Watching the Ballooners

We started our second day in Page, AZ by watching the balloon ascension from our hotel room. This was totally unplanned. We learned the annual balloon ascension would be the weekend we are in Page. After we checked in, we learned one of the ascension sites was visible from our room. The weather didn’t cooperate, but it sure was fun watching them mill around from the comfort of our room.

Glen Canyon Dam Visitor’s Center

From there, we visited Glen Canyon Dam. It was a pretty standard dam tour. I think Hoover Dam was a lot cooler. Although the visitor center building is a very cool.

View at the end of Hanging Garden Trail

We took a short hike to a hanging garden – which means moss-like plants growing on the wall of a wet rock. If the garden wasn’t all that great, the hike itself was very nice. Notice Danita near the bottom of the picture.

Lake Powell from the Boat

I especially liked the “Castle” on the right near the horizon. I’m still doing my new hobby of eating in amazing places. Yesterday I ate at Lee’s Ferry (the original, upstream location) and Horseshoe Bend. Today, I ate at the top of the Hanging Garden trail and on the Lake Powell boat trip we took after the hike.

Navajo Canyon, Navajo Wash Wall

The boat tour included travel up two canyons. The first was Navajo Canyon, which contains a way-cool wall with “Navajo Wash”. It looks rather like a psychedelic mural. This photo really doesn’t do it justice.

Antelope Canyon

We also visited Antelope Canyon. The channel kept getting narrower. We were in a substantial boat. We were all convinced the boat wouldn’t even fit. The pilot managed to turn it around and drive it back out.

After that, it was time for the drive back to Pipe Spring. Tomorrow’s a work day …

Navajo Bridge

We are on an overnight trip to Page, AZ. We started out with a communion service and breakfast in Kanab. Then we drove to the Colorado River just above the Grand Canyon. Navajo Bridge was built in 1929, making it efficient for cars to cross the Colorado River. By 1990, they needed a wider bridge that could handle heavier trucks. They left the old bridge up for pedestrians to use.

Original location of Lee’s Ferry. “Lee’s Backbone” is in the background.

Before Navajo Bridge, the only way to cross the river around here was to take Lee’s Ferry. John D. Lee was a Mormon. Back in 1857, Brigham Young was building a theocratic nation-state in Utah. President Buchanan took exception to that and decided to send out a civil governor, judges, and 2500 Federal troops. The Mormons decided the only reason to send troops would be to throw them out of Utah. This set up a hysterical war mentality that ultimately lead to the Meadow Mountain Massacre, where the Mormons in southern Utah killed 110 people in a wagon train trying to go to California. John D. Lee was the only person identified by name to participate in the massacre.

Building at Lee’s Ferry

Brigham sent Lee to a remote lumber mill for a few years. Then he sent him to the even more remote Colorado river to establish a ferry service for Mormons who wanted to move into Arizona. Lee created the ferry a few miles upstream of where they eventually built Navajo Bridge.  Lee’s ferry used a steep hill, gaining 300 feet of elevation, called “Lee’s Backbone”. It was the hardest part of the journey to AZ. Wagons had to be double-teamed with oxen to make it up the hill. A few years later, Lee was tried for the massacre, found guilty, and executed by being shot. He was not the only person to participate in the massacre, but he was the only person ever punished.

Second location of Lee’s Ferry

Lee’s widow took over the ferry and moved it downstream, closer to Navajo Bridge. The new location avoided the steep hill, but snow melt made the river impassible in the summer. Over the years, a cable was added to make the ferry safer. The ferry was used to transport materials for the Navajo Bridge. Unfortunately, the ferry sank about 6 months before the bridge was complete. They had to finish the bridge without the ferry, which added over a hundred miles of travel between the two sides of the bridge.

Steam Engine

Most people around here don’t know about the two different locations for Lee’s ferry. So now you know more than most about a small piece of Mormon history. The steam engine shown here was brought out when they found gold in the area. Charles Spenser started a gold mining company. Besides the steam engine, there are also remnants of a large steam boiler and the steam boat. The gold was very fine — really just dust. The plans for removing the gold were a total flop. The gold mining company was a spectacular failure.

Horseshoe Bend

After that, we went to Horseshoe Bend. This is an easy 3/4 mile walk to a point where the Colorado River goes through a spectacular 300 degree bend around a piece of sandstone rock. The vantage point is high above the river. The view is quite dramatic.

We finished the day with hamburgers and ice cream for dinner. We’re snugly ensconced in our hotel room in the city of Page, AZ; well positioned for tomorrow’s adventures.

Orson Adams House, last house standing from the old village of Harrisburg, which died when the river was re-routed

Life proceeds apace out here “on the strip”. The part of Arizona between the Grand Canyon and the Vermilion Cliffs is known as the Arizona strip. It’s called a high desert because on the Colorado plateau, so the altitude is 5,000 feet (just like Denver).  There is only one road, going East-West on the south side if the Vermilion Cliffs. Every trip involves going through either Kanab to the east or St. George to the west.

A Red Cliff

This weekend we went west to the Red Cliffs area. The area is managed by BLM (just like the area the Bundys were acquitted of seizing). There’s a tent campground (no RVs permitted). We took an easy walk to some Anasazi ruins. Some people say they should be called “Ancestral Puebloans” or “The Ancient Ones” because the word Anasazi is a Navajo word that means “ancient enemies”. The scenery was nice enough, but the ruins weren’t all that much to look at. We found two men from OK finishing up their work of installing new signs, which was as interesting as anything else.

Anasazi area sign, ready for mounting

I wrote earlier that just before we left, BoA (Bank of America) decided we had to have new credit cards and they had to be activated. The new cards were identical to the old ones, except the new card had “World Traveler” printed on the front. After a long phone call, I got the bank to send additional cards overnight so we could activate them before leaving on our trip.

2 Guys from OK. They’ve been working out here for a month. They go home next week.

BoA did it again. I’ve been downloading transactions to Quicken for years. It’s an easy way to keep track of expenses. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped working. BoA pretends they know nothing about it, and they refuse to help. Still, it’s our major credit card and they give us 1% cash back with a minimum of gimmicks and hassles.

“Ancient Enemy” ruins

Then they issued a new credit card. Again. Our old cards were deactivated Tuesday. This time we are using an internet phone service. It’s OK for short calls, but the sound quality is not good and it keeps on fading in and out. I wasn’t up to a long phone call with BoA. We let the card expire and tossed them in the trash. If we get new cards and if BoA lets us activate them, we’ll keep the account. Otherwise, we’ll be looking at Chase or Capital One after we get back home. In the mean time, our backup Visa card is now our primary card. I didn’t like it because it doesn’t support downloading into Quicken and the rebates are full of gimmicks. On the other hand, we got new cards from them, forwarded to us in Pipe Spring. And we were able to use the old card until the new cards were activated.

Yesterday I realized I had set up our medical insurance payments for the rest of the year using our BoA card. I don’t know what the website is to change that. (Those records are at home.) Life is full of fun little surprises.

This is how we knew we were at the right place for sunrise

I got some stunning pics this time. This is mostly a photo-tale of the Bryce Canyon, with apologies to those of you who can’t get to the pictures. Yesterday, temperatures were near 70 and very comfortable. Our room was nice, although TV was limited. The best thing we could find to watch was Rush Hour 2. When we got up to drive to Bryce, it was 22 degrees. It was so cold that the car’s tire pressure warning light turned on. (It turned off when the temperature got up to 50.) We had the clothing we needed, but it was still rather chilly.

View of Sunrise Canyon

The first viewpoint at Bryce is called “Sunrise”. The second viewpoint, 1/2 mile down an easy walk, is called “Sunset”. You need to know this to understand what we did first off. We watched the Sunrise at Sunrise. Then we walked to Sunset. We ate our breakfast at Sunset in the morning sun, then walked on to Sunrise.

Sunrise at Bryce

After our sunrise excursion, we went to the lodge. Room rates at the lodge were triple our room. They didn’t have any TV at all, and their WiFi was even worse than our WiFi. What they *did* have was a real fireplace with a real wood fire, free coffee, and nice public bathrooms; all of which we enjoyed very much.

View of Sunrises Canyon

After warming up, we went back out to see the rest of the viewpoints. Temperatures were quite comfortable and got back to near 70. We had a great time until around Noon, when the viewpoints got mobbed and parking was not available. We decided we had a very nice time, had gotten some great pictures, and we could reasonably go home. We stopped at the Thunderbird Restaurant for lunch. In spite of their “Ho-Made Pies”, it was a very nice place. (They claim “Ho Made” wasn’t a slur when they started the restaurant in the 1930s.) We didn’t have room for pie, but our lunch was quite good and reasonably priced.

View of Sunrise Canyon

Sunset Point

Sunset Point

A real fire and free coffee were much appreciated

Rainbow Point

Black Birch Canyon

Ponderosa Point

Ponderosa Point

Agua Canyon

Natural Bridge

Fairview Point

Piracy Point

Paria View

Paria View

Thunderbird Restaurant “Ho Made Pies”

Shakespeare Arch Trail

Red Rock Canyon, with the moon in the background

On Tuesday, our last day of work this week, Danita got laryngitis. She had two fort tours in the afternoon. Another ranger took her first tour and I took her second. We were both tired by the end of the day. Wednesday we were still both tired. I slept in until after 6, which is later than I’ve slept for many months. I’ve been popping the “C” and Cold-Eeze. So far, I’ve felt mildly under the weather, but that’s it. Danita seems to feel pretty good, other than that she can’t talk. We took it easy Wednesday, doing our grocery shopping and minimal chores.

Angle’s Palace Trail

By Thursday, we were feeling good. That’s a very good thing because we had reservations for a hotel room near Bryce Canyon. Bryce is a little over 2-hours from Pipe Spring. We could have visited Bryce in one day. But we decided to make it an overnight trip. Today, we visited Kodachrome park. Tomorrow, we’ll be at Bryce to watch the sunrise over their main amphitheater. Driving up, we also saw Red Rock Canyon, which is a very small but visually stunning area.

Hoodoo Ahead

Kodachrome is a nice park. Because it’s 30 minutes beyond Bryce and because we’re in the shoulder season, it wasn’t crowded at all. We walked two short trails and saw some amazing countryside. Following my new hobby, we ate our luncheon sandwich at Angel’s Palace and our luncheon banana at Shakespeare’s Arch.

Kodachrome Park Fickle Finger of Fate

By 3, we had seen enough. We went to the Bryce visitor center to get advice for tomorrow, buy a coffee cup, and watch the park video. Then we went to our hotel room. The WiFi is both weak and slow. But for $70, this is a very nice room.

Shakespeare Arch Trail

Shakespeare Arch Trail

Shakespeare Arch

Angle’s Landing Trail

We’re settling into a routine. We work Sat – Tue, then we get 3 days off. That makes Friday the end of our weekend. We usually spend one day chore-ing, which includes a grocery run to Kanab (about 25 miles), along with a stop at the library and other miscellaneous stuff. The other 2 weekend days are spent visiting sights in the area.

Angle’s Landing – End

This week I went back to Zion without Danita and hiked Angle’s Landing. This is the most popular trail in the park. It’s 5 miles long with 1500 feet of vertical gain. There’s no way Danita would attempt this with her knee, plus her aversion to heights. The trail is listed  as strenuous, is famously narrow, and has a chain to help hikers. I found it to be a fun hike of mostly walking up an incline path, followed by simple rock scrambling. There was one spot I really wanted the chain. For the rest of the hike, the chain wasn’t needed and sometimes was just in the way.

View from Angle’s Landing

You know you’re at the end of the trail when you see everybody ahead of you either sitting down or taking pictures. There were obviously amazing views of deep canyons and big rocks, but they tend not to photograph very well. There were a couple of chipmunks who were afraid of nothing. I had to warn one woman about the chipmunk going inside her pack. Following my new hobby of eating lunch in amazingly beautiful places, I found the chipmunks especially interested in my cashews.

Cascading Falls Trail

With only one more day for visiting, Danita and I decided to visit Navajo Lake. We found very little information about the area. Since it’s at 9,000 feet, the visitor’s center and all but a few camp sites were closed for the season. We decided to hike a trail called Cascading Falls – one mile round trip with mild elevation changes. It turned out to be the surprise of our trip so far. The trail was near the ridge of the cliff with spectacular views all the way to Zion park. It took us quite a while to hike this trail because I kept on stopping to take pictures.

Cedar Mirror Lake’s stream

When we got back to the car, we took another trail to Aspen Mirror Lake. This turned out to be a delightful pond with a very nice mountain stream. The overall hike was less than a mile, but the area was quite lovely. We even found a substantial beaver dam downstream a little. We continued our new hobby (eating lunch in amazingly beautiful places) by eating lunch on one of these lava rocks.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Pipe Spring Group Photo

The first pic this week is a group shot of the folks at Pipe Spring. Danita and I are kneeling front & center. The man behind Danita is Asa, our roommate. Asa is a very nice guy and a neat freak besides. We couldn’t get a better roommate. The person kneeling at the extreme left is our supervisor, Kate. Next to her is our alternate supervisor, Eric. The most interesting person at Pipe Spring has an unusual beard and is standing in the back row, third from the right. Benn is a Kaibab Paiute Indian. He lives on the reservation and works as one of the interpreters at the park.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

The most unusual part of our training was the rattlesnake handling session. A woman from the University of Utah came with non-verminous snakes and rattle snakes. She had us handle the non-verminous snake, then pick the snake up with snake tongs, then pick up the rattle snake with snake tongs. Danita and I declined to handle the rattle snake. As a result, we are not qualified to move a rattle snake should one appear on the grounds. So sad!

The sand comes from here

We visited Coral Pink Sand Dune park Wednesday. The view above is what we saw when we walked over the top of the first sand dune. The Vermilion Cliffs are in the background. The second view shows where the sand comes from. The wind erodes sandstone. It funnels between Moquith and Moccasin Mountains, picking up speed and carrying the sand. On our side of the pass, the wind fans out, slows down, and deposits the sand. Sand is also blocked by the Vermilion Cliffs. The result is a beautiful sand dune playground. Younger folks ride sand boards (like snow boards, but on the sand). Richer folks ride OHVs (Off-Highway Vehicles) around the park.

Cactus Flower at Zion Park

Here’s how you make a sand dune playground of your own. Gather enough white sand to cover parts of six states. Cover with ocean, add iron oxide and let sit 170 million years. Sand will turn a nice rosy sandstone. Elevate the area to 5,000 feet (the Colorado Plateau). Expose sandstone to elements and let erode into coral-colored grains.

Zion Park Court of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Cactus Flower

Today we visited Zion Park. IT’s a hour and a half drive if you don’t take the shortcut. If you take the shortcut but don’t have a high clearance 4-wheel drive, it takes the better part of a day plus about $500 to get yourself towed out. The long drive goes through Hurricane, Utah. We got away from the East Coast, but we can’t avoid Hurricane. Zion park has a bunch of very impressive rocks that mostly make for very boring pictures. Most of the pictures are of other things we saw while walking around.

Riverside Walk, going towards Narrow Gorge

Danita has been trying to get the results of the MRI of her knee, without us having to drive to St. George. The latest is that she filled out a permission form along with a copy of her driver’s license. There is a possibility we will have the results in a couple of weeks.

Hanging Gardens (Eat your heart out, Babylon)

6-point buxk

Ground squirel

All the pics this week are from the Grand Canyon.

Walhalla Lookout

Looking down on the hawks

I wrote earlier about Danita having a severe problem with her knee. The problem seems to have gone away. Maybe it was the steroid shot. Maybe it just went away. We have no idea what the caused her pain. Results from the MRI are still not available. When Danita checked the hospital’s website, she found our that the person the hospital staff were calling “doctor” is actually a Physician’s Assistant. We are thankful that she isn’t having problems. We are not taking significant hikes. Danita hasn’t ridden her bike.

The trail at Angle’s Point got quite narrow, dropping off on both sides

Yesterday we went back to visit — and see — the grand canyon. We took a 0.8 mile walk to Angle’s point behind the lodge. I scrambled up on a rock for the picture above. Then we drove out to see Angel’s Window and Cape Royal, stopping at the view points along the way. The views were spectacular. I finally stopped adding pictures to this blog because there would be too many, and because no picture can describe the feeling of being here.

We were delighted that we decided to re-visit the canyon.

Today it’s back to work. This is our last week of training.

At Walhalla Lookout

Encantada Overlook

Encantada Overlook

Roosevelt Overlook

I couldn’t resist taking this picture. The couple had obviously been married for a long time. The woman was telling her husband that he was too close to the edge. The man was totally intent on getting the perfect picture.

At Angle’s Window

Angle’s Window

The Epic Journey ended with a visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This visit is a perfect example of our definition of an adventure – Things don’t always go well. It’s all part of the adventure.

Halfway View

The trip to the North Rim Tuesday morning was mysterious and wonderful. It was mysterious because we were never quite sure we were on the right road. There were plenty of indications we were doing the right thing, but we expected to see a lot more signage than we saw. And we experienced a lot less traffic than we expected when approaching such a well-known site. As it happened, we were on the right road all along. The wonderful part was a continuation of the amazing landscapes. The picture shows a panoramic view about an hour from Pipe Spring, and half way to the North Rim. After we decided to stop, we also saw there were toilets, which made the rest of the ride much more comfortable.

Our view of the North Rim

By the time we arrived at the North Rim, rain had set in. I heard the rain was caused by hurricane Paine. We spent some time at the ranger station psyching out trails and viewpoints. By the time we were through with that, fog had set in. The entire day was spent inside the lodge common areas looking for a place to sit and for something to do while we waited out the weather. The lodge had every room reserved. Many of us were waiting until the rooms were available for us to check in. The ranger presentations had record-high attendance. The geologist, who has been doing this for 4 years, said this was the first time he was obliged to do his presentation indoors.

Clearest view all day

Danita had been experiencing some difficulty with one leg. She had pain starting in her hip that occasionally went all the way down to her foot. She was taking it easy and taking Aleve. For no apparent reason, after the geology presentation, she experienced extreme pain in her knee, to the point that she had difficulty walking even with a walking stick on one side and me on the other. We ended up requesting a golf cart to take us the short walk from our cabin to the common areas so we could have dinner.

 When we woke up Wednesday morning, the weather was much better. It was still cloudy, but there was no rain and the fog was gone. However, Danita was still having so much difficulty that she couldn’t walk from our cabin to get a quick glance of the Grand Canyon. We confirmed our intention to leave very early in the morning so we could get to the hospital in Kanab before 9 and get some medical help. (Kanab is 2 hours from the North Rim and half an hour from Pipe Spring. It has the closest hospital to Pipe Spring.) Their doctor examined Danita and they took some X-rays. Then they gave Danita a steroid shot. That’s all they could do in Kanab. They ordered an MRI in St. George, which we will get done Friday. In the meantime, Danita’s taking it easy but back on her feet.

 I visited the more popular South Rim of the Grand Canyon on my first Epic Journey. Danita and I took the kids on a Western tour and visited the South Rim again. Both times we enjoyed excellent health, excellent weather, and amazing views. Based on my limited experience, I definitely recommend visiting the South Rim.

We went to a very nice service at the church here in town. Then we went up the mountain to Cedar Breaks National Monument today. It’s about 10,000 feet in elevation. It is reputed to be one of the best 5 places to see the fall colors. The colors were out today for sure. We drove the first half of the park road and took a moderate 2-mile hike. We finished the hike about 1:30 and drove back to the picnic area. It was breathtakingly beautiful scenery and a wonderful hike.

This alpine pond reflects the surrounding vegetation in perfectly still water

That was enough for us today. We’re enjoying a down day for the rest of the day. We don’t even have to leave the hotel for dinner. We’re having leftovers from yesterday’s restaurant visit.

Tomorrow we will drive to Pipe Spring. We’re just setting up our room and crashing for the night. After that, we’ll have two days at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon before returning to Pipe Spring and starting our training.

The breeze was blowing the leaves, making them sparkle in the sunlight