Day 9: Monday, September 10th

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

Today's planned route: St. George, UT to San Diego, CA; Goin’ home is pretty much a straight shot down I-15!

They say that a fool and his money are soon parted… the first stop out of St. George after an hour and a half of crossing the Nevada desert is Las Vegas. In tribute to my cousin Gerry, who retired from the Palace Station sports book 5 years ago, I stop there to try my luck with the slots. OK, well it’s close to the freeway, maybe that’s why I stop, figuring to win the $300K progressive jackpot that will allow me retire when I show up at work tomorrow morning.

Once I plop myself down in front of a slot machine, I become dismayed by the “progress” that gambling joints have made in the digital age. Last time I went through this town for any longer than 15 minutes, I encountered the electric push button changes that replaced the standard levers on slot machines. This time, I find that not only can I not use my spare coins because they’ve covered the coin slots with chrome steel plates (so tell me what’s the sense of putting coins into a jar now?), but if I want to win the progressive jackpot, I have to be a card-carrying member of the Palace Station club.

I slip a twenty into the bill feeder, and only minutes later I’ve played through it. One more attempt, I think, to at least pay for gas on the trip. I saunter over to another likely machine, but that $20 bill goes pretty quickly too. It seems like only seconds ago I walked up to the machine to feed it.

With my $3 winnings on the way to Zion, I am now $37 down. I guess I’ll keep my badge for a while yet and not mail it to the address posted on the back. I’m back on the road in hopes of beating the rush-hour traffic in Rancho Bernardo, four hours away.

There is more traffic between Vegas and San Diego on the drive home than any combination of the Utah and Arizona back roads that I’ve taken over the 7 days of the tour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many trucks, often slowing down the rest of us by passing one another (you’ve been there!) and at one time through Victorville all three lanes of a three lane southbound track of I-15 have trucks attempting to get ahead of one another.

SIDE TRIP: To pass the time on a long trip, I sometimes mentally keep track of the license plates I see along the way. I won't bore you with the detail, but my count on this trip was 42 states, with Alaska being the star find. I was surprised to see (besides the obvious southwest states' plates) a good number of folk from Wisconsin, out to escape their summer, I suppose. Oh, the humidity of it all!

I thought I learned from the last trip home from Denver, but I guess I haven’t. I elect to take the I-215 south fork towards Riverside off of I-15, especially since the northbound track worked well on the way into Nevada a week ago. And for the second time in a year, I encounter a traffic jam trying to merge off of I-215 onto I-215 (no typo, the southbound freeway has an exit to get onto an on-ramp to a freeway with the same designation where the CA 60 splits it east and west). And again, as I did last year after waiting for 10 minutes in bumper-to-bumper 5 mph traffic, I decide to take the on-ramp to Hwy 60 west to where I know it crosses I-15. So despite Mona’s constant yelling at me to make a U-turn at the next opportunity to get back to I-215, I go the 10 western miles out of the way to avoid the mess I left behind.

One other traffic snarl on I-15 between Fallbrook and Valley Center keeps me in gridlock at 3-5 mph for 20 minutes, with no obvious cause once the traffic gets back underway at speed. Probably the dog-in-the-road theory happening here, the idea that a dog crossing the road causes the oncoming traffic to brake, and then there’s a ripple effect that can last for an hour from traffic that comes up behind.

So maybe there was an accident an hour ago.

Now I’m coming to the end of the road, figuratively as well as literally, home again to San Diego. Some reflections on the trip I’ve just experienced:

I like traveling during the week after Labor Day. There is overall a lack of crowds (except for buses carrying European tourists) because most families with school-age children are back at home in their routine, easing the park population. Additionally, it’s usually a nice time of year seasonally, as the temperatures are going down (well, maybe not in the Southwest anymore), and the chance of precipitation in most areas of the country is sparse.

I have truly enjoyed the scenery in Southeastern Utah. Even the drives between the NPs are exceptionally scenic, yet visually diverse as far as landscape formations and colors and flora. After I got used to the rhythm of going from park to park (and made it past the first day's long drive), I settled into the driving part pretty well.

One good thing about traveling by car is that you can take a lot more stuff with you than when you fly. I was able to pack a sweater for that morning I got up at oh-dark-thirty to watch the sunrise at Bryce Canyon, even though I knew it would be over 85 degrees for the rest of the day. Of course, if the extra stuff is important at all, it means you get to lug more baggage from the car to your lodging for the night.

On several days the timing was such that I didn’t actually have a lunch stop. It was fortunate that I brought along some snacks, as a few of the parks had no place to buy food within the park proper. I guess I could’ve planned the food allocation better, but that would have taken even more research.

"He travels fastest who travels alone." – proverb

“The man who goes out alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau

"Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter." – Izaak Walton

I’ve been asked how would I have done with someone else aboard. Well, it WAS a preliminary test for the longer road trip ahead, the one where I take 2 months to tour the US. For the most part, I don’t mind being by myself. I think there were times where I would've liked to have someone there, at least at the actual park locations, to share the vistas and the walks and talk about the information on the placards posted along the way. Maybe even on some of the longer driving stretches. But all-in-all, it was a good way to find solitude, and learn some more about how I would deal with encountering strangeness for long periods of time. (I don't mean eerie strangeness, but new and different environments and new people that I may or may not react well to.) One of the good things about "tourist" locations, though, is that if you say hello to someone, especially on a hiking trail, 90% will say hello back.

But yes, not having to allow for a passenger's needs did have its good points. Like, no one to complain that I stopped at McDonald's once or twice and that I picked it up at the drive-in window, then ate as I drove. (It was chicken, honest!)

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Elliot

Almost 2200 miles and 40 hours of driving between stops over 9 days through 5 National Parks, 2 National Monuments, a State Park and a Navajo Tribal Park. I’ve taken almost 1300 photographs (yeah, digital!) of countless rocks, recharging the camera batteries 6 or 8 times in the process. I’ve got a damaged windshield, a dirty car, dozens of travel brochures and tons of stories to carry me through the winter.

It seems like such a long time ago that I set out (late) on a Sunday morning in early September. Like my 7-day, 7-state whirlwind trip to New England in the fall of 1999, now that I’ve got a general view of the Southern Utah National Parks, I can pick one or two spots to come back to and visit more leisurely. But there is soooo much more of the US for me to see yet…so I’ll keep my navigation software up to date.

Thanks for hanging with me for this long, if you managed to do so. I’d love to hear your comments about the trip, my writing efforts, even my photography skills.

Yours in adventures yet to come,
JT
jtgregory@gmail.com
November 10th, 2007

Today’s drive:
St. George, UT to San Diego, CA via Las Vegas, NV
Just over 7 hours, 443 miles (includes 20 minute freeway logjam north of Valley Center)

Tomorrow:
Back to work!

Day 8: Saturday, September 8th

“Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.” – Regina Nadelson

Today's planned route: Page, AZ to Grand Canyon National Park’s north rim to St. George, UT

Before breakfast I make the trip down in the elevator with several bags to load in the trunk. A tourist bus is parked beyond the loading zone such that it blocks my exit. I decide to eat first, and then come down with my remaining bags before I go find the driver to complain. Sure enough, he’s gone when I come out with the second load, so I ease the TL on to the roadway and begin my journey south towards my final target, the Grand Canyon.

Like the Arches pages on the National Parks site, the Grand Canyon pages also have some good hints. These are with regard to hiking in the park (take water, duh! Plan ahead, take breaks, eat salty snacks with water to replenish your lost salt…). If you’re interested, these hints can be found by clicking on the following link: http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/hike-tips.htm. They’re useful if you’re a novice hiker, and if you’re not, they’ll serve as a good reminder.

Having been to the South Rim a few times, I look forward to the views into the canyon where the Colorado River has exposed the different colored layers of earth and rock that represent the passage of time.

Just under two hours from Page, AZ and after passing more busloads of tourists, and a convoy of three RVs from Missouri, I find myself on the turnoff to the North Rim. A 20 minute drive through pine-filled forests interrupted by the occasional meadow takes you into the park. The park is at around 8800 feet, but of course, there are a few places in the park where that elevation drops off considerably - by around 6000 feet.

At the park entrance I find myself waiting behind a line of cars – and tourist buses. It’s the longest wait I’ve had to get into one of the NPs. Ten minutes later I am following the park road, another 8 to 10 miles, to the Visitor’s Center parking lot, adjacent to a number of log-cabin style bungalows, and a compound that contains the Visitor’s Center, a deli and the lodge.

The world-famous Grand Canyon Lodge overlooks the north rim, and there are some unparalleled views to be found just gazing out into the great pit from the adjoining deck. Several lookouts on ledges that poke out into the canyon are easily accessible, so I follow the short trails and climb down the stairs onto the closest one. My friend vertigo arrives closely behind, and so I step back from the railing to catch my breath. I hang around long enough to take a dozen or so photos (I find vertigo is worse with a lens tucked against your eye!) and then return to the lodge.

From the lodge I follow the Bright Angel Trail out to the point with the same name; the view is not extremely different, but I am able to look down into the canyon, and across the gorge onto the south rim.


More photos. But that’s one of the things I’m here for. In time I take the trail, maybe a half-hour round trip plus photo stops, back up to the lodge, and beyond to the Visitor’s Center. There I spy a note on the white board: The road to the Cape Royal Trail is closed! I have plans for several more stops along that road and a few more hikes, but I’ll have to tuck them away in my backpack for another visit. This has all the makings of a short day. Oh, well, after 8 days on this road, I’m kinda “rocked” out anyway.

More photos of the North Rim can be found at my WebShots site…follow this link:
http://community.webshots.com/album/560954825nDZIYZ

“If we are always arriving and departing it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” – Henry Miller

Here's my comparative assessment of the North Rim, Grand Canyon: for me, it's not as spectacular as the South Rim. But it could be that it just isn't as accessible, with only a few turnouts available for viewing, and they happen to be on the road to Cape Royal, which was CLOSED. So I couldn't take any of the hikes at the end of that road, and so pretty much I stuck around the Lodge, where there were a few lookouts, and a hike or two further along the rim in either direction – and the canyon views from these points seemed to me to be pretty monotonous. I have friends who tell me they like the North Rim better because of the lush growth of forest and meadows on the way to different views, but I am here to look at the canyon.

For me, the subtle color changes and the differences in perspective that you get at the South Rim make the canyon more striking. The South Rim has a shuttle, or you can drive along the rim for miles, and there are a number of places along the road where you can see different perspectives of the many faceted, multicolored rock layers that have been etched over the millions of years that the Colorado River has been at work. And there are easily accessible places where you can get a view of the river itself.

Oh, and the colors don't seem to me as vibrant on the North Rim either, although it could just be the time of day and difference in sunlight and shadows. So I think the pictures won't turn out as good from the North Rim as opposed to the ones I took during my last visit to the South Rim. But maybe this can all be put down to the fact that I've had my fill of seeing rocks in various poses and am ready to leave the desert, and maybe I’m inured to any more formations unless they are Bryce Canyon spectacular. Certainly, north or south rim, the Grand Canyon is nothing short of awesome.

“If an ass goes traveling he will not come home a horse.” – Thomas Fuller

I neglect to stop and check my MS Streets &Trips printout of the route directions before leaving the park. Should I pull over to review it? I dial the St. George, UT hotel information into my Acura navi system, and it gives me back a route, so I decide to just motor on. The navi insists I take UT Hwy 9, which I find vaguely familiar, but can’t fully place in my mind. As I drive through Kanab, UT, I zoom in on a suspicious green shape looming ahead on my route. Too late, I realize that my current route takes me through Zion NP again on the way into St. George. I am frustrated that I have to take the winding one lane road a third time through the park; it’s a good thing I bought the annual NP pass or it might also be an unexpected toll. But it’s too late to reroute now – and of course, there is some good news, I will be able to recover at least some of the photos that I wiped out at Emerald Pool. Once in Zion, I stop at Checkerboard Mesa to take a few new pictures.

I decide not to stop for the other pics I lost, because there are only a few interesting spots on the park’s east end that will come up before the tunnels and 18 miles of switchbacks leading into the visitor's center. I might as well have made the stops. After pulling out of the Checkerboard Mesa turnout I end up behind a Mercedes 300D from Nevada that adheres strictly to the speed limit the entire way to the visitor's center, through Springdale and 10 miles beyond. And there appears nary a passing lane through the whole mess. Finally I find a stretch of road to pass them, and am met by a string of a half-dozen cars ahead. I pass them all one-by-one by the time I reach Hurricane, and then arrive at the I-15 on-ramp.

A quick peek at my navi system tells me to take I-15 north, but I soon realize, too late, that St. George lays to the south. Mona, my navi system’s voice, tries to make it up to me (3 times) by telling me to take a left turn off the interstate (at the “authorized vehicles only” service roads) and make a U-turn.

Finally I take the freeway exit (to the right) 5 miles up the road. Since I’d been up that way on the way to Bryce, I ignore the urge to explore, and get back on I-15 southbound. Mona has taken me an extra 10 miles and at least 10 minutes out of the way. If I feel this cranky about the navigation error, I must be looking forward to going home.

“No vacation goes unpunished.” – Karl A. Hakkarainen

From 79° in Page this morning when I left, and the 70° at the Grand Canyon, St. George is baking at 104°. I pull in for gas at a station next to the hotel. While I am scraping the AZ bugs off of my windshield, I find a crack in it, probably from a rock that skipped up somewhere coming out of the Grand Canyon area. It’s been hidden behind the rearview mirror since I heard that loud thunk, but with the heat, is spreading rapidly. I guess I should stay away from the Grand Canyon – the last time I had to replace a windshield it was because of a rock kicked up while driving into the South Rim!

But tonight I will go across the street to the Ruby River Steakhouse and have a big Porterhouse steak, a baked potato and maybe 2 beers. I already know it will be a great meal, since we ate there last year when we stayed in St. George on the way to Denver, and I’ve been looking forward to it since I left Grand Junction. All is well that ends well.

Today’s drive:
Page, AZ to St. George, UT via Grand Canyon NP – North Rim AND Zion NP.
Almost 5 hours, 290 miles (excludes in-park time)

Tomorrow:
Goin’ home to San Diego!