Grilled pannini, Cherry-flavoured cough lollies, and Battered Okra.
Back in bleak Canberra, and have some catching up to do, with this blog.
Day 12 - Southern Utah
We headed back to Arches National Park in the morning - the pass we had paid $10 for was good for a week. The rocks appeared different in the morning light. They seemed a more washed-out brown colour, rather than steeped in the brilliant ochres and reds of the previous afternoon. After purchasing a few souvenirs we pressed on.
We drove through Monticello and stopped for lunch in Blanding. Craig wanted to go to the local burger joint, but I had had enough of take-away style food. Instead, I persuaded him to go to the “Peace Café” for a proper sandwich.
The Peace Café was a trendy spot. We ended up waiting over half an hour for our grilled chicken and pesto pannini sandwiches (which to be fair, were very tasty). But we felt the Peace Café belonged more in Byron Bay, New South Wales than Blanding, Utah.
For the rest of the afternoon we checked into our Super 8 Motel in Blanding and relaxed.
Day 13 - Southern Utah
On day 13, I woke up with a very sore throat and a croaky voice. Craig went to the Clarks across the street (a huge supermarket, discount type store) to get me some cough lollies. Unfortunately, the ones he came back with were cherry flavoured.
Americans seemed to love cherry flavoured items. Craig reckoned that one of the many advertisements on American TV that he saw, was for cherry flavoured Pepto-Bismal. Apparently, it featured a lady who was discussing what her husband had recently consumed. “He’s been eating cherry flavoured chicken, cherry flavoured fries, and drinking cherry flavoured coke!” she said. I can believe it.
My mother uses a waxy furniture polish that smells of cherry. As a child, I used to help her polish the coffee table. I’d imagine that had I eaten some of that polish, the taste would have been similar to the cherry flavoured cough lollies I had. In addition, the back of the packet listed a bewildering array of chemicals.
Subsequently, I felt a little woozy as we took off for a day of driving around in the desert. Every so often, Craig would stop the car, leap out, and take a picture of some interesting rock formation. Then he’d jump back in, glance at me lolling in the passenger seat, murmur “Poor thing,” and take off again.
He drove us along the Valley of the Gods trail, through a rocky orange landscape speckled with spots of green scrub. The road was unsealed, with many steep dips. Craig took delight in putting the foot down, making the car gain some “airtime”, just like in “The Dukes of Hazzard”.
We stopped at a tiny town near the state border called Mexican Hat; so named because there was a nearby rock which looked like a man wearing a sombrero. We ate at a café and noticed that several of the other customers were wearing cowboy hats and spurs. After lunch, we drove across the border into Arizona. Headed east along Route 160 and saw the Four Corners monument - the place where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet up. In fact, this is the only location in the USA where four states join.
As with almost every national park, historic, or monument in the USA, we had to pay to enter. (In this case, $3 each). The Four Corners monument is run by Native American Indians, and they had stalls set up around the monument, hawking jewelry and pottery and pancake snacks. The monument itself was a platform split in four by a large cross, and a plague right in the middle.
After making sure we’d walked in all four states, we set off, back to Blanding, Utah. Our route took us from Cortez, Colorado to Monticello, Utah. This stretch of road was Route 666, aka “The Devil’s Highway.” Back in Bodega Bay, Craig had bought a book about haunted roads of America, and one of the stories featured the Devil’s Highway.
The narrator of this particular tale was driving along the Devil’s Highway. It was night, and there was a full, orange moon and some strange blood-red clouds in the sky, bathing the entire landscape in an eerie glow. In the distance, a car appeared behind the narrator - just two shining headlights. The narrator was suddenly struck by a sense of fear. He increased his speed, wanting to get off Route 666 as soon as possible. But even when his speed reached 90 miles per hour, the car behind him kept on coming, getting closer by the minute.
Eventually, the car was riding his bumper, flooding the inside of his car with light. The narrator tried to move into the other lane to get the car off his tail, but swerved off the road. Whilst fighting for control, the narrator caught a glimpse of the other car as it sped past. It was a old black sedan, with silver smoke streaming out from under its bonnet. The narrator felt a tyre go out and his car skidded to a halt.
He jumped out, and frantically began putting the spare tyre on. As he was finishing, he heard the sound of howling. As he leapt into his car and took off, he saw a pack of dogs loping along the road behind him. Their eyes were yellow.
According to the book, this narrator’s experience is not uncommon. Other motorists have also being run off the road by a black automobile, or chased by a pack of vicious dogs late at night on the Devil’s Highway…
However, for us Routh 666 was quite tame. Perhaps it was because it was only 5.30pm and the sun was still high, but the sky was most definitely not bathed in red. The landscape was cultivated, and quite lush and green. We were not pursued by any black automobile. In fact, the only car we saw on the Devil’s Highway was strangely enough, a Holden Monaro.
Day 14 - Colorado
On Day 14 we left Utah and entered Colorado. The home state of persons such as boxer Jack Dempsey and actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. We visited the Mesa Verde National Park (pronounced “May-sah Ver-day”) which contained the remnants of ancient dwellings constructed by the Pueblo Indians from approximately 800 - 1200 AD.
I drove the Chevy along the winding road that led us to the Visitors Centre. We took a walk down to the sandstone cliff dwellings. They were remarkable - square and circular houses of carefully placed brick, nestled right under the overhanging cliff. A friendly ranger encouraged us to go down a ladder into a Kiva - a circular underground room - which we did.
We also passed a couple of groups of school kids, no doubt on an end of year excursion. They went by, smelling of sunscreen, some carrying cameras, all of them chattering and excited. It reminded me of my school camps back in Western Australia, although we never saw anything like this.
That afternoon we arrived in a town called Pagosa Springs, where we stopped for the night. I lay in bed and watched episodes of “Friends” that were nearly as old as the Mesa Verde ruins, whilst Craig went downstairs to check out the bar.
He was back after an hour or so, enthusing about how great it was. So I accompanied him downstairs. The bar was nice. The top had images of local animals, birds, and plants etched into it. I traced the outline of a mountain lion with my finger as I drank my Avalanche beer.
We also ordered dinner at the bar. I had the pulled pork, which like lots of dinners in America, came with a choice of several side dishes. I decided to try the okra because I felt like some veggies. The okra came out battered. Definitely the strangest meal I had in the USA - pulled pork and battered okra. On the plus side, it wasn’t cherry flavoured.
Day 12 - Southern Utah
We headed back to Arches National Park in the morning - the pass we had paid $10 for was good for a week. The rocks appeared different in the morning light. They seemed a more washed-out brown colour, rather than steeped in the brilliant ochres and reds of the previous afternoon. After purchasing a few souvenirs we pressed on.
We drove through Monticello and stopped for lunch in Blanding. Craig wanted to go to the local burger joint, but I had had enough of take-away style food. Instead, I persuaded him to go to the “Peace Café” for a proper sandwich.
The Peace Café was a trendy spot. We ended up waiting over half an hour for our grilled chicken and pesto pannini sandwiches (which to be fair, were very tasty). But we felt the Peace Café belonged more in Byron Bay, New South Wales than Blanding, Utah.
For the rest of the afternoon we checked into our Super 8 Motel in Blanding and relaxed.
Day 13 - Southern Utah
On day 13, I woke up with a very sore throat and a croaky voice. Craig went to the Clarks across the street (a huge supermarket, discount type store) to get me some cough lollies. Unfortunately, the ones he came back with were cherry flavoured.
Americans seemed to love cherry flavoured items. Craig reckoned that one of the many advertisements on American TV that he saw, was for cherry flavoured Pepto-Bismal. Apparently, it featured a lady who was discussing what her husband had recently consumed. “He’s been eating cherry flavoured chicken, cherry flavoured fries, and drinking cherry flavoured coke!” she said. I can believe it.
My mother uses a waxy furniture polish that smells of cherry. As a child, I used to help her polish the coffee table. I’d imagine that had I eaten some of that polish, the taste would have been similar to the cherry flavoured cough lollies I had. In addition, the back of the packet listed a bewildering array of chemicals.
Subsequently, I felt a little woozy as we took off for a day of driving around in the desert. Every so often, Craig would stop the car, leap out, and take a picture of some interesting rock formation. Then he’d jump back in, glance at me lolling in the passenger seat, murmur “Poor thing,” and take off again.
He drove us along the Valley of the Gods trail, through a rocky orange landscape speckled with spots of green scrub. The road was unsealed, with many steep dips. Craig took delight in putting the foot down, making the car gain some “airtime”, just like in “The Dukes of Hazzard”.
We stopped at a tiny town near the state border called Mexican Hat; so named because there was a nearby rock which looked like a man wearing a sombrero. We ate at a café and noticed that several of the other customers were wearing cowboy hats and spurs. After lunch, we drove across the border into Arizona. Headed east along Route 160 and saw the Four Corners monument - the place where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet up. In fact, this is the only location in the USA where four states join.
As with almost every national park, historic, or monument in the USA, we had to pay to enter. (In this case, $3 each). The Four Corners monument is run by Native American Indians, and they had stalls set up around the monument, hawking jewelry and pottery and pancake snacks. The monument itself was a platform split in four by a large cross, and a plague right in the middle.
After making sure we’d walked in all four states, we set off, back to Blanding, Utah. Our route took us from Cortez, Colorado to Monticello, Utah. This stretch of road was Route 666, aka “The Devil’s Highway.” Back in Bodega Bay, Craig had bought a book about haunted roads of America, and one of the stories featured the Devil’s Highway.
The narrator of this particular tale was driving along the Devil’s Highway. It was night, and there was a full, orange moon and some strange blood-red clouds in the sky, bathing the entire landscape in an eerie glow. In the distance, a car appeared behind the narrator - just two shining headlights. The narrator was suddenly struck by a sense of fear. He increased his speed, wanting to get off Route 666 as soon as possible. But even when his speed reached 90 miles per hour, the car behind him kept on coming, getting closer by the minute.
Eventually, the car was riding his bumper, flooding the inside of his car with light. The narrator tried to move into the other lane to get the car off his tail, but swerved off the road. Whilst fighting for control, the narrator caught a glimpse of the other car as it sped past. It was a old black sedan, with silver smoke streaming out from under its bonnet. The narrator felt a tyre go out and his car skidded to a halt.
He jumped out, and frantically began putting the spare tyre on. As he was finishing, he heard the sound of howling. As he leapt into his car and took off, he saw a pack of dogs loping along the road behind him. Their eyes were yellow.
According to the book, this narrator’s experience is not uncommon. Other motorists have also being run off the road by a black automobile, or chased by a pack of vicious dogs late at night on the Devil’s Highway…
However, for us Routh 666 was quite tame. Perhaps it was because it was only 5.30pm and the sun was still high, but the sky was most definitely not bathed in red. The landscape was cultivated, and quite lush and green. We were not pursued by any black automobile. In fact, the only car we saw on the Devil’s Highway was strangely enough, a Holden Monaro.
Day 14 - Colorado
On Day 14 we left Utah and entered Colorado. The home state of persons such as boxer Jack Dempsey and actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. We visited the Mesa Verde National Park (pronounced “May-sah Ver-day”) which contained the remnants of ancient dwellings constructed by the Pueblo Indians from approximately 800 - 1200 AD.
I drove the Chevy along the winding road that led us to the Visitors Centre. We took a walk down to the sandstone cliff dwellings. They were remarkable - square and circular houses of carefully placed brick, nestled right under the overhanging cliff. A friendly ranger encouraged us to go down a ladder into a Kiva - a circular underground room - which we did.
We also passed a couple of groups of school kids, no doubt on an end of year excursion. They went by, smelling of sunscreen, some carrying cameras, all of them chattering and excited. It reminded me of my school camps back in Western Australia, although we never saw anything like this.
That afternoon we arrived in a town called Pagosa Springs, where we stopped for the night. I lay in bed and watched episodes of “Friends” that were nearly as old as the Mesa Verde ruins, whilst Craig went downstairs to check out the bar.
He was back after an hour or so, enthusing about how great it was. So I accompanied him downstairs. The bar was nice. The top had images of local animals, birds, and plants etched into it. I traced the outline of a mountain lion with my finger as I drank my Avalanche beer.
We also ordered dinner at the bar. I had the pulled pork, which like lots of dinners in America, came with a choice of several side dishes. I decided to try the okra because I felt like some veggies. The okra came out battered. Definitely the strangest meal I had in the USA - pulled pork and battered okra. On the plus side, it wasn’t cherry flavoured.