Days 12 and 13: Sedona and home

     On to our final two night stop, at Sedona. South of Flagstaff the road descends into a deep and heavily wooded gorge. For the first time on our trip we are in well-watered, green country, with early summer lupins and fresh leaved trees. The town itself is a prosperous little tourist town, full of shops selling crystals and native American nicknacks.

      We explored several areas here on foot, including the West Fork Creek and the area of big red bluffs to the south, where we met a lovely lady who had retired and was living in a Winnebago on permanent tour of the national parks, with her cute little dog as her only companion.

      We also managed a trip on the Verde Canyon Railroad, an old mining track that made someone a fortune at the time, and was bought up by a local native American entrepreneur, after it fell into disuse. Arriving in a tropical downpour, which soon cleared up, we were shown to our luxury car, with armchairs and a running buffet, and a sound track of every pop song ever made that mentions trains (and boats and planes). Our down-home stetsoned guide explained the natural and man-made history rolling past, from thousand year old native houses to the day the How the West Was Won film crew blew up the water tower, as we traversed the world’s bendiest train line.

      So to the final leg, out of the pines and into the Arizona desert with its organ-pipe cacti, then through the vast, ugly sprawl of Phoenix. We spent a little time in the Desert Botanical Gardens, very pleasantly laid out and stuffed with exotic dry climate plant species, before heading to the airport.

All in all, a rich and fascinating tour, with every type of weather known to man, and natural wonders that have to be seen to be fully comprehended. But I hope these words and pictures capture a little of the magic.

Days 10 and 11: Grand Canyon

   

  So, moving on again towards the final sections of our trip, we approached the Grand Canyon, via an interesting old trading post by a rickety suspension bridge at Cameron. Our first sight of the Canyon was at Navajo Point, where is found the Desert View Watchtower, a quirky building that dates to the period in the 1930s that the national park was opening up to visitors.

      From here you can look into the depths of the canyon itself, which is so vast that our brains can’t really comprehend it. But you just spend a lot of time staring into this amazing abyss, transfixed.

      The Colorado river can be glimpsed a mile straight down below the rim: and rising above are layer after layer of sediment. The canyon is 277 miles long and up to 18 miles wide.

      We continued along the south rim’s scenic drive, stopping off many times at the various viewpoints, for about thirty miles to the main village, then south a little to Tusayan, where we stayed for a couple of nights. This is a typical national park fringe town of motels, steak houses and the like. There is a quirky IMAX presentation, which includes great fly throughs of the bottom of the canyon, but with highly dubious ‘historical recreations’.

      No — the canyon itself is the thing, and we took several long walks along the rim, watching a chilly, brilliant sunset and along the bluffs further west during the day. Theodore Roosevelt, a great advocate for its preservation, said: ‘The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world. Let this great wonder of nature remain as it is now. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimeity and loveliness.’ The national park service do a great job in preserving it, while allowing easy, unobtrusive access, and long may this continue.

Day 9: Lake Powell

      Glen Canyon Dam is an engineering triumph of the 1950s, which flooded the Colorado river valley and some of its tributaries, forming a hugely popular water recreation area, and one of the south-western USA’s most important water and energy sources. However the recent three year long drought means that the lake is a hundred feet below its optimal level, leading to rationing for farmers and other users.

      The lake has great numbers of houseboats. This being America, they really look the size of floating houses which, like the Winnebago motor homes, allow for travelling in some style. With nearly 2000 miles of shoreline, there is plenty of space for these ungainly vessels to pootle around, although the surrounding countryside has a rather desolate, desiccated look.

We stayed one night in Page, a fairly prosperous looking town built to service the dam construction and now a tourist centre. We found a little Mexican redneck cafe that was cheerful and friendly, but probably not a good place to get into a political discussion.

Days 7 and 8: Monument Valley

     

Leaving Moab bright and early next morning, we drove through young pine forests mostly on back roads, taking in the Natural Bridges national monument, and continued across a flat plateau, before suddenly finding ourselves on the edge of a precipice. The road descends rapidly through a series of hairpin bends so vertiginous that my companions threatened to get out and walk, leaving me to drive the car on the gravelly, sloppy surface. But our trusty Ford Fusion got us to the bottom — and there, hovering on the horizon, was our next destination: Monument Valley.

      Through Mexican Hat (above) and you are into the lands of the Navajo Nation, a self governing state-sized area that we would drive through for the next few hundred miles. Monument Valley itself is a red desert with the familiar buttes of John Ford movies. We had to split to stay in separate hotels, but each has spectacular views across this famous landscape.

      Everything in the valley is run and staffed by the native American community. The hotels and rooms are comfortable and well designed, but we were warned off the food: what we saw looked uninteresting, so we ended up picnicking in our room on what we could glean from the general store.

      On our first evening we sat on a cliff overlooking the Mitten buttes as the shadows lengthened and the sunset polished up the sandstone until it was glowing bright and deepest red. Next morning we woke early to watch the sunrise behind the monuments. No wonder the film makers love this place.

      With my knee playing up, Ian and Kathleen managed a long walk around the buttes while I took it easy on the first afternoon, and we had a leisurely drive around the (inevitable) scenic drive the next day, stopping off at many good viewpoints — although we resisted the temptation to hire a horse to be photographed in Lone Ranger style at John Wayne rock.

Days 5 and 6: Canyonlands and Arches national parks

     Next day, we took off and, in improving weather, continued on the scenic highway to its end, with the great wall of the San Rafael Reef on our left, until we met Interstate 70. The sediments here are distorted into a great wave (or anticline). This was a major barrier to early settlers trekking west, but a narrow river-cut gap was used as a mule trail and now the interstate plunges through it in sweeping curves, dropping rapidly from the plateau to the plain to the east. A turn out at this point provides a dramatic view.

      A quick lunch stop in Green River, a fading former mining town sidelined by the interstate, and we continue on to Moab, a much more pleasant prospect. This is a stopping off point for two national parks and our next resting place, courtesy of Comfort Suites. It’s another tourist oriented town, with a lively centre, and tree lined streets and squares, although the main road, one of the few north south routes in this region, is very busy. We were caught out by a massive tropical downpour soon after we arrived, with lightning, thunder and hail, but braved the weather for a wander, eventually ending up at Twisted Sisters Cafe, where we had one of the best meals on the whole trip - a very friendly little place and much better than the Desert Bistro, which we tried on the second night. As with many American restaurants that aspire to be at the top end (i.e. expensive), this one tries too hard, with too much going on on the plate.

     
      The following morning, we went out to Grand View Point, where you can see the vast inaccessible wilderness of Canyonlands National Park. The Colorado and Green Rivers have carved out their deep valleys, leaving a narrow mesa 1400 feet above, which they call the Island in the Sky. It lived up to its name on this visit, as the valleys filled with cloud and sometimes the depths around us could only be glimpsed. Ian stayed back as Kathleen and I took the 2 mile walk to the end, along open stone ledges, with plunging cliffs to the side. The cloud suddenly dispersed and the vistas appeared.

     Next, it was time for a quick tour of Arches National Park, much more accessible and therefore highly visited, with a scenic drive that tours the more spectacular geology. Here, there are literally dozens of natural arches, water and wind carved, as well as stacks with almost human form, and oddly balanced rocks. We walked to some of them along easy trails, including the routes they call Park Avenue and the Devils Garden trail. (They like biblical references — well, this is still Utah! Others include Fiery Furnace, Tower of Babel, and the Garden of Eden.)

Days three and four: to Capitol Reef

Battling to the car in Scott of the Antarctic conditions, we leave the plateau and drop down into relative calm, still cold but sunny, and investigate some further delights on Scenic Route 12.  Best along the route is the Petrified Forest at Escalante.  There is an easy walking trail up the hill, to visit the 150 million year old remains of trees, that were buried in shallow lake deposits and molecule by molecule replaced by mineral crystals, to produce an exact likeness of tree trunks.  Some are so detailed that you can see the exact form of the bark and even in some cases the tree rings within.  

To run your hand over these and feel the exact shape of the tree, just as it would have felt when it fell -- and it feels just like its current coniferous descendants -- is quite an experience.  

This area is known as the Grand Staircase, and all around are the terraces of sandstone and alternating limestone sediments descending, layer upon layer.  From about 200 million years ago, there was a great shallow sea between where the Rockies are today, and the Appalachians. Into this at various times descended the shells and bodies of chalky creatures to provide limestone strata; material was eroded from the surrounding mountains to form sand bars, or sand dunes invaded the site; volcanoes spewed out vast deposits of ash and lava bombs.  Layer upon layer, miles deep, until there was a great tectonic squeeze and the whole area was uplifted way above sea level to produce a vast plateau.  Then rapid erosion cut in the deep canyons leading to the Colorado.  The "staircase" is the exposure of the different layers, some softer, some harder, eroding at different rates and providing different profiles as they get exposed.  In the deeper canyons tens of millions of years are exposed to view.  

All day the temperature remains below zero, but at least the wind has dropped.  We ascend to 9400 feet and extensive aspen woods, interspersed with pines: the temperature drops even further and the weather  closes in with snow flurries and heavy skies.

We finally reach Torrey, where we are staying for two nights.  Our motel is perched on an outcrop facing a great layered wall, glowing in the late afternoon sun for a while, until the weather here too deteriorates and the cloud descends until nothing is visible.  By morning there's a good covering of snow everywhere and it's still falling. We drop into the Chuck Wagon General Store for breakfast.  It feels a little like Twin Peaks in this remote corner, so I order cherry pie and "dam' fine coffee".  The town is tiny but with a few much older buildings harking back to the original settlers, and a fine avenue of trees lines Main Street. 

The weather clears enough to let us visit the Capitol Reef National Park.  On the left are huge ranges of red sandstone, some layers incredibly detailed, others great blank walls. And on the right there are huge incisions many hundreds of feet deep further into geological time.  We are able to go to the edge of Gooseneck Canyon and look into its depths. Once it was a meandering stream on a low lying plateau.  Then as the rock was rapidly forced up, the stream cut down through the Mesozoic layer cake, maintaining the loops and bends of its course. We carry on to the Grand Wash, another such canyon where we can walk along its bed around 13 bends, looking up at the looming walls, some heavily overhanging our path.  As we walk, the snow starts up again, in flurries, then something stronger. We turn back and by the time we get to the car it's getting serious and we're getting soaked by freezing sleet (but it turns out Tilley hats are also waterproof). 

Just time for a visit to the old Gifford homestead, one of the few artefacts of early Mormon settlers in this remote area, the last to be explored and mapped by Europeans in the continental US. A good place to buy patchwork place mats, cedar rolling pins and home made rhubarb and strawberry pies -- at least that's what we came away with. 

Day two: to Zion and Bryce Canyon

An early start and we headed for Zion National Park, via its doorstep little resort village, Springdale, where we were all persuaded to buy Tilley hats, "made with Canadian persnicketiness" and guaranteed for life: perfect, we were assured by the charming lady who sold them to us, in sun, wind and rain.  Little did we know how well they would be tested over the next days.

Certainly it was getting windy as we walked in the park's canyons, but still sunny and fine.  The hats' ingenious cords held them firmly in place, once we had mastered the technique.  The canyon we followed wound deep into Zion's heartland, with a small river flowing out surrounded by cottonwood and juniper trees and many shrubs and spring flowers.

We continued on our way through a narrow tunnel then out into a completely different, dry, chaotic landscape.  We soon realised that the landscape changes completely over each horizon.  Wonders that we found amazing here don't even get national park status, because the parks have even better stuff!  We followed Scenic Byway 12, "Utah's first All-American road", and scenic it was. We were especially taken by Red Canyon, a collation of weird shapes resembling Asian temples or Castilian castles.  

So for our second night, at the Grand Hotel in Bryce Canyon City (population 300).  We had been steadily climbing since St George, and getting out of the car were almost flattened by an icy blast.  (Tilley hats up to the challenge though.). Even the locals were surprised by this late cold snap.  There were warnings of high winds gusting to 60mph, and temperatures dropping to minus 7 ("feels like minus 15").  From the tropics to the Arctic in one day?  

Nevertheless we managed a late afternoon visit to the adjoining national park.      The town sits on a rather bland plateaus, but offers up its great treasure as a surprise to unsuspecting tourists.  The land falls away into the vast canyon filled with layer upon layer of rock, fantastically carved into turrets, walls, and endless features, all looking splendid in the late afternoon sunlight as cloud shadows scudded across.  We visited several lookout points and walked along part of the rim, to get the most of the changing views.

A new trip to.the south west US

Time to restart my blog! We are in the southwestern U.S. on a tour of the national parks and having such a wide range of experiences that I'll forget it all if I don't write it down. I'm touring with Ian and Kathleen (with whom we stayed in New York before flying out here -- more on NY later). Five days into the tour and we have run out of adjectives.  We have only travelled across the bottom edge of one state so far (Utah) but the sense of space, of immensity, and of our infinitesimal place in nature, is very strong. Space -- and time -- because this is a region where you come face to face with the workings of the earth over geological timescales, with layer upon layer of sediments deposited miles deep, but here exposed to view.  But enough waffle! On to 

DAY ONE

We flew out of JFK to Las Vegas, which we dashed through like a nun in a brothel, our aim being to see the wonders of nature, not the excesses of Mammon.

We did cruise the Strip, which nowadays seems more Disneyland than ever.  Soon though we were out on the interstate across the Arizona desert, heading for our first night stop, just across the border into Utah, at St George.

A very pleasant little clapboard housed, picket fenced place, dominated by its whited sepulchre of a Mormon church, all under an immense red sandstone cliff.  Temperatures were tropical after New York and there was time for a dip in the hotel pool.  We found a surprisingly good restaurant with a panoramic view of the cliffs and watched as the sun set, shadows moving across the cliff, then the light twinkling on in the town below.  We were also introduced to the delights of Utah's microbreweries: it turns out they produce some fine IPAs and porters.  Come to Utah for craft beer -- who knew?  The omens seemed good for our trip.