Utah Rocks!

It took us a little while to get out of town on Saturday, May 15. We realized that we needed to go back by Camilla Mohn's house because we had had our mail forwarded there while we were on the river raft trip. We had kind of forgotten about that. But first we had to find an AT&T store, because Liz was going to get a big treat. We felt she had done such a tremendous job on the raft trip that we should strongly consider getting her the cell phone that she has been pining for. So we did ..... she was super excited, and is starting to learn about how to keep track of it and not lose it!

By the time we did all this, it was afternoon, and we had planned to make it to Moab, Utah, to finish our visits of those beautiful red rock areas .... Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We headed up I15 past St. George and Cedar City, and then turned east at Interstate 70. Four hundred and fifty miles later we rolled into an RV park just north of the turn-off to Canyonlands. We had a really narrow campsite, but decided we COULD put our slides out without hitting the motorhome next to us, so we pushed out the bedroom wall and hit the hay!

We had learned that there was a very popular hike in Arches .... the Fiery Furnace, which took reservations. We actually hadn't been entirely certain of our dates when we would be there, but by the time I had a pretty good prediction, the reservations were out until August. But I heard from someone on the raft trip that they did save a few spots on the hike for people who arrived at the visitor center each day and wanted to go. So we decided to be there at the Visitor Center on Sunday, May 16th when they opened at 7:30 a.m. We actually thought it would be good to be there early, so we got there at 6:30. Liz and I hung out in the parking lot in the car, while Gary read a book by the door. We were the first ones in, and were able to get a reservation for the Fiery Furnace hike (for Liz and Gary) at 10:00 on Tuesday, the 18th. A guy was right behind us who said that he needed 4 tickets for that day for people he was "guiding" into the park. But there weren't any ...... obviously he hadn't really planned ahead.

So we slightly adjusted our plans, and decided to stay until 1 o'clock on Tuesday so they could do this hike where you walk through narrow slot canyons and crawl through small canyon spaces.

The rest of the day we decided to spend in Canyonlands. You may remember we visited the southern part of Canyonlands .... the Needles .... in late April, but we wanted to do the signature visit to Island in the Sky. Below the entrance sign you can see a diagram from the National Park Service brochure which shows how the Green and Colorado Rivers, and their confluence, carve out this island.

The Island in the Sky is a plateau of land that is surrounded by canyons all the way around.

You enter over a small "neck" of land (see sign middle below), with canyon walls sloping way on either side.

and then you are peering down to river canyons and other plateaus and mesas all around you.

This is the view through Mesa Arch and then below looking down to the left and to the right (on the right).

It was fun to see all the areas down below the "island," and it felt like you really were looking out at a "sea" of canyon lands.

And down along the edge of the next level was the White Rim Road, which can be circumnavigated in a jeep.

Driving back toward Moab was the turn off to Dead Horse Canyon. You'll be able to read below the story behind this, where wild horses were driven onto this high plateau, with another narrow neck, and then it was blocked off so that it became a natural corral. The part of the story about not letting the unselected horses go free was kind of troublesome, but otherwise it was a great story of the Old West.

The view from Dead Horse Canyon point down to the Colorado River

On the right below you can see where the road is narrow and the pieces of wood are stacked on the sides which, in times when wild horses were driven onto the mesa, the wood would be pulled together to enclose the corral.

We weren't able to visit the more remote part of Canyonlands National Park which is hard to reach to the west. It is called The Maze, seen below in the distance, with canyon upon canyon all running together. In the maze is Robbers Roost and it is said that this is where Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would go to get lost. It seems likely.

The next day, Monday, May 17, was a little slow. We slept in a bit, and went in to Moab for breakfast and to pick up our mail. Gary's new cell phone arrived and Liz' end of the 4th grade testing materials arrived. Minnesota home-schooling guidelines require that she take a standardized test, so we ordered the usual Iowa Test of Basic Skills from the University of Minnesota Testing service. We plan to give this to her at the end of the month. We also did a little grocery shopping, and I spent a little time looking for a book I wanted about the Grand Canyon.

Later in the afternoon we returned to Arches National Park to see the things we could get to by car. The Fiery Furnace hike is scheduled for tomorrow.

When you first enter Arches, one of the first big collections of rock is called Park Avenue.

And just a little ways down the road is The Three Gossips ....

We saw "baby" arches just starting to be formed .... erosion that is starting to eat away at each end. On the right, in the distance, is North and South Arch in the Windows Section.

We saw some beautiful wild flowers along our drive.

Next came Balancing Rock (in the middle on the left), and then a brief walk to Sand Dune Arch where Liz posed in the slot canyon leading up there.

I was able to catch this Raven with Broken Arch in the background.

We ended the day with a little walk to Landscape Arch, one of the longest in the park. We tried to take the picture of the three of us together and found our arms weren't really long enough to get us all in! You may notice that Gary has kept his beard since the river trip .... we're all thinking he's looking kind of hunky with it .... Ernest Hemingwayesque!

The next morning, Tuesday, May 18, was finally the day Liz and Gary were signed up for the Fiery Furnace tour. They took a disposable camera with them (we still need to get the film developed) as we didn't want to lose the good camera in the tiny, narrow, crawl-space canyons. They call it the Fiery Furnace because when the setting sun shines on these red rocks with their pinnacles and various shades of red, it looks like fiery flames in a furnace.

Since I wasn't doing the Fiery Furnace hike, I did the 3 mile hike over slick rock to Delicate Arch. Actually, I met someone on the trail who had done both hikes, and she said the Delicate Arch was really just as difficult, just not as narrow in some places, and the Fiery Furnace hike is longer. This is certainly the case as it took me about 2 hours to do my hike, and Gary and Lizzie were on theirs for three hours. These pictures show some of the hike up to Delicate Arch over the slick rock, and then below is the arch close up and then from a further away view point I drove to.

After the Delicate Arch hike, I returned to pick up Gary and Liz from the Fiery Furnace. They had had a really good time. We picked up Buster (actually attached the car) at the Visitor Center, and returned to I70 .... on the way to Colorado!

Rocky Mountains, here we come.

Julie, Gary and Liz

Preparing for and Recovering from the Grand Canyon: LAS VEGAS

Hoover Dam with new roadway bridge, May 4, 2010

Wednesday, April 28 was a pivotal day. As I mentioned in the Grand Canyon post, we did consider driving to Las Vegas on this day, leaving Buster, and hustling over to Yosemite. But we had been there in October, 2008, and thought at this point in our 11 1/2 month adventure, we might just coast a little bit.

The weather on the 28th encouraged us in this regard. It was incredibly WINDY. As we drove south from Tusayan, AZ, just south of the south entrance to the Grand Canyon, we felt incredible gusts of wind, and later learned there were reported gusts up to 50-60 miles per hour. We were interested in going to Meteor Crater, about 40 miles east of Flagstaff on Highway 40. But we thought we would leave Buster at the closest place we might possibly park for the night, which turned out to be Williams, AZ, and just take the car to Meteor Crater. We parked at Williams Railroad RV park, right next to the train that goes from Williams to the Grand Canyon, and then set out in the car.

About 10 miles west of Flagstaff, I saw a sign that said, "Hwy 40 closed in 35 miles." We did the calculation, and I thought that meant we wouldn't be able to make it to Meteor Crater. Interstate 40 was closed from Two Gun to Holbrook because of the wind. It wasn't necessarily that wind was blowing cars or trucks off the road (it was reported gusting up to 70 mph), but because there is so much loose dirt/sand/desert there, visibility was greatly compromised.

So we detoured and went to Walnut Canyon. Walnut Canyon is just southeast of Flagstaff, and Gary remembered visiting there with his mother and brothers in 1953. It is really part of Sunset Crater Volcano that we spoke about in our April 8th post. More cliff dwellings were found here from inhabitants 800 years ago, both inside the canyon and throughout the pine forest on its rims. These people are today known as Sinagua -- Spanish for "without water" -- a tribute to their ability to turn a relatively dry region into a homeland. It is thought that the eruption of nearby Sunset Crater sometime between 1040 and 1100 made the land more fertile, attracting many more people to the San Francisco volcanic field and bringing change to Sinagua life. Another school of thought is that the change was simply from new water-conserving farming practices and general population increase in the Southwest leading to more trade. It was so cold and windy we didn't venture too far into the canyon. Here's a little tableau from the Visitor Center:

After our overnight in Williams, we proceeded on to Las Vegas on Thursday, April 29. We read there was construction on the Arizona side of Hoover (formerly named Boulder) Dam, so we elected to drive around through Laughlin. We didn't realize we would be passing this way again so soon, but not by choice! (see Grand Canyon post about being turned away from Boulder Dam following the raft trip!)

It was still windy, and Gary paid great attention to staying in his lane. Here, once again, is a little photo with a view of the Colorado River in the lower Colorado/Lake Mead National Recreation area.

We decided we wanted to try to find a kind of nice, resort-like place to park and relax before the raft trip. We called Sherry Wieler and asked her if she knew anyplace, and she suggested the sister resort of their La Quinta, California, park .... Outdoor Resorts. A little phone calling discovered that this former Outdoor Resorts is now called Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort, and was nearly identical in layout to the beautiful place we had stayed in the California desert with Sherry and Marty. We got settled in with a patio, barbeque, pool, 9 hole golf, and proximity to Las Vegas attractions. We celebrated with spaghetti, a beautiful fruit plate created by Liz, and an NCIS (TV) marathon.

On Friday, April 30, we had a very laid back

day, as we had intended. Liz and I did a little math, then headed over for a swim in the beautifully heated pool. Again, it was almost as if we had been transplanted from Outdoor Resorts in California .... but the pool was a little more interesting .... and warmer. In the early evening we drove to our friend's home, Camilla Mohn where she lives with her daughter Marisa. Marisa is a beautiful 14 year old, who is just as smart as she is pretty. Camilla, my little girl pal when I was in medical school in Loma Linda, is now a gorgeous mom, mortgage broker, and still the sweetest person in the world. We all went to dinner at Vintner's Grill (Camilla's treat Thank You Very Much) in the northeast Las Vegas Summerlin area, near where Camilla lives. It was delicious, and we had such a nice time. Camilla and Marisa invited Liz for a sleep over, and she was so happy to accept. Everyone had a great evening. A little break is always a good thing.

Camilla and Marisa dropped Liz off in the early afternoon, after they had had pedicures! I had made one of my mother's "luncheon" recipes .... Curried Tuna Salad with chinese noodles and almonds -- and it was well received. Then Gary and Liz had a swim and I essentially insisted that Liz try to take a nap and she finally did. We were going to the 10:00 showing of "O" .... Cirque de Soleil's fabulous acrobatic/musical/water show at the Bellagio (see Bellagio ceiling below).

We arrived at the Bellagio about 6:30, and found our way into dinner at Circo, the companion restaurant of Le Cirque, and equally as colorful and interesting. Gary and Liz were snapped there. The highlight of the meal was probably Liz' dessert: homemade donuts, reminescent of New Orleans beignets.

We made it to the 10:00 performance and took our pretty good seats. No photography is allowed, so I will simply share a photo from the program, which gives you an idea of the creativity of the costumes. Some of the current performers are Olympians. It is simply a visual feast, and the diving and water aspect just made it seem all the more dreamy. We loved it. We learned that almost all the shows in Las Vegas are 90 minutes, I presume so you can see quite a few in one day ... even two in the same evening. We were home, and tucked into Buster, by 12:15!

Sunday, May 2nd, was another relaxing day. Gary, actually, spent the morning completing some on-line continuing education. He has realized that he needed to complete about 50 hours of continuing dental education in order to qualify for his relicensure due 5/31/10. He had started taking some of the courses when we were staying at Polly's, but today he worked on dental implants, having adolescents as patients, tips on dealing with anxious or phobic patients, and halitosis! He is very well-educated!

We set the afternoon aside for some serious preparation for the raft trip. We found a Sports Authority where our expert, Anita Mayer, had suggested we look for quick dry shirts/short/and pants. Our only problem was predicting how cool it might be, and how many layers of quick dry/polypro we might need. Next we went to REI where Gary and Liz got great KEEN river/water shoes with good support for hiking and traction on the raft. I also got Liz some polypro long underwear which was also quick dry, and Gary got his full "rain suit" which would keep him dry through major rapids. We also got "dry bags" to hook on the raft straps to keep our necessities in that we wanted to keep close at hand during the day (see details in previous post about raft trip in Grand Canyon). We had some debate about whether we needed a "sun shower" .... black bag to be filled with water that we could clip on the surface of the raft to warm water from the sun during the day. We ended up with a 5 gallon one, and I ended up being quite glad we had it!

We had invited Camilla and Marisa back for supper that night, and they came with most of it: some yummy chicken and steak kabobs from Whole Foods, and sweet potatoe fries. We provided our marinated vegetable salad, so we had a nice little meal before Camilla and I took off!

I had looked over the other shows in Vegas and besides the Beatles LOVE show (which we had tickets for after the raft trip), the only other thing I really wanted to see was Barry Manilow! I have always liked him which is kind of interesting ..... he doesn't really have that great a voice, but he does communicate a "niceness" and happiness in his music. And it's kind of romantic. Curiously, Camilla who is over a decade younger than I am (obviously!), also likes him, but couldn't get any of her pals to go to his show with her. I was thrilled to take her!

After playing about 5 years at the Hilton, off the strip, he is now the headliner at Paris, a big hotel right on the strip. I think he only does shows on Thursday through Sunday nights .... I believe he actually lives in Palm Springs, and flies back and forth after his shows are finished.

It was fun ... and at, I think about 67, he still sings really very well. It was very entertaining. That's him, standing (pretty little) at the front of the stage singing, obviously, "Can't Smile Without You!"

Monday, May 3rd was another day with little agenda. I scoped out a place in North Las Vegas where I was able to buy unique camera batteries for my Panasonic Lumix camera, so that I wouldn't run out on the raft trip ... there is no recharging down there! (Obviously, I was very prepared, but not for the scenario that wind would blow sand into the camera and ruin it!) I also spent a little time in Walgreen Drugs filling out my dispensary: antibiotics, wound care, sun screen, steroids .... everything I thought we might possibly need when we couldn't get to a doctor for 8 days! Liz and Gary spent a large part of the day swimming and playing in the pool (so much so that he jumped in with his cell phone in his pocket ..... when we got it we thought he might need insurance!), and doing laundry. A nice, quiet day.

We reserved the 4th for a trip to Hoover Dam. It is really something impressive to see, and even more so now that the new bridge is near completion. This image below is pretty teeny (from the internet) but you can see the big change from when they started it as a suspension bridge, and now it is suspended, but without all the cables. It will allow traffic on US 93 to cross the river without having to cross the strategically and vitally critical Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam when completed in 1935, but its name was officially changed to be named after President Hoover, Secretary of the Interior at the time of construction, in 1947.) President Hoover strongly advocated that the Boulder Canyon project be self-supporting, financed entirely through the sale of hydroelectric power generated at the time. This has been the case through the life of the dam.

We decided to take the "go inside of the dam" tour. I remember doing this when I was on my 9th grade summer high school trip; Gary thinks he's been in there before, too. Our guide told us they used to take people down for free; now it costs about $30 a person to go to the power plant, and walk inside the big concrete wall passageways. If you look very carefully in the photo above on the right, you can see a very slightly lighter area ..... this is a vent/window in the wall of the dam. The picture below on the right is taken from out that window when we walked out from the central hallway half way down in the dam. The super big and powerful generators can be seen on the left.

It was fun to be inside the wall of the dam, and kind of sobering to think of what could happen if an earthquake actually hit there! We were REALLY careful not to trip during this portion of the tour!

An equally strong motivator for the building of the dam was the control of the Colorado River which would flood parts of Arizona and California regularly. The control of the water has enabled the Coachella Valley in California to reliably produce crops and produce. The dam's construction, begun in 1931 and completed in 1935, is a world-renowned structure. Completed by six specific construction companies with specific expertise, it was finished two years ahead of schedule. It was a huge force in putting the nation back to work during the depression.

A big part of the story was how to divide the water rights among the seven states the Colorado River water serves. In 1922, a representative from each of the seven states and the federal government met for this purpose and created the Colorado River Compact. They divided the Colorado River Basin into an upper and lower half, and gave half of the river's annual estimated flow to each basin. Division of each basin's apportionment was left to the states in that basin.

Above on the left you see Lake Mead (and below), and can see how LOW it is. It is down about 30 feet, and they are speculating (hoping) this is just the tail end of a usual decade-long drought. It should start to regain its former depth in the next few years; if the Rocky Mountain snow pack really does not rebound (they had a lot of snow this year), it might truly be a sign of global warming.

The angels are part of the dedication/completion recognition. The dam was dedicated by FDR in 1935.

We really enjoyed the tour, and the yellow hard hats we had to wear. Once again, we were happy we were traveling in early May as we avoided hoards of crowds which descend once school is out.

Driving back to Las Vegas, we got a better view of how expansive Lake Mead is.

Once we made it back to Buster, after another stop at REI for a few last minute things, we continued our task of "eating down the fridge" as Gary calls it ..... trying to eat everything we have in the refrigerator or freezer (hadn't bought anything new for days), so that we have very little to throw out when we have to park Buster without power for a week or more!

Wednesday, May 5, was our last day in Las Vegas before the raft trip. We left Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort, and drove down to the strip to the Marriott Residence Inn on Hughes (Howard) Center Drive where our orientation meeting would take place, and where Buster would be parked for the duration of the trip. This was after we had a full morning: Gary took a 3 hour health-care provider CPR course needed for his dental re-licensure, and I got my hair cut and colored at Kelly Cardenas Salon. It was the best shampoo I've ever had .... and a little pricey, too. But the color is great, so I'm just going to enjoy it!

We were so pleased we had decided to just take it easy this week before the trip. We were very rested, and ready for anything!

As you read in "From Top to Bottom: Our Grand Canyon Adventure", it was a trip of a lifetime. We were on such a high when we returned on Thursday afternoon, May 13. We were proud of ourselves that we had done it, and that we all came through it safely and with no adverse effects ..... except being dirty and smelly. We all took long showers back at the Residence Inn in Las Vegas, and just walked across the parking lot to Gordon Biersch Brewing Company, a microbrewery with quite good food. We saw some of our raft-trip mates in there as well, although most folks actually headed straight for the airport when they got off the bus.

After an early evening the night before, we had a leisurely sleep in morning on Friday, the 14th. Gary and Liz just wanted to hang out in the pool most of the day, and that worked for them. I had a relatively short errand list ..... get my disposable camera film developed (I had the photos put on CDs so I could use them here on the laptop for the blog), look for a lab coat (Liz is playing at lab work like Temperance Brennan, Ph.D. on Bones!), and get a new camera. There was a Best Buy nearby .... I was all set.

I had time for an afternoon swim before we arrived for our early steak dinner at Morton's Steakhouse (they have the BEST chopped salad), and then to our 7:00 performance of LOVE (the Cirque d'Soleil show set to the Beatles music). We loved this one, too! (Sorry, no pics .... I didn't get my new camera out until we were on the road the next day!).

Las Vegas turned out to be a great staging area for the Grand Canyon. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there, but we were ready to move on to see what else lay in store on League's Excellent Adventure.

Stay tuned for more,

Julie, Gary and Liz