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Just a another ho-hum day in the magical Monument Valley, which is in the southeastern corner of Utah near the Four Corners.

UTAH'S NATIONAL PARKS: A primer

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Like visits to 5 different planets

This state is extraordinary. Here is where I really fell in love with desert. It's a love that endures.
There are five national parks strung out along the southern tier of Utah and a visit to each is like a visit to five different planets. Honestly unbelievable scenery.
After a few days at the Grand Canyon, I traveled northeast into Utah though the amazing Monument Valley, stopped in Mexican Hat for a “swinging steak” then explored two national parks in the state’s east, Arches and and Canyonlands.
I then took a detour farther east in Colorado, but doubled back and explored the other three parks, Capitol Reef in the state’s south-central section and Bryce Canyon and Zion in its southwest, as well as traveling down The Grand Escalante (or The Great Staircase, "steps" climbing from the Grand Canyon up to the Rocky Mountains). It was a wild trip in the last region actually mapped out in the United States by cartographers. The Bureau of Land Management website says the Escalante is “beyond human comprehension.”
Met some great folks here, made a major truck repair and saw wonders that amaze me years later.
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Jay, the chef and son of the owners of the Mexican Hat Lodge, toils over the grill swinging by chains while suspended over roaring Juniper logs in the open-air bar/cafe attached to the lodge. The specialty of the house is the Cowboy steak and I was delighted to enjoy one swinging on this grill. 

MEXICAN HAT DANCE, PART II

In an earlier post, I told you of how the Poet was attacked by fire ants on the Space Coast and also of how his torment at the time looked like a Mexican Hat Dance – sort of. Little did I know then but there was soon to be a second reason to use that phrase.
After leaving the Grand Canyon, I was traveling northeast, through the Navajo Nation, up toward Moab, Utah. The road follows the Little Colorado River, before it joins its big brother, and it features sensational gorges and another painted desert.

To read about Grand Canyon stop, click HERE

Dotted with quaint impromptu trading posts, this . painted desert, though vast, was not as vivid or as vertical as the National Park off to the southeast, but was eye candy just the same.
I stopped at several of the small trading posts, one to use the parking area for access to a Little Colorado gorge and the second to pick up some superb buffalo jerky that was advertised on a handwritten road sign.
It was here that I spoke to a Navajo couple that, shockingly, after hearing my voice, wanted to know where I was from and where I was going. After explaining myself, and my plans, they told me they had recently followed most of the same path – only backwards. And they did it in just three weeks. They only stopped a couple of times for a couple of days and otherwise just drove. When I asked them for any recommendations for the road, they told me that, when I was in South Dakota, not to miss the Crazy Horse Memorial in the South Dakota’s Black Hills. I’d heard this before and told them it was already on my short list, which they enjoyed hearing.
I found this couple to be very relaxed and uncomplicated, no stress, reminding me very much of the Inuit Eskimos, or “Real People,” I encountered on journeys previously to northwest Alaska.
Continuing toward the state borderline, I was amazed at how the landscape changed. Suddenly I was surrounded on all sides by these magnificent volcanic mountains, mesas and buttes, everywhere, reaching for the sky from out of the sands, defying gravity.


A scene from the Monument Valley. Imagine replacing the road with John Wayne and Glen Ford leading a posse through on horseback and you'll see what I saw, and what influenced filmmakers like John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and George Lucas. What an exciting, incredible day I had driving through this area.

Incredible shapes. Sensational scenery. Eye-popping! But where was I?
This place had to be referenced on the map, so I stopped and checked. I was in an area called
Monument Valley , a Navajo Tribal Park.

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I felt, at that moment, as if I was a movie-screen cowboy in an old western, riding herd along a picture-perfect range as the sun was beginning to slip over the horizon. Hollywood location scouts could not have picked a more ideal spot for such a scene. (Now if only my truck would act like a trusted horse, coming when I whistled and running on hay and carrots instead of gas. Someday? … Maybe?)
The next day and about 60 miles north of this area, I was able to gather some information about it:
Monument Valley’s story is like much of the Southwest, formations of sandstone uplifted by natural forces to form mountainous formations, canyons and gullies. Then erosion shaped and mottled these structures, and the minerals embedded in the stone provide the colors. Human occupation is severely limited by the climate, but archaeologists now say ancient Indians lived here before 1300 AD and the Navajo have been here for centuries, herding sheep and other livestock. There is also a small bit of farming here – drought-permitting.
Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I was right about the movie locations too. Major movies that have filmed in this area include: How the West was Won (1942), My Darling Clementine (1946), The Searchers (1956), The Trials of Billy Jack (1973), The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1980) and Back to the Future III (1988), along with countless TV shows and commercials.

The donkeys retreat after I shooed them from the roadway.

Continuing along over the border into Utah, I was to go down some very steep inclines, thankfully well marked in advance by the Utah Highway Dept., ‘til, at the edge of a yet another reservation, the road was blocked by a pack of donkeys, half a dozen in number, large and small in stature. They may have been wild, maybe not, but one thing I’m sure of, they were 100 percent stubborn, refusing to move until I got out of the truck and slapped and shooed them from the road. Got a couple of pictures though. (Hmmm … Last night it was the elk and the trailer, today it’s donkeys and the road. Stupid Human Tricks all over the place.)
Back in the truck, down a few more steep twists and turns and that’s where I fell into … Mexican Hat

A Siesta, Then a Swinging Steak

You have, of course, heard of a place being called a one-horse town. Well, Mexican Hat may have had a pony, once-upon-a-time, but it ran off long ago. Three lodges and a gas station/convenience store. That’s it.
So, down another steep hill, a severe right-angle turn and then up a just-as-steep incline and I was in front of the Mexican Hat Lodge.
The sturdy two-story structure, open now for 26 years (in 2006), is advertised as the “Home of Swinging Steaks, Beer Garden and Billiards.” I just had to take a peek. It’s a 10-room lodge with an open-air bar/restaurant attached and with the touted billiards table centered inside the lodge’s sitting room, which is decorated with mounted cattle horns and hides, etc.

The Mexican Hat, itself, just north of town.

After securing a room, I cleaned up and rested a short while. Later, I proceeded down to the restaurant, grabbed a seat at bar and took in my surroundings. The joint, some of it covered by a sloping tin roof, some not, had a dirt floor, some weather beaten planks nailed over fence posts in free form to shape the bar and the few tables were old but sturdy, painted in faded pastels. There was a sign promoting a local brew – no kidding -- Polygamy Porter! It’s slogan, of course: Why Just Have One?
Across from me at the bar stood a large bandstand, with a wide American flag covering its backsplash and an old wooden dance floor fronting it.
A couple of fridges, a sink and a beer cooler complete this picture, except for the chopping block and serving station in front of two large grates, maybe three foot long and two foot wide each, suspended by chains from a horizontal pole and swinging back and forth over an open red-hot juniper-wood fire in a raised pit. As I watched, every once in a while, the cook would tap the side of the grille to force it to maintain its pendulous rhythm over the reaching flames.
I made up my mind in short order while peering at the brief menu. Each steak coming off the swinging grille looked better then the last. I chose the large rib eye. When the barmaid came over to take my order, after a few words, she says, “Hey, you’re from Boston.” As soon as I heard her speak, I replied in amazement, “You are too!”
We had a good laugh at the irony of two New Englanders meeting in this very remote corner of the desert. Her name was Dawn (not to be confused, she says, with her brother Don) and she was actually from the Berkshires. She was maybe 30, maybe a year or two younger, and she had gotten out of western Massachusetts as soon as she was old enough, come out here some time ago and just fell in love with the desert. She goes home for occasional visits, but she’s making a home for herself and her young son right here on the shifting sands of southeast Utah.
Before I knew it, an incredible looking steak, cooked to perfection, was in front of me. It was on a large platter with heaping sides of pinto beans, salad and Texas Toast (there were no choice for sides, every steak came like that; I’m not complaining though. I gobbled them up).
With a frosty Dos Equis at the ready beside the platter, I dug in. Soon the grille master came over to inquire if the meat was cooked to my liking. Since it was already about two-thirds long gone, I assured him he had nothing to worry about. He told me that the meat came from “Free-range cattle, not some poor cow stuck in a pen all day,” and that it had been locally raised. He added that, “This is steak like your grandfather used to eat.”
His name was Jay, and he was a stocky fellow under his 10-gallon hat – one of those immovable object-type of guys. Son of the lodge’s owners, he was definitely a town “personality,” bantering with the locals swilling beer down the bar, teasing the barmaids and generally adding color to a joint already overflowing with it.

Home of the Swinging Steak


Being a fan of steak ever since I got my second teeth, I’ve eaten at almost all the big national chain steakhouses -- Morton’s, The Capital Grille, Ruth Criss, etc. -- and, I can honestly say, none of them do it any better than Jay (“Jay and the Swinging Steaks!” Sounds like a doo-wop group).
Soon the other barmaid, Suzy, was beside me conducting some business, as she moonlights as a notary public. Afterward, we struck up a conversation about her native Mexican Hat. “Got just about 35 residents, give or take one or two,” she said. “Every day people like you stumble through town, and every once in a while one of ‘em stays … No traffic, no politics, no trouble. We just love it here.”
Later, she told me that once upon a time, this area was famous for its huge uranium deposits, buried deep under the sands. But, “The uranium market dried up some years ago and all the mines shut down and everybody just went back to ranching. But now,” she added, rather conspiratorially, “People come down here from all over the world (including representatives, according to her, of some nasty folks in the news lately, you know, the ones wearing turbans), trying to wrest the claim rights from the locals, including some of her close family, that still hold them. (Now I don’t know all that much about the uranium biz, and all that may have just been bar chatter, but that story just can’t be considered good news.)
She also told me that almost everyone in town plays some sort of musical instrument and, for the week before and culminating on Memorial Day, the whole town turns into a country music festival, with some of the finest professional musicians from around the area coming down and sitting in with the townsfolk. It’s a well-attended event, a tradition that’s been going on for years and every room in town was spoken for months ago. She told me that I’d be all right with the trailer though, because they’d be parked everywhere, all over town. (I’d honestly love to go but, as I said before, I’ve got a schedule to keep.)
The Mexican Hat’s restaurant is the kind of place you’d love to find in Key West, Fla. but it is also the type that town’s business leaders and politicians, or “The Bubbas” as locals call them down there, continue to try and shutter in their never-ending quest to upscale and squelch that island’s unique personality.
I mentioned in the introduction to this blog that I was on the lookout for hidden gems. Well, in the spirit of the murals in Florida and the snake house in Texas, I found a diamond in the rough at Mexican Hat. Unpolished, but still finely cut.

Hollywood in These Hills?

There are a lot of movie references contained in this post and, as some of you might know, my late father -- let’s call him Skinner -- had some brief exposure under the Hollywood spotlights. Thanks to his friendship with The Farrelly Brothers and their family, Skinner was lucky enough to appear in four of The Brothers’ comedy features, including  the 1998 blockbuster "There's Something About Mary" as well as "Kingpin", "Me, Myself & Irene" and "Shallow Hal."
But, here’s something you might not know:

That's Skinner, middle, in the sailor's hat in "Mary".

When The Brothers got their first big break - the green light for Dumb and Dumber, they decided that this may be their only shot, and they were going to have a good time with it. How? They surrounded themselves with family and friends, putting them to work as extras in the film -- a practice that became a hallmark of their later efforts.
The Brothers lensed Dumb and Dumber a little bit in Rhode Island, but the majority was filmed right here in Utah, and they had made approaches to Skinner to come along out to the desert with them.
Now, besides his own family and friends, Skinner loved, among other things and in no particular order, cigarettes, steak, music and, after he was cured of golf fever later in life, a cocktail.
So when The Brothers asked him if he wanted to be in their big screen blockbuster, Skinner must have shocked them by mistakenly saying, “Nah, Utah’s a dry state.”
Dismissing the notion with his trademark wave-off and a shrug, he later told me, “So I said, ‘Nothing doing!’ ” (The impression I took away from his story was that actually he was looking for an excuse, masking his instinctive shyness and not bowing to an unquenchable thirst. By the way, as all Skinner fans everywhere saw, he managed later to overcome that bashfulness.)
Anyway (I’m counting on my fingers here), … 1, Steak? … 2, Music fest? … 3, Cold beer?
Too bad! If only The Brothers had chosen to film in Mexican Hat, Skinner could have been the guy smoking a blunt under the big sombrero. Would’ve been half-a-stretch, but I’m confident he could have shined in the role. He would have loved this place. Can’t picture him up on a horse though … Hmmm … Maybe one of those donkeys …
The next morning as I was leaving Mexican Hat, I stopped and asked Jay -- who had traded in his grill fork for a backhoe while working to replace the bar’s dance floor -- to recommend any worthwhile sights on the road up to Moab, Utah. He suggested I visit a dinosaur museum up north in Blanding, Utah, which was good advice. However he forgot to mention the Valley Of The Gods, just beyond the other side of the next hill.



Desert needles: The Navajo Twins

 And on The Eighth Day …

From what I’ve seen and heard, the locals take this scenery for granted (ho-hum, just another absurdly fantastic vista. These cowboys should go sit in some offices for 25 years, and then see if they take notice!), but to not mention this place is a sin …
Now, if one was to pick up a Bible and open it to its first page and chapter, Genesis 1, one would find out that, for the very first little while, God did the grunt work, making the earth out of a heavenly hash, if you will. Then came night and day, so He could keep track of time (even though, I’m sure, God wasn’t punching a clock or anything). Next came the sky and with it, of course, the weather. So far, so good … even the weather!
On Day 3, very busy now, He divided land from the sea and later, the story says, He made that land good & plentiful (The candy came much, much later).
Pleased with His progress, God was on a roll. In the next few days, He accessorized, flicking up the on switch for the sun and the stars, and then rolling out all the animals along with the fish and the birds, the snakes and the insects. One big happy Animal Kingdom.
Feeling strongly now that joint would need some sort of middle management, He created people, pesky even in those very early times.
He felt He had to sit mankind down for a stern talking-too about responsibility, telling the new tenants to get about the business of building up their brand and, as a general practice, to keep things down to a dull roar.
After that, He showed them around the new setup, explaining how to work the levers, which buttons to push, gauges to read and so forth (“OK, now crank back slowly on the carnivores ... Yep, that’s it. That’s … Nope, nope… Slower…”).
Satisfied, God knew that all work and no play makes for a very dull deity. So, near the end of one busy week, it sort of says in The Good Book, He took a chill pill.
After tossing his white coveralls – you know the ones, with “Creator” monogrammed on the left breast pocket -- in the laundry bin marked “Extra Bleach, No Starch,” God scrubbed and scrubbed, ‘til his grimy hands were clean. He then shut off the overhead lights in His workshop and closed and double-locked the door.
So on the first day of the next week, by the time God was laid out on a lounge chair somewhere by a celestial shoreline, lathered up in SPF 35 and catching 40 winks with a very early edition of the Garden of Eden Gazette draped over his face, that’s probably right when things went plum loco in southeastern Utah.
Because this place is absolutely otherworldly:
Castles, towers, pyramids, mountaintop fortresses, Buddhist Temples, hands with upraised fingers reaching skyward -- this panorama was truly haunting.
After a while I realized of what it reminded me. The scenery was reminiscent of sets used in Akira Kurosawa’s films. The late Kurosawa, recognized as film royalty worldwide, was the master Japanese filmmaker whose stylish medieval Samurai epics spawned or heavily influenced flicks ranging from spaghetti westerns to the Star Wars six-pack, along with many others in between. Could it be that these shapes and forms, seen in the old westerns, influenced Kurosawa?
On the 17-mile loop in the actual Valley of the Gods, you pass by formations with such names as the Seven Sailors (with seven cylindrical stones side-by-side with flat rocks tilted at different angles atop them, looking for all the world like a gaggle of German sailors in those Bundesmarine caps), Setting Hen Butte and Battleship Rock. Truly though, there is much more to this area than just the named creations. Much, much more!
The shapes and sweeping vistas are more striking then those in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, and the color mixes -- crimson, green, orange, yellow, milky gray – are magical.
Now, I’m no physicist, but maybe all this has something to do with the uranium harmlessly buried far below. Some sort of fission collision?

Digging Up Some Dinosaurs



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Utah has some of the most prominent dinosaur digs in North America and, to promote that fact, it has 10 dinosaur-connected attractions.
On Jay the Grill master’s recommendation, I tracked one down -- The Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah.
The women working at the Dinosaur Museum couldn’t stop laughing as I queried her about the place. She thought I was from England. That aside, it’s still a very cool place to tour with some actual fossils along with many casts from dinosaur digs and some scale models.
Some new information on some very old animals has recently come to light: that many dinosaurs may have been covered with feathers rather than scales, and this museum has some

A Tarbosaurus skeleton.

  of the experimental models as paleontologists seek answers to these questions.Not that these were cute little tweetie birds. No way! These were some very scary looking animals. Lots of claws, talons, teeth and sharp edges.
There were also a lot of exhibits of popular culture concerning prehistoric times, literature -- including comic books and pulp novels -- along with film posters, including a long corridor displaying on both walls many vintage movie house advertisements for flicks such as Lost Continent, with Cesar Romero headlining and the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. with Victor Mature and Lon Chaney Jr. topping the bill.

Open April 15 to October 15, this museum is well worth a look-see.

Mea Culpa …

As I stated above, I’m no physicist. Heck, I can’t even count. In my last post, I added a zero to some calculations about money made by that Grand Canyon helicopter service. The correct annual total for income generated by this business is just a hair shy of $53 million. I removed the incorrect reference from that post. Sorry …

Next On The Agenda

Visits to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and some new friends made in Moab, Utah. Then, a couple of days at Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park.

Urban renewal is unheard of in the Four Corners area. The Rockefeller Trust was broken up in 1911, splitting the Standard Oil monopoly into pieces. That probably is right around the last time this place was occupied. Notice the Wiccan symbol painted on the front corner.

Your humble correspondent under the South Window at Arches National Park in eastern Utah.

Message from Moab

With Mexican Hat, Utah and the Valley of the Gods regretfully in the rear view mirror, I headed north through the southwestern Utah desert ‘til I reached Moab
Moab sure looks like a ski town, but it’s one without a mountain. Although the peaks of the Le Sal Mountains tower above this hamlet, none have been carved out to cater to the downhill and snowboard crowd. Jammed between two high red-rock canyon walls, Moab’s stuffed with cafes, restaurants and fast-food joints, motels and youth hostels, bookstores and souvenir shops, auto, motorcycle and bicycle supply houses and many outdoors-adventure outfitters.

The foothills of the Rockies beckon from outside  Moab.

A Mecca for mountain bikers, motorcyclists, off-roaders, rock climbers and river rafters, Moab does offer some cross-country skiing in the winter months at the foot of the nearby Le Sal range, but it draws most of its tourist dollars from its location, nestled between two wonderful and very different National Parks: the Arches and Canyonlands.
Triple-A seems stingy with its recommendations for spots to stop and camp at along the road, sometimes completely ignoring towns with more than a few serviceable areas. Here at Moab, however, the AAA boosts no less than 25 camping, RV and cabin parks in the vicinity.
Yes, folks, Moab really, really wants your disposable income. C’mon out here, let ‘em prove it to you …
Not that Moab was without obstacles: road resurfacing had the main drag torn asunder, to misplace a nautical term, from stem to stern. Your federal tax dollars at work, my travel time in tatters.
I finally pulled in a RV park about mid-town and, after securing a spot, was going about setting up for a visit of a few days when I was approached by a little lady, limping along, her left leg in a walking brace. After noticing my Florida plates, she declared, “You’re a long way from home!” After I told her I really was from the Boston, she said she recognized my accent as she and her husband had many friends from Beantown and The Big Apple.
So began a brief but very pleasant association with two kindred spirits, Rocket and Kelly. Camping one site removed from my trailer, this pair from north of the border had pulled in only a short while before me.

Rocket & Kelly

Down from Whistler, British Columbia, they prove out that old maxim of how opposites attract: Rocket, nicknamed after Montreal hockey great Rocket Richard whose surname he almost shares, is a laid-back, square-shouldered, retired fireman. He’s currently serving as Man Friday, butler and chief bottle-washer to Kelly, the diminutive and chatty ski instructor in a leg brace.
(Several days after we met, Kelly asked me if she and Rocket would rate a mention in this blog and, if so, how would I characterize them? After some thought, I decided on a Looney Tunes cartoon couple, Foghorn Leghorn and Tweety Bird: He the huge-in-comparison, stoic no-nonsense take-charge guy, she the tiny-in-contrast, never-ending stream of consciousness personified, balancing precariously upon his shoulder.)
And hey, they’re both huge Booby Orr fans, saying several times that the majority of Canadians serious about hockey take into account Orr’s injury-abbreviated career and so consider him the best to ever to lace up his skates, with Wayne Gretzky a close second.
Rocket and Kelly are traveling the western U.S. in a RV after Kelly had recent knee surgery in Kansas City. Saddled with a very serious injury that occurred in a ski training accident, Kelly was denied the procedure in Canada. The Canadian government’s medical evaluator gave them some lame excuses about her age (early 40s) and professional status, but it seems, after it was explained to me, that you can lay the blame for this snafu squarely on the nationalized healthcare system north of the border (“Take a number and go to the back of line 68. … That’s right, back of the line. … Yep, that’s the one … Around that corner, the end of the line’s there, three-and-a-half, blocks down that alley … Don’t worry about that, there’s port-a-potties down there”).
Seriously, Rocket and Kelly both swear that the Canadian system is serviceable for health maintenance and in emergencies, but if an expensive procedure – such as knee surgery – is required, you’re plum out of luck. Kelly, however, held a trump card: she knew a Kansas City surgeon who skies at Whistler and he volunteered to help her out.

Forgive me now, as I editorialize briefly (be aware it's May 2006 as I wrote this, without benefit of a crystal ball or Tarot cards):

Remember that this Canadian system, which could deny one needed medical care on some evaluator’s flimsy whim (with no recourse or second opinion even considered), is funded by a general national sales tax of 10 percent on all items bought except food -- and is still forever in a serious funding crisis.

Several examples of a needle.

 (Under the socialist political system which stunts Canadians’ financial growth, personal as well as business-wise, this burden is on top of provincial, or state, sales taxes of at least seven-to-10 percent, depending on the province, very high national and provincial income tax rates - on average much higher than in the U.S., gas taxes, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes, etc., along with fees tacked on for many activities. Maybe it’s me, but Canada sounds very taxing, kind of like Massachusetts.)
Canada has about 30-35 million residents, all stuck under this flawed health program. Bring this type of plan south to America, extrapolate it out to fit in our about 300 million citizens and you got a problem. No, make that 10 times the problems. Bottom line: everybody pays into the system, but anything expensive is either not covered or greatly delayed. If you need leg surgery, learn to like your limp. If you desperately need a triple bypass – but haven’t had a heart attack yet -- just hope you can last at least 18 months or a couple of years before getting one. Otherwise you must he wealthy enough to completely afford independent care or be unbelievably fortunate enough to know a generous American surgeon. And, even if those two options were available, you still have to pay the general sales tax - of 10 percent.
Now I’m no fan of the insurance mob, as it seems bogus to pay through the nose for something you hope to never, ever use. But the Canadian system is no panacea; it’s a bad idea, absurdly expensive and taxing to common folk with coverage that’s full of holes.
Which brings me to America. Perhaps tort reform here could drive down the ridiculously onerous malpractice insurance rates U.S. doctors must pay to protect themselves (I've heard figures of $80,000-$100,000 annually; I don't care how much you make, that's a lot of cake for something you hope to never, ever use!), forcing the bulk of those costs to be passed down by health insurers into the single rates we all pay.
A small number of individual lawyers, of course, rake in huge fees from some astoundingly generous medical malpractice awards and thus have a huge stake in making sure that tort reform never passes into law. To that end, the American Bar Association lobby in Washington is constantly fighting, tooth-&-nail.

Mesas and buttes form a pseudo city in the desert.

Now, certainly not all lawyers are crooks, and not all doctors are perfect. If a doctor – willfully or not - screws up, the courts should, in a fair fashion, screw that doctor to the wall financially, providing remedy and some sort of small comfort to a wronged patient. But we are all paying, via our exorbitant health insurance rates and fees, for a small number of crazy tort judgments in some far-flung cases brought forth by a few money-hungry, ambulance-chasing, jury-shopping shysters (read up on the filthy rich-from-shady-tort-case-fees John Edwards’ pre-Senate career in front of the bar should you need a clear example of this style of barrister).
It’s all just plain wrong, and something’s got to give. No surprise, but I’m on the tort reform bandwagon. E-mail your representatives in DC, tell him or her you think tort reform might be worth a try. That’s except, of course, for you Bay Staters. It’s useless, for all your senators and congressmen are either members of the bar or else deep in the ABA’s back pocket. Despite all their lip service to the contrary, the Massachusetts delegation’s voting record on legal issues – the only true barometer - time-and-again backs up this assertion. Sorry, I know the truth hurts …
Tort reform won’t mean medical care will be free. It is big business now, and, just like any other, it costs to do business. However, tort reform will make medical treatments more reasonable and affordable. That’s just common sense.
Anyway, it’s your money and, ultimately, it’s these few sleazy lawyers with greedy motives whose shady actions are forcing up malpractice insurance rates for doctors, and therefore your rates, effectively picking your pocket.
Thanks for staying tuned while I vented; now back to Moab:

Larry & Navajo Joe.

Also around and about was an older fellow named Larry who was accompanied by his dog, Navajo Joe. Larry told us he had rescued this happy hound about eight years ago from a Navajo reservation in Arizona just over the border from Mexico. Navajo weighed just 18 lbs. when Larry scooped him up off the desert floor, so the vet was the next stop. The doggy doc told Larry that Navajo was probably around three or four years old at that point and most likely a mix of Irish setter and Mexican Grey Wolf -- an endangered species, one of which I recently viewed in a zoo in Carlsbad, N.M. Sweet-natured and healthy now at his full weight and with a heavy coat of red and black fur, Navajo Joe provides good company for Larry, a gentle eccentric who, at age 73, travels North America in a oversized van he customized for extended trips in comfort. (Larry may well have been the one who coined that bumper-sticker motto, “Little Red Riding Hood was a big fat liar, a wolf won’t hurt anyone,” for he quotes it often.)
A father of six, Larry is a nature photographer of -- judging by his prints -- prodigious talent. His eventual destination in the lower 48: Puget Sound in northwest Washington state and the ports of departure for the Alaska Marine Highway ferries – a voyage northwest that Larry will soon sail on (and one I took 10 years ago this August, which I shall always fondly remember for its beautiful scenery, ashore as well as at sea, and for its true relaxation).
The four of us shared several dinner feasts, a couple of cocktail hours, some genuine conversation and more than a few laughs. Just one more example of how very lucky I’ve been so far to meet many such generous and authentic characters along the trail.
I spent a day each exploring the nearby national parks, and will detail those areas below, but first, as we were all breaking down to leave, I briefly engaged in a conversation with the fellow who had pulled into the next campsite late the prior evening. His name was Joe and he was in his 70s. Joe had seen the Mt. Washington sticker that is affixed to the back of the trailer and, demonstrating once again what a small world we live in, told me he and his wife were from Saco, Maine – home to one of my favorite restaurants, the Kerryman.
Along with several pals, I stumbled upon this eatery between 15 and 20 years ago during an evening ride north to ski country and it has become a must stop on almost all trips through that area. It offers the best lobster pie your correspondent has ever enjoyed (and I freely admit that I’ve partaken in many).

Golden glow these Arches

As you head north out of Moab, you quickly cross over the mighty Colorado River and then enter Arches National Park . The gate is that close to Moab – about two miles away. You swiftly begin to climb up the windy roads between the canyon walls and suddenly the state of the scenery may bring some strange thoughts to mind.

The now-collapsed Delicate Arch.

 To me, the Arches looks like that fun couple, Mother Nature and Father Time, conspired to chisel it out of stone: Mother Nature held a fearsome chisel while Father Time swung a mighty hammer, cleaving and smashing the gold- and red-rock formations. In some spots, it looks as if these ethereal giants then played with the stones as if children, piling them up like building blocks and later scattering some of the blocks about, as children sometimes will.
Strange thoughts, stranger looking place …
Huge squared-off sandstone formations, tall spires or fins, massive granite domes, colossal stones balancing atop smaller stone spires, and, of course, the many, many arches. The geological story of the Arches differs slightly from the familiar Southwestern tale of the tape. Sorry, it’s no fairy tale, but instead the result of the fact that the park lies on top of an immense underground salt bed. Thousands of feet deep in some spots here, a salt bed is generally unstable under the pressure that the Earth’s constant sub-surface movement produces.

Fellow travelers provide scale against the Double Arch.

Faults deep in the earth created instability on the surface and this movement caused the cracks that later became the famous Arches. Over time, water seeped into these cracks and ice formed, forcing those cracks open. After much erosion, wind and water pounded these huge sandstone surfaces and stripped away the debris fallen from the holes. Many of these structures collapsed, but others survived to produce the more than 2,000 arches catalogued so far in the park today. Those arches listed range in size from just three feet wide to the Landscape Arch, which measures 306 feet across. Divergent minerals in the sandstone and soils provide for many visual delights. The evidence of these natural processes, however, is circumstantial, as the park handout readily admits.
The park gate is at an elevation of just under 4,100 feet above sea level. It’s just a little less than 18 miles from that gate to the Devils Garden campground, but you rise up almost 4,000 feet in elevation. Along the way, with several short side trips, you can view such natural wonders as the Tower of Babel, a huge vertical formation and the Fiery Furnace area, a kaleidoscope of colors upon a variety of surfaces. There’s a huge Balanced Rock along with a personal favorite, the Parade of Elephants – several huge geological anomalies reaching for the sky, along with many arches, among them the Turret Arch, the Double Arch, the Sand Dune Arch and the Delicate Arch (a trail marker near the thin, frail looking Delicate Arch declares that it will soon share the fate that has befallen New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain, which it did in August of 2008).

A camping site in the amazing Devil's Garden.

The Park Service allows tourists to get up close and personal with many of these structures as you can access numerous arches with short hikes. Serious hikers will find many more such opportunities available to them along the park’s 13 trails.
The Devils Garden offers a unique camping experience with desert conditions at about an 8,000-foot altitude and 52 campsites scattered among beautiful red sandstone formations with a mountainous backdrop. I couldn’t access this area after dark, but was told that the stargazing here is sensational.
As usual with the National Park Service, there is a very informative Visitors Center near the park entrance and various comfort stations scattered throughout.
You could spend a couple of days exploring the Arches, but a thrifty sightseer can cover it in about four hours time.
Let’s play a little Canyonlands

With just a little over a 30-mile drive from downtown Moab, you reach the gates to Canyonlands National Park . If you consult a map, it appears that the Arches and Canyonlands stand side-by-side. But geologically and visually, they are worlds apart. At the Arches, almost every remarkable spectacle requires you to gaze upward. At Canyonlands, nearly the exact opposite is true.
Canyonlands lies at the heart of the Colorado Plateau and -- once again according to the park handout -- water and gravity are the primary forces that shaped this extraordinary landscape, fashioning the hundreds of magnificent canyons, mesas and buttes, along with some arches and spires.

One of many canyons in Canyonlands.

If you check a map of the park, it seems that the mighty Colorado River and the formidable Green River plot to divide Canyonlands into three parts or districts, with the Colorado flowing in a southwesterly direction and the Green joining it from the Northwest. It looks as though a watery, twisty Y trisects the park with the arms splitting off the north and the stem partitioning the south.
Each district has a name: Island in the Sky is the northern section; Needles, where most of the spires are located, is the southeastern section with the wild and remote Maze section holding the southwestern corner. Needles and Island in the Sky are accessible by auto transport, while the ledges and labyrinths of the Maze are strictly the province of hikers, backcountry campers and your occasional bighorn sheep.
Since Island in the Sky was the area closest to Moab, that was the section chosen for exploration. While driving north from Mexican Hat, I had passed the long access road west out to the Needles, and was intrigued by names of some of its landmarks, such as Paul Bunyan’s Potty, but I had to pass by that opportunity to reach the central location of Moab.

A road winding along the cliffs through the Canyonlands.

After some morning chores and shopping, and with plans for a supper feast with my three new friends, Kelly, Rocket and Larry, I was a little pressed for time when I reached the park gate just after 1 p.m. I spoke to a park ranger at the Visitors Center and asked where one could find the best photo opportunities; she shrugged her shoulders and smiled, saying “Everywhere.”
And she was right. Despite the sometime overcast skies, the views were wonderful at every turn.
Although the windy, twisty roads do not follow the rivers, they certainly mimic their path. I made my way south along the 12-mile road out to the Grand View Point, rising more than 2,000 feet in altitude along the way.
The Grand View is certainly all that, offering a sweeping panorama of colorful canyons and mesas for as far as the eye can see. In the distance you notice both the Colorado and Green Rivers as they carve their path through the stone.
Other scenery of note was the Buck Canyon (see above), the Orange Cliffs, the Holman Spring Canyon and Mesa Arch.
All and all, it was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

A bargain, then Eastward Ho!

As I was soon to head east then north up into the mountains and the Rocky Mountain National Park and then later down into the city of Denver for a few days, I decided to try and store the trailer in the Moab area and then return to pick it up for the trek west. To that end, I found a storage area and stop to inquire about prices. Having no idea about prices, I was expecting the tab to runs about $10 dollars a day for 7-10 days.
Here I met Franky, the storage lot caretaker and a delightful woman about to celebrate her 80th birthday. She told me that the company didn’t do short contracts and that the least amount of time I could rent a spot for was one month. Steeling myself for the bad news, I asked how much a month would cost. She said, “33 dollars.” I was instantly sold, and then stored the trailer after unpacking my tent and camping gear. Rocky Mountains, here I come!

I am actually kind of glad to be getting out of the Southwest for a while, as I was swiftly running out of adjectives to describe this beguiling area. I’m scraping the bottom of my vocabulary barrel, struggling to describe this beauty. Perhaps I may find a bigger, better thesaurus in Denver …

To read about three stops made in Colorado, including the Rocky Mountain National Park, click HERE

Truck and trailer provide scale at Wilson Arch, the first arch I encountered, just south of Moab and due east on the Needles section of Canyonlands NP.

There was much to see at Capitol Reef National Park. It was full of unexpected pleasures including this granite guy I’m just going to call Stoney!

It’s said that every picture is worth a 1,000 words …

SO, HERE’S ABOUT 7,000 ….

Sliderock Divide

 … Give or take a paragraph or 10.
As I told you in an earlier post, when I visited Rocky Mountain National Park, I met a few interesting characters, including Nick and Judy, a pair of Brits who had been traveling the country in a RV full-time for nearly the last three years. They had visited almost all the great parks in the U.S. system and were a welcomed fountain of information and advice.
When I asked them which state they thought was the most scenic, they answered in unison, “Utah.” They touted Capitol Reef National Park heavily, joining along with a park ranger I met who was presently stationed in the Rockies, but who previously been posted at Capitol Reef.
 Everyone talks about the Big Four in south Utah – Arches and Canyonlands in the east, Bryce Canyon and Zion in the west – and, so, based on that counsel, I almost passed by Capitol Reef, located right in the middle.

The Castle

Nick and Judy said I’d be a fool to miss it, and that it was the standout park of their entire trip. And since they had pretty much covered the entire system, it seemed a fairly strong endorsement. So I dropped by. Glad I did!

One again, the geology tells the tale here. About 65 million years ago, the Earth’s crust buckled, form what’s now called Waterpocket Fold, a giant rocky wrinkle that stretches for 100 miles north-to-south through south central Utah.

Waterpocket Fold

  With the Freemont River flowing through the middle of the park, there’s a spot called Fruita here also. Like previous stops, it is also an oasis-type area, filled with fruit orchards. These spots are still an amazing sight here after the dust of the desert, no matter how many times you see one. I stayed to myself here, purposely not trying to make friends as I had a lot of ground to cover and very little time budgeted for exploring.
I camped in the town of Torrey, just west of the park.I then went to the Visitors’ Center, where both rangers had New England ties, one was from Guilford, Maine and the other had attended Wellesley College.


The Notams

Based on the rangers’ advice, I followed the Notom-Bullfrog Road running parallel to the Waterpocket Fold. Rough road, but great sights and well worth the trouble. The Fold is a thin strip, bordered on both sides by incredible ranches. It’s amazing to think that some individuals own all this land and have these private views.

Before a huge full moon took over the night, I traveled down a scenic drive at sunset, again on the rangers’ advice. I was wonderful, full of amazing colors and shapes, and some very tight slot canyons.


Flowers that look like Creamsicles

 The Navajo called this area The Land of the Sleeping Rainbow. This is one beautiful spot. From now on, at least from me, you’ll be hearing about the Big Five in Utah, not four!
Only a national Park since 1971, there is no admission charged here.

On the way to Capitol Reef, I stopped here, a convenience store on a whole new level, this store, gas station and gathering spot carved out of the rock is a welcome relief in the high desert in Hanksville, Utah. Hanksville sits, geographically, just south of the Dirty Devil River, due west of Canyonlands National Park, due east of Capitol Reef and north of Lake Powell. Seems this store wasn't just situated at the crossroads of routes 95 and 24, it was the nexus in town. Not knowing what lay ahead, I stocked up on water, block ice and gas.

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.