Leaving Las Vegas
Got back after midnight last night. Bone tired. Great trip! We left early for the conference to give us time to stop by Bryce canyon. A surreal experience.
The rock formations at Bryce have an interesting legend (click the picture to zoom.) Bright-eyes and I invented stories about them coming to life on the night of a full moon and dancing in the valley. They allow night hikes through the canyon, which got us both thinking about another trip timed to check this out.
After Bryce we left for Las Vegas, drove through the Dixie National Forest and at the top of a summit pass, standing on the edge of the mountain, you could hear the wind blowing in the valleys below. This is the music I'd like to capture in my flute.
We kind of waffled our way through Las Vegas and found our hotel. I went to conferences for a few days and bright-eyes wandered around unsupervised but seemed to stay out of trouble. Mostly.
We rendezvoused for lunches and hit the town on the evenings. Lots of glitter. And lions, tigers, leopards, dolphins, music and dancing. And, by the way, wandering around with bright-eyes in the lion habitat thing, I came face to face with a leopard. They have a *very* intense gaze. Then he yawned and laid down to get back to his dreams. Certainly perked me up though.
Our room was about a 1 ½ mile walk from the conference area, I think I walked about 75 miles in 4 days. I found out a week or so before hand that I was going to be a speaker. Had an impromptu audience of about 150, seemed like it was well received despite the lack of preparation.
We escaped Las Vegas at just about the right time. Both our noise and stimulation thresholds were about maxed.
Headed out with directions from the valet to the west rim of the grand canyon. Did the skywalk thingie, which was cool, had to keep towing bright-eyes though, she was convinced she was going to plummet through the glass at any time. Imagine you are floating over the canyon if you go, makes for some interesting dreams :-)
It was a rush but probably not something you’d want to repeat. It’s way over-priced. At $20 for parking(?!), $29 per person to ride the bus to the skywalk and $29 each for the walk. It adds up fast.
I was expecting it extend much further over the canyon. You can see its actual size here, a little different from what they show in the brochures.
You also can’t bring your cameras onto the walk. But the crows there were interesting. They got pretty close to the humans, to steal food mostly but still, that's pretty impressive for a crow. They usually think of humans as some untrustworthy abberation of nature to be closely watched. Flying in the sunlight they were silver gulls. Their wings irridescent mirrors. Bright-eyes and I watched a couple of them horsing around under the tower with aerobatics more impressive than any Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
Next stop was going to be Kayenta to stage a trip in the morning to Monument Valley. After getting some directions from a Navajo standing on the side of the road, we headed down an unmarked dirt road for 50 miles and ended up on old Highway 66, which was pretty much deserted.
I was looking for gas and there were several ancient and abandoned stations from back when it was the major through-way to the west. We finally found one with two old fashion pumps, a talkative old codger and shop with candies and such from the 60’s, still in their classic wrappers. And probably still edible.
As we drove off I was thinking it was kind of strange that this old station appeared when we needed it and there were no other stations before or after ---or traffic for that matter. As I looked in the rear view mirror I saw a dilapidated old station with tumbleweeds around the pumps. No way we could have just filled up there. One of those twilight zone moments.
There were lots of Joshua trees everywhere. They didn't seem to be doing that well. Maybe it was the season. They grow from a rhizome (rhizomes actually have more to do with the internet and the internet cultures than most would suspect) , like aspens, but they live up to 200 years; and they look like some creative interbreeding between cactus and tree. The Indians used its leaves for sandals and baskets, and the seeds and flowers for food.
Speaking of food, we stopped in Cameron on the way, I had an Indian Taco. Man those are good. Probably not good for ya (frybread cooked in a vat of lard), but once a year or so it’s a nice treat. Usually get them at pow-wows, but we hadn’t been to one of those in a while. After spending the night at Kayenta we headed toward Monument valley. The winds had whipped up and dust shrouded the valley in mist, so we decided just to head home. Which turned out to be a good thing.
Shortly after passing Vail around 5pm, we got stuck on I-70 behind a major pile-up near Frisco (A semi jackknifed, no injuries.) We sat there, inching 5 miles in about 5 hours. If we’d come a few hours later we would have been there until the next day.
When we finally got to the outskirts of Frisco we had three lanes of traffic trying to chaotically merge into the single lane exit. Two Frisco police cars were sitting there ignoring the traffic and telling jokes. My patience was a wee bit worn at this point, so I rolled down the window to shout some constructive feedback. “You Guys Suck!” They seemed shocked with their citizen performance review. Guess I didn't have the right form.
It got worse as the snarl of traffic tried to navigate through their Podunk town. There were no signs pointing where the detour went, no cops at the traffic lights, which resulted in the flood of cars getting balled up and winding through little streets trying to find their way past the various intersections to get back to some exit, hoping the path back onto I-70 wasn’t blocked as well.
Since I had lots of time still on my hands, I called their police station on the cell, who assured me they had their task force out directing traffic. I informed them their task force consisted of two cruisers sitting back at the first exit telling jokes. And by the way, what kind of mickey mouse operation couldn’t get a 1 mile stretch of road cleared in 6 hours? I come by my mouth honestly.
Frisco, bah. We finally made it through town and found the right exit, got gas in Dillon where it was 6 degrees out and my teeth were rattling. My eyes were starting to cross the last leg of the journey, but we finally made it back and I slept so deeply I think my butt was scraping the floor beneath the bed. Or that could've been the Indian taco.
All and all it was a fun trip. And that’s all I have to say about that.
The rock formations at Bryce have an interesting legend (click the picture to zoom.) Bright-eyes and I invented stories about them coming to life on the night of a full moon and dancing in the valley. They allow night hikes through the canyon, which got us both thinking about another trip timed to check this out.
After Bryce we left for Las Vegas, drove through the Dixie National Forest and at the top of a summit pass, standing on the edge of the mountain, you could hear the wind blowing in the valleys below. This is the music I'd like to capture in my flute.
We kind of waffled our way through Las Vegas and found our hotel. I went to conferences for a few days and bright-eyes wandered around unsupervised but seemed to stay out of trouble. Mostly.
We rendezvoused for lunches and hit the town on the evenings. Lots of glitter. And lions, tigers, leopards, dolphins, music and dancing. And, by the way, wandering around with bright-eyes in the lion habitat thing, I came face to face with a leopard. They have a *very* intense gaze. Then he yawned and laid down to get back to his dreams. Certainly perked me up though.
Our room was about a 1 ½ mile walk from the conference area, I think I walked about 75 miles in 4 days. I found out a week or so before hand that I was going to be a speaker. Had an impromptu audience of about 150, seemed like it was well received despite the lack of preparation.
We escaped Las Vegas at just about the right time. Both our noise and stimulation thresholds were about maxed.
Headed out with directions from the valet to the west rim of the grand canyon. Did the skywalk thingie, which was cool, had to keep towing bright-eyes though, she was convinced she was going to plummet through the glass at any time. Imagine you are floating over the canyon if you go, makes for some interesting dreams :-)
It was a rush but probably not something you’d want to repeat. It’s way over-priced. At $20 for parking(?!), $29 per person to ride the bus to the skywalk and $29 each for the walk. It adds up fast.
I was expecting it extend much further over the canyon. You can see its actual size here, a little different from what they show in the brochures.
You also can’t bring your cameras onto the walk. But the crows there were interesting. They got pretty close to the humans, to steal food mostly but still, that's pretty impressive for a crow. They usually think of humans as some untrustworthy abberation of nature to be closely watched. Flying in the sunlight they were silver gulls. Their wings irridescent mirrors. Bright-eyes and I watched a couple of them horsing around under the tower with aerobatics more impressive than any Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
Next stop was going to be Kayenta to stage a trip in the morning to Monument Valley. After getting some directions from a Navajo standing on the side of the road, we headed down an unmarked dirt road for 50 miles and ended up on old Highway 66, which was pretty much deserted.
I was looking for gas and there were several ancient and abandoned stations from back when it was the major through-way to the west. We finally found one with two old fashion pumps, a talkative old codger and shop with candies and such from the 60’s, still in their classic wrappers. And probably still edible.
As we drove off I was thinking it was kind of strange that this old station appeared when we needed it and there were no other stations before or after ---or traffic for that matter. As I looked in the rear view mirror I saw a dilapidated old station with tumbleweeds around the pumps. No way we could have just filled up there. One of those twilight zone moments.
There were lots of Joshua trees everywhere. They didn't seem to be doing that well. Maybe it was the season. They grow from a rhizome (rhizomes actually have more to do with the internet and the internet cultures than most would suspect) , like aspens, but they live up to 200 years; and they look like some creative interbreeding between cactus and tree. The Indians used its leaves for sandals and baskets, and the seeds and flowers for food.
Speaking of food, we stopped in Cameron on the way, I had an Indian Taco. Man those are good. Probably not good for ya (frybread cooked in a vat of lard), but once a year or so it’s a nice treat. Usually get them at pow-wows, but we hadn’t been to one of those in a while. After spending the night at Kayenta we headed toward Monument valley. The winds had whipped up and dust shrouded the valley in mist, so we decided just to head home. Which turned out to be a good thing.
Shortly after passing Vail around 5pm, we got stuck on I-70 behind a major pile-up near Frisco (A semi jackknifed, no injuries.) We sat there, inching 5 miles in about 5 hours. If we’d come a few hours later we would have been there until the next day.
When we finally got to the outskirts of Frisco we had three lanes of traffic trying to chaotically merge into the single lane exit. Two Frisco police cars were sitting there ignoring the traffic and telling jokes. My patience was a wee bit worn at this point, so I rolled down the window to shout some constructive feedback. “You Guys Suck!” They seemed shocked with their citizen performance review. Guess I didn't have the right form.
It got worse as the snarl of traffic tried to navigate through their Podunk town. There were no signs pointing where the detour went, no cops at the traffic lights, which resulted in the flood of cars getting balled up and winding through little streets trying to find their way past the various intersections to get back to some exit, hoping the path back onto I-70 wasn’t blocked as well.
Since I had lots of time still on my hands, I called their police station on the cell, who assured me they had their task force out directing traffic. I informed them their task force consisted of two cruisers sitting back at the first exit telling jokes. And by the way, what kind of mickey mouse operation couldn’t get a 1 mile stretch of road cleared in 6 hours? I come by my mouth honestly.
Frisco, bah. We finally made it through town and found the right exit, got gas in Dillon where it was 6 degrees out and my teeth were rattling. My eyes were starting to cross the last leg of the journey, but we finally made it back and I slept so deeply I think my butt was scraping the floor beneath the bed. Or that could've been the Indian taco.
All and all it was a fun trip. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Sounds like a fun trip and just think of all the excitement caused by the delay. That valley is simply awesome.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post ..thanks for sharing the trip :)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your blog very much Kento. You need to teach me how to do that. Need to see more of your photos too and we can compare notes with our trip to Utah the same time you were out in Vegas. Isn't Bryce something! I loved riding a mule down into that formation 2 years ago without the snow that you had. Thanks, Pat
ReplyDelete