US Road Trip - Done.

We're home now.

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We covered 3645 km in the car (5 states, 7 national parks, 3 national monuments) without killing each other. That's more of a testament to our marriage than any Elvis Ceremony could ever be.

You Don't Want To Know What Happened In 'Querque

Actually, not much happened in 'Querque; it's not exactly a destination city. We drove through Old Town but couldn't be bothered to even find a place to park. Instead, we went and saw "This Is The End" in the dodgiest neighbourhood in the city; it's a bad sign when you see a movie about the rioting and chaos during the end of the world, then you exit the movie theatre and feel somewhat jealous of the characters in the movie. This sign was next to where we parked the car:

To kill time the next day before flying home, we went and saw "World War Z". This time we decided to burn a little more gas and drove to a theatre in the suburbs.

(July 7, 2013)

Thoughts of prime numbers and pi.

Our science focus changed once again in New Mexico, this time to astronomy for some hard-core nerd-tourism. About two hours southwest of Albuquerque is the Very Large Array, and conveniently for us they provide guided tours on the first Saturday of each month. Some undergrad astronomy students toured us around the facility, showing us the control room (which looked nothing like it did in Contact), the supercomputers (which looked nothing like they did in Contact), and also where a few scenes of Contact were filmed (I can only assume these did look like they did in Contact).

(EDIT: I take it back. I've now reviewed the scenes from Contact and the undergrads were wrong: the control room looked fairly similar to the real thing. They perhaps took out a few walls to open it up for camera lines, but overall the layout was correct and included the tacky '70s architecture. Stupid science students... what the hell do they know?)

For the sake of our photographs we were fortunate that the 27 dishes were in their "C" configuration, meaning the furthest ones were only a mile away; had they been in their "A" configuration the furthest dishes would have been 13 miles away and the closest slightly more than a mile.

About 30 miles west of the VLA is a town called Pie Town. If there is a human being capable of driving through a place with that name and *not* stop to get a slice, I don't want to know them.

Sadly, our choices of pies at the Pie-O-Neer café (get it?) were somewhat limited because a group of insane cyclists had blown through an hour before us on a marathon trip from Banff to Mexico. (Pie Town is near the continental divide (which amounts to a gentle hill down here) so I can only assume that was their route.) The owner told us she eventually refused to serve them any more or else she would not have any pies left for her normal customers. Good thing or else we would have never gotten to try some unique pie flavours: I had a New Mexico Apple Pie (apple and green chiles) and Jessica had pear & ginger. Both were delish.

Mmmmm... pie... and SCIENCE!

(July 6, 2013)

Americana Grab-bag.

For the Fourth of July celebration I did manage to spot a mobility scooter and later some gaudy Stars 'n Stripes shirts, but never both on the same person. As a consolation prize we spotted a truck with a Confederate Flag on the back and "NOBAMA" painted on the side:

The unique thing about the fireworks was just that we were allowed to watch from very close to where they were being launched, which made for an nervous experience of them exploding right over our heads. However, the show was stolen when we returned to Mesa Verde: at high altitude and in dry desert air the stars were amazing and we were even able to make out the band of the Milky Way, which we've only managed to do previously in the southern hemisphere where it is brighter.

The next morning we moved on to New Mexico where our science focus changed again, this time from archaeology to physics. We took an indirect route to Albuquerque so we could swing by Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project was centred. The science museum there was somewhat sparse though. Also, some of the displays were a tiny but dated: one movie talked about how Los Alamos at it's height was unique in that there were no "invalids".

What was more interesting was the locality of the town for historical reasons, perched high atop a desert mesa and still primarily only accessible via a few winding roads up the canyon wall. It was not difficult to understand why the US military chose this spot.

The route from there to 'Querque went through Santa Fe so we pulled off the interstate to say we had seen it. We didn't even get out of the car, though, and instead just did a drive-thru visit to the (quasi)-famous Santa Fe plaza and cathedral.

Again, the more interesting thing here was not the main attraction. Instead it was that the entire city consists of Adobe-style buildings. Odd to see such a distinct architecture throughout a North American city.

Nothing to exciting today; it was mostly just a travel day.

(July 5, 2013)

Mesa Verde National Park

We spent a day in Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of Colorado, which is somewhat smoky due to the forest fires a few hundred miles to the east of us. The forest is alive with the song of the local breed of cicadas which have hatched this year. We're very lucky to be visiting during a cicada year, otherwise we'd have to wait another seventeen years to be repulsed by these big, disgusting grasshoppers-on-steroids.

Unlike the previous parks we've visited, the focus here at Mesa Verde is on archaeology instead of geology. The highlight of the park is the famous Cliff Palace, a 800 year-old Pueblo site.

Today is Independence Day here in the home of the free and land of the brave. We're heading into the nearest town, Cortez, to watch the celebration and fireworks. I will be quite disappointed if we don't get flag-adorned mobility scooters and gaudy stars-n-stripes collared shits.

America... f*ck yeah!

(July 4, 2013)

Four Corners

Jessica and I can now say we've been in the only place in the whole USA where four states touch each other! I am standing in Utah and Arizona; Jessica is standing in Colorado and New Mexico.

JEALOUS?!?

Yeah, I can tell... you're jealous.

(July 3, 2013)

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As an aside, the reason you don't often see images on this blog that contain both Jessica and myself is because I don't trust strangers to take good photos. They always f*ck it up. Always, always, always.

If we're standing in front of a beautiful vista that stretches to the horizon, you can be sure that 60% of the photo will be the asphalt below our feet. In Tulum I asked a woman to take a photo of us in front of the ruins; she stood 30 degrees off the required line of sight and it just ended up being a photo of us in a field with no ruins in the frame whatsoever. Another favourite is when they cut off our feet at the ankles, or the top of my head is missing. I've even gone so far as to adjust the zoom and angle while Jessica poses without me, show the stranger exactly how I want the shot lined up in the viewfinder, then run and stand next to Jessica moments later. It doesn't work; they never listen and instead change the zoom, aim at the ground, or walk to a different spot before taking the picture.

In this case, we actually wanted the ground in the photo since that's where the monument is. We had no choice but to get a stranger to take the photo since there were four states to stand in, requiring four feet. I specifically said to the guy "Make sure you get as much of the monument as possible in the shot." What do we get? Glorious blue sky and white fluffy clouds make up the top 40% of the photo, while most of the monument is outside the frame.

I officially give up.

Monument Valley

Next stop was one of the main targets for this trip: Monument Valley.

You could actually see the iconic buttes from many miles away on the horizon, but as we crested a hill on the approach we both instantly recognized one of the more famous stretches of road in the world:

Monument Valley itself is actually quite compact, at least when compared to some of the other parks we've visited on this trip. This is surely why it's so iconic: you can fit most of the buttes into a single shot.

The scenic drive around the valley is on unpaved and very rough roads and we were attempting it in a Nissan Altima.

I high-centred the car three times - once quite loudly. Good thing it's a rental.

(July 3, 2013)

Island in the Sky

(EDIT: I messed up and put up some posts in the wrong order. (Either that or the time-travelling experiment worked.) This post belongs in the afternoon after visiting Arches but the day before visiting The Needles.)

On the afternoon after Arches we headed over to the nearby Island in the Sky, located in Canyonlands National Park. Having never heard of this one we weren't sure what to expect but thought it would be a pleasant way to spend the afternoon before heading back to- HOLY MACARONI, ISLANDS IN THE SKY IS AMAZEBALLS!!!

This attraction is well-named, as you really do feel like you are on a floating island high above a deserted moonscape. A lack of safety rails became a problem, though:

Seriously though, we both preferred this park to the Grand Canyon. We're not sure if this was because we had never heard of this one or if the Grand Canyon just has better publicity, but the views here took our breath away:

Tomorrow we were going to skip The Needles in Canyonlands but now we are rethinking our plans...

(July 2, 2013)

The Needles

Departing Moab to the south we were undecided whether to visit The Needles in Canyonlands National Park. The guidebook said it was less busy than other parks in the area but this was largely because you had to get out of the car and do some walking to see anything good. We had a lot of miles to cover before sunset so it didn't seem like we would have time.

Fortunately, we spotted a sign for Needles Outlook which promised a vista of the entire area without having to enter the park and allowing us to have a Clark Grisward style view of the canyon. The road to the outlook was quite abandoned and at times we could see it go straight as an arrow to the horizon both behind us and in front with not a car in sight. This left no choice but to see if we got achieve time travel by getting the car up to 88 mph. In fact we topped out at 100 mph before Jessica made me slow down. Sadly our Mr. Fusion was broken so we're still stuck here in 2013.

(If any members of the Utah Highway Patrol are reading this, let me assure you that I often exagerrate details for comedic effect. In fact, we never exceeded the speed limit, were both wearing our seatbelts, as well as DOT approved helmets.)

The outlook did not disappoint, teetering on a cliff hundreds of feet above the canyon below.

For Jessica's coworkers reading this blog, she spotted a rig on the way back to the highway and had to take a picture. Enjoy:

(July 3, 2013)

Arches National Park

Next stop was a half-day tour in the famous Arches National Park. The forecast was for cooler weather with a high of only +39C, so I decided to weat long pants to keep warm.

The hike up to the iconic Delicate Arch was only about 5 km round-trip, but in the oppressive desert heat an no shade, it felt like much more. Still the arch itself lives up to its reputation:

(I'm in that photo if you look closely.)

We then did a driving tour of all the other attractions that were within a few dozen meters of the parking lots. (Get out of the car, take a picture, run back to the car, blast air conditioning, repeat.) Our final stop was another icon: Balanced Rock.

Word to the wise: if you're lazy like us (read: don't want to hike very far) you can comfortably do Arches in less than half a day.

(July 2, 2013)

National Park Sampler Platter

Today we started our "Sampler Platter" of National Parks: over the next three days we plan to cover 5-6 parks, though only getting a taste of each one. No long hikes, but that as fine because the canyoneering adventure had left us both quite sore. Unfortunately today we had a lot of miles to cover since we needed to get clear across Utah by nightfall.

We started with a brief driving tour through the southwest corner of Zion National Park. (I had actually thought our canyoneering was within the park but it turns out guides are not allowed to operate within the park itself.) You can't see much of Zion from the car  since most of it is only accessible via a shuttle service.

We also had to skip Bryce Canyon due to lack of time, though there were some nice oddities on bypass:

Scenic Bypass Route 12 then took us through Grand Staircase National Monument which was gorgeous.

In fact, the entire journey on Route 12 took twice as long as we expected since we ended up having to stop every couple miles to take yet another picture of the spectacular desert scenery. As it was Canada Day, we made sure we only listened to Canadian music the entire way.

Canyoneering

Today (June 30) we actually did something active and went canyoneering down a slot canyon called Yankee Doodle in the Pine Valley Mountains just west of Zion National Park. We haven't done anything this adventurous since spelunking in Australia.

We were quite pleased with ourselves for how we had done, but as evening set in our muscles started kindly reminding us that we're getting too old for this stuff.

Lake Powell

Today's destination was Rainbow Bridge. Unfortunately, it's quite a long slog to get there by boat from the base of Lake Powell, though the scenery is quite impressive along the way:

Unfortunately, as we neared Rainbow Bridge our tour boat lost an engine. While we still were able to limp the last 45 minutes to the dock with the one remaining engine, they had to radio back to the resort for a second boat to bring out the mechanics and take us home. We were told to hike up to see the bridge (about 1.25 miles each way thanks to low water levels in the lake) while our rescue boat made its way to us.

Upon returning from the bridge, our replacement boat had not arrived. The bad news is that was over two hours before it showed up and we had nothing to do but wait in the heat; the good news is that it was one of the less balmy days we've had so far, topping out at a paltry +42 Celsius.

Nerves were short when we got back to the resort after 10 hours, 4 hours behind schedule. :(