Denver, Damascus and Pensacola
We are leaving Santa Fe, but we have time for one more Santa Fe experience: Harry’s Roadhouse. It’s on the road out of Santa Fe, and hey, we have to have breakfast anyway. We are so glad we stopped here. This is a very cool place.
There are lots of rooms. This is the room we ate in, below. They have all kinds of wonderful breakfast foods, and the furnishings are all different colors. It is a colorful restaurant, sort of like it breaks the rules of taste and it doesn’t care. It’s kind of freeing 🙂
We are making really good time on the way to Denver when all of a sudden, on a not so busy freeway to this point, everything stops. “What on earth???” AdventureMan asks, and I have no clue. “Probably rockfall,” I say. It’s happened to me before on Colorado roads. Sometimes a huge boulder will just dislodge and fall on the highway. It can really hurt somebody if it hits them – of if they don’t expect a big boulder in the middle of the road and they hit it.
We are stuck for around 30 minutes. When we drive by the bottleneck, one lane, the rockfall has been mostly cleared. It takes massive equipment to get the rock off the road.
We pass Trinidad, a town we’ve stopped in before, but we aren’t hungry yet. An hour later, we need gas and we need to eat, but there is a whole lot of nothing near the road. As soon as we see anything, we head for it.
First gas. Then – another Barbecue. LOL, it’s not as if we don’t get BBQ in Pensacola, but as it turns out, this is pretty good barbecue.
We hit Denver just about prime traffic time, and worse, Denver has just been hit by a heavy rain and sleet storm. We recognize a street name we know, exit the interstate and in very short time find my sister and her husband and happily settle in. Tonight we are all having dinner together over at Little Diamonds, with the kids; AdventureMan and I still have the remains of our BBQ, and we split a salad. Dinner is great, the conversation is even better, and the children are delightful.
The next day is so much fun, my sister has tickets for the Viking exhibit AdventureMan has wanted to see at the beautiful Denver Museum of Natural Sciences. This is a great exhibit, full of treasures and wonders, beautifully exhibited. We have such a great time.
This is my very favorite part of the entire exhibit, and I am sorry my photos are blurry but we can only take photos with no flash, and the light is very low in the exhibit to protect the artifacts.
There are people associated with the exhibit who are character actors. This is Tova, an older, still beautiful, much married woman, who tells us about her three marriages, her husbands, her life, her wealth and property, all the while holding a spindle with which she spins thread while she talks to us. She interacts with her audience, asking questions, but never straying from her character. She was enchanting, and even better, she was convincing. We learned so much from her.
I wish you could see how beautifully made so many of these articles are, and read all the descriptions. This was well curated.
Another of my favorite exhibit, and almost impossible to photograph. These are nails, exactly in the positions they were found. An entire Viking ship had been found, buried in dirt and mud. The wood all rotted away, and disappeared, but the nails stayed exactly where they had been, and in the exhibit, thin, nearly invisible lines hold each nail in its place. Together, the nails form the shape of a ship, but you have to find the right perspective to see it. I tried, this was the best I could get.
A tombstone put up by a wife to honor her dead husband – and to determine, also, her property lines 🙂
Another character actor helping the students find the answers to their worksheets.
The exhibit was full of school groups, with booklets to find the answers to. These kids were having so much fun, and learning so much. This group donned Viking helmets for a photo, but were in constant motion (sigh) in the low light.
Probably the very best gift (from his perspective) our grandson got was one of these paper Viking helmets; our grandson wore it all the next day, after we got home, even to choir practice!
We had lunch at Sams #3, wow, so much selection and every dish was wonderful. Then, home to pack up and have a rest before we all meet up again for dinner. Dinner is a lot of fun, we’ve all been to Damascus, so we are eating at a restaurant near Denver University called . . . Damascus!
Things did not start well. “Mike” greeted us and told us he was not really the waiter, but the waitress had quit and he was the dishwasher, but tonight he would try to be the waiter while the owner trained a new cook. They couldn’t promise that everything on the menu would be available, but . . .
The good news was that as much as we all love Middle Eastern, particularly Damascus, cuisine, more than anything we wanted time together, sitting, talking, laughing, telling stories, so we just rolled with it. We ordered and it seemed nothing was not going to be served.
First out was hummus, and mohammara, and a big basket of hot hot hot fresh pita bread. Oh! I had forgotten how good it tastes, fresh out of the oven, and so plentiful. We were so happy, we stopped even thinking about the rest of dinner.
A while later, our dinners appeared, and they were each wonderful. AdventureMan had a felafel sandwich, which I failed to photograph. I had ordered this wonderful vegetarian platter, which I was happy to share with everyone.
My brother-in-law had chicken on the bone, with rice and salad. Perfect!
Little diamond had fattoush and grilled mushrooms.
My sister had a cucumber soup. We all had lots of mohammara and bread. As we ate, the restaurant filled. Mike explained to each table that things might not go well, but every table seemed to get a great dinner. It’s the old adage, Under Promise and Over Deliver. Makes customers happy every time. 🙂
This was the BEST way to leave Denver, full, happy, having time with family.
We leave early the next morning for Pensacola. Not everything goes smoothly, but we arrive in Pensacola little worse for wear. It’s been a great trip.
And we’re off on our next adventure! 🙂
Santa Fe, Here We Come
We spent one night in Santa Fe two years ago, and knew we had to come back. We put a three day stay at the end of our parks visit to give ourselves some play time, we really love Santa Fe.
This was not a bad day, but I will not tell you it was another best day of the trip. Some days, you just have to drive to get where you are going. This was mostly that kind of day.
We came south back to Kayenta, turned left, and stayed on the same highway until Farmington, where we had lunch at the crossroad where we turned south. On the way, we saw flashing lights ahead, and were afraid it was an accident but it was a marching group. We didn’t know why they were marching. Then about ten miles later, we saw a similar group marching towards us. We gave them a big thumbs up; YAY! Marching for a healthier lifestyle! They all looked about our age 🙂
We were about to turn south when we saw this sign: Serious Texas Bar-B-Q. Â Who could resist that sign? Not us!
We each ordered a sandwich. When they came, we discovered that SERIOUS meant huge. We couldn’t begin to eat the whole sandwiches, we had to leave about half behind. The restaurant was full of big burly cowboy types who seemed to have no trouble packing away that kind of serious sandwich.
All the following photos seem to be about food, but we did other things, too!
Checking in at the Hotel Santa Fe and Hacienda, AdventureMan reminded me we had one of the best meals of our lives at their Amaya restaurant. We reserved for that night, and AdventureMan had their duck, and I had the salmon.
As we were eating, we overheard another table talking about the Farmer’s Market the next day. We love Farmer’s Markets! We asked the waitress if she knew where it might be, and she didn’t know, but very soon, another waiter came over and told us how to get there – it was right across the street. After dinner, we took a walk, found where the market would be, and came back to the hotel, had coffee and dessert while we listened to the hotel musician, who plays Spanish guitar and Indian flute, then headed upstairs for some much needed sleep.
Although we were near the elevators, the rooms are so quiet, we never heard another guest. I love that the hotel has coffee service for guests on each floor; early the next morning while AdventueMan slept, I could creep out and fill my cup without him even missing me.
He was awake soon, and we headed for the Farmer’s Market, only to learn that there was also a Crafts and Artists Market in a separate row. Oh, what heaven! I found some wonderful gifts and AdventureMan and I found wonderful quiche and croissants at the Farmer’s Market, which also has baked goods and crafted goods, plants, all kinds of things. We loved the Santa Fe market.
I asked one of the vendors I was buying from where he and his wife eat when they come to Santa Fe, and without hesitation he said “The Pantry” so we put it on our list of places to take a look at. Meanwhile, we headed out Canyon Road, which we loved, with all the art shops and cute restaurants, then went to explore San Miguel’s, billing itself as the oldest church in the United States, with an altar that dates from the days of the Spanish exploration.
AdventureMan had heard of Jambo, an African fusion restaurant he thought we should try. It was wonderful. We ordered too much. We ordered a hummus appetizer, salads and a peanut chicken stew to share. The hummus was huge, and beautiful, with hummus, and also lots of veggies and olives, and pita bread, and then the salads came, huge and delicious . . . when the stew came with the rice, it was also delicious, but we were so full! We ate a few bites, then packed it up to take it back to the hotel for dinner. We love that our room has a fridge and a microwave, and we have plates and utensils and napkins, so we will feast again tonight in the glory of our own little suite.
xxx
(Forgot to take a photo of the peanut chicken stew, which when we first had it many many years ago was called Ground Nut Stew. This was a little different, but equally delicious.)
We were lazy on Sunday and didn’t get up until seven thirty or so, to get to the Pantry while there still might be tables left on a lazy Sunday morning. Oops, my bad, Santa Fe must get up early, all the tables are taken and there is a line to get in. The waitress says it will only be ten minutes or so, we decide to wait. In almost no time, we are in, and have a great table.
This looks like a picture, but it is actually a quilt someone did of the Pantry.
AdventureMan ordered biscuits and gravy – and beans!
I ordered blue-corn pancakes. Sigh. They were good, but they tasted like . . . pancakes!
At a nearby table was a friendly man who told us we might want to try Maria’s for dinner, that it was another good place where people from Santa Fe eat. He also told us he was a musician and an Elvis impersonator. Almost everyone we met in Santa Fe was very welcoming and glad to give out information. It was a lot of fun, being in that kind of atmosphere.
We visited the Georgia O’Keefe museum, walk around a little, but AdventureMan’s banged up leg make it hard for him to walk easily. That’s OK, we are in Santa Fe to kick back and rest up, so we spend the afternoon reading and snoozing. Later in the day, we hit Maria’s. Most of the people coming in were heading to the bar, evidently Maria’s has like 99 different kinds of Margaritas. We just wanted dinner – and our server was efficient, and sort of brusque. The restaurant wasn’t that busy, but getting busier. Maybe he had though he would get a break between lunch and dinner, and was just tired. He did the job. He did not make us feel welcome.
As much as we like Santa Fe, we are ready to start heading home. First step: get to Denver, where we will be staying with my sister and her husband, mother and father to Little Diamond, grandparents to the little little diamonds. From Maria’s, we head back to the hotel and organize our suitcases, take out the big ones and just keep the small overnighters. Sorting through now helps us plan for our time in Denver and for the trip back to Pensacola.
Monument Valley: A Day to Remember
When we decided to go to Monument Valley, we decided to go all out, and we are so glad we did. We had read you can go down and visit many of the places in Monument Valley on your own, which we often like to do, go places on our own. On the other hand, doing Monument Valley on your own, you could very well miss something important.
So we signed up with Majestic Monument Tours, for a morning in Mystery Valley and an afternoon in the regular valley below the hotel. Bright and early we met our guide, Hope, in the hotel lobby and our day began.
Immediately we were so glad to be with Hope. For one thing, she is knowledgeable, not showy but quiet and modest and full of good information, if you want to know. Second, she is a really great driver, and some of the places she took us needed four wheel drive. Third, many of the places she took us were also off-limits to people who did not have guides. Last and not least, the roads were as bad as any we have ever driven in Africa or the Middle East, and our little rental car might have suffered damage had we tried these excursions on our own. Going with a guide was the right decision, for so many reasons.
This was another best day of our entire road trip.
While it was still cool, we hiked up to some dwellings, straight up the red rock. I didn’t have any problem going up, I wasn’t worried about going up, it’s always going down on rock where I worry – loose pebbles can make your foot slip, and there are no soft surfaces on the way down. I did fine, and I thought AdventureMan did, too, only to learn when we got back to the hotel at the end of the day that he had actually slid and tumbled badly down one rock slope when he had gone up to photograph some hand prints in a location that I would not attempt.
This is the rock hill I climbed, early in the morning, while it was still cool. By later in the day, it was too hot for me, I would hike, but hide in the shady areas.
This is Hope, our guide, with me at the top of the hill, and the truck down at the bottom of the hill.
I risked it all for petroglyphs.
I was cooing and babying him, so sorry I had no idea that he had hurt himself, but he said “I didn’t want anyone to know, and the most important thing is I didn’t damage my camera.” LOL, so stoic, and here we are bumping around all day in hard seats mounted on a truck, like we are riding really difficult hard horses most of the day, and he doesn’t make a peep!
This is the cliff AdventureMan fell down. He had gone up to take photographs of family hand prints and petroglyphs on the wall. He was the only one who climbed up with Hope.
The day was full of wonders, including backdrops from old cowboy movies. When we cam back, AdventureMan reviewed a lot of the movies mentioned and would call me in and say “Look! Clint Eastwood is climbing that rock formation!” or “John Wayne is there with those cliffs in the background!” That was a lot of fun.
I love pictographs and petroglyphs. Can you see these?
Here’s what I find interesting about the following two: Â each one has a right hand that is enlarged. I wonder if it is co-incidence, or if the enlargement of the right hand has significance? Look at the line coming out of the head of the top figure. That doesn’t look accidental, it looks intentional. What could it mean? These were intelligent human beings, problem solvers, artists. We have to give them credit for having as much capability of expression and intent as we have – or do we?
At one of the hollowed out areas, Hope pulled out her flute and played a haunting melody, echoed off the wall. It was a wonderful moment.
I liked this formation below a lot; it is called Three Sisters, and I am one of three sisters.
I think this was called God’s Eyes
And this was called God’s ear.
One of the classic cowboy movie backdrops.
Late in the afternoon, we got back to the hotel, grabbed quick naps (hey! it’s vacation!) and then headed to Amigos for a truly great dinner.
I woke up early to take this photo for you. This is sunrise in Monument Valley. You want this on your bucket list. Look, you can even see a star and the dim lights of the first trucks heading down into the valley to capture the early morning light.  🙂
Zion National Park to Monument Valley: AZ or UT?
“Look! Look! Grab your camera! Grab your camera!”
“It’s just turkeys,” I grumble to myself, I’m not even settled in the car, I don’t even have my seat belt on and AdventureMan wants me to take photos of turkeys? I take a couple shots, then we head to the lodge and check out.
This time, the camera is in my hands. This time, when we see three turkeys, and two of them are male, trying desperately to get the turkey chick to give them the time of day, so to speak.
This was actually a great way to start a day which will have a lot of driving before we reach our goal, Monument Valley, which is sort of in Utah and Sort of in Arizona, or at least the hotel where we are staying is in Arizona, but the road to get to it starts in Utah. Because it is Navaho Nation, they have gone on Daylight Savings Time, in spite of the technicality that they are in Arizona, a peculiar state who does not go on Daylight Savings Time.
Farewell, beautiful Zion.
This is the route we will be taking today. Our maps tell us it has some scenic routes. Remember, cell phone coverage is spotty in this area, and physical maps are a really, really good idea.
We know where we will stop for breakfast – The Thunderbird, In Mt. Carmel Junction, where we had lunch the day before. It is right on our way. Actually, I had a healthy breakfast, but I had to order this cinnamon roll, which AdventureMan and I nibbled on, and then took the rest with us in case we were stuck somewhere in a remote place and needed some sugar-energy. This roll had a lot of sugar-energy.
On the road, after the glory or Arches, and Bryce Canyon, and Zion, we are spoiled. It is harder to appreciate normal beautiful vistas. As we drove through a forest, however, AdventureMan spotted a deer running, not a pronghorn, not a mule deer, we don’t know what it was. I am sorry it is fuzzy; he was running!
Maybe it was a mule deer, now that I see the ears. I am not sure.
We stopped to look at this vast overlook, and I was sort of thinking “ho-hum” when an Asian family drove up, a dad and his three daughters, and the daughters all had iPads and were taking photos and one of them said to me “Just look! This is right out of the old West! Can’t you just see an enormous herd of buffalo stretching all the way to the horizon, and what if they get spooked and stampede??”
And then, I saw them, thousands of buffalo in the valley below, nibbling on the new green grass, stretching to the horizon. I owe that girl. She gave me a great gift, a major shift in perspective.
AdventureMan said “Why are there so many contrails?” and he was right, there were contrail everywhere. We were close to the Northern side of Grand Canyon, which is still closed at this time of year, so maybe they were planes coming and going out of Phoenix? Maybe the air is so cold that the contrails form more easily? I don’t know, but he is right, the sky is streaked with them.
I think these are the Vermillion Cliffs, fabulous, but . . . we are jaded after the glories we have seen. We drive on.
We stop for gas in Kayenta, and we go into the Basha Market to buy water. Two things, one is that we have this totally deja vu feeling, like we have been in this shopping area before. AdventureMan says we had lunch at that Subway store, and I kind of remember. Second, all the people in the market, mostly local Navaho, have carts full of sugary foods, sodas, sugary cereals, snacks and candy. It’s like the don’t know that sugar is the new poison, that it leads to obesity, that it rots your teeth and inflames your gums. Or they know, and they don’t care.
But we are starving. We see Amigos on the side of the road as we are heading to Monument Valley, and decide to give it a try. As soon as we get inside, we know we are in the right place. There are local people. There is a lunch special up on the blackboard. The smells are wonderful.
AdventureMan had Tostada and Enchilada. See that salsa? That salsa is one of the best salsas we have ever eaten. In the photo it looks red, but it actually was very green.
I had two tacos. The tacos were enough, I didn’t need the rice and beans and I left them, but I did ask for another salsa, it was so good.
We liked Amigos so much that we came back here again for dinner the night after we had been out all day in Monument Valley.
The name of our hotel is The View. It is a Navaho owned and operated hotel in Monument Valley proper, where all the tours start. We chose it for so many reasons, for one, because every room has a view, for another, that it is Navaho owned and operated, and last but not least, they advertise that they have some of the best star-gazing because there is no light from nearby cities; there are no nearby cities (Kayenta is about 30 miles away.)
At check-in, we are delighted; the lobby is lovely! It is light and bright and full of art works. We are also chagrined, the receptionist is rude to the people in front of us, and not at all welcoming to us. She wasn’t rude to us, just very businesslike and unsmiling. Maybe she was just having a bad day.
This is the area where people met up with their tour guides for the morning, afternoon and evening tours.
This is our room. It was lovely. We loved the art work, we loved the very spacious bathroom, and oh my, we loved the view.
The view, straight out:
The view to the right
The view to the left
As the late-afternoon sun begins to mellow, the colors morph and darken
Staying in this hotel is SO worth it.
The hotel has a fabulous gift shop, full of lovely jewelry, art items, artifacts. AdventureMan looked at a beautiful knife for our son; the cost was over $500. Oops! They also had more affordable things, one of our grand children’s favorite gifts was a bag of colored rocks, LOL. They had some good books, with Indian legends, written for children, and of course, T-shirts.
We ate dinner in The View restaurant, it was packed, full, with lots of families with young children and lots of tourists, some in groups. The servers did their best, but it was chaotic. AdventureMan had the “famous” green chili stew, which he said was not very interesting, and I had a taco salad, which was equally not very interesting. Our breakfast there, the next morning, was equally not very interesting. It was a breakfast buffet with a very limited selection.
There is another downside. During the day, the hotel facilities are dominated by the day-trippers. The hotel area is sort-of separated from the more public areas, but the feeling is chaotic. It all calms down dramatically when the last bus leaves. Wait to visit the gift shop after the teeming hoards have departed.
The upside of The View is the view. The upside is that the view at sunset is gorgeous. The upside is that it truly is magnificent star gazing. The upside is that the sunrise is beyond magnificent.
Zion National Park, Mineral Gulch and the Coral Sand Dunes
Wake up to grandeur in Zion National Park 🙂
It’s a little chilly for breakfast on the terrace, but the inside restaurant is nice, the wait staff is exceptional, professional, helpful and quick. When I saw blueberries available on another dish, and asked the waiter if I could add them to my oatmeal, it was a done deal. Don’t you just love it?
Most of the hiking groups who are tackling the higher peaks have already departed, but there are some elderly hikers getting a later start. We hike, but we are not group hikers. We like to set our own schedule and our own pace, but we admire the groups that have been hiking for years and adapting to one another’s styles. They have a great camaraderie.
We have to take the shuttle to get deeper into the park, so we go all the way to the end. Our plan is to do the Riverwalk hike, then work our way back to the hotel. At this time of the morning, there are only adults, no children. The children arrive on buses, hundreds of school children brought to the park nearing the end of the school year, to show them the wonder of our country’s natural beauty.
The Riverwalk is awesome. It is glorious, and relatively easy, and relatively safe. You reach a point where it says “no wheelchairs beyond this point due to the grade” and realize that even to this point, there have been steady ups and downs.
The beauty is so totally different from Bryce Canyon, we are in another geological era and we are viewing it all from below, rather than from above. This reminds me very much of Yosemite, with Capital Dome, and all the granite. The color mixtures here are wonderful to behold.
You can see that the path is mostly smooth, and paved, with an obstruction here and there to keep it interesting and natural.
There are rockfalls along the path, giant rockfalls. Anyone with an inkling of imagination can realize how short life can be, how unpredictable, how chaotic.
It is so early that the river itself is mostly in the dark.
Wonderful plants and flowers find enough nutrients in crevices and eroded places to explode into life.
Look at those trees, clinging to life at the tops of these cliffs!
I spotted this, and followed the line up.
AdventureMan, with his sharp eyes, spots an anomaly on the side of the cliff:
We think this is one of the park employees, creating safe climbing areas for those who like to go straight up, using ropes and pitons and you know, climbing stuff.
Leaving Zion, we are exploring Mineral Gulch, just outside Zion National Park, where we are told there are pictographs. I will tell you the truth, but do not do what we did, it is not safe. AdventureMan went one way, and I went another. I found a dry stream bed that looked promising, and I followed it.
Doesn’t this look exactly like where pictographs would be?
Or this? Oh, I wish AdventureMan were with me, with his sharp eyes. Even as I am thinking how very wrong and stupid it is to be off exploring separately, not together, I keep going a little further, a little further. Every now and then AdventureMan and I shout back and forth, but it’s been a while since I have heard him. I know I need to go back, I know it, but maybe, just around the corner, are the pictographs.
We never found the pictographs. I found a lot of places where I think they should be, but if they were there, I didn’t see them. Hot, tired, dehydrated, we headed for Mt. Carmel Junction, where we found this crazy funky restaurant, and got our orders in just before the Korean tour bus arrived.
Club Sandwich for AdventureMan:
Taco Salad for me. Very different, lots of peppers, lots of salsa. Very tasty, not a lot of beans or meat.
AdventureMan has spotted another remote road going to Coral Dunes State Park. I keep thinking we are on the wrong road, and he keeps insisting this is the road, it is the only road it can be. We are not arguing, we are just not on the same page. He was right. We find the Coral Sand Dunes, and they are beautiful.
He has shown me the road on the map, and we THINK we can make it, but his rental is a little low to the ground. I notice that the road number obscures the fact that for four miles, going into Arizona, the road is actually a track. We hold our breath, as the pavement ends, the road turns into washboard, the road forms crevasses, and we just hope the road doesn’t wash away. This is one of the longest four miles ever.
Safely off the track, we hit Springdale, just outside Zion, for ice-dream, and for sandwiches for dinner. They have a mercantile shop with a sandwich shop inside, with gourmet sandwiches. AdventureMan has an Avocado Veggie special, and I have a Reuben, and we find some crazy great T-shirts for all the little ones.
Back in Zion, the light is fading fast.
The horses are being taken back to rest up for the next day.
My feet are sore from the uneven smooth rocks in the creek-bed, and I am still a little dehydrated. Sure wish we had found those petroglyphs.
Bryce Canyon Pines and Dinosaur Tracks en Route to Zion National Park
We hate to leave Bryce Canyon Inn, we really love staying in this cabin, but the road beckons, so we get up early and find Bryce Canyon Pines on our route. Bryce Canyon Pines is a motel and restaurant, with a cowboy theme. As soon as we walked in, we knew we had come to the right place.
I wish you could hear the country music radio playing old old classic country and western tunes. I wish you could smell the buttery smell of pancakes and waffles in the pans, and the bacon frying. This is about as down-home as you can get.
I ask if I can have my veggie omelette made with 2 eggs, not 3 and the waitress says “of course!”
AdventureMan says these are the BEST biscuits and gravy!
I take photos quickly, before the restaurant starts to fill up.
This is a really cute place, and we heard they are also good for lunch and dinner.
We can actually get to Zion very quickly, maybe an hour and a half, but we decide we want more adventure. AdventureMan finds a road through the mountains, to another interstate, which we are hoping will take us to some other dinosaur tracks, more accessible, south of Zion. We have the time, and it sounds like fun.
First out, AdventureMan spots a Pronghorn Deer. “Take a picture! Take a picture!” he shouts, knowing I keep my camera in my lap, available for just such an emergency. The Pronghorn ignores us, so we shoot, quickly, and leave him in peace.
This is one of those photos that doesn’t work. High in the hills (once again, we have snow flurries at the higher altitudes) there are small groves of shining white birch trees among the pines. The white against the green is so beautiful, but it doesn’t translate in photos.
Did I mention it was cold? This lake, at a resort along the small Utah road, is still partially frozen. It is beautiful.
We hit the interstate, and quickly get to Hurricane, don’t you love the name? AdventureMan is looking for a particular site with dinosaur tracks, so we stop at the local historical museum for information. They told us just where to go and how to get there.
We follow the directions, and end up on a very rural road. It is so rural, it is open range and cows are on the road. The pavement ends, and it is sandy and rough. It is also hot, really hot, thank goodness we have water with us. There are no signs.
Finally, we pass Fort Morgan, which was part of the instructions, so we keep going, making a right where the track splits here, and then a sharp left a half mile later. We go up a steep hill, and finally, we find a sign. We are out in the middle of effing nowhere.
Looking back down the road we came in on. Of course, to get to the tracks is an uphill hike. Did I mention it is really, really hot? We are like in the desert!
This time, I am the one who spots the tracks. They are set aside, sort of protected, except that you can see people have chiseled out parts of the tracks and taken them for their own use. That just breaks my heart.
The signs tell us who made which track, and once you know what the tracks look like, they are easier to find.
Yep, this is it. These are the tracks. Maybe three good ones, and it was a long, hot drive followed by a long hot hike. Actually, it was a lot of fun, as adventures go, we survived, but I still get to tease AdventureMan about it.
We are starving. We head back into Saint George, UT, where we find this really fun restaurant with a bear theme, and pretty good salmon. I’m a happy woman.
Our reservation packet from Zion National Park included a red tag to hang from our rear view mirror. It allows us to drive to the lodge in our own car, since we are staying there. It also allows us in and out of the park, which comes in handy for us restless types. Check in is perfunctory; some lodges have chirpy, friendly receptionists, Zion has slow, surly receptionists. We like our spacious room and balcony, but we miss the privacy of our cabin.
We have dinner later on the terrace in the Lodge, salmon cakes and a salad for me, the salad bar and soup for AdventureMan. There are still tourist buses loading up in front of the lodge around 7; guess they are the last ones out.
Once the last bus leaves, you would think it would grow more quiet, but the lodge is full of hiking groups, many with wine, and they are having a fine time, everyone out on the balconies, hopping from room to room. Fortunately, they are early risers, and so also go to bed rather quickly. By nine, all is silent. We check for stars, and we can see a few, but it is hazy, so the stars are not so bright.
I know I have mentioned before the National Parks special card for seniors. My friends, this card is such a deal. You buy it once, I thin it costs 10 or 20 dollars. It covers you and the whole car every time you enter a National Park. It is such a deal that both AdventureMan and I each have one – we have Fort Pickens nearby, which is a national seashore park, and we often take visitors out to see the fort. These passes are good for life. It is a way the United States Park Systems honors aging US citizens. How cool is that, especially when the major parks charge $25 entry per car?
Spectacular Beauty in Bryce Canyon, UT
We wanted to see the sun rise in Bryce Canyon, so we chose to have an early breakfast at the rustically beautiful Bryce Canyon Lodge.
“Why didn’t we stay here?” asks AdventureMan, although we really love the cabins where we are.
“I can’t remember,” I reply, miserably, because I really can’t remember. When I was originally making plans it was for earlier in April, and I discovered all the best places were already booked! It was Easter, and Spring Break, and although I thought I was booking way early, no, I wasn’t.
AdventureMan also reminded me about the snow-in-the-pass issue, so I moved the trip almost four weeks later, and we are still running into snow-in-the-pass as well as snow almost every place else, too. It’s just little patches of snow, and occasional flurries of snow, which quickly pass and leave no trace.
Plus, I’m an Alaska girl, remember? I have a wardrobe of hooded sweatshirts and jeans, beautiful German boiled wool coats, which I considered investment clothing, knowing we had a house waiting our return to the Pacific Northwest in Edmonds, WA. While I may be a sartorial fish-out-of-water in Pensacola, FL, I KNOW how to dress in the chill mountain temperatures, and I am happy!
But I will let you decide for yourself. Temperatures are, indeed, chill, but just look at this light! Look at the sunlight, the blue skies, the way the patches of snow make the greens look greener and the gives the reds more depth. This day is one of the happiest days in my life; there is beauty on this earth which no human hand can create nor capture.
Breakfast at the Bryce Canyon Lodge was a lot of fun. I had the Bryce Canyon Breakfast, two eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast. I asked the waitress just not to even bother with the potatoes, and she listened. She also kept my coffee cup filled, and was efficient without making us feel in the least bit rushed.
Bryce Canyon Lodge exterior
Bryce Canyon Lodge entrance from parking lot
Bryce Canyon Lodge lobby
Bryce Canyon Lodge display of local arts
As soon as we had finished breakfast, we walked straight out from the lodge to a place about half way between Sunrise Point and Sunset Point. This early in the morning, before too many of the tour buses arrived, we were able to take advantage of the light and have a great walk, from Sunrise to Sunset 🙂
I can’t help it. If you were in Bryce Canyon with me, you would also be taking photos like crazy. You know capturing such beauty and such grandeur is just not possible, but something within begs you to try; you want to take a little bit of it all back with you. I am sorry for you, you are going to have to put up with all my photos, my babies, my pieces of grandeur, which one would you have me sacrifice?
There is beauty to the left and grandeur to the right, everywhere you look. This is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I have ever been.
Rainbow bridge
This reminds me of the Heidelberg Castle, like a huge long castle defense
There were a surprising number of children in this park. I say surprising, because it truly is dangerous, on the same scale as Grand Canyon, this is nature, not Disneyland. Not everything is roped off or gated, you are expected to use good judgement and not get too close to the edge. In my opinion, unless you keep your child on a leash, you are taking a chance taking a young child to Bryce Canyon. Wait until they are 10 or so, and understand the dangers.
At Yovimpa Point, I was taking a photo, near the edge, and was steadying myself against a tree. When I stood up, fast, I whacked my forehead on a tree limb. First it swelled, then it showed a long cut and gorgeous bruise. I felt like a true wild woman, or a pirate, with my colorful head wound.
Bryce Canyon is a wonderful place to walk, with great walkways. Yes, this one has rails. Not all the trails do.
All these viewpoints have cute names. This one might be Balzac? Or Queen Victoria? I took it because I loved the contrasting greens, and snow, with the rusts and oranges, and the mountains dim in the background.
These eroded sandstone pillars are called Hoodoos. You can buy all kinds of sweatshirts and T-shirts (we didn’t) that say “I hiked the Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon”
I’m pretty sure this is Thor’s Hammer.
This narrow canyon reminds me so much of our camel trips in Wadi Rum, near Petra, in Jordan.
After another best morning of the trip 🙂 we have lunch at the Bryce Canyon Lodge; I have a particular reason, they have an elk stew. We used to eat elk when I was a kid and I didn’t remember what it tasted like. There wasn’t a lot of meat in the stew, mostly carrots and potatoes. The elk seemed a lot like ground beef.
There is no such thing as “enough” when you are taking photos at Bryce Canyon. We loved all the places we travelled on this trip, but in retrospect, Bryce Canyon was the most stunningly beautiful place we visited. We were glad, really glad, we did it in May, before schools get out and there are even more people in the park. Many many were from other countries, and we were happy to see them. Astounded, really, at how many Chinese there were.
Moab to Tropic, Bryce Canyon And a Wonder-Filled Detour through Capitol Reefs
We are still on Pensacola time, so early rising is a piece-of-cake. Quick breakfast, quick departure. We had looked at the options the night before, we could go directly to Zion via fast roads, or take a southern route which would take considerably longer. AdventureMan had looked at the map and suggested a third route, which took longer, but not so long as the southern route, and took us through a place I have never even heard of, Capitol Reefs.
We’ve lived in so many wonderful places, and, because AdventureMan’s job was always so demanding, I took care of trip-planning, finding places to stay, creating routes to travel and choosing sights to see. This way is so much better, AdventureMan has the leisure to look at the maps, and he has good instincts. This day was another best day of the trip.  🙂
(Yes, I know, technically, they can’t all be best days. Toward the end we had some more boring days, but each day brought wonders and joys, and this is one of those best days, honest.)
One thing we never want is to find ourselves miles from a gas station in a remote location. As we are filling our tank, leaving Moab, I see one of our contemporaries loading up for his own adventure. This is what I love about Moab, you are free to pursue your own adventure.
If you are thinking about taking this trip, or a trip like it, you need to know that our phones had no service much of the time. Fortunately, we had maps and are good at reading them, mostly. It is really important to have some kind of back up when you are in remote locations. If you rely on your phone, and there is no service, you will have a harder time.
The scenery, even along the major highways, can be distractingly spectacular. This is, I believe, along I-70, which we take for a short time to get to the scenic road we want to be on to get to Capitol Reefs.
What we didn’t realize was that the greenery near the cliffs in Capitol Reefs indicated a river. I discovered it as I was making a pit-stop. I was headed to a private spot when all of a sudden, I realized I was not alone. By a stroke of luck, I had my camera in my hand. I whispered to the Mule Deer that I meant them no harm, and they calmly grazed as I took a couple photos.
Can you see why I am considering this another of the best days? I love happy surprises, and this day is full of happy surprises, even a few flakes of short-lived snow.
Good thing we stopped where we did. Just another quarter of a mile down the road is a major stop, with a beautiful walkway, so people can view Petroglyphs!
So, can you see the petroglyphs? I bet your eyes are getting better at it. You learn to look a little higher than you would think.
There are so many places where petroglyphs have been lost to natural breaking off and erosion.
This is a piece that has broken off, but remnants of the original petroglyphs remain.
This is the beautiful walkway they built.
This is the sign. It is a little obscured, but we are always thankful for good signage.
I want you to know how very brave I was. I was about to lean on the railing to steady a shot when AdventureMan said “You’ll want to look before you do that,” and when I did, I saw a thousand creeping caterpillars. They were falling out of the trees, and covered the walkway. I made AdventureMan check my hair, and my hoodie, then I covered my hair completely; I looked like a total dork. Back in the car, I made him check me again, to make sure I wasn’t carrying an unwelcome guest with me. But no matter how much I was creeped out, it didn’t stop me from taking these photos 🙂
“This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be thankful in it!”
Shortly after finding a gas station, and looking for a restaurant that was open and might serve more than hamburgers and beer, we found the Capitol Reefs Cafe and Restaurant, which suited us perfectly. It had a unique gift store – I found the only petroglyph soap, black with etched petroglyphs – of the entire trip, perfect for a three year old, or even in the tip of AdventureMan’s Christmas stocking. Alas, there was only one, and I gave it to the three year old.
Look at that! Cloth napkins, and in a beautiful local textile.
AdventureMan had a fabulous corn chowder, and these Shrimp Tostadas.
I had a smoked trout salad, the only one I have ever had in my life. It was unique, and wonderful.
At Larb Hollow overlook, you could see for miles, maybe hundreds of miles. We could see Lake Powell. In the highlands, it was still very cold, and we had occasional flakes of snow.
This stop was hilarious. We thought it was some kind of big deal but it was a very little deal. It reminded us very much of Germany, with a rural forest feel, a walk around a large lake, people with those walking picks that give me the shivers – “No! Don’t point that pick at me!”
We stopped at a rock shop, where I bought a T-shirt I loved. He said it was last year’s color, and gave me a great discount, but it was a much more subtle color, a desert deep rose color, and it has a 70’s peace sign in gold, so elaborate that you don’t necessarily even see what it is. I love it. Then I went to take a photo of these cows, which AdventureMan thought was hilarious. “You’d be surprised how many people stop to take photos of those cows,” the owner of The Rock Shop told him.
Arriving in Tropic, we are assigned to this cabin. Of all the places we stayed on the trip, we loved this cabin the best. It was a lot of fun, spacious, clean, very private, great beds, and the least expensive place we stayed. This was the Bryce Canyon Inn, in Tropic, which also has a coffee shop and a pizza restaurant in the same complex.
We took a short rest, then headed out to do a reconnaissance of Bryce Canyon, finding one of the major sights on our way. I think it was called Mossy Grotto, or something like that. Honestly, they give names to all these hikes, and while the hikes are great, I can’t remember the exact names. These are all late in the day, some times the sunlight is perfect and some times it has already disappeared due to landscape features. We needed a good hike after spending so much of the day with our only exercise getting in and out of the car.
This is one of the features, and I couldn’t really figure out why. I think in winter it has huge icicles hanging from it. It is moist and water weeps from it. I think it is the mossy grotto.
It looks like these rocks are kissing 🙂
We headed back to Tropic around dinner time, ate at the pizza restaurant. AdventureMan did the smart thing, he ordered a pizza. I saw halibut and chips on the menu and the Alaska-girl instincts kicked in, oh, halibut and chips! I got two small heavily breaded pre-frozen little lumps of fish, tasteless, what a waste of halibut. 😦  Learned – re-learned a lesson: if you’re in a pizza restaurant, order pizza.
We slept wonderfully in this cabin 🙂 Every day so far exceeds 10,000 steps 🙂
Potash Road and Pictographs, Moab, Utah
Potash road is 279; you can see where it begins near the entrance to Arches National Park, but on the other side of the main road as you are going towards Moab. It is clearly marked Potash Road.
After our long hike, and our fabulous lunch, we took a short nap, then headed out to find ancient petroglyphs and pictographs. (Pictographs are painted on, petroglyphs are incised out.) Potash Road was near the entrance to Arches National park. It looked like an ordinary road, even a farm road. Once again, a road that started out looking and sounding inauspicious turned out to be a lot of fun.
First, the road follows the Colorado River flowing along swiftly, full of rafters and boaters. Then you come to the cliffs about 5 miles in which are used by the climbing and rappelling schools to teach rock climbing, and there must have been fifty separate people working their way up and down the cliffs. This is not for the weak in body; we saw one dazed and damaged young man being loaded into an emergency vehicle for transport back to the hospital. Just past the rock climbers is the first set of petroglyphs, which are really hard to spot, about 20 feet off the ground, but once you get the hang of it, you start spotting them everywhere.
The truth is, I can hardly ever spot them. AdventureMan has sharp eyes, he spots them and shows me where they are. This time, they are about 15 feet, 20 feet above the road. They were incised when the Colorado River, at our backs, was higher, before it eroded the valley more deeply.
Can you see any pictographs?
I can begin to see these; AdventureMan shows me where they are.
These are the cliffs where the rock climbing classes are held and the pictographs co-exist with the rock climbing.
Now, they are beginning to be more clear.
This is what the casual observer sees:
If you see closely, you can find some petroglyphs.
This is near the end of Potash Road, looking back into Canyonlands, toward the Dead Horse Point.
The Colorado River parallels Potash Road, which is in the foreground.
This is the climb up to the dinosaur track. I got this far, and the next part of the hike was straight up. It’s late in the day, my legs are shaky, I am not going to climb straight up and risk falling straight down.
This is the dinosaur print. Â AdventureMan climbed all the way up!
Potash Road was a total thrill. It is easy to miss the sign for the Dinosaur Track if you are coming from Moab. We got all the way past the Potash Plant to the beginning of the unpaved, unimproved road before we turned around, and only on the way back did we spot the sign showing where the dinosaur track was. It was not a well marked trail, in fact, it was barely a trail at all, and I thought it was dangerous.
Arches Thai in Moab, UT
We were so hungry! Hiking all morning left us starving, and wanting something healthy. We found Arches Thai listed as a hidden gem, and when we found it, we totally agreed. First, it is beautiful. It has a lovely atmosphere, even before we saw the menu.
The menu was huge. We ordered samosas, which were unusual – maybe filled with sweet potato? Whatever it was, it was fabulous.
We both ordered Rama, a dish I love and a dish I don’t find in Pensacola. We chose chicken, and it was served over a bed of beautifully steamed broccoli.
There was so much food we packaged up what was left over and took it back to our hotel, where we had a refrigerator and a microwave. We had the same delicious Rama for dinner 🙂
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