Monthly Archives: May 2018

American Southwest 2018

We had a wonderful two week trip through the American Southwest and saw some incredible scenery. The American Southwest is one of the last areas we’ve wanted to visit in the US since we’re not big into red rocks or desert so we’ve held off visiting the area until now. After our visit, I’ve changed my opinion a lot and look forward to visiting again, hopefully soon!

We drove a giant circle across Arizona and Utah visiting a ton of parks along the way (Petrified Forest NP, Canyon de Chelly NM, Monument Valley, Goosenecks SP, Arches NP, Deadhorse SP, Capitol Reef NP, Grand Staircase Escalante NM, Kodachrome SP, Bryce Canyon NP, Cedar Breaks NM, Zion NP, Grand Canyon NP) seeing incredible sights, eating incredible food, and enjoying spectacular weather.

It’s hard to describe the enormity of the sights. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is the perfect example – it’s a national monument / natural feature that has grand mesas and incredible 1,500ft monoclines climbing stepwise nearly 7,000ft over many miles. The Grand Canyon is just that – grand, and the other national / state parks we visited were equally enormous. The slot canyons, hodooos, mesas, buttes, monuments, ruins, petroglyphs, arches, mountain peaks, desert valleys, goosenecks, orchards, and crystal clear night skies were all incredible. No photo is capable of capturing the sheer size and beauty of the area. I tried, I really did, but I know the photos I took are not representative of the area and fail to portray the area accurately. The area is one of those places a person has to see in person.

The national parks were busy. Very busy. To cope, we did one of two things: we either altered our schedule to minimize the number of people we’d be around or we’d figure out alternate paths / alternate activities. As an example of altering our schedule: we chose to do a lot of early morning hiking. Seeing sunrise on Peek-a-boo trail in Bryce Canyon was an experience I can’t describe and is easily one of the best moments in hiking I’ve ever had. We started hiking when it was still rather dark and had hiked in solitude for about 45min in the dark / shade of the hoodoos before we rounded a corner to see a very large valley filled with vibrantly lit hoodoos from the early morning sun. The colors were amazing and the full body experience was exacerbated by the early morning stillness, early morning animals, and early morning smells. It was stunning. As we finished up our hike we saw humanity pouring into the canyon and it was loud. Screaming, yelling, music playing, and selfie taking made it a bit harder to enjoy the trail. I’m confident we would have greatly disliked hiking in Bryce if we would have hiked at a normal human time simply because the crush of humanity would also be enjoying the trails. Renting bicycles and riding around the canyon floor in Zion NP is the other example of finding alternate activities. Humanity is overrunning Zion – people, people, people everywhere so the national park service runs shuttles to minimize traffic in the canyon. I know there is about a 0% chance I’d cram myself into a tourist shuttle so I looked for alternate activities and found we could rent bicycles and bike wherever we wanted; sounded like a great alternative! Not only was it a great alternative, it’s one of the coolest things we’ve ever done! It felt like we had the canyon to ourselves! Since there was very little traffic we could bike wherever we wanted, it was super quiet, and it was stunningly beautiful. It was surreal knowing that there were a ton of people in Zion NP but that they were relegated to shuttles and wherever they decided to get off the shuttle. Had we not rented bikes I’m pretty sure we would have hated Zion since there were so many people.

Outside the national parks, the solitude was incredible. There were vast expanses where we didn’t see other vehicles or other people, didn’t see planes overhead, had zero cellphone signal, and didn’t hear or smell anything other than nature. For example: Red Canyon right next to Bryce Canyon NP. It’s not even a park but part of national forest surrounding Bryce NP. There are quite a few trails in the area so we decided to hike the area. We hiked in the middle of the day and chose a more popular trail, the Golden Wall trail. We didn’t see a single person, we didn’t hear any sounds of humanity, and only enjoyed nature. The sights were really similar to Bryce Canyon but no-one was around. The hike is one of the better hikes we’ve ever done in our entire lives.

We were chatting with the National Forest Service volunteer at the Red Canyon visitor center and she mentioned Highway 12 is “the second most beautiful drive in the world”. Highway 12 runs between Moab and Bryce Canyon NP and goes through Grand Staircase NM, Capitol Reef NP, and a lo of beautiful areas. We had driven on Highway 12 and thought it was quite pretty so we were a bit surprised to hear it’s the second most beautiful drive in the world. I asked her what the first most beautiful drive was and she said “Milford Sound in New Zealand”. Fortunately for us, we had driven that road when we could compare. I think Highway 12 in Utah was more beautiful only because we didn’t really like New Zealand :/. It’s interesting to think that Milford Sound is internationally known yet I had never heard of Highway 12 in Utah.

Speaking of national parks and national forests – I continually re-learn that there is a major difference in crowds visiting national parks and national forests. We’ve hiked, a lot, all over the country and I noticed a while back that the folks visiting national parks seemed to be more like city dwellers who wanted to see nature and have access to amenities like shops, rangers, informational walks, etc., and people who visited national forests for hiking seemed to be the type of people who, in general, want to enjoy hiking far away from others. It’s awesome people want to visit national parks; there’s literally nothing else like the US national park system we’ve seen in all of our travels. It’s truly a unique gem all Americans should take advantage of when possible.

This is the first year I’ve noticed something different about the crowds in the parks and other areas we were visiting. While extremely anecdotal, it seems as though the improving economy has brought a different part of society to the parks. Jac and I started visiting national parks in 2008 and witnessed firsthand the utter destruction the Great Recession had on the tourist areas around the parks starting in 2009. Seeing boarded up hotels, closed restaurants, and shut down tourist attractions was common place. This year I noticed far fewer shuttered businesses and noticed the parks were attracting families / individuals who looked different than the typical national park tourist and may have been a lower socio-economic class. It was exciting to see the folks – the recession was awful and disproportionately awful to the lower socio-economic classes so it’s my hope my observations mean the recovery has worked its way to all classes of society. If my observation is true then the recovery sure took its sweet time. 

We were surprised to find out the area has a lot of homemade pie options. It seemed as though every local restaurant we visited offered some sort of homemade pie ranging from the classic apple, peach, etc., to the more adventurous mountain berry and summer fruits mix. This all started at Capitol Reef National Park. I had read that one of the gift shops sold homemade pie inside the park – which I thought was very strange. I had read that tourists needed to show up a bit early to make sure they were able to get pie, even in March / April, since they tended to sell out. First, I don’t recall homemade items ever really being sold inside a national park. Second, Capitol Reef NP is in the middle of nowhere, seriously, look at a map of the US to find a big city in the area and then look at a population density map, there’s nearly nothing in the area. So, we set off early from Moab and arrived in Capitol Reef NP a bit after 10ish or so. We found they were selling small personal pies in the park so bought one pie as a test quickly discovering we needed seven more. From there on out, I think we had pie with every meal and pie at night before we went to bed. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much pie!

Without planning, it seems our timing was right for a lot of things:

  • we weren’t snowed on, at all, unlike what happened to individuals we know who traveled the area a couple weeks before us,
  • the Milky Way was out in the early morning and we ended getting some great Milky Way photos,
  • our driver for the Monument Valley sunrise tour happened to know an incredible amount about photography and taught me a massive amount about night photography in about half of an hour,
  • the fruit trees in Capitol Reef NP were in bloom and it was beautiful,
  • the road to Cedar Breaks NM just opened for the year while we were in the area and the sunset we watched in solitude was incredible,
  • our gravel / dirt road driving went without a hitch since it hadn’t rained in some time and everything is solid,
  • we were able to get a tour of the Glen Canyon dam,

Despite having grown up in an arid climate I had forgotten how bad static electricity can get. I live in Minnesota now, rarely do I ever build up enough static electricity to shock myself or anyone else. Being high in the mountains and in the arid climate reminded me so much where I grew up; it only took a couple of days to get the metal touching habit back to top of mind so I could dissipate smaller amounts of static electricity frequently instead of getting a few doozies J.

Lastly, the food was great; not just the desserts, real food too. We had some extremely delicious Mexican food and it was awesome to get Indian tacos again. I had Indian tacos a lot in school growing up and I’ve come to find most folks in Minnesota have no idea what an Indian taco is or where to get one. One of the best meals we had was an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet in Moab after a long day hiking around Arches NP; we made out like bandits on that deal.

Overall, this trip went well above our expectations. I can’t wait to go back!

Enjoy the photos –

Chris W.

Short album:

 

Long album:

South Carolina Spring 2018

I was sent to South Carolina for work only to be quite a bit surprised at what I learned – South Carolina is a very strange place:

  1. there is a very weird attachment to the confederacy,
  2. the civil war is described as a war between the “Federalists” and the confederates,
  3. locals told me the Columbia area is known as the “armpit of the south” due to how humid and hot it gets,
  4. the magnolia trees are incredible – some fully in bloom and 30ft tall, and,
  5. the poverty is very apparent, pervasive and manifests itself in subtle ways,
  6. it appears as though there is a very bimodal distribution of wealth.

We spent a bit of time driving around the countryside and seeing a confederate paraphernalia wasn’t uncommon. What was strange was seeing Sons of the Confederacy #842 implying there are at least 841 other Sons of the Confederacy establishments. I had never heard of the Sons of the Confederacy so I learned what Sons of Confederacy stood for and promoted which, unfortunately, didn’t clear much up for me. America loves winners. It’s in our blood. Yet, there’s a group of people who cling to the past glorifying a bunch of losers who lost fighting trying to defend their horrific and awful values and morals. We lived on a east coast and we’ve traveled around the east coast quite a bit so we read a lot of roadside historical markers and visited other historical sites but South Carolina is the first place I can recall reading about the “Federalists”. I think this is a purpose obfuscated to change the narrative to States Rights fighting a supreme federal government instead of the Union, preserving the union, fighting against a bunch of renegades who want to enslave people. It’s sad.

It was a bit warm and humid driving around South Carolina but I told we weren’t close to experiencing the worst of the weather. I felt quite fortunate the weather was a nice (?) as it was because it already felt like I was wearing a hot shower.

Everything was neon green, just lush, but the 30ft Southern Magnolia trees were a shock. The flowers the size of a small dinner plate and the trees were covered with the flowers. Lots of other plants were in bloom but the Southern Magnolia stole the day – by far. We have magnolias here in Minnesota but nothing 30ft tall!

Rural South Carolina is a bipolar arrangement of abject poverty and well off communities. It wasn’t uncommon to see well-off gated communities near run down clusters of homes. The typical big box stores could be seen in the outskirts of reasonably large communities but the dowtowns were almost always boarded shut or vacant. It was depressing.

I noticed another strange manifestation of the poverty and bifurcated socioeconomic classes when it came to picking restaurants based on Google Reviews. Low cost quick serve restaurants, like Little Ceasers, could easily get 4.2+ stars with hundreds of reviews while high-end steakhouses would score in the 3 star range with hundreds of reviews. Now, while I don’t much for meat anymore, I do remember how a high-end steak tastes and I’m confident all the steak I’ve ever had is better than all the Little Ceasers I’ve ever had, no contest. We visited a steakhouse with 3.8 stars and my colleague had a very large steak so I asked him if the steak was better than all the Little Ceasers he’s ever had, after a chuckle he said, “well, yeah, it’s steak”. The only reasonable theory I have as to why this situation exists is because there’s a bimodal distribution of wealth so different groups go to different restaurants with little overlap: lower socioeconomic classes go to Little Ceasers and well-off folks go to steakhouses.

Socioeconomic divides are everywhere in America, South Carolina isn’t unique. What is unique is how the divide plays out and the apparent valley between the poor and well-to-do.

So, in general, South Carolina is a weird place.

Enjoy the photos –

Chris W.

Texas Spring 2018

My work sent me to Texas at the right time of year – the spring wildflowers were in bloom! It was amazing to see fields and fields of flowers. I had no idea spring bloom was a thing in rural Texas and it was serendipitous I was in the region at the right time. In many ways it felt like all the different places we’ve been in the world at the right time to see once-in-a-year or rare events – like cherry blossoms in Japan and Washington DC, fall colors in the Smoky Mountains, Canada Day in Jasper, being in Alaska for the once nice week of beautiful sunny weather, visiting Romania when elderberries are in bloom so we could drink elderberry lemonade, International Fireworks Competition in Quebec City, the banks being shut down in Greece, being in Hawaii for the Jacarandas in bloom and the lava in flow, and so on. It was really special to see the bloom!

Rural Texas is a strange place. It’s flat, generally not interesting, kinda run down, but there are surprises. From amazing food located in the middle of nowhere to interesting archeological sites, Texas seems to have something for everyone. There’s a new-ish national monument in Waco dedicated to the Columbian Mammoths. We had a bit of downtime so a colleague and I went to the site – it was pretty interesting!

All in all, it was a good trip.

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.