September 30, 2012

I HAD EATEN IN THE MOTEL'S RESTAURANT THE NIGHT BEFORE and was not impressed. Accordingly we decided to go to another restaurant for breakfast. I ordered three pancakes, but the waitress tried to talk me into a smaller order. She claimed that the pancakes were very large. Because three pancakes cost only six bucks, I figured that they couldn't be too big. When the order came, it looked like a stack of frisbees. I managed to make it through about half of them.

We tried to find a sports bar in town so that Carole could watch the Packers, but sports bars have not made their way into this corner of the world. Thinking that we might find a place where Carole could watch the Packers play near Monument Valley, we left Page around noon. Our destination was Kayenta, a town near Monument Valley. We didn't fill our tank with gas because our map showed that there were several towns on our route. When the gas tank was near empty, we saw a sign for one of the towns. What was labelled a town on our map turned out to be a collection of rusty trailers, but no gas station. The next "town" we saw looked just like the first one. With no town within 40 miles, and our gas tank on empty, we began practicing saying ya'at'eeh in case we met one of the locals who might have some gas. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a gas station appeared and we were able to fill our tank.

When we arrived in Kayenta, we discovered that it did not have a sports bar; so Carole sat in the Durango and listened to the game on Satellite radio; that's devotion. I was afraid she would burn up a tank of gas, but she told me that she used up only a quarter of a tank. In pellucid logic, she explained that using up a quarter of a tank of gas was cheaper than buying  a ticket to a game. At least the Packers won.

While Carole was listening to the game, I amused myself by reading the local phone book. Because there are so few people living in the area, the phone book covers a wide area. When Carole came back to the room, I told her that we had to visit a town in Utah named Fredonia. Frankly, I was surprised when she inquired as to why I wanted to visit this town with a hallowed name. I patiently explained to Carole why I wanted to visit Fredonia: "Don't you remember the classic Marx Brothers' film  Duck Soup, and Groucho singing "Hail Fredonia? Groucho, AKA Rufus T. Firefly, was the president of Fredonia during its war with a neighboring country."

We saw a sign indicating that there was a museum in the area dedicated to the Navajo code talkers who baffled the Japanese during WWII.  We decided to pass up the museum. After all, our oldest daughter and I have been talking in code for years. No one has ever been able to break our code.  In fact, most people don't even know we are talking in code.

September 29, 2012

WE LEFT  CANYON VILLAGE THIS MORNING to go to Lake Powell. We may have left Canyon Village, but we didn't leave the canyon: it was in sight for nearly fifty miles. The Colorado River starts at Lake Powell, and flows southward before bending westward to flow through the canyon. It was a clear day, and we could see Navajo Mountain over 90 miles in the distance.

After stopping several times to see the canyon from different angles, we finally reached the end of the canyon.

Not far from the east entrance is a watch tower which affords a commanding view of the canyon. I resisted the urge to climb the tower.

Once out of the park, we skirted the edge of a large Navajo reservation where the late Tony Hillerman set most of his mysteries. At one point, we drove within a few miles of Tuba City, a headquarters for the Navajo police frequented by Jimmy Chee and Joe Leaphorn, Hillerman's leading two detectives.  Throughout our drive, we could see the abject poverty of the Indians just as Hillerman had described in his novels. Many of The Navajos live in old trailers and have erected wooden stands by the highway to sell blankets.  When we reached the motel, we were happy to see that most of the employees are Navajo.

Page, the town at Lake Powell, is much more up-scale than most of the towns we have seen in the last several weeks.  The canyon rafting trips start here, and the lake is a very popular spot for house boating.

September 28, 2012

WHEN WE RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM OUR DAUGHTER to the effect that she and her husband could not take off work to meet us at Lake Powell, we spent some time this morning plotting out several new destinations in Colorado. After again walking along the rim and viewing the canyon, we decided to search out another ranger talk. Since we hadn’t heard one on elk, we decided to attend one in the early afternoon.

On our way to the ranger talk on elk, our bus was held up by a slow moving elk. During the ranger talk, we heard again that elk are in rut and are unpredictable. Their massive antlers can weigh as much as 80 pounds. Ironically, elks normally do not have to use their antlers in fights. In most cases, a mere “show of force” will scare off smaller competitor elks. If they do engage in fights, they run both the risk of becoming entangled with other elk antlers or suffering severe gashes.

 
Later in the day, we attended a ranger talk on California Condors, the largest bird in the United States. Faced with extinction a few years ago, the condors have made a remarkable comeback. Enlisting the assistance of scientists and hunters, the Park Service has inserted into the park birds born in captivity. From a low of 22 condors when they were first recognized as endangered, they now number over 400 worldwide. Grand Canyon, alone, has 87 condors. They are often confused with Turkey Vultures, but their wing-span of over 9 feet should be a dead giveaway. Although the ranger did not mention it, I came to a conclusion about both Turkey Vultures and California Condors: they are both really ugly birds.

September 27, 2012

OUR TRAIN RIDE/OVERNIGHT STAY had given us enough of an overview of Canyon Village that we knew how to get around Canyon Village. Because the shuttle buses are color coded, a practice we had first encountered years ago in the London Underground, it was easy to get to wherever you wanted to go: determine the color of the “line” where your destination is located and get on a bus marked with that color. We decided to check out a geology museum. It wasn’t much of a museum, but had a huge window offering a broad view of the canyon. On a shelf near the window, the Park had placed at least a dozen high-power binoculars. A convenient map indicated points of interest in the canyon. We could see where a number of rafters had pulled ashore, and could make out the location of the Phantom Ranch. With the zoom lens on my camera, the photo I took made some rafters look closer than the two miles away they had pulled their rafts ashore.

During the balance of the day, we ambled along the rim and viewed the canyon from a variety of vantage points.  As we walked along the rim, we noticed that as Americans we were minorities. I was waiting for one of the Italians to start talking to Carole, but it didn’t happen. Early fall is a popular time for foreigners to visit the West.

Tired of eating sandwiches, we had dinner in the Arizona Room in the Bright Angel Lodge.  In addition to a Caesar Salad, I ordered a huge “sampler” which included filet, ribs, chicken, green beans, and baked potatoes. Carole ordered a Rib Eye served with a shrimp topping. 

The night ranger program was conducted by a guy who had been a ranger for around thirty years, and his experience showed. He had some title to his program, but answered questions on numerous topics. He mentioned that while cougars are rare in the park, a tracking camera had once filmed one in the park several minutes after two rangers had passed the same site. 

Oddly enough, squirrels account for the largest number of animal attacks in the park.  Despite warnings not to feed them and further warnings that squirrels can transmit a form of the plague, an average of one person is bitten by a squirrel. In each case, a tourist was feeding the squirrel.

September 26, 2012

THE CAR MAN AND THE BUS GUIDE left us so exhausted that we slept late. When we eventually got up, we took a walk to the rim and again marveled over the size and ever changing light of the Canyon. Many prominent artists come to paint the canyon, and I snapped a photo of one of them.

The friend we had dinner with the other evening had hiked rim to rim hike last year; and looking through our binoculars, we began to appreciate what that meant:  a mile walk down into the Canyon, a ten mile walk across it, and then a hike up the North Rim. Because the route is not along straight lines, the total distance is around 26 miles.

Many people have an urge to get to the bottom of the canyon. For hikers, there are moderate, strenuous and extra-strenuous hikes. Occasionally, hikers will become too tired to make the climb back up. If they decide that they want a helicopter ride to the top, the price tag is $3,000. Some people like to hike to Phantom Ranch, the only lodging at the bottom of the Canyon. Other people take burro rides to the bottom. The burros are very well trained, but like to walk as close to the edge as they can. A few people, after seeing the movie Thelma and Louise have committed suicide by driving cars into the canyon.

After pondering a possible descent, we decided against it. It was around 100 degrees in the canyon, and we will blame the heat when we tell people why we decided not to hike down into the canyon. The truth is that there has never been a time in my life when I would have thought that hiking up and down the canyon would have been fun. Instead of risking a $3,000 helicopter extraction fee, we took a shuttle to a ranger show. On our way, we saw a massive elk with a rack which would have dissuaded even the stupidest tourist from approaching it. Directly across the road from the elk, a male mule deer was quietly eating.  In comparison to the elk, the mule looked like a small dog.The ranger program was a one hour walk and talk and killed the time before the train left to take us back to our car and luggage.

When we got on the train, we saw that we had the same car man who had entertained us the day before.  Either because he was 103 years old or because it was near the end of his work day, he was much quieter on the way home. Instead of telling jokes, he decided to favor the passengers with one on one conversations. He had a ten minute conversation with a girl who looked to be about 17 and who had completed a rim to rim hike. I guess I have been retired too long, for she was an attorney for an L.A. firm specializing in estate planning.

When he started moving our way, Carole thought she could prevent him from intruding on our privacy by leaning over and kissing me.  Nothing could stop him, however. I looked over my shoulder and saw his nose about six inches from me.  He blurted out, “Yuck, yuck, what’s going on here?”  I then reverted to one of several of my pseudo foreign languages.  Not yet deterred, he asked Carole what “land” I was from.  When she told him Green Bay, he said:  “Oh, a football player.”  After he left, Carole commented that I should have used my crazy-eyes ploy, a tactic I used to use to fend off drunks when I was taking the late train home from work.  

The banjo player didn’t make an appearance today, but a woman with an accordion came into our car and said: “I’m from Tennessee; where are you all from?” A guy behind us yipped that he was from Tennessee too. When she approached me, I drawled out: “I’m from the Valley of the Three Forks, right on the Kentucky border, the same town where Sergeant Alvin York was born.” Her eyes got big and she said: “Really.” Because she seemed like a nice lady, I couldn’t sustain the con and admitted that I was from Indiana. Demonstrating the quality of public education in Tennessee, she replied: “Well, Indiana is in the South.”  Next, she pointed to her accordion and said: “I’ll bet you know what this is.” When I told her that the people who played the accordion in my home town were Polish, she played a few bars of one of Frank Yankovic’s polkas. I showed my appreciation with a few hoya hoyas. Noting that the young female attorney was watching, I said: “My home town is so backward that the courts still follow the Rule Against Perpetuities. I knew that my reference to an arcane rule of property law would interest her, but I was surprised at her response. She laughed and said California also still followed the Rule Against Perpetuities. I admitted that, after generations of law students, lawyers and judges had struggled to understand this holdover from the common law, Illinois had abolished it years ago.

The picture lady, who had taken pictures of most of the passengers the day before, came into our car with a huge stack of photos which she offered to sell to people for $35 a photo. I looked at her expectantly as she looked in vain through her stack of photos for ours. Shortly after the picture lady left our car, we saw masked riders alongside of the train. They were getting ready for the pièce de résistance of the ride: a fake train robbery. To assist the banditos, the train stopped so that they could board without having to leap onto the train. As they strolled through the cars, some of the excited passengers stuffed money into their belts like they were the Chippendale Boys. They probably made out better than some of the real train robbers. In any event, they occupied the last fifteen minutes of our train ride. We found our luggage and drove back to the Grand Canyon, where we had booked a room in a lodge for a couple of nights.

September 25, 2012

AFTER BREAKFAST, WE MANAGED to avoid the “gun fight” staged for the tourists, and jumped on the train. To make sure that no one slept or read on the 2 hour and 15 minute train ride to the Canyon, a “car man” was stationed on each car. Our car man was 103 years old and kept up a constant line of jabber for most of the ride. Complete with a “by cracky” accent which sounded more Kentucky than Arizona, he acted much like an interlocutor in an old minstrel show with an inexhaustible supply of jokes, most of which were a cut below cornball. He was interrupted once by a banjo player who played such western standards as the "Wabash Cannonball."  A little later a  picture lady appeared offering to take peoples’ pictures for a “nominal fee.” When the picture lady reached us, she said: “Would you like your picture taken?” I replied: “No, I wouldn’t want my wife to see it.”  She left us alone after that.

Carole had scheduled a bus tour which met us at the train. When I saw the guide, I was ecstatic. He looked like a double for Curly in the Three Stooges. He even had some of Curly’s gestures. I half expected him to say “woo  woo  woo” and start performing his famous Curly shuffle. Within minutes of the start of his spiel, Carole began complaining that he was worse than the old guy on the train. Like most women, Carole detests the Stooges, and I assumed that her problems with the guide were simply a subliminal reaction to the guide’s eerie similarity to Curly. I soon changed my mind. He had an irritating habit of saying sentences and phrases twice, like the Mafioso nick-named “Jimmie Two-Times.” Also, he had a tendency of repeating certain words three times. As a change of pace, he would draw out certain sentences very slowly: “The Miss-iss-i-pp-i i-s a ve-r-y s-low r-iv-er.” Most annoying, however, he was a “required responder.” He would make a banal comment and then throw up his arms and say “right?”  If he did not get a response, he would continue to say “right?” One of his comments was “Is everyone going to eat tonight?” I knew there was a problem when Carole muttered the contrarian response of “no” to the question about eating.

He finally stopped where we could view the Canyon, and we quickly got as far away from him as possible and had our first awe inspiring  view of the canyon.  A mile deep and twenty miles wide, photos cannot do it justice. A single photo, even when the camera is set on “landscape,” captures about one percent of the view. 

The Colorado River looked like a small creek from the rim of the Canyon. My zoom lens revealed that we were observing one of the worst rapids on the river.

I could not get out of my mind the realization that Carole’s parents had twice taken a raft trip through all 277 miles of the Canyon. You might think that Carole’s mother was forced to take the raft trips by a macho husband. Although Carole’s dad was very much a “man’s man,” it was her mother who insisted on the trips. When Carole’s parents retired, her mother decided that she wanted to “do things.” In addition to the raft trips, she initiated a number of other trips, including a month trip to Egypt where they went up the Niles as far as Abu Simbel, a trip to China and a trip to Machu Picchu.

Impressed with Carole’s parents’ raft trips, we ended up taking a day raft trip with our kids soon after Carole’s parents returned from their first trip. Our trip was also on the Colorado, but not in the Canyon. We had decided that our kids should have the experience of running some rapids, just like their grandparents had done. While we were going through one set of rapids, I was pitched overboard. Our oldest daughter decided that she had to “save her dad,” and jumped in also. She needed have worried; I shot through the rapids in seconds. It was like the world’s fastest water slide. While our oldest daughter and I were laughing, we noted that Carole appeared to be more than mildly upset.

Carole’s irritation with our guide got so bad that she wanted to leave the tour early. Still hoping that the guide would end up with the Curly Shuffle, we stayed until the end. To date, none of the guides we have used have solicited for tips. We hadn’t even seen a single discretely placed tip box on any of our tours. Remembering my maxim that, “The worst guides always expect the biggest tips,” I was ready for Curly. Sure enough, when we exited the bus, old Curly had his hand out, palm up. I had made sure that I had a bag in each hand, and simply shrugged my shoulders sadly. Worn out from the tour, we ate dinner and retired to our room.

September 24, 2012

OUR DRIVE FROM LAS VEGAS TO WILLIAMS, ARIZONA was both scenic and restful: no steep mountain driving. However, we are again in the maw of Xanaterra, that grasping, greedy monopoly.  I was surprised to find that we have free WiFi here.

Xanaterra's "lodge" has a very confusing layout. In fact, when you check in you are given a two-sided map, one for side for each floor, which shows exactly what a labyrinth they created. Theseus could not find his way out this place. In fact, some senior citizens have become lost for days.

I am getting car-lag. When we drove to Las Vegas, we were on Pacific time. Williams is on Mountain time, normally a hour later than Pacific time. I say "normally," because Williams does not buy into daylight savings time. As a result, the time here is the same as it is in Las Vegas. This is almost as confusing as Indiana where parts of the state are on Central time and other parts are on Eastern time. In addition, Indiana counties can choose whether they want to buy into "fast time," a localism for daylight savings time.

Tomorrow, we take a train ride to the Grand Canyon and a bus tour once we get there. Then, we return here. The train cars are really old; they are so old that some of them are exactly like the ones the Illinois Central used well into the 1960s. When the IC finally replaced them, they replaced them with ones exactly like the lighter colored ones below.  The old cars were far better built. While the IC was phasing in the newer cars, there was an accident where some of the new cars collided with the old cars: 39 people were killed. After the collision, the new cars looked like tin cans that had been ripped open. I hope that we get on one of the old cars tomorrow.

When we return from the canyon, we will drive into the heart of Grand Canyon National Park and stay for several days at one of the Xanaterra run lodges. If the lodge in the park charges $15 an hour to use WiFi, we may be off line for a few days.

September 23, 2012

WE TOOK OUT A DAY FROM OUR TRIP to visit a guy I have known since kindergarten. While we have always had very different life styles, we have always been friends. He has always been somewhat wild. Some of his friends in high school, for example, were among the most disreputable kids in school. Given the type of crowd he ran with, it is not surprising that he was involved in drinking and other "bad boy" behavior. In contrast, when I was in high school, my role model was Pat Boone, the then popular, milk-drinking, clean-living pop singer.

When my friend was in college, he took a year off to live in America's Sodom, New Orleans. Living not far from The House of the Rising Sun, he must have had quite a year. Over the years, he drifted to Las Vegas, America's Gomorrah. Finding Las Vegas more to his liking, he ended up living there for many years running poker rooms for such places as Bellagio.

When he returned to our wholesome hometown for a few years, I thought that he had finally seen the light. My hopes were dashed when I heard that he had moved back to Las Vegas. I was surprised to see that he may have finally seen the light. He has been living a clean life-style, including hiking throughout the mountains in the West.

September 22, 2012

WE HAD A LONG, BUT A GOOD DAY in Zion National Park today. There are very few roads in the park, and limited parking. Like most people, we parked just outside the park and went to the visitors' center to get some basic background on the park. Carole picked up a new Jr. Ranger work sheet. 

Shuttlebuses run every 5 or 10 minutes, and we hopped on one to see those sights where Carole could do her "home work." One of those stops was at the Lodge where we could both eat lunch and look at the mountains. The lodge has a large front lawn, and people were sprawled all over it either eating lunch or simply relaxing. 

We took in a ranger presentation where we learned that the park has a large number of Tarantula Hawks.  They are not really hawks, but flying insects slightly larger than a wasp. Despite their small size, they impart one of the most painful stings of any insect in the world. Being stung by one has been likened to a three minute electrical shock. The ranger assured us that they usually don't bite people. In other words, she told us what we have been told about rattlesnakes, grizzly bears and mountain lions. I was certainly reassured by her comment.

A large number of people who come to the park come to hike its numerous hiking trails. Those trails range from very short, simple ones to extremely strenuous ones. Climbing is also popular in the park. Yesterday, a climber was found dead on one mountain. He was rappelling and fell. He caught one of his feet in his rope and was found upside down. I learned about this incident in an on-line newspaper. His death was not mentioned by any of the rangers or tour guides we met.

There are spectacular mountain views at every turn.

It is difficult to believe that a small river, the Virgin River, carved out these mountains over a period of millions of years. The widest point in the river we saw was around 25 feet, but heavy rains and melting snow can turn the little river into a large, raging body of water. Two years ago, the river flooded covering some of the roads and forcing the park to close for a time.

Hopping onto and off of the buses was tiring. Walking around trying to find the answers to Carole's home work was also tiring. By 4:30 pm we were ready to go back to the Visitors' Center and get Carole's new badge. Part of her homework required her to draw a badge for the park. When she turned in her Jr. Ranger brochure, the rangers passed it around and gave her the usual compliments.