Zing Blog 2

Wednesday we got up early to watch the sun rise. Then we drove out of the Grand Canyon to the east, crossed the Colorado River somewhere around Antelope Canyon, and swung north into the legendary realm of Utah, a place I’d never been before.  The maps app said the trip was about five hours, but for us it was more like eight, because we kept stopping for scenic overlooks along the way and doing short hikes to the local vista.  It was amazing to see the way the landscape changed over the miles.  The Grand Staircase with its layers of all different colored rocks was particularly amazing. 

We got to Bryce in the late afternoon and had time for a hike around the rim to a place called Sunset Point. We dipped into the upper part of the canyon, then back up to the top to watch the sun go down.  (Fun fact: the sun doesn’t actually go up or down, or around the Earth at all. It’s the Earth spinning that creates the illusion of the sun traveling across the sky!)  We were staying at the lodge in the national park here to, and had drinks dinner at the restaurant there.  Very yummy.  There was no TV or wifi in the room.  Next morning we hiked into the canyon.  Bryce is much smaller than the Grand Canyon and you can reach the bottom in an hour or so.  But the rock formations are the most amazing to behold that I’ve ever seen!  So we spent at a few hours hiking around the canyon floor and eventually up the other side at Sunrise Point.

We had lunch there before we took off, then it was another drive across the mountains and desert to Zion.  This one was only two hours or so long.  Coming into Zion from the east, we had had to drive thru a long tunnel and down an intense series of switchbacks to get the main canyon.  We weren’t able to get a room in the park lodge here, so we stayed in a hotel a little ways outside the park gate.  We had dinner at a really good Mexican restaurant that from the outside had a vibe like From Dusk ‘Til Dawn before things turned weird.

Friday we hiked around inside Zion, which was really beautiful like everything else, and had looked alot like Sedona actually.  Walked along the river at the bottom then up a side canyon to a series of pools and waterfalls.  All of these hikes were pretty big – over five miles and 1,000 feet vertical.  We ended up at a saloon in the village right outside the park gate having a couple drinks and a late lunch.

Saturday we drove from Zion to Las Vegas, Nevada.  This was a short ride by this vacation’s standards, only a couple hours.  On the way we stopped at a dinosaur discovery in St. George, Utah.  The main attraction there was a giant slab of natural rock which had been cleaned up and had a roof put over it.  The rock reveal thousands of dinosaur footprints and told the story of how it was once a sandy beach and shore of a shallow lake. 

In Vegas the weather was hot for the first time since we’d arrived out west.  And unlike everywhere else we’d been, everything was very crowded and noisy.  Last time I was in Vegas was in the 1990’s, so it was interesting to see what has changed.  In the afternoon we walked along the strip and got as far as Caesar’s Palace, about halfway up.  In the evening we went out to dinner with Jeannie’s cousin Lynda and her husband Carl, who moved to Vegas some years back.  It was an Italian restaurant in the part of town off the strip where people actually live.  That gave a different perspective on the city.  Afterwards we went back to the strip, and starting at the Luxor worked our way back to our hotel at the other end, stopping occasionally to rest and have a drink and take in the sights.  The highlight was at the Parisian, where a Moulin Rouge style burlesque show appeared right at the bar where we happened to be lounging.  A troupe of cute dancing girls in corsets and fishnets shaking their thang, and a self-aware singer who broke the fourth wall to tell us all she thought the lyrics to Roxanne were really repetitive.  We looked for opportunities to play some blackjack or roulette, but the tables had all been replaced by machines that made it feel like self-checkout at the supermarket and didn’t look like very much fun.  Jeannie found an arcade of vintage slot machines and spent some money there but didn’t win anything.  At least people don’t smoke indoors anymore.

The last day was the drive back to Phoenix to catch our flight home.  We did this trip in the opposite direction thirty years ago.  Back then it was mostly a two-lane country road across the dessert.  I remember a sign in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Arizona saying “No gas next 150 miles.”  You couldn’t even tune in a radio station.  Well now that middle part of the trip is mostly a divided four-lane highway heavy with traffic, and the no-gas zone is more like 100 miles, and by the time you pass thru you’re in the sprawling exurbs of Phoenix.  Compared to the other drives on the trip, it was pretty flat, mainly desert with groves of Joshua trees and Saguaro cactuses.

Our rental car, a Nissan Rogue, kinda sucked BTW.  The flight home was uneventful, except that getting in an out of Kennedy Airport is a nightmare these days because of all the construction.

We just got back from a a great trip out west to Arizona and Utah.  Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and 24 hours in Las Vegas.  Lots and lots of hiking.  A good deal of driving.  Epic scenic vistas galore.

Part of the purpose of this trip was for Jeannie and I to celebrate out thirtieth wedding anniversary, which was earlier this month.  (We had thought we might do some kind of party or dinner for family and friends, but as it happened we weren’t much in the party spirit in the late summer and early fall.  I ended up making a toast to Jeannie and thirty more years when we were visiting my parents a couple weeks ago.)  In any event, Jeannie and I had taken a trip to Arizona the year we got married.  It was our first vacation together, and my first time out west.  So we visited a couple places we’d been to before, and some new places too.  It was a good opportunity to reflect on our lives together so far and the way things change and stay the same across the grand passage of time.

The first stop on our itinerary was Sedona.  We flew out Saturday morning.  Our flight landed in Phoenix, and by the time we got our car and drove up there, it was late afternoon.  We took a sunset hike up a nearby mountain, the first of many.  It was only about two miles and maybe four or five hundred feet vertical, winding up from behind the local high school, which was across the street from our hotel, and took a little over an hour.  But the view was amazing, looking down into the valley and across to the mesas and rock formations all around. Went out to dinner for Mexican food.

Next morning we explored the town a little more and did a little shopping because I needed new hiking boots, and we got some groceries too.  Sedona has a vibe very much like a ski town because the main activity there is hiking.  It’s pretty small with just one main drag, full of shops and restaurants, quite nice.  If you leave town in any direction you’re five or ten minutes away from an epic hike.  We chose one called Fay Canyon, which had a side quest to a natural stone arch, and a good scramble up the cliffside at the trail’s end to some great views.  That one was maybe three or four miles and a thousand feet vertical.  We followed it up another shorter, steeper hike to the top of another mesa, called Boynton if I recall.

When we were up in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, Chris and Mark told us that our old friend Keith, the crazy talented guitarist for Event Horizon, was living in Sedona, and gave us the name of the band he was in.  We tried to find him but he didn’t have any gigs the weekend we were there.  Nevertheless, we had dinner at a bar where he was scheduled to play the following weekend, and left a message.  He was always a difficult one to get a hold of.  It would be amazing to hear from him.

Anyway, Monday morning we lit out for our next destination, the Grand Canyon.  On the way we stopped at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, after several hours of winding thru very scenic canyon and mountain roads. This is something we both had always wanted to see.  Percival Lowell of course was a famous astronomer who discovered the once and future planet Pluto, mapped the famous canals of Mars, and contributed in many other areas.  Other astronomers there mapped the moon in the 1960’s and discovered the cosmic redshift that led to the expanding universe model of cosmology.  The tour was fascinating; they showed us several working telescopes and explained about their history, construction, operation, and how astronomers use them in their research.  We would have liked to have been there at night to look thru the big telescope, but Flagstaff is very remote and we would have had to spend the night.  As it was, we got to look thru a few ‘scopes in the daytime. One was trained on the sun and had filter at the alpha red wavelength emitted by hydrogen. As a result it showed mainly the surface of the sun and not the white and yellow light blasting from within.  The sun actually looked like a ball and not just a disc, and was covered with the hairy fuzz of solar flares, each much larger than the earth.  Another ‘scope showed Venus, which is apparently visible in the daytime if you know where to look and can block out the light of the sun.

After several hours more of driving thru very scenic mountains we arrived at the Grand Canyon, shortly before sunset.  We were staying in a cabin at Bright Angel right in the park, at the very edge of the chasm.  This was something we’d done thirty years before, and was a special memory for us to revisit.  The room had a view looking right out over the canyon, and a fire place which was now gas but thirty years ago had been wood-burning.  That evening we had dinner at El Tovar, the fancy classy restaurant there.  When we were there the last time I declare the steak I ate that night the best I ever had, and over the years it has gained legendary status.  I ordered the steak again, and I must say it was a damn good steak.  But I supposed I’ve had plenty of great steaks over the last thirty years.  For dessert the chef spelled out Happy Anniversary in chocolate on the plate, which was quite nice.

Tuesday was the biggest hike of the trip, down into the canyon itself. It was a beautiful day for it, although they’d had snow just a couple of days earlier. (We had perfect weather the whole trip, although the air was very dry and the elevation made the sunshine extra strong.) The trip was three miles in, going down more than 2,000 feet in elevation. It was basically endless switchbacks scratched out of the cliffside. But you know, breathtakingly beautiful, and fascinating to see the shift in perspective that came with the descent.

A word about the colors. Everywhere we went out there the rocks were really red, to the point where it affected the way you other colors. Basically all the colors were really vivid and seemed to pop. You’ve never seen a more intense blue sky (maybe that was the elevation too) or greener scraggly desert shrubberies. The pants I was were appeared tan under normal circumstances turned green on the trail. And Jeannie’s hiking boots, which were normally grey, turned blue. Totally wild.

It took us a little over two hours to get to the three mile point, which was about halfway to the bottom in terms of both distance and elevation. After we paused for lunch, it was the long slow climb back out, relentlessly uphill for three miles. We were told to plan on taking twice as much time to climb out, but for us the total trip was right around six hours.

After a rest we decided to walk along the rim trail to a vista point to watch the sunset. It was a bit further than we expected, another two miles or so, so we ended up taking the bus back to the village.

A word about sunrises and sunsets. You can really appreciate the optical effects of the earth’s atmosphere at the tops of these cliffs cuz you can see for miles and miles and miles (oh yeah). It’s best to look to the horizon opposite the sun. You can see the shadows climbing up the rocks in the opposite side of the canyon, and really get a feel for the earth turning. You’ll see a blue zone in the sky that creeps up underneath the pink. After the sun set it continues to rise, as the pink begins to fade. This is actually the shadow of the earth itself, causing the night to fall.

At the end of the night we went out a dark place at the end of a parking lot to watch the starts. Amazing, clear skies, just tons and tons of stars. I don’t think I remember ever seeing the Milky Way like that in the fall.

Next up:  Utah!