Road trip #2
July 1, 2007
We headed right to Zion National Park in Springdale, UT. The scenery was amazing. First we did the 1-mile Riverwalk hike. It was gorgeous. The Virgin River that cuts through it is a gorgeous deep blue like the Caribbean. We decided that we wanted to see Zion up close and personal so we embarked on the 5 mile (roundtrip) Angel’s Landing pass, that we failed to note was a very strenuous hike… especially for two people from sea level… and especially for me, who has hiked one time in my whole life. Oh, and also, it was “only” 110 degrees. It took up close to 4 hours to get up because our lungs could not get enough oxygen in them so we had to pause frequently to catch our breaths. Luckily our legs were in fine shape. It goes up 1700 extra feet while you hike and starts at about 6000 ft. Yikes. Now I know why teams do not want to play at Mile High Stadium. I drank 2 liters of water while hiking that thing and still did not need to pee, 5 hours later. I actually copped out halfway at Walter’s wiggles which was without about .06 miles to go… my hip started to hurt but Matt kept going and reached Scout’s landing. Getting down was much easier. Took about 45 minutes. We were ravaged after only eating a light breakfast and like 2 granola bars for “lunch” so we stopped at the first restaurant we could find, which was a Thai one. I tried Sake for the first time. Not bad. We were hot and sweaty so we high tailed it into the hotel’s pool, which had 3 young-ish kids (probably 12, 6 and 5) and NO parents or lifeguard watching over them. We forgot we were in Mormon Country and that it was Sunday so when we tried to find an open liquor store, we realized we would have to travel the 6 miles to Arizona to find some Coronas but when we got to the border, there were no towns for about 20 miles and it was only 27 miles to the Nevada border (using route 15 - look it up!) so we decided to see three states in 30 minutes and went all the way to Mesquite, Nevada (which had casinos in it- kind of like how New Hampshire sells fireworks the second you get over the border) but not before stopping in Beaverdam, Arizona at what had to be the sketchiest gas station I’ve ever been to. Pre-pay inside only and when I told him where my car was he said “if it’s not at pump 1, you’d better move it”. We bought Coronas and then went home. The town could not have been bigger than like 100 people tops and was all trailers. I am always overwhelmed by the abject poverty that exists in this country. I can’t imagine how anyone who went to the high school we saw there would be able to achieve scores high enough let alone have the money to go to college to get out of that dump. It’s sad to think about.
July 2, 2007
Today is our day off. It was nice to sleep in until 11, when we were woken up by the hotel guy to move our car so that the lawn mower didn’t get grass on it EVEN THOUGH WE SAID ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ on the door! Mofo. It always amazes me that southern-ish states (hot states) do not serve ice coffee at McDonald’s. I went to order one today at 11a, (while it was 96 degrees) and they told me they didn’t have iced coffee. So I said I’d take the hot one instead (there are no Dunkin Donuts down here, sadly, or I would’ve gone there). When I go to pay for the drink, the manager walks over to the girl taking the order and goes, “did she want iced coffee?”, the girl answered, “yes, but we don’t have any”. So he says to her, “you can just fill the cup with ice…” then he looks at me and asks if I want to do that. Now I’m intrigued. I KNOW that’s not how you make iced coffee but I bite. So he makes it and it, of course, tastes like ass crack. So I went to Burger King and ordered a BK Mocha Joe then I fed the crappy iced coffee to Matt. Hahaha. I told him the story first, of course! By the way, even though it’s like 110 degrees here every day, there is no humidity so it doesn’t feel oppressive or bad at all. I’d rather have 110 and not humidity than 80 degrees with 80% humidity. We just tried to find the closest Bank of America to us and it’s in… drum roll, please… Mesquite, NV. Roadtrip!
Matt went to go see Live Free or Die Hard. I am lazy and want to upload videos. We ended up watching Reno 911 then headed to bed.
July 3, 2007
We arrived at my most favorite location on the planet today: Bryce Canyon National Park. It’s10000000 times better than the Grand Canyon and I highly recommend it. And it’s, of course, in Utah, still my most favorite state on the planet. It’s even better the second time. We had to drive through Zion National Park to get here… and some interesting mountain tunnels. Matt and I walked to the bottom of the Canyon (to the Queen’s Garden), which is something I always wanted to do. I hugged a hoodoo. Hoodoos are the odd shaped rocks that exists in this park. They are very unique. We then scoped out our campsite and went into town to drink some beer and eat some ice cream. It’s only about 90 degrees here but there is humidity that makes it feel way hotter. I am actually typing this at our picnic table at our campsite. We are waiting for sunset to go see the view. This park is between 7,000 and 9,000 ft high depending on where you go. It’s too bad we won’t be here for the 4th of July - my favorite holiday. We went to see the sunset and it was amazing. Then we went back to go view the nighttime sky - apparently Bryce is famous for its darkness. Normally, humans can see about 2500 stars at night due to lights being around. At Bryce, you can see 7500… and boy did we ever. I felt like I was in a planetarium - almost like it was fake. There was almost no part of the sky that was not lit up. We saw shooting stars and satellites - clear as day. The planets were out in full force too. Breathtaking. Best of all - we saw the Milky Way galaxy. Then we slept in the tent in Bryce. I swear I heard bears growling around our tent but I guess not - because I am still here!
July 4, 2007
We took a lot of scenic routes to get to Lake Powell, UT/AZ to get to Glen Canyon. The drive here took f-o-r-e-v-e-r but it was a very very scenic drive. We went form Canyons to national forests to a full-blown desert (San Raphael)!!! We knew we had to take a ferry across Lake Powell once we got there but we didn’t know how infrequent it came so we wanted to find things to do to pass the time - and we ended up going down to the marina and renting out jet skis for 2 hours. It was soooooo much fun. I can’t even describe it. It’s so amazing to see a huge lake in the middle of the desert. The contrast of red rocks to bright blue sky is fascinating. Red rocks surrounded every inch of us. And we definitely got sunburned. Lake Powell is the 2nd largest manmade lake in the USA and took 17 years to reach full capacity. We needed every minute of the 2 hours that we rented them to see the lake and we still didn’t see it all but it was a lot of fun. Then we watched fireworks over the lake. It’s my first time seeing them in a long time, which is sad - considering that it is my favorite holiday. Adam and I have tried without success to see fireworks for a few years now. They were amazing. We slept here in Glen Canyon National Park in a tent. We are becoming pros at setting up.
July 5, 2007
We took the ferry across Lake Powell to the other side and took more scenic routes to get to Mesa Verde, CO… where it promptly began to thunder and lightning ferociously. I love it there though. It’s amazing to see the pueblo homes there. Our tour guide was an effing idiot. She couldn’t answer any questions. Matt and I started playing around saying we were gonna ask her where we were and she would answer “I don’t know exact;y” because that was her answer to everything. Now we are holed up in a hotel room in Cortes, CO. Oh… we also saw this dog wandering on the road and it was so cute and when we turned around like 5 minutes later, someone had killed it!! So sad.
road
We headed right to Zion National Park in Springdale, UT. The scenery was amazing. First we did the 1-mile Riverwalk hike. It was gorgeous. The Virgin River that cuts through it is a gorgeous deep blue like the Caribbean. We decided that we wanted to see Zion up close and personal so we embarked on the 5 mile (roundtrip) Angel’s Landing pass, that we failed to note was a very strenuous hike… especially for two people from sea level… and especially for me, who has hiked one time in my whole life. Oh, and also, it was “only” 110 degrees. It took up close to 4 hours to get up because our lungs could not get enough oxygen in them so we had to pause frequently to catch our breaths. Luckily our legs were in fine shape. It goes up 1700 extra feet while you hike and starts at about 6000 ft. Yikes. Now I know why teams do not want to play at Mile High Stadium. I drank 2 liters of water while hiking that thing and still did not need to pee, 5 hours later. I actually copped out halfway at Walter’s wiggles which was without about .06 miles to go… my hip started to hurt but Matt kept going and reached Scout’s landing. Getting down was much easier. Took about 45 minutes. We were ravaged after only eating a light breakfast and like 2 granola bars for “lunch” so we stopped at the first restaurant we could find, which was a Thai one. I tried Sake for the first time. Not bad. We were hot and sweaty so we high tailed it into the hotel’s pool, which had 3 young-ish kids (probably 12, 6 and 5) and NO parents or lifeguard watching over them. We forgot we were in Mormon Country and that it was Sunday so when we tried to find an open liquor store, we realized we would have to travel the 6 miles to Arizona to find some Coronas but when we got to the border, there were no towns for about 20 miles and it was only 27 miles to the Nevada border (using route 15 - look it up!) so we decided to see three states in 30 minutes and went all the way to Mesquite, Nevada (which had casinos in it- kind of like how New Hampshire sells fireworks the second you get over the border) but not before stopping in Beaverdam, Arizona at what had to be the sketchiest gas station I’ve ever been to. Pre-pay inside only and when I told him where my car was he said “if it’s not at pump 1, you’d better move it”. We bought Coronas and then went home. The town could not have been bigger than like 100 people tops and was all trailers. I am always overwhelmed by the abject poverty that exists in this country. I can’t imagine how anyone who went to the high school we saw there would be able to achieve scores high enough let alone have the money to go to college to get out of that dump. It’s sad to think about.
July 2, 2007
Today is our day off. It was nice to sleep in until 11, when we were woken up by the hotel guy to move our car so that the lawn mower didn’t get grass on it EVEN THOUGH WE SAID ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ on the door! Mofo. It always amazes me that southern-ish states (hot states) do not serve ice coffee at McDonald’s. I went to order one today at 11a, (while it was 96 degrees) and they told me they didn’t have iced coffee. So I said I’d take the hot one instead (there are no Dunkin Donuts down here, sadly, or I would’ve gone there). When I go to pay for the drink, the manager walks over to the girl taking the order and goes, “did she want iced coffee?”, the girl answered, “yes, but we don’t have any”. So he says to her, “you can just fill the cup with ice…” then he looks at me and asks if I want to do that. Now I’m intrigued. I KNOW that’s not how you make iced coffee but I bite. So he makes it and it, of course, tastes like ass crack. So I went to Burger King and ordered a BK Mocha Joe then I fed the crappy iced coffee to Matt. Hahaha. I told him the story first, of course! By the way, even though it’s like 110 degrees here every day, there is no humidity so it doesn’t feel oppressive or bad at all. I’d rather have 110 and not humidity than 80 degrees with 80% humidity. We just tried to find the closest Bank of America to us and it’s in… drum roll, please… Mesquite, NV. Roadtrip!
Matt went to go see Live Free or Die Hard. I am lazy and want to upload videos. We ended up watching Reno 911 then headed to bed.
July 3, 2007
We arrived at my most favorite location on the planet today: Bryce Canyon National Park. It’s10000000 times better than the Grand Canyon and I highly recommend it. And it’s, of course, in Utah, still my most favorite state on the planet. It’s even better the second time. We had to drive through Zion National Park to get here… and some interesting mountain tunnels. Matt and I walked to the bottom of the Canyon (to the Queen’s Garden), which is something I always wanted to do. I hugged a hoodoo. Hoodoos are the odd shaped rocks that exists in this park. They are very unique. We then scoped out our campsite and went into town to drink some beer and eat some ice cream. It’s only about 90 degrees here but there is humidity that makes it feel way hotter. I am actually typing this at our picnic table at our campsite. We are waiting for sunset to go see the view. This park is between 7,000 and 9,000 ft high depending on where you go. It’s too bad we won’t be here for the 4th of July - my favorite holiday. We went to see the sunset and it was amazing. Then we went back to go view the nighttime sky - apparently Bryce is famous for its darkness. Normally, humans can see about 2500 stars at night due to lights being around. At Bryce, you can see 7500… and boy did we ever. I felt like I was in a planetarium - almost like it was fake. There was almost no part of the sky that was not lit up. We saw shooting stars and satellites - clear as day. The planets were out in full force too. Breathtaking. Best of all - we saw the Milky Way galaxy. Then we slept in the tent in Bryce. I swear I heard bears growling around our tent but I guess not - because I am still here!
July 4, 2007
We took a lot of scenic routes to get to Lake Powell, UT/AZ to get to Glen Canyon. The drive here took f-o-r-e-v-e-r but it was a very very scenic drive. We went form Canyons to national forests to a full-blown desert (San Raphael)!!! We knew we had to take a ferry across Lake Powell once we got there but we didn’t know how infrequent it came so we wanted to find things to do to pass the time - and we ended up going down to the marina and renting out jet skis for 2 hours. It was soooooo much fun. I can’t even describe it. It’s so amazing to see a huge lake in the middle of the desert. The contrast of red rocks to bright blue sky is fascinating. Red rocks surrounded every inch of us. And we definitely got sunburned. Lake Powell is the 2nd largest manmade lake in the USA and took 17 years to reach full capacity. We needed every minute of the 2 hours that we rented them to see the lake and we still didn’t see it all but it was a lot of fun. Then we watched fireworks over the lake. It’s my first time seeing them in a long time, which is sad - considering that it is my favorite holiday. Adam and I have tried without success to see fireworks for a few years now. They were amazing. We slept here in Glen Canyon National Park in a tent. We are becoming pros at setting up.
July 5, 2007
We took the ferry across Lake Powell to the other side and took more scenic routes to get to Mesa Verde, CO… where it promptly began to thunder and lightning ferociously. I love it there though. It’s amazing to see the pueblo homes there. Our tour guide was an effing idiot. She couldn’t answer any questions. Matt and I started playing around saying we were gonna ask her where we were and she would answer “I don’t know exact;y” because that was her answer to everything. Now we are holed up in a hotel room in Cortes, CO. Oh… we also saw this dog wandering on the road and it was so cute and when we turned around like 5 minutes later, someone had killed it!! So sad.
road