Hi, all! Sorry it’s taken me all week to get around to this final post, but the brain took a break after all that driving around. (We could have driven home from Arches National Park, that’s how far we drove.)

So what pro tips did we discover this time?

This tip is from Ranesha, the Avis rental agent at the Four Queens Hotel & Casino in Vegas: Check to see if your hotel has a car rental desk. If so, then take a cab or Uber from the airport and rent your car at the hotel. (She didn’t say, but I imagine it would be a good idea to do that over the phone before you start traveling.) No lines, personal service, and no trudging through a giant parking deck. Also, sometimes you get a better deal.

Ask park rangers for advice on how to get from there to the next place. This is how we were able to see more than just the five national parks. However, remember that it is also how we got to experience Hwy 12.

In the same vein, don’t overlook state parks. Nevada’s Valley of Fire and Utah’s supremely silly Valley of Goblins were awesome!

As always, in a park with one main artery in and out, drive to the end and then stop on all the overlooks on the way back, unless the overlooks are on the right. Mostly they’re on the left, though.

Especially in Arches National Park, if your timed ticket is after twelve noon, go straight to Delicate Arch. If you don’t, you’ll end up like us, too tired to make the 40-minute hike to see it up close.

In Vegas… I don’t know. I have no affection for the place. Cirque du Soleil is fabulous and I would advise you not to miss Meow Wolf’s OmegaMart, but otherwise the city is not my kind of place. YMMV, of course. You might check hotel prices out near Hoover Dam to see if they’re cheaper; it’s a 30-minute drive, but the savings may make it preferable.

No pro tip here, but a caution: We like to travel without firm plans on where to stay, using the app Hotel Tonight to book hotels on the fly and at reduced rates. The one night we had planned to use Hotel Tonight, though, I was shocked to find that no rooms were available in St. George, UT. When I went to Expedia, I found plenty of rooms, so the lesson is that if business is booming, hotels have no reason to push reduced-rate rooms via Hotel Tonight.

As always, be aware of altitude sickness. It’s real and it will lay you low. Just take it easy, drink lots of water, and make sure you pack your lip balm — when they say it’s a “dry heat” you’re probably focused on the “heat” part of that, but the “dry” is equally as problematic.

Next: CHRISTMAS MARKETS IN GERMANY — stay tuned!

We arrived back in Newnan around midnight Saturday, so we didn’t actually unpack until we awoke at some point midmorning Sunday.

Cecil the Pest™ was immediately helpful.

Abigal, the good and deserving Assistive Feline™, of course, knows how best to be assistive.

But Cecil the Pest™ insisted on helping.

Although we — as certified Old People — have agreed that we will not buy stuff on our trips,^[1] of course we buy some stuff. Here’s what I bought.

After the excitement of Hwy 12, we had to buy the t-shirt.

I decided to buy socks at each park; here are three of the five or six I got. (The others are in the wash at the moment, but you get the idea.)

I also decided to buy stickers for the car. I’m sure I’m missing at least one, but maybe they’ll turn up. I knew when I bought them that I should develop an organized method of keeping them safe.

I bought a few lizards. I have a thing for lizards.

Plus a lizard mug.

Okay, and a piece of lizard art for the labyrinth. So I bought more than a few lizards. I have a thing for lizards.

Petroglyphs are fascinating to me, so at Valley of the Sun I bought a book about them. Did you know there are petroglyphs in Georgia? The little metal guys came with a greeting card and a little hook for hanging. They’ll just sit on my desk. Next to the lizards.

This handmade ceramic ornament appealed to me, mostly for the Greek key design.

A couple of tasty things…

…and GIN! I had some really good southwestern gins, but was prevented from acquiring more than these two either by our schedule or Utah’s screwy liquor laws. The Pipistrelle, from Etta Place, is a pommeau: a mixture of apple juice and apple brandy.

I bought the Beehive gins without having tasted them, so I had to wait until we got home to know if they were any good. I am happy to report that the Jack Rabbit gin — notes of juniper and rose — is a light, lovely gin. I’ll report later on the barrel-aged.

There were also a few gifts, but of course I’m not going to show those.

Next: PRO TIPS

—————

^[1] Exempted are jewelry, art, and gin. Especially gin.

Before we left St. George, we went back to Ancestor Square, where we dined last night. I wanted photos of the place in daylight. Newnan City Council, this is what the Brown Steel Property could be. Restaurants, shops, offices, all in a pleasant setting.

Public spaces. Green spaces.

Distinctive architecture.

Here, have a panoramic view.

Or you could, you know, build a convention center and hotel that offers nothing to those of us who live there.

Then it was time to head back to Nevada, this time on the interstate. The geology was impressive, as usual.

We arrived way before check-in at the Four Queens, so everyone else went to see the Princess Diana exhibit; I wandered lonely as the cloudage just to kill the time.

After we got into our room and rested up a bit, we had a very good — but extremely expensive — dinner at the hotel’s upscale Hugo’s Cellar.

And then: Meow Wolf, in Area 15.

You may recall that my Lovely First Wife and I encountered Meow Wolf’s original installation in  Santa Fe during last year’s trip to Grand Canyon. It was such an amazing experience that we were eager to go to OmegaMart, their Las Vegas installation.

Area 15 is more than just Meow Wolf; it’s a huge space with bars and nightspots.

Here’s what greets you when you enter the warehouse.

And we’re off. After clearing security, we entered OmegaMart.

Y’all. You cannot imagine this place. And yet — this is what boggles my  mind — someone did imagine this place, and not only imagined it, produced everything you see.

The whole thing is a relentless parody of American consumer capitalism. Your brain just goes sproing as it recognizes all the pieces it sees, but can’t quite put together into a coherent whole.

Did you notice the visual glitch with FRESH DAILY?

The products are almost real.

What are NEG-PLANTS?

These things.

You can’t tell, but this thing is the size of a volleyball.

Remember, not only did someone have the idea, they had to make everything you see.

Even without the rest of the installation, the Mart left me breathless with laughter.

Cereal.

Soft drinks.

Harvesting the zalg. Don’t ask.

DramCorp’s sinister backstory sucked up my Lovely First Wife and Mary Frances fairly soon after we started shopping, but I resisted the urge to (for example) open this freezer case, because I knew what lay beyond. Well, I didn’t know exactly what lay beyond, but I knew that Marc and I had to diligently examine the entire Mart before we… well, you’ll see.

Meds.

Meats.

Superpower supplies. (The Schadenfreude is “German-engineered.”)

Candy, gum.

Health and beauty.

The thing about Meow Wolf’s thing is that the front is just a facade, if you’ll pardon the pun. In Santa Fe, in what seemed a normal-seeming suburban home, you opened the refrigerator and found a portal into a bizarre multiverse. In OmegaMart, there were any number of innocent-looking paths: behind the meat counter, stairs to the employee lounge, the freezer cabinet, and suddenly…

There’s always some sinister backstage story to what’s going on, and the more driven among you may want to find all the clues and put all the pieces of the storyline together. I was just there for the art, but essentially DramCorp’s family owners had a dispute about their research into aliens/alternate realities/leveling humanity up — or something like that.

The space is huge and chaotic and multilevel. OmegaMart is much more high-tech/electronic than Santa Fe; both are amazing.

Bizarre.

Clues.

It’s clear that whatever they were doing, something went wrong.

Have a panorama from the second level.

Small universes.

Interactive pieces.

Some staggering beauty. This room was all windows like this. (It’s made of layers of engraved plexiglass, with each layer lit in turn.)

Simple yet compelling.

In a glass case, geometric solids extend into infinity.

There was a room with lasers, which if you blocked with your hand, created music. There was another room with a machine that allowed you to create music with beats and tones. The rooms and art pieces went on and on. DramCorp employees were on hand to offer answers or suggestions — or warnings.

The main big room had a 15–20 minute video playing over the entire surface of the undulating walls, with a kind of record of DramCorp’s research, from math/geometrics to single cells to Alex Grey-style faces to star people. Who needs hallucinogens when Meow Wolf has done the work for you?

(I am being informed by the interwebs that Alex and Allyson Grey in fact designed the video.)

(I also realize, in researching the above, that there were some significant parts of the place that I missed.)

It was, as we expected, absolutely mindblowing and absolutely amazing.

We finally stumbled out of DramCorp’s nightmare multiverse and headed back to the hotel, where despite the (extremely loud) enticements of the Fremont Experience, we went to sleep.

Next: Home, the Swag Post, and Pro Tips.

On the road to Canyonlands National Park, our final destination.

The usual diary of our planet’s checkered past…

The La Sal Mountains being a bit ominous.

The drive into the park only hinted at the nature of the place.

Across the street from the visitors center, large expanses of bare rock…

…huge tracts of land. Note the humans for scale.

And then you’re at the rim.

Panorama.

You will have noticed the segment of road on the right. Most of the park is inaccessible to mortals without 4-wheel drive or who are not dedicated hikers. In fact, several of the regions aren’t even accessible from the main entrance. You have to go all the way back to Moab and start over in a different direction to reach the southern regions. Welcome to Canyonlands.

Driving out to the first viewpoint. You’re on a plateau, and it all looks normal.

On the path out to the viewpoint. Aren’t these lovely?

A close-up. I have no idea what they are, but if I lived out here they’d be in my front yard.

And there it is.

Panorama

We have our very own Half Dome here. And see that big boulder in the lower left? Remember: It was not always there.

Vertiginosity.

On the way to the next viewpoint. The cloudage was doing its thing, this time with downpours in the distance.

Just when you think you’ve seen all the erosion…

Panorama.

This here is what we call a “vista.”

You could clamber down some stairs and stroll along the rim for a bit. I opted not to…

… but my Lovely First Wife took the chance.

I think the thing that amazes me about this landscape is that it’s like recursive canyons. You’re standing at the rim of a 1,000-foot drop, looking down at another rim of another canyon.

This park was created in the 1960s. Part of the Johnson administration was thinking about damming the Colorado here, but wiser minds claimed it as a national park. (You can see bits of the Colorado, but these photos aren’t that detailed.)

I try to remember to look close by as well. The infinite forms erosion gives us is mindbending.

Piñon, I think?

Another conifer, not a bristlecone, but isn’t it lovely?

Finally, we hit the road to St. George, a five-hour drive. Cloudage was magnificent…

… or weird…

… or adorable.

We dined at the Spotted Pony, which is located in this really cool complex of shops and restaurants. Newnan City Council, this is what the Brown Steel property should be. I know you want a convention center, but how about something that we citizens can use on a regular basis?

In that same complex was Spiritual, a craft cocktail bar recommended to me by Goat, a dear burner friend. And when I say “craft,” I mean craft cocktails. It was late, so I had only one (a cedar-smoked Old-Fashioned). Pity.

Next: VEGAS REDUX

Cloudage in the morning at the Rim Rock Inn, Torrey, UT.

Bad cloudage in the morning. The rain skirted us most of the day.

We had to drive through the Capitol Reef area, so we stopped at a pullover we hadn’t stopped at yesterday. As one does.

Soon the landscape changed again.

It’s awe-inspiring to remember that each of these layers represents eons of time and erosion on our planet, with each one showing drastic changes in the atmosphere.

A video.

You might think all this barren landscape would get boring, but somehow it never quite does.

Mount Boulder, we think. It is so far the only actual mountain we’ve seen.

Earth was going through some things, apparently.

We stopped in Hanksville for refreshment, and the young man checking us out was also the artist whose works were on display.

Yes, those are Lichtenberg figures, and yes, they are named after our very own Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. The young man was delighted to learn that the term had antecedents.

More magnificent cloudage.

This was supposed to be a simple travel day, from Torrey to Moab, but Ann at Etta Place recommended that we go off course to see Valley of Goblins State Park. So yay for bonus trips. Hang on.

On the road into the park, there were others.

That’s a small group of pronghorn antelopes. I had gotten out of the car to take this photo and was in the process of shooting a panoramic video (not included here), when everybody suddenly started urging me to get in the car. I turned to see…

The buck expressed his displeasure at my presence, snuffing and snorting while I stood between him and his lady friends. I retreated, sensibly, and videoed him from the safety of the back seat.

So, Valley of the Goblins. Let me say that if you’ve never thought of geological erosion as silly, then allow me to bring you some silliness.

One of the appeals of the place is, as Ann put it, “human-scaled hoodoos.” She was not wrong.

But these isolated examples cannot prepare you for the full story.

Those who are susceptible to pareidolia may now wallow in it.

This one looked unhappy for some reason.

Oh, look, a pass, I said to myself.

…so I approached, thinking to walk on through. But it wasn’t a pass.

Instead:

…a whole other field of goblins.

Write your own jokes, people.

I don’t know about you, but this whole place just made me giggle.

How big are these things?

Let’s go walkabout.

 

At first glance, the goblins seem to be dissolving in front of our eyes, but close inspection shows they are just covered in mud from one flood or another.

A cozy nook.

A tiny lizard, about 4″ long, resting his chin on a tiny rock.

There was this huge outcropping that looked green. It was too far away to walk to (for us), but some hikers who had been that far confirmed that it was greenish. I am conjecturing that it’s a efflorescence of copper, somehow.

We named this one the Holy Family.

This was a fun grouping.

Have a video for scale.

We found someone’s home. See the little holes? No clue as to who might live there.

Remember: As macro, so micro. This little gully? It is no different than the forces that formed these canyons. This is how it started.

We clambered down the dirt path to get into the valley…

…not knowing there were actually stairs. We returned that way, needless to say. As we began to climb, I noticed a sign that said Valley 1. There are two more valleys of these things, but you have to hike to get there.

Outside the park is a canyon wall with pictographs. (Petroglyphs, like at Valley of Fire, are carved into the desert–varnish–coated rock; pictographs are painted onto rock walls using ground up rocks as pigment.) Most pictographs that we still can see are under overhangs, i.e., protected from the elements.

The site is barely two miles from the Valley of the Goblins, but the geology is completely different: rock, erosion, everything.

Here’s the site of the pictographs.

The pictographs. Notice how the rock wall continues to flake off; that whole wall was covered with pictures. The tall guy in the middle of the group holding a snake — what’s left of him is six feet tall. The full figure would probably have been eight feet. It is worth mentioning that every piece of rock art we’ve seen has been in an inaccessible spot. None of the documentation at the sites even mentioned that fact, nor how the original peoples would have gotten up there. But it seems to me that this alone indicates that these figures were not idle doodles — the creation of these images was serious business to the people who made them.

Panorama

Back on the road to Moab, with the everchanging landscape.

We stopped for lunch at the Tamarisk restaurant in Green River, and then headed down to Moab, where we checked into the Apache Motel. It is a delight. Click on that link to read all about its history, which includes John Wayne.

We strolled the four blocks to downtown Moab — Moab actually has a downtown, full of shops and restaurants — and ate at Spitfire Smokehouse, a great barbecue place. There was a huge line to get in, but then we learned that if you wanted cocktails with your meal, you had to go around to the rear of the establishment where little children can not see alcohol in use. Indeed, there was a full bar in back, totally uncrowded, and we ate there. With cocktails.

Utah, man.

Next: ARCHES NATIONAL PARK

Dawn at the Rim Rock Inn, Torrey, UT.

We went to the local trading post/cafe/souvenir shop for things, and this was parked outside. ::sigh::  Bless their hearts.

This is the Torrey Log Church and Schoolhouse. I will now copy the historic plaque for you:

The Torrey Log Church/Schoolhouse, completed in 1898, is locally significant as the first church building and the first school building in the pioneer community of Torrey, settled in the 1890s. After a new multi-use building with classrooms was built in 1917 and a new meetinghouse was constructed in 1928, the Torrey Log Church/Schoolhouse continued to be used for various religious and social functions until the 1970s.

The building is architecturally significant as one of approximately one dozen remaining Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouses built within the initial settlement phase. It is the only known example of a log meetinghouse still standing in the state. The building is made of sawn logs joined at the corners with carefully executed half-dovetailed notching. The building was relocated approximately 100 yards to the west to make room for the expansion of the neighboring 1928 sandstone meetinghouse. The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers have restored the building and are using it as a place to hold local meetings, continuing its traditional use for religious and social functions.

The aforementioned half-dovetailed notching. Pretty impressive.

So, Capitol Reef.

No, I hadn’t heard of it either, and the young ranger at the visitors center made light of their relative invisibility vis-a-vis Zion and Arches.

Before you even enter the park…

This is not a good photo, but I’ve always loved this grass, with its little flags of seeds.

Since it rained yesterday, several of the roads and hiking trails were closed due to the threat of flash floods. (This did not stop people from walking down closed roads — I mean, it’s clearly not raining, right? Wrong. (If you didn’t click that link yesterday, click it now. And don’t be stupid.))

It’s bizarre how different each park is. Capitol Reef is mostly sheer cliffs rising above a settlement called Fruita; the settlers grew apples, pears, etc., and those plants are still there. For a fee, you can pick your own.

There is still a settler’s home there, the Gifford House. Much renovated over the years, of course, it’s now a gift shop/museum and snack bar, while still maintaining the feel of the home it used to be.

We’re going to do a lot of geology today. Since you’re at the bottom of the canyon this time, it’s easy to see the geological layers. I’m not going to try to teach you what they are; I have barely started learning myself. But you will recall from your science classes that all these layers of sedimentary rock are exactly that: sediment from oceans long gone, as the earth formed and reformed itself over the years.

Now all those ground up rocks are themselves being ground up by wind and water.

There are important facts to remember that make your mind go sproing and you go back to marveling at it all. In this next photo, for example, remember that these cliffs were part of one continent-sized plain. As tectonic forces raised that plain up, wind and water did their thing, and after millions of years of erosion…

Layers.

All these big boulders down here? They used to be up there. Each bit of debris you see was an event. As hard as it is to realize that this is not the way it always was, it’s true.

Not only that, but every force that created this landscape is still in operation. Boulders still fall. Water still freezes in cracks and splits rock.

Wind still scours holes in solid rock.

Cute plant. Not a fern, but similar.

Remember, this fell from the cliff once upon a time, and relatively recently, given the sharp edges.

This one was amazing.

A closer look.

A rock split by ice. All those forces operating on a macro scale on the cliffs are operating on each and every rock.

See the little holes?

Look at this beauty.

Now look at a close-up of it. If I hadn’t told you it was a close-up of a boulder along the path, would you not think it was a photo of an overhang on one of the cliffs?

Pop quiz: Is this from a small eroded boulder next to the path, or is it a close-up of a cliff wall?

(Answer: It’s the same boulder as above.)

Fantastical is a word we don’t get to use very often.

Amazing.

This was on a face next to the path. You can see the the diagonal layers on the bottom, pushed up by tectonics from its original position, eroded flat, and a whole new generation of sediment laid down horizontally on top and then compressed into rock. Millions upon millions upon millions of years.

It’s worth mentioning, of course, that all the forces that created these spectacular landscapes here in Utah did the same thing — and are doing the same thing — where you live.

We met a friend.

It’s about as big around as my finger, and about two feet long. It ignored us.

Most of these geology-focused photos are from our walk along the Great Wash. Here’s the point where we decided to turn back. Notice the humans for scale.

The streaks are from rain, with microbes and other beasties using that moisture to begin forming desert varnish.

Look at what the water in the occasional flash floods has done to this rock face.

Water finds cracks; water freezes; rock splits.

This was not always there.

Wind and water on a macro scale. If this is a reef and not a plateau, then that amphitheatre will will eventually become an arch.

Those who are susceptible to pareidolia are certain to find a lot to make them wriggle with delight.

See that light-colored boulder on the left? See where it came from? It was an event.

So far, this area has the clearest delineation of the millions of years of layers from the different climates depositing silt into the ocean.

Like an iron oxide torte. (Iron is what gives the rock its red color; the gray sandstone was from an era where there was no oxygenation in the sea.)

Another feature of Capitol Reef is the petroglyphs. They are high up a cliff face and are stunning. (See the chunk missing from the cliff on the lower left? That used to be part of the wall and had more petroglyphs on it, but it collapsed very recently, as in the past few decades. (I can’t remember the year and can’t find it online.)

The forces that formed this landscape are still in operation.

Cloudage.

A 360° panorama of Capitol Reef.

After the park, we returned to explore tiny little Torrey. A stop at the main gift shop was productive. I’ll do my usual swag post when we get home, but you should know that we purchased “I survived Hwy 12” t-shirts.

We also discovered the Robbers Roost Distillery (!) and Etta Place Cider. The Distillery is open only Thu–Sat, so they missed out on a large sale, but Etta Place was open.

We went in and had a tasting with the very entertaining owner, Ann, who was able to elucidate some of Utah’s weird-ass liquor laws. We condoled with her, explaining that Coweta County had just repealed Prohibition last year.

For dinner, we chose the Hunt & Gather restaurant, a “slow food” restaurant which — once again — confounded our expectations about what a town of less than 300 people can pull off. Amazing food, and of course they offered ciders and spirits from Etta Place and Robbers Roost.

Next: ARCHES NATIONAL PARK