Category: Travel

Grand Canyon 2024

Posted on by Dale

Yes, we traveled once again to Grand Canyon. It was our fifth trip to our favorite place, and this time we started out with a two-night stay at the North Rim, a 4.5 hour drive from Las Vegas.

And yes, I usually live-blog our travels. But how many photos of the Canyon do you need to see? You can always use the dropdown menu of categories over there on the left to find our previous Canyon jaunts.

I do have some thoughts, and with that…

PRO TIPS

  • If you’re going to the North Rim, fly to Vegas. If you’re going to the South Rim, fly to Phoenix.
    • If you have the time and money, spend a night in St. George, UT, on the way to the North Rim, and in Flagstaff, AZ, on the way to the South Rim.
  • If you have a SoLight or two, bring them with you to light your way back to your cabin/campsite.
  • Do you have dirty shoes from hiking/tripping over elk? Bring some cheap shower caps to put them in when you pack!
  • North Rim Lodge: Try to get in one of the cabins numbered 300 or 400. They are a little more modern and a little more spacious than the originals.
  • The restaurants claim to expect “business casual” attire. Pfft. I saw no one turned away for shorts and t-shirts.
  • Pack your jigger and your bitters, then buy a small bottle of gin, either on the way out of Vegas or Phoenix or at the General Store in the park. Presto: your first pre-dinner cocktail is now a lot cheaper than the one in the restaurant. (I snagged a 750ml bottle of Bombay Sapphire our second day there, and even though I left half the bottle for the cleaning staff it was still cheaper than my having the same cocktail up at El Tovar or Bright Angel.)
    • Empty your ice bucket somewhere it can pool so the chipmunks and ravens have a little water in that heat.
  • Stick to the speed limit. Wildlife will be right there in the road when you least expect it.
  • Watch for stopped traffic, too: It usually means there are elk or deer or something to look at. Similarly, in the Village, if you see a bunch of tourists facing away from the Canyon, they’re more than likely watching a wild animal or two.
  • “Where are you from?” always works as a conversation starter, followed by “Is this your first time at the Canyon?”

 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

  • The North Rim is very much more wilderness than the South Rim, a lot less accommodating to the casual tourist. The ponderosa forests, flecked here and there with stands of aspen, are gorgeous, and even the fallen giants are beautiful, serving their cyclical purpose in death.
  • Reservations are required at the North Rim Lodge restaurant. It’s the only restaurant there (with a small deli and one coffee shop) and seating is tight.
  • The elk on the South Rim are quite habituated to humans, but are nonetheless wild animals. After all, they’ve had us around for over 100 years now, and the three babies we saw — like their mothers — have never known a landscape without those weird human things in the way.
    • As a comparison, the only elk we saw at the North Rim was on our way out,  a youngish male who was thinking about crossing the road but when he saw our car went sproinging away into the woods. At the South Rim, they just stroll on out across the road.
    • In the same vein, we watched two baby elk play-fight in front of us, then race each other up and down the “revegetation area” there at the rim. No adults in sight. A third baby, smaller, chirped at being left alone.
  • Spanish and Eastern Asian languages were the predominant languages I heard there. English was maybe 30% of what I heard.
  • We went into Tusayan to check out the pizza place (right there at the roundabout), and it was good! As we left the park, we realized there was a very very long line of cars waiting to get through the gate, so I did a little map quest and discovered that there is indeed an “authorized vehicles only” road that zips around the gate and deposits you right there in the Village. So, shouldn’t guests at the Lodges, who hold senior citizen National Parks passes and who are sustaining members of the Grand Canyon Conservancy, be authorized to skip the line??
  • We had literally cloudless skies the entire week we were there. For the past five years we’ve tried to catch a summer lightning storm over the Canyon, and every single trip, the weather has been flawless. I registered a complaint at the front desk and was told with a laugh that I should have been there the week before. Hrmph.
  • We saw our first Tesla Cybertruck in the wild, and yes, it’s as ugly as you think. I now describe them as looking like a police artist sketch of a Rivian.
  • I had a Scathingly Brilliant Idea for a t-shirt, which seemed to tickle the folk at the Grand Canyon Conservancy when I emailed them about it, but I doubt they’ll have the courage to produce it:

What’s not to like? They’d sell a million of them.

Germany 2023: Day 5 & 6 probably

Posted on by Dale

Yesterday in Munich, in the block where we ate lunch at a very good burger place, there was a movie theatre. This is what was scheduled for Sunday night:

The silent era masterpiece Metropolis with a live orchestra? Yes, please. My only consolation was that it was no doubt canceled because of the snow. Everything was canceled because of the snow that everyone seems to think is so pretty.

Otherwise, there would have been plenty to do in Munich of an evening besides wander the stalls of the Weihnachtsmarkt and sip glühwein. One theatre had a production of Cenerentola, for example, Rossini’s version of Cinderella and one of my favorites.

So when we last left our intrepid band, the cliffhanger was whether they would be able to escape Munich and make it to Stuttgart, the next stop on the tour. In a sequence worthy of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles they made it: four cabs to the bus station, and a 2-hour+ bus ride to Stuttgart (plus a subway ride to the main train station and a walk to the hotel).

Around Munich the snow was still thick:

 

But by the time we got to Stuttgart, there was no snow on the ground, Gott sei dank!

After a short break, we headed out to the Christmas market. I will state for the record that Stuttgart’s market is to be preferred over Munich’s. It seems more relaxed with a much broader selection of wares than Munich’s. I can state this with confidence because we immediately bought a bunch of stuff, which was not the case in Munich.

Here, have some photos:

Yes, that is a children’s Ferris wheel, with seats that look like Christmas tree ornaments.

We ate at the Alte Kanzlei, a well-regarded restaurant featuring Schwabian cuisine. It was very tasty. On the wall, one of my favorite glitches in the Matrix: the random use of English in another language:

Bottom line: Oldtimerturen durch Stuttgars Weinberge.

We explored the Market thoroughly, making some fun purchases because NEVER TOO MANY CHRISTMAS KENNETH, and then heading back to the hotel and its lovely gin bar.

How dedicated a gin bar is this bar? When I asked the bartender in this one if he could make a Manhattan, not only had he never heard of the drink, he had no idea what rye was. (They did have Bulleitt bourbon, so I used that to build on the young man’s knowledge base.)

WEDNESDAY

No real reporting for Wednesday, because I had a bit of an upset digestive system. Nothing Immodium couldn’t cure, but I realized it too late to take the meds and be settled in time to catch the train. I settled for a quiet day in Stuttgart while everyone else headed off for a charming day in Tübingen. (My Lovely First Wife found THE SHOES THAT CAN ONLY BE FOUND IN EUROPE KENNETH, so it was probably just as well that I was in the hotel reading Terry Pratchett.)

Have another glitch in the Matrix, a major one:

This is a sign on a store, one of several. The store builds wooden furniture and makes that fact its identity. But did you catch it? It’s a tree story. A freaking pun in English, and only in English. One’s head spins, it truly does.

Once everyone else was back, the two of us chose to go to Mauritius, a “beach bar,” where indeed all the cocktails are tiki cocktails in English: Zombie, Beachcomber, Sex on the Beach, etc. The food was good; we eschewed the fruity drinks.

Back to the parts of the Market we missed, including the great plaza with a light show:

The column in particular puts on a computer-sequenced show that’s delightful.

Very nice things at the section of the market we covered: antiques, quality goods, and this charming decoration:

The three discs turn, giving the illusion of skiers schussing down the mountain. Did we buy it? Not at all. But it was cute.

Germany 2023: Day 3, 4? Who the hell knows?

Posted on by Dale

It’s been a right old time here in München, Deutschland. You may recall the general rejoicing over the SNOW, KENNETH, as we rode the train into Munich. Yeah, well, what you saw as picture-perfect Christmas-postcard delight, meteorologists saw as a 90-year record snowstorm, blanketing Germany in feet of snow and crippling transportation all across the nation.

But first, let me back up and tell you how our Saturday did not end in starvation but indeed turned out beautifully.

Our tour leader Jim texted us all that he had made reservations for an Italian restaurant nearby if anyone wanted to join, which we did. There were seven of us and we had a great time over drinks and dinner, getting to know each other and laughing. One of us, Debbie, misheard the waiter asking if “alles” wanted the tiramisu and thought he called her Alice, which is her name now I don’t make the rules.

(“Alice” also made an inadvertently — and hilarious — vulgar joke which I will not repeat here but which you definitely should ask me to repeat for you in person if you’re that kind of person. You know who you are.)

Alice went out for a smoke and returned to tell us excitedly that there was a carousel right down the street, plus one of the dozen Christmas markets that litter the city at this time of year.  Of course we headed out, only to find that she had scammed us: the carousel was kiddie-sized. But the market was real, and we had a blast wandering through it. It was much smaller and much more fun than the Marienplatz market downtown.

Finally we returned to the hotel and hit the bar.

You will recall that I had hit the hotel bar on Friday night and called it solid but basic. This was their bar book:

It listed all the whiskeys, rums, vodkas, etc., that they stocked, plus a handful of basic cocktails. But it didn’t list the gins, of which there seemed to be dozens. I thought that was odd.

On Saturday night, we headed back to the bar after that long day, where I discovered:

I was in a gin bar! This bible contained all the gins they stocked…

… including its type, its botanicals, where it’s made, and the recommended tonic water for a gin & tonic. And you see that half-page bit in the center? Those are regional gins. I suddenly didn’t mind that a) Munich does not seem to be blessed with solid craft cocktail bars; or b) that I might be trapped here for a while.

SUNDAY

We were supposed to go to Nüremberg on Sunday, but transportation across Bavaria was largely shut down. What trains were running were overbooked as Germans tried to get home from Munich. We had to cancel any of our plans, which included my visiting the Ayers gin distillery and buying more of one of the most delicious gins I’ve ever bought. Ugh.

I am omitting our visit to the Alte Peter church, because it triggered my inner Marxist and I’d like to keep this positive.

We went to the Residenz, the in-town palace of the ruling Wittelsbach family back in the day. It was largely destroyed in WWII, so most of what you see is a reconstruction.

The main courtyard as we waited to enter was blanketed in snow. I found this cherub delightful:

Yes, there is a cherub under there.

The first room was the Grotto, a fantasy of one of the Wittelsbachs.

A close-up of one of the ladies in the decor:

Yeah, the whole thing was pretty grotesque. Yes, the whole thing is encrusted with seashells.

The first main hall:

Here the Wittlesbachs gave full rein to their imperial fantasies, with busts of all the Roman emperors and their appendages.

Me with my friend Marcus Aurelius:

My friend Dionysus:

My friend Apollo:

These two were fairly nubile, but there were multiple athletes of one kind or another who were much tauter.

Here’s a terrazzo at the bottom of a very big staircase leading up to the Elector/Duke/Emperor’s private chambers. I really liked the geometry involved in graduating the sizes of the tiles to accommodate the arced design.

The palace as a whole is a rabbit warren of halls, antechambers, bedrooms. Each head honcho felt compelled to build his own suite of rooms, often adding entire buildings to do so. The only rooms open to the public are the glamorous ones, but of course we wondered where the accommodations for the servants were, where the kitchens were, dining halls, etc.

We noticed throughout this little dingus:

I thought perhaps it was some kind of drawer for the maids to keep brushes or something, but it’s simply a retro-fit for electrical outlets for today’s custodial staff.

The Residenz has some nice bits, but on the whole the Wittelsbachs were not Bourbons, and the Residenz is not Versailles.

We roamed the Marienplatz market again for a while, then the group set out to find sustenance. At some point, two of the company and we set out for a restaurant that one of us had highlighted in her book, i.e., highly rated. We set the phone to guide us, and trudged through the snow-still city only to find that the restaurant was closed because of the weather.

Just down the street though was another restaurant, a charming little cottage set in a courtyard, which was brightly lit and warm and closing as we walked in.

But they recommended Siggis, right next door, and it was open. It was also vegan, but the meal was delicious and we were content.

After that it was back to the hotel, a few more gin and tonics at the bar, and then bedtime.

MONDAY

Everything is still at a standstill. We slept late, then hit the road to explore another market. On the way were these cool sculptures, made even cooler by the snow:

Did you see it?

All the trees in this park had straw bales tied to their bases. Why? Because kids were sledding there; these cushioned any kid who whammed into the tree.

Our main goal on the way to the Sendlinger Tor market was the Asam Church, which we had seen in 2007 but was worth another visit. Our hearts sank as we hit the street and saw scaffolding covering the facade, but it was open. Although the gate to the chapel itself was locked, we could still see the interior, which is a stunningly Baroque masterwork.

This was the private chapel built by two brothers; it sits behind an unassuming facade in the middle of a 21st-c. shopping street, and it’s a showstopper.

The Sendlinger Tor market was a bit of a disappointment, very few booths and most of those food or glühwein.

Lunch at a really good burger place, then more wandering through the main market before linking back up with the group to head over to the Hofbrau Haus for a beer and pretzels. There we discussed how the hell we were getting to Stuttgart tomorrow, or if we would get to Stuttgart tomorrow.

All I will say is that we have a plan, but since it involves the icy precipitation holding off enough for us to escape, I will spare you the details.

Back to the hotel, where I have decamped to the lobby with the laptop to catch up on this blog, this time with a Manhattan rather than a gin and tonic. (I had to teach the Hungarian bartender how to make one.)

I apologize for the blogging of this trip being so lackluster, but as I said in the previous post I haven’t been able to get as many photos as I usually do. Rest assured that we’ve done plenty of shopping, and the company has been first-rate. (In fact, I can snag a lot of photos from our WhatsApp group, but the wifi at the hotel is less than first-rate and it’s a pain to stay online.)

Here, have a photo from one of the markets:

Will our intrepid crew make it to Stuttgart, much less Frankfurt, much less home? Stay tuned.

Germany 2023, Day 1 & 2

Posted on by Dale

Note: The weather is working against us, so for the first two days there’s not a lot to report or show.

FRIDAY

We had a long and uneventful flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt, and then a long and uneventful train ride from Frankfurt to Munich.

Here’s the train station right there in the Frankfurt Airport (not to be confused, we were told, with the Frankfurt station, which is in Frankfurt, unlike the Airport station, which is not).

Uneventful, except for this:

Not only is it snowing in Bavaria, it’s a white-out. MY FAVORITE KIND OF WEATHER, KENNETH. (It is not my favorite kind of weather.)

The hotel in Munich is nice, Hotel One, clean, well-appointed. After a short rest, we met with the group to walk down to the Christmas Market. It was crowded, snowy, and pretty enough. No shopping, because we were just getting our bearings. (Our tour guide, Jim, is an old friend from GHP who drags tours around Europe.)

We dined at the Weisses Bräuhaus, near the market, where we had traditional German food and those who liked beer had traditional German beer.

And as was foretold, we trudged back to the hotel in the snow — still falling — where some of us retired. I went to the bar, basic but solid, and had a gin and tonic before retiring.

SATURDAY

Still snowing. This is the garden area outside our hotel window.

We headed back to the Marienplatz, where the Christmas Market  is, in time to hear the Glockenspiel play and watch the charming 19th-c. animatronics do their thing in the New Town Hall tower.

Then over to Alte Peter, “Old Peter,” the oldest church in Munich. (Munich — Bavaria in general — is Catholic, having fought off Martin Luther and his minions over the years.)

Although the Alte Peter dates to the 12th-c., the  interior is a mishmosh of subsequent architectural styles, with Rococo predominating.

Next we hit up the Frauenkirche, the “Lady Church,” i.e., a cathedral devoted to Mary. I don’t have a photo of this one. I’ve been bundled up with multiple layers, plus a stadium coat, plus scarf/hat/gloves, so it’s a real pain to get the phone out and take a photo. My apologies.

Lunch at the Augustiner Bräuhaus, where it was so crowded that we were able to be seated only because we volunteered to take two other people at the table. We were joined by a lovely Belgian father and his young son, who had come to Munich for a soccer match but were forced by the weather to circle the airport for two hours, plus wait for the transport bus (from the tarmac to the terminal), and then found trains/buses/taxis were all shut down because of the snow.

You know, the beautiful snow that you all seem to love.

We were not with the group, so we decided to use our time before regrouping to head over to TK Maxx so I could buy a fleece blanket for my personal sleeping comfort. By the time we made it back to the Frauenkirche for the next leg of the trip, the group had already moved on to the Residenz. Since we’re all communicating via WhatsApp, we told them that was fine, we would do our own thing.

We then set off to maybe actually shop at the Market, but then one of us wanted to find a shop that we remembered from visiting Munich in 2007, Kenneth. You might be surprised to learn that we never found it.

At this point we decided to trek back to the hotel. It was still snowing.

At the time of this writing, we are wondering if we are going to be able to find anywhere that’s open at which we can eat dinner. If worse comes to worst, I have a pack of trail mix that will keep us alive until morning.

Germany 2023: The Beginninging

Posted on by Dale

::sigh:: Yes, yes, we were just in Germany last spring, but this is different.

When our son was studying in Munich seventeen years ago, we went to visit for Thanksgiving. We had a lovely time, but we had to leave the day before the Christmas market opened. This has rankled my Lovely First Wife for a while now, and so for Christmas I have given her a tour of Christmas markets in Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt.

Because, if you know my Lovely First Wife, you know that there is no such thing as TOO MANY CHRISTMAS.

Follow along as I freeze my ass off all across Germany.

Utah 2023: Pro Tips

Posted on by Dale

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!

Utah 2023: The Swag Post

Posted on by Dale

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.

Utah 2023: Day 10

Posted on by Dale

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.

Utah 2023: Day 9

Posted on by Dale

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

Utah 2023: Day 8

Posted on by Dale

I took nearly 100 photos in Arches National Park.  I shall not post all of them.

Also, I’m almost out of words.

Arches is such a popular destination that they now impose timed entries. Our entry time was 1:00, so we were going to be traipsing about during the hottest part of the day.

Everything has names. This is the Courthouse. No, I don’t know either.

The Three Gossips.

Park Avenue. We named one formation the Donald J. Trump Hand of Destiny. See if you can find it.

A pretty little yellow thistle.

La Sal Mountains + cloudage.

A particularly egregious hoodoo.

This is Balancing Rock. It’s not really balanced, of course; it’s all one piece, although eventually the limestone layer beneath the top will erode and it will collapse (as did its MiniMe a couple of decades ago).

Hoodoos.

An arch in formation. There are thousands of arches in this park, ranging from little “windows” to the most famous, Delicate Arch. Hold that thought.

I liked the way this piñon trunk became a barrier for the dirt.

The South Window arch. No one else seemed to be concerned that this massive arch of stone seemed to be resting on a layer of crumbling rock.

The view on the other side of the South Window.

Panorama.

As we started walking around to the North Window, I happened to notice this bit just kind of wedged up there in the South Window.

The walk around to the North Window, with cloudage. The cloudage was particularly ebullient today.

North Window.

The Turret Arch, which is right there with the South and North Windows.

Panorama.

Cloudage, dumping rain on the La Sal Mountains.

This one is hard to make sense of, but it’s the view of the descent from Turret Arch, with the South Window across the way. That’s my shadow at the bottom of the photo, and the shadow of the arch midway. It’s harder going down than up.

The cloudage just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Meanwhile, on the other horizon…

I have to correct an erroneous guess I made yesterday in the Valley of the Goblins. I had posited that the greenish surface on one outcropping was a copper deposit, but that is incorrect. It is actually a layer of volcanic ash that was laid down on a salt bed hundreds of millions of years ago. Chemical reactions turned it greenish.

And finally, the approach to Delicate Arch! The most iconic image of Arches National Park, indeed, of Utah itself.

We had some choices. If we turned into the first parking area, it was about an hour’s walk up to the arch itself. If we went to the second parking area, there was a thirty minute walk up to a viewing area some distance from the arch. And there was a second path from the parking area, a mere five minute walk to a viewing area.

Since it was the end of a very long, very hot day, we opted for the five minute walk.

Are you ready?

Prepare yourself.

It’s iconic.

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::drumroll::

We collapsed in helpless giggles. Here we were at one of the most famous locations in the U.S., and there was no way we were going to get any closer to it. Marc referenced Spinal Tap‘s Stonehenge screwup, and it was even funnier.

So here, have a closer look at Delicate Arch.

This inspired a couple more Bad National Park Reviews:

  • “They need to build a road up to that Delicate Arch.” — me
  • “You should move Delicate Arch closer to the entrance so that we can see it first.”  — my Lovely First Wife

Moving on.

I am — as you have already surmised — fascinated by the cloudage, especially when it is as magnificent as it was today.

Believe it or not, there was more to see (available by car). Here is the Fiery Furnace.

Somebody lives here.

At that point we called a halt, opting to return to Moab, shower, and head for dinner at the Sunset Grill, which is atop a mountain there in Moab. Here’s the view of the sunset while we waiting for our table.

We sat outside on a spacious veranda overlooking Moab. The meal was delicious, especially the desserts. The waitstaff was garrulous and charming. And as we were finishing up, a moth fluttered into our space and landed on Mary Frances. Before she could react by brushing it away, we all cried out for her to freeze!

When she saw what it looked like, she was delighted to have such a gorgeous piece of living jewelry.

It stayed on her until we were ready to leave. We coaxed it off her onto the table, and it finally flittered off.

A quick search when we got back to the motel revealed that it was a sagebrush sheep moth.

Here’s the view of Moab from our dining area.

It’s not as big as it looks, though certainly larger than Torrey. For one thing, Moab has two grocery stores! Torrey has to drive 90 minutes to their closest grocery store.

Next: CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK

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Did you guess right?