MY 50-STATE STRATEGY

Thor's Hammer in Bryce Canyon's Agua Canyon (elev. 8,800 feet).

That Hoodoo that you do … so well!

With apologies to Cole Porter, we’ll get to the Magic Act in a minute, but first …
After pulling out of the Capital Reef National Park area, I headed southwest through the formidable Escalante National Monument.
(A National Monument, for those who don’t know and as I have just recently learned as well, differs from a National Park in that it is administered by the Bureau of Land Management under the auspices of

Common sight in the west is a sign used for target practice.

 the Department of Interior, not by the National Park Service, and has smaller quotas, if it has any at all, for camping and recreation or development along with a different fee schedule, again if any. National
Monuments are, on land set aside by the federal government, National Parks in waiting.)
Escalante, translated from Spanish to English, means Grand Staircase. In this instance, its mountains and canyons denote a metaphorical stairway up from the Grand Canyon at its southwest end, and heading in a northeasterly direction across southern Utah up to the Colorado Plateau and, finally, the Rocky Mountains in Colorado at its northeastern terminus.
And -- let me shout this -- Grand It Is!It is said that the Escalante was the last area of the lower 48 states to be mapped and catalogued, and, indeed, the village of Boulder along this route was almost totally isolated until the 1930s, at that point still receiving  its mail deliveries via pack mule.

Top entrance above the Kiva Kooffeehouse.

Driving through here -- rising and descending thousands of feet in the space of a few miles, hugging the road on the mountains cliffs with little room to spare, plunging down a hill, making an extreme hairpin turn, then shooting skyward up the next bit of road -- one can see why mapmakers left this not-so-little chore for the absolute end. Even pioneers had limits. One area here carries the name “Hell’s Backbone,” and carries it well, for good reason.
I took many, many photographs of its vast, colorful and cascading landscape, but the magnitude and scale of this region overwhelms the camera lens. Painted mountains, painted deserts, there are whole vistas here with ancient volcanic activity still apparent. The photos are fine, but simply do not do this huge 1.7 million-acre area justice. Seconding the inadequacy of any photos, I found a BLM website which hit the nail right on the head, stating that the Escalante is to be considered “Beyond human perspective.”

I did stumble upon a unique man-made place while traveling through these one-of-a kind highlands: The Kiva Koffeehouse. A small café carved into some high cliffs, it was a complete surprise when I spied it as I came up a hill and around a corner, literally in the middle of nowhere. I stopped there and had a great lunch while making splendid use of the large floor-to-ceiling picture windows that surround the entire seating area, separated only by 2-to-3 foot-wide juniper logs in use as roof-support beams. The room so flooded with light that pictures taken inside were unusable (clink link above for good interior pictures). But this comfortable view was magnificent. I wanted to move in.






A slice of the vast Escalante seen from the Boynton Overlook. 

 



 Explorer John Wesley Powell, the first to navigate the Grand Canyon by boat, surveyed some of the Escalante around the Civil War period, and Powell Point, at 10,138 feet, is named in his honor. The tip-top of Powell Point was especially marvelous, as canyons and cliffs conspired to form one false horizon after another, their gray and black edges fooling one’s eyes.

John Wesley Powell

With some roads reaching well over 9,000 feet above sea level and then very swiftly dropping deep down into a valley, the whole area was a roller-caster. But it was a very enjoyable ride under perfect blue skies with some wispy clouds floating in the clean, crisp air.
There was one conversation of a humorous tone on a cliff overlook near the end of my time in the Escalante. A couple there had asked me if I would take their picture and I said sure. As we exchanged goodbyes after the photo, a older fellow from Missouri, who had just pulled up, approached me as I turned back to the view and said, from over my shoulder, “Sure don’t look like Massachusetts, does it?” Once again amazed that four-or-five soft-spoken words can betray my origins, I lamented, “How did you know I was from there? I have Florida plates.” He laughed, replying, “Don’t you worry! You can hear that you’re Massachusetts from a mile away with the windows rolled up.”
I’m beginning to believe that should I commit a crime out here, my wanted poster would not display my photo or fingerprints, but instead have big, bold type reading simply, BOSTON ACCENT . Like a speaking scar or a talking tattoo, it appears I am marked.
I’d better stay on the right side of the law.

A True Magical Kingdom

After the Escalante, I had thoughts that Bryce Canyon National Park might be a letdown. After all, how could it compare? But Bryce did not disappoint. And how! Truly unique by itself, it is once again different from all the other wonderful areas set aside by the government in southern Utah.

A raven stands sentinel over at Agua Canyon.

  You know right upon arrival here that orange is the operative word, as small amounts of iron mixed into the limestone have made that hue dominant all over this park, with yellows, reds and browns also in attendance, albeit in much smaller ratios. These colors mixed in the millions of evergreens present make the area appear as if one giant Christmas Village. Of physical matters, geological forces and erosion combined forces with wind and ice about 60 million or so years ago to deform these rocks and form this wondrous landscape,
Another word you’ll hear all the time here is “Hoodoo.”
Who what? … Who? … Huh?
I’ll let the information experts fill you in.

According to Webster (abridged): hoo·doo, noun, 1 : a body of practices of sympathetic magic traditional especially among blacks in the southern U.S. 2: a natural column of rock in western No. America, often in fantastic form.
Encyclopedia Britannica adds (again abridged): Hoodoos, tall thin spires of rock that protrude from the bottom of arid basins and badlands, composed of soft sedimentary rock and most commonly found in the High Plateaus regions of North America … Nowhere in the world are they as abundant as in the northern section of Bryce Canyon National Park. Walt Disney’s Imagineers notably based the design of the popular Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attraction around a series of hoodoos, albeit ones constructed out of steel and concrete. At Bryce Canyon, hoodoos range in size from that of an average human to heights exceeding a 10-story building. Minerals deposited within different rock types cause hoodoos to have different colors throughout their height.
Paiute Indian lore had its own version first, saying (unabridged, if you will): “The Legend People lived in this place. There were many kinds of Legend People, lizards, birds and animals, who were able to assume the human form. But, for some reason, the Legend People were bad and The Coyote turned them all to stone. You can still see them now, standing in rows, some sitting down and some holding onto others. You can see their faces with paint on them, just as they were before they became rocks."

It was the Friday afternoon of the Memorial Day Weekend as I pulled into Bryce, and the camping spots in the park were filling up fast. There were just two left of the 102 sites in the North Campground, one of two major areas within the park (with a third set aside for large groups only). Choosing which spot out of those two was how I came to meet Tom and Linda.

The Natural Bridge (elev. 8,627 feet).

Trust me, although these sites were right across the road from each other, one was clearly superior. I jumped at the opportunity for the better and, just a few minutes later, this couple pulled up and filled the lesser spot.

About a half-hour after, with the short set-up chores behind me, I was down at registration area filling out the necessary forms, when the fellow who took the other site approached, good-naturedly saying that he wished that he and his wife had arrived 10 minutes earlier, so that they would now have the better spot.
We briefly volleyed back and forth in jest, and I noticed that he was sporting a peculiar accent all his own. As the conversation wound down, he looked at me and said, “Man, you talk funny!” Finally! After weeks, at long last, an opening – I replied, “Man, you do too!” Both feeling somewhat triumphant, we laughed. Later, on the cliff-side above, we shook hands and became fast friends following introductions.
Now in their mid-50s, Tom and Linda were breaking out the camping gear for the first time in a very long while. They had been constant campers in the late 1960s and ‘70s while courting and then first married. But, alas, family and other responsibilities schemed to keep them from around the campfires. Now transplanted by employment opportunities to nearby St. George, Utah, they were hoping to make good use of the spectacular opportunities nature offers around this area.
They call Baton Rouge home, but have moved about as jobs have warranted, most recently from the Dallas area and, also notably, from the San Francisco vicinity. Tom’s a wholesale representative for a national fine grocery concern and Linda is also a sales rep, currently looking for a spot at their new location. She used to work for The Legos Company. Her favorite among past employers, Legos was also my preferred toy as a small child, and Linda seemed amused as I recounted building whole miniature cities, skyscrapers and all, out of little plastic blocks.

My elevated camping site and trailer under Ponderosa pines.

 Still in search of their first decent Cajun fare since they left Louisiana, they are expecting their first grandchild for the holidays. So, it looks like it’s a race to the finish to see which arrives first, a good bowl of gumbo or the grandbaby!
The first evening they consented to share my campfire, and I soon discovered that while Tom and I, though our vantage points are separated by geography, agreed on many issues of the day, Linda was excellent at biting her tongue, withholding her comments and criticisms to keep the conversation moving.
The next morning, Tom and Linda found a site more to their liking in another area of North campground. After going our separate ways during the day, they later welcomed me to their new and vastly improved camp for a delicious dinner, cooked over the open fire, of hamburgers with all the fixings and trimmings. Linda struggled with the heavy iron skillets, but the results were much to my delight. I was early to bed that evening, as I had alone stayed up very late the night before, enjoying the fire.


Ebenezer and Mary Bryce

 After a bit of early exploring, I was sad the next morning to return to the trailer and find a business card there with their telephone number and e-mail address scribbled on the back with a request to get in touch when I passed through St. George in the next little while, headed for points west.
I couldn’t blame them for leaving though, as it was icily cold at night up in the Canyon, the temperatures plunging down into the 20s each of my three evenings there – a chilly reception for them after 30 years out of the woods.
I’d like to say that the frost was on the pumpkin -- everything hereabout being orange and all -- but the harvest was still a half a year down the road. Even though the Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, it did snow briefly in the late afternoon with the cold air howling out of the west, reminding of how the wind sounds in the Mount Washington Valley during the late fall, winter or early spring seasons. If one is camping there and then, you may hear the wind building miles away down valley and roar up, sounding for all the world like a freight train bearing down, about to run you over. The express was a’rollin’ through Bryce Canyon that afternoon.
While exploring this rugged area, I came across several trail markers, which remind readers that Ebenezer and Mary Bryce, a couple of Mormon pioneers, had, in the 1870s, carved a life out of this harsh canyon, building not only shelter and church, but roads and irrigation canals with their bare hands and rudimentary tools, hence the name Bryce Canyon.
Seeing this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a comment I heard while watching the HBO serial, The Sopranos, back a few years ago when it was still a serious enterprise and not just a respite for some New York actors lazing about under distracted direction.
The lead character, the gangster Tony Soprano, is sitting in an old stone cathedral with his reluctant daughter as company. In an attempt at motivation, he is telling her how his grandfather, along with a brother among others, built that very church, block-by-block-by-block. He concludes this gentle family parable by saying, “Nowadays, just try to get two guys in to grout the tile in your bathtub.”


A section of a Hoodoo field seen from Sunrise Point.

  I covered the length of Bryce Canyon in several day’s time, from Sunrise Point in the north to Rainbow Point in the south, and all points in between, rising just over 1,200 feet in elevation – to 9,118 feet above sea level at Rainbow -- on the 18-mile journey. The many overlooks harbored views of a wealth of natural wonders (see some above), their highlights well reported by trail markers. On a clear day, such as my second, it is said you can see for over 100 miles from atop these cliffs.
Explorer John Wesley Powell also had a hand in naming some of the park’s more famous features. Many have names like Thor’s Hammer, The Poodle or the Sentinel, those monikers attached using their shapes as guide.
The park, protected by the federal government in 1928, affords fine facilities, comfortable camping and many diverse hiking opportunities, both short and long. Over 1.7 million people a year visit, from all over the globe. Besides the many foreign visitors, it especially seems a magnet for folks from western North America: the states of Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Washington state, California, Arizona, Montana, some of the west Canadian provinces and, of course, Utah were all represented on the license plates of cars parked at one main overlook.

Broke My Camp, Broke My Truck

I struck camp early Memorial Day Monday and headed southwest with my next intended stop the nearby Zion National Park for a brief stay, then through St. George, back into the desert, and ultimately through the city of Las Vegas. But, disaster struck just north of Zion …

THERE'S 2 MORE ENTRIES IN UTAH DIARY, RED CANYON & ZION NP. TO READ, CLICK OLDER POSTS, BELOW

The HooDoos do what they do in a big way at Bryce Canyon.