, so it’s not surprising to find a similar erosion pattern in Canyonlands.

Here’s a canyon view through the arch.

It’s easy to drive from place to place in Canyonlands, because the park’s scenic drive goes over the top of a mesa.  The canyons are eroded at lower levels and the mesa provides a good viewing point of them.  We took pictures of scenes we liked, so I don’t have names for all of them, but the first one is called The Maze.  I wonder why.  The pictures below are representative of what Ted and I saw on our day in this national park.

I think the photo below looks like an underwater view, with formations above and below sea level.  Maybe that’s how it was before the erosion began millions of years ago.  The solid, level blue is a distant mesa, and the sun shining into my camera lens created the hazy look.

Notice the dirt road at the top of the cliff wall on the left in the picture below.  Then look at the second picture, which shows how that road winds down into the canyon.  Ted and I counted 8-10 cars navigating the road very carefully and very slowly.  It’s steep and has tight curves, but no guardrails.  The third photo shows the road straightening out (a little) at the bottom of the canyon.

The trails we walked on today were marked with rock cairns.  I think that might have been necessary because there was more rock than dirt on the trails, making it hard to follow a specific path.

We missed what was probably the best trail and the best view of the entire park because we’d already walked short trails for almost four hours before we arrived at Upheaval Dome.  It was getting late in the day and this trail looked steep and difficult.  The syncline loop trail around the rim was rated primitive and strenuous and required topographical maps.  The information board noted that this trail requires more rescues than any other trail in the park.

The trail to the second overlook, where we would have gone, looked pretty tough and was estimated at an hour’s time (minimum) to hike.  We just didn’t have the energy for that level of hiking for another hour or more.  Darn!  The information on the board said there is controversy over whether this formation was created by volcanic activity or by an impact.  Current opinion leans toward an impact.  This would have been amazing to see!

My lesson for today was botanical.  One of the trees growing in this area is the two-needle pine.  Look carefully at the needles in the picture–each one is paired at its base with a twin.  Cool!

Fun fact of the day:  It looked like Mickey Mouse was visiting Canyonlands too.

Before leaving the park just before sunset, Ted and I took time to sit on a rock (there were a lot of them in the park) and admire the view while we ate a snack.  A nice ending to our day in Canyonlands.

A shadow selfie.

Ted and I spent today in Arches National Park–number four on our tour of Utah’s Mighty 5®.  The park has over 2,000 arches (if the visitor center information is accurate), but nearly all of them must be insignificant or inaccessible, because only 19 are identified on the NPS map of the scenic road and trails in the park.  Speaking of trails, there seem to be only two kinds of trails in Arches NP:  easy trails that are a mile or less in length; or strenuous trails that are three miles or longer.  A few trails are described as “primitive.”  These trails are not necessarily difficult or long, but are marked only by rock cairns.  Hikers are encouraged to look carefully, as the trails might be difficult to find in some places.

You can see the rocks lining the primitive trail in the center of the picture.  This is the trailhead.  I assume the number of rock markers decreased as the trail went on.

The only strenuous trail we considered would have taken us to Delicate Arch–the poster arch of Utah (it’s on the license plates).  We would have trekked the three miles without shade (it was only in the upper 60s) and the 480-foot elevation increase, but then we found out there are ledges and were told, “If you can make the ledges, you can make it.”  The word ledges convinced us to settle for the trail that let us view that arch from a distance.  It would have been nice to be right up next to the poster child of the park like the people we could see over there, but we know our limits.

This is as close as we got to Delicate Arch, and it’s a zoom-in shot.  The arch is 60 feet tall.  You can see tiny people to the left and right of it.

Arches NP is different from the other places we’ve been visiting.  It has the now-familiar-to-us eroded red rock formations, but they seem to jut up out of the ground at random, rather than filling a large space.

This is a close-knit group of individually jutting rocks.  In most of the park, the rock formations are relatively widely scattered.   The center formation includes Turret Arch.  (Seek and ye shall find.  You can see the purple mountains through it.)

This is a very large isolated rock fin.  Isn’t it odd that so much land around it would erode and leave an obviously harder piece of rock like this to stand alone?

Here are some more isolated rock formations. Guess which one is named Balanced Rock.

North and South Window arches were pretty, and they were fun too.  We climbed through each of the Windows to the other side.

This is the South Window.

The North Window has a pretty view through it.

When you look at the Windows together, they look like eyes with a big nose between them.  All they need is a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and a mustache.

This good-looking couple keeps appearing in our pictures.  As we were walking on the trail, an Asian lady going in the opposite direction apparently told her husband (in Asian-speak) to take our picture, because he stopped us and said he would take our picture.

Turret Arch was near the Windows and was an interesting arch.

Turret Arch looks like this from the trail.  We climbed over the rocks to the other side of it.  You can see other people climbing through too.  Look for the pink T-shirt to find them.

This is what Turret Arch looks like on the other (sunny) side.

If you see Turret Arch in shadow, the rocks surrounding the opening seem to signal A-OK.

Sand Dune Arch was an easy walk–0.3 miles round trip.  The trail was deep sand, so it was like walking on a beach.  A lot of little kids were making sand angels and sand piles.  Too bad there wasn’t any water available to make red sand castles.

This is the entrance to the Sand Dune Arch area. That’s Ted wriggling through it.

And here’s Sand Dune Arch rising over its sandy “beach.”

Our final arch of the day was Double Arch, the highest and third widest arch in the park.

The sign at the trailhead was a little confusing.  Three openings in a double arch?  Define “double,” please.

Double Arch lived up to the NPS description of “spectacular.”  Ted and I chose it as our poster arch of the day.

Tomorrow:  Number 5 of Utah’s Mighty 5®–Canyonlands National Park.

Capitol Reef National Park was today’s trip highlight.  To reach the park, we had to drive Utah Scenic Byway 24–not a hardship.  After leaving the park, we drove Scenic Byway 95 to get to Moab for tomorrow’s hiking in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.  Basically, it’s the old “you can’t get there from here” thing if you want to go east from Capitol Reef to Moab, because there are no east-west roads through the rocks and canyons.  To get 100 miles east of Capitol Reef, we took Scenic Byway 95 130 miles southeast, then Utah SH 191 125 miles northeast to Moab.  It was a  beautiful drive so, again, no hardship.  Scenic Byway 95 was dedicated in 1976, so it is also called the “Bicentennial Highway.”  Whatever its name, it was a pretty drive.

Here’s a typical scene from Scenic Byway 24.

Near the end of Scenic Byway 24, we drove through Luna Mesa.  These pictures show how easy it was to name this area.

Scenic Byways 24 and 95 meet at Hanksville, UT.  Since it’s the intersection of two state highways, there are three gas stations at the corner.  This one was the most interesting.

The owner had a convenience store-sized hole blasted into this rock formation and built his store inside the rock.

There’s a rock wall separating the store from the rest room area–probably for structural support.  The attendant told me they never heat or cool the store because the rock provides good insulation.  All they need is a fan to keep the air circulating.

After the Hollow Mountain gas station, we started our journey on Scenic Byway 95.

We saw this curved wall of rock along Scenic Byway 95.

This is Lake Powell, a reservoir on the Colorado River in Utah’s Glen Canyon.  We are at a turnout on Scenic Byway 95.  The road then goes downward to the left, around rock formations and mesas, and eventually crosses the bridge you can only see if you zoom the photo and look hard for the blur.  The bridge is silver and it’s at the far end of the visible water.  It took us about a half hour to get from this point to that bridge.

Glen Canyon was probably the prettiest part of the scenic byways today.  Here’s a scene from a rest stop in Glen Canyon on Scenic Byway 95.

At this point, it was probably highway construction that created a pillar beside the large rock.  An arm of Lake Powell is on the right.

Capitol Reef is a beautiful national park.  I learned that it was formed by a huge mountain-building event.  The rock to the west of the buried fault was uplifted 7,000 feet higher than the rock to the east of the fault.  As layers of strata accumulated on the rock, the pressure of the overlying strata folded the rock layers over the fault.  Erosion exposed the strata, and the result is the rock formations we see today.

Ted and I narrowed our photos of the day down from nearly 100 to the ones you see in this post.  Every rock formation in the park and along the byways seemed worthy of a photo, even though they all shared many common characteristics.  I don’t know the names of the rock formations (or if they have names), but I believe the first one below this paragraph is called “Capitol Dome,” for obvious reasons.

We saw an interesting tree as we were driving through the park.  I assume that, given the altitude and the color of the leaves, it’s a member of the aspen family, but I’m not a botanist.  Maybe one of my attentive readers can provide positive identification of the tree genus.  I noticed it because the bark was unusually formed.

Ted and I have now visited three of Utah’s Mighty 5®:  Zion, Bryce, and Capitol Reef.  Tomorrow, we’ll visit the last two:  Canyonlands and Arches.  We visited the first three in the early 2000s, but have never been to the last two.  The weather looks great for the hikes we’ve planned for the next two days.

It’s Ted’s and my second day of Utah’s “best week of our lives,” and the catch-phrase is living up to its name.  We had a beautiful day of scenery from start to finish.  We began on Utah’s Highway 12, an All-American Road, that took us to Bryce Canyon National Park and to Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument.

Highway 12, an All-American Road

To be recognized by the USDOT as a National Scenic Byway, a road must have one or more of six intrinsic significant qualities:  archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and/or scenic.  To be designated as an All-American Road, the road must go through a nomination/ approval process and must already be recognized as a state scenic byway.  In addition, it must possess at least two of the significant qualities listed; it must have features that do not exist elsewhere in the U.S.; and its features and qualities must be important enough to be a tourist destination in itself (i.e., driving the road must be the goal, like the Pacific Coast Highway).

Highway 12 begins just west of Bryce Canyon NP and ends at Torrey, UT, 40 miles east of Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument.

Utah State Highway 12 meets the All-American Road qualifications in every possible way.  Every time we went around a curve, there was another photo-worthy view.  Luckily, there’s not room to pull off the road except in designated areas, or we’d probably still be driving it and remarking on its scenery.  The road goes up and down and curves around mountains, canyons, and plateaus.  Curves are plentiful and speed limits are necessarily low, so it’s not a quick drive, but who would want to hurry past this kind of scenery?  We don’t think there was a straightaway longer than one-half mile the entire 123-mile length of the highway.  We highly recommend this road as a tourist destination.  Here are a select few of the beautiful views on Highway 12.

The scenery at the west end of Hwy. 12 looks similar to Bryce Canyon, with red hoodoos.  It keeps changing along the road.  This is just east of Bryce Canyon.

Even farther north and east, the mountains become higher and denser.

Another beautiful curve.

Red rocks everywhere.  Gorgeous in the sunlight and even better at sunset.

We came to the end of Highway 12 at sunset.  Still beautiful.

Bryce Canyon National Park

The last time Ted and I visited Bryce Canyon (October, early 2000s), it was cold and had nine inches of snow.  Only a few miles of the park road were plowed and open.  We have stunning pictures of the red rocks of Bryce Canyon sprinkled with evergreen trees and topped with white snow.  Today it was sunny, clear, and in the 50s, so we took some different, but still stunning, pictures of Bryce Canyon.  This time, we drove the roads we were unable to access last time and we thought these views were even more beautiful.

The end of the road in Bryce Canyon is at 9,600 feet elevation, so I started the day with a cup of hot chocolate.  It came in a Christmas-themed cup.

Snow poles were placed along the road and in the parking lots.  Judging by how tall they are, Bryce must get some incredible snowfalls.

The tall, thin, spire-shaped rocks that rise from the dry basin of Bryce Canyon are called hoodoos.  They are also referred to as tent rocks, fairy chimneys, and/or earth pyramids.

Ted and I voted this to be the most spectacular view of Bryce.  It’s called “Natural Bridge,” but is really an arch.  The people in the second picture below are also spectacular.  Or at least the view behind them is.

Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument

Grand Staircase is not actually a staircase or anything that looks like one.  It’s a term used to describe the cliffs, slopes and terraces extending 150 miles northward, from the Grand Canyon to the top of Bryce Canyon–a rise in elevation of more than 6,000 feet.  The topographic layers have different colors and, as they erode, these layers and colors appear in the canyons.

Highway 12 runs through Escalante National Monument.  Ted and I had low expectations of Escalante, NM because it is widely known for its huge plateau (1.9 million acres in the park) and for its dinosaur fossils.  What a wonderful surprise to discover that Escalante is the most beautiful 28-mile stretch of Highway 12.  The road in the first picture below is Highway 12.  On the right (where we were headed), it’s high; then it winds and drops through the center and left of the picture.  (Note:  That’s one of the few straight portions of Highway 12.)

Tomorrow:  the third day of the best week of our lives.

Las Vegas:  city of excess.  If it can be overdone, I’m sure the Las Vegas Strip area has overdone it.  Still, the energy of the Strip has a magnetic attraction for tourists, including Ted and me.

The last time we were here (late 1990s), we set aside some money to play the slot machines, only to discover that the one-armed bandits had long since given way to putting a credit card in a slot and pushing a button.  That didn’t seem like much fun, so we spent our gambling allowance on a high-end dinner instead.

Slot machines.  No one-arm bandits.

Players at tables where Ted and I are not gambling.

Dealers waiting for us to take our place at their tables.  Still waiting.

This time, we decided we’d skip the gambling in favor of buying tickets to whatever show interested us and had available seats.  Our choice was Elton John, but he is only performing on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and we’re only here on Sunday and Monday nights.  Apparently, our message to EJ didn’t get through.  We tried to pick another show, but nothing really interested us at the given prices.  Tickets cost $150-$200 each–and that was for the “medium” seating area, dropping to around $100 where binoculars are needed, and going up to $200-300 to sit anywhere closer.  That was too much for a performance we were settling for just for the sake of seeing a performance.  We opted for the same thing as last time:  we used our ticket money for two high-end dinners instead.  The food was out of this world and much better than a “settled for” show.

Here’s the first restaurant we chose in place of a show (Prime, on the lower level, center of the photo).  It overlooked the pool with the Bellagio fountains.  A beautiful show!

This is the second restaurant we spent our ticket money on.  This time, the show was watching the chef and his helpers prepare the diners’ meals.

Temperatures were above normal (90 degrees), so daytime walking on the Strip was not that much fun, even it if is a dry heat.  We waited for the heat of the sun to dissipate, then did the Strip-walk until dinner time.  People-watching on the Strip is a tourist attraction in itself.  I made Ted promise to never dress like an older man we saw while we were eating lunch:  sandals with navy and white polka-dot socks, green plaid shorts, and a red polo shirt.  Eeewww!  That was hard on the eyes!  As we strolled down the Strip, Ted was offered several opportunities for entertainment tonight.

Decisions, decisions.  Ted decided to have dinner with me instead.  Aww, how sweet!

We’re staying at the Bellagio, and the decorations are gorgeous.

This glass-flowered skylight ceiling was one of our memories of the last time we were here.

The Bellagio has five huge pools, plus several hot tubs and lots of cabanas, as seen from our 16th story room.  Quite a few people were trying to keep cool in the pools this afternoon.

Here’s the nighttime view from our hotel window.

The hotel decorations are fall-themed.  This hallway featured over-sized, colorful peacocks.

The peacocks’ tails were made out of flowers–just like the floats in the Rose Bowl parade.

Another seasonal decoration covered with flowers.

And one more Hallowe’en guy with flower-based construction.

The Bellagio is not the place to look for cheap souvenirs, although the usual mugs, T-shirts, and sweatshirts are plentiful.  There is an entire wing of designer shopping.

Some hotel ceiling decorations and the entrance to the Via Bellagio–the upscale shopping area.

Dior, Prada, Gucci–you name it and there was a store.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything I liked, and neither did anyone else.  Whenever we walked by, there were no customers in any of these stores–only salespeople.

Finally!  Harry Winston had a bracelet I’d like to wear.  I inquired, but decided not to buy when the salesman said “$30,000.”

The lights on the Strip have become brighter (LEDs now) and more numerous, but the Bellagio fountains are just as beautiful as we remember.

It’s the Las Vegas Strip, not Paris, France, but you knew that.

A passerby offered to immortalize this moment for us.  (The bracelet I’m wearing cost less than $30,000.)

Aaahhh, the Bellagio fountains.

We didn’t stay up all night to verify it, but I’m sure that, like New York City, this town never sleeps.  Things will be much quieter for us in Zion National Park tomorrow.

Last night in Flagstaff (elev. 7,000 ft.), the temperature dropped to 26 degrees.  Luckily, we were in bed and, when we went out into the morning sunshine, it was already in the low 50s–much nicer.

We drove from Flagstaff to Las Vegas today, which included crossing the Hoover Dam.  It’s been many years since we visited Hoover Dam, so we decided to stop again and check it out.

The dam still looks the same, and the water level in Lake Mead is still low, but the café has expanded, the number of visitor tours has expanded, rest rooms have been added along the pedestrian walkway, and the visitor center has its own building.  In addition, there are now 12 parking lots, so the number of visitors must have increased greatly.  Even at closing time, when we arrived, we had to troll the parking lots to find an empty spot.

The biggest change was the re-routing of US 93.  It used to cross the dam; now there’s a new bridge that takes US 93 over the tailrace of the dam.  Naturally, security has been added, so we had to stop to let the guards decide that we were not a threat before we could drive to the actual dam.  We passed.  We arrived too late in the afternoon for a tour, but the parking was free, which saved us $10.

The new Hoover Dam Visitor Center is on the left.

These sculptures have been added on the NV side of the dam.  There is also a larger-than-life sculpture of a dam builder working on the dam in a safety harness, but I couldn’t get a good picture of it.

This is the beginning of Lake Mead, the reservoir immediately behind Hoover Dam.  The top of the white rock is a high water mark.  If I remember correctly from our previous visit, life is good when the water level covers the lower portion of the intake towers on the left.  When it’s low like this, there’s a drought going on.

Here’s the selfie of us at Hoover Dam.

This is the new US 93 bridge over the tailrace.

Ted and I spent today at the Grand Canyon.  Last week we visited Palo Duro Canyon, just south of Amarillo, TX–the second largest canyon in the U.S.  It is definitely a distant second to the Grand Canyon.  As my brother Tom said, “There are many canyons, but only one is Grand.”  It was a beautiful, sunny, calm day.  We were at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, so it was cool, but we had jackets, so temperatures in the 50s were no big deal.

We spent most of our time walking on the south Rim Trail.  At one point, we saw people on burros at the bottom of the canyon, nearly 6,000 feet below us.  A man with binoculars found them and pointed them out.  With the naked eye, you could only see them if you knew where to look because, at that distance, they were tiny dots that moved along one of the trails.

One part of the Rim Trail is called the “Trail of Time.”  It’s a 2.83-mile-long interpretive geographical timeline, and has received national recognition.  (It sounds self-congratulatory for a national park trail to receive national recognition, doesn’t it?)  The displays along the trail are well done and include rock samples from each layer of the Canyon walls, set at appropriate markers along the time line.  Basically, the trail is a short course in geology.  In fact, a high school class was walking the trail for a field trip.  Each meter of the trail equals one million years of geologic history, and there are markers set into the trail at every meter to mark the time.  The trail begins at “today” and ends at 4,560 million years.

Start walking the Trail of Time here.

Pause here, a million years ago.

Congratulate yourself here before walking the next two billion years of the Grand Canyon’s geology.  The Canyon is “only” 6 million years old, but the trail continues for 4,560 million years–the age of the earth’s geological development.

We also listened to an NPS Ranger Talk about the geology of the Canyon.  He said that real geologists would hate him for simplifying the development of the Grand Canyon to the word you say when you first see it:  DUDE.

D for deposition–the soil deposited in the Grand Canyon that later turned to rock.

U for uplift–the movement of the tectonic plates that raised the Grand Canyon.

D for down–what the river did to the rock:  wear it down.

E for erosion–what wind and water have done to the rock.

Why didn’t the Colorado River go around the mountains during the “D” portion of the Canyon’s development (wearing it down)?  Because the river had the right of way, so it cut right through them.

Of course, we took a lot of pictures and they all show beautiful (grand) views.  Here are a few of our favorites.

I like the color contrasts in this photo.  The brown in the sky is smoke from a nearby prescribed burn.

Again, the colors of the different rock layers make this a beautiful place to visit.

This was a very deep/steep area.  Of course, depth never shows very well in photos but the rock formations are interesting.

We stayed until the sun was setting.  All the colors became more golden and red, and the shadows grew larger.

Another great day together for Ted and me.

We arrived in Grand Canyon Village late this afternoon, checked into our hotel, and searched the internet for restaurants and restaurant reviews.  The results were, as our President would say, “sad.”

We checked reviews for about 10 restaurants–steak houses, pizza parlors, and family dining.  No matter which restaurant we were checking, the reviews were terrible.  Even worse, they were similar for every restaurant:  the food was overpriced; everything tasted terrible (dry, overcooked, or even as if it was out of a can); the service was extremely slow (30-90 minute waits for the food); and it wasn’t worth the time or money.  A number of people even qualified their reviews by saying they have never reviewed a restaurant online, but this one (whichever it was) was so bad, something had to be said.

Almost unanimously, the reviewers mentioned that the food would have been better and, although still overpriced because they were taking advantage of the captive tourist market, more reasonably priced at McDonald’s or Wendy’s.  McDonald’s was two doors down from our hotel.  Here’s a picture of our dinner tonight.

The food was overpriced (captive tourists); everything tasted like it always does at McDonald’s; service was fast (about a two-minute wait); and we were satisfied.