THE DESERT
Days 41-46
Having done two weeks chilling in Jamaica, two weeks adventuring in Costa Rica, a week on the beach in Mexico and a week in hospital - it was time for a ROAD-TRIP! Yeah!!
The plan was to drive for about 1,300 miles through the National Parks of Zion, Monument Valley, Canyonlands, Arches, and on to skiing in Aspen. A week in the desert and three days in Aspen.
​
We duly picked up our lovely 4WD which we had hired for a whole nine days and set off for the first 200 mile run to Springdale inside the Zion national park. Now probably the only way to document a ROAD TRIP - cos that is what it is - is do do by day numbers
​
DAY 1 - PICK UP CAR, I really hate picking up hire hire cars! I really do. The two most difficult things on holiday are picking up the damn car, as in finding the twatting place, and then inevitably turning right onto a three lane highway as the GPS packs up. Every time!!! Second only to returning the bloody things "tank full please", lovely, except there isn't a petrol station within 30 miles of the return location, at least not one I can ever bloody find - please tell me it is not just me!
​
Anyway, brilliant car, no rush, set everything up. Mirrors, seats, GPS. Sara says "look - it can link to your phone" (I always use my phone as I can't be arsed to learn every different car's weird GPS). So I link. And I drive on, and as I approach the main road, hundreds of cars, many choices of which to collide with, the poxy phone/car collusion decides to have a spat. Great! Three lanes - no f'ing clue where I am going. Cue loads of expletives, cue Sara being incredibly calm and pointing out the route. We hit the route, ROAD TRIP!!!!!
.jpg)
.jpg)
On DAY 1 we are driving to Zion National Park which is an easy 150 miles. Along the drive I become obsessed by tumbleweed. Great round ball shaped chuncks keep diving in front of the car while I do a steady 90 mph (along with everyone else, the old 55 limit is long dead round here). My determination to pull over and be pictured holding one of these plucky little desert rovers is matched only by Sara's ferocious wish for me not to jam the anchors on at 90 and stop on a busy road for her to picture me holding some twigs. Which is pretty much why there is no picture. Just one of our lovely car instead.
Zion turns out to be a tiny village. We are a tad surprised that to visit the only local walk is $30 to drive into the car park but we cough up and walk up an amazing canyon for several miles in much colder conditions than we are used to.
It is interesting to note that throughout all the parks the buildings are virtually camouflaged. There are obviously rules on wall and roof colours which means that often whole villages are almost invisible. Fools the Redskins I guess.
​
.jpg)
DAY 2 - ZION to PAGE. We leave Zion and drive through the most amazing scenery, up the pass, over the mountains, and down into the desert. At this point I should probably fess up. There is going to be a lot of 'amazing scenery', 'up over the pass', 'down into the desert' so in order to save time I am going to shorten it to 'ASUOTPDITD'.
So we did several ASUOTPDITD as we passed Angels Landing, Vermillion Cliffs, Horseshoe Overlook, and lots of other famous sights known to us all from the old John Wayne westerns. All amazing, all very red rocks, all brilliantly lit by the sunshine. All met with so many explanations of awe that we were soon awed out.
A hundred and a bit miles later we arrived at Page. A town based on the dam that creates Lake Powell. Which is almost empty!! Only 35% of its capacity is left in there.
.jpg)
We drove out to an abandoned slipway 30 meters wide and half a mile long, sorry, mixing my measurements, 804.672 meters long - that ended at a cliff 150 feet above the bloody water line! They have decided it will NEVER fill again and are going to abandon it, empty it into Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) and pray that it can still feed Las Vegas, Los Angles, and God knows how many other towns downstream. Scary!!
.jpg)
I mean, seriously, the greenish bits are where the water was only a few years ago! There were 40 meter boats (yes, you who know boats know how big that is) up on the hard above the deranged slipway, that will never be back in that previously enormous lake - enough of the forecasts of Armageddon.
We obviously found the only Sushi restaurant in town, it's our thing. Disappointing. We had Sushi, but not as we know it Jim. It was, as everything is in the States, smothered. In this case perfectly normal Sushi rolls, smothered in cheese and a spicy sauce!! I was SO impressed I paid the 20% tip (and yes, 20% is normal, you are invited to consider 25%) that I inadvertently left our main credit card in the bill fold and we walked out - never to see it again. Gone. My travel partner not impressed as I never lose anything, ever, never, OK just this time.
​
DAY 3 - PAGE to MONUMENT VALLEY. This was a lovely drive through amazing scenery, up into snow capped hills, down into.. Sorry, we agreed - 'ASUOTPDITD'. Then at the 120 mile point we chucked a left into Monument Valley, home of so many John Wayne/John Ford westerns. Iconic or what? We stayed at the famous Gouldings Hotel, slap bang in the dead centre of the valley and watched films in their cinema about the history of the first trading post in this Navajo homeland. The Navajo sure know how to charge. Small woven basket $1,500, small rug $2,500, one hour trip up a sandy canyon $100. Sara and I, drive up said road, take pics, drive away quickly as Navajo come a 'running. Bad tourists!
.jpg)
We obviously paid tribute to the famous 'Forest Gump' location where he finally gave up after running 15,000 miles, amazing man, no wonder he is revered in the US, and quite right too. "Run, Forrest, Run!" Millions of years of erosion have made this place what it is. Despite that - most tourists stop at the 'Forrest Gump' Scenic turnoff. How did a guy like him never make President, where is he now???
​
From Monument Valley, which was amazing, we drove on to our planned destination of Moab, another 250 miles, because Moab sits inside two national parks, Canyonlands and The Arches. Named after the fact that the first has a lot of one thing and the second has loads of the the other thing. This was where the ASUOTPDITD issues started to reassert themselves. We 'liked' Moab, and like the idea of more canyons and more arches (one such is shown below), but not THAT much. So we drove on. Through quiet a lot more desert..... 250 miles more.
Above is a picture of Sara as an 1850's Mormon explorer in a classic covered wagon, and I wish I could explain how amazingly clever the design was, perfect to be horse drawn and man handled over such rough territory, a really clever solution to the problems they faced. The pic to the right is - you guessed it - an arch. Of which there were a lot locally. But as I said - arched and canyoned out we kept on trucking towards our next entertainment - SKIING IN ASPEN.