Last night I went back down to the casino after writing my report with my roll of quarters and my winnings from before. I started playing a stud poker game, and before I knew it an hour had passed and I was up 44 quarters. This just wouldn't do. Either I needed to win big so I could brag, or I needed to lose all this money so I could go to bed. So I cashed out the machine and fed the quarters two at a time into a slot machine until they were all gone.
A woman looked at me funny because, I believe, I was actually pulling the lever. And just now, as I am writing this, I realize why my arm was so sore this afternoon as I reached up to open my sun roof.
This morning I got email telling me that I needed to look for a sign that said "Route 50 -- Loneliest Road in America" just west of Ely. I wasn't going to go that way and, had I not been alerted, I would have missed it. The sign was about four blocks from the hotel, on the western edge of the town.
After photographing the sign I turned around and left Ely on U.S. 50 to the east.
Yesterday on 93 and today on 50 there were a few signs marking "Wildlife Viewing Areas", but I didn't see any wildlife. Then again, I didn't stop to look.
Just after crossing through Conner's Pass I was told to pull over by a state patrolman. The music was too loud for me to hear what he said, and he had continued west before I could ask him to repeat it. Luckily another came along and told me that a wide load was coming through and that I should wait until it passed.
I could see the road drop away and rise up toward some mountains in the distance, and on that descent I saw the truck with the wide load. It took it fifteen minutes to make it to where we waited.
Why did the cow cross the road? To make me stop and wait while it took advantage of this "Open Range" area.
I cut down Nevada 487 which turned into Utah 21 when it crossed the state line. There was a small town right there, but no others for 75 miles!
The scenery along here was different again. The ground was covered with scruffy bushes. The mountains were big broad imposing things, covered with the same scruffiness (and maybe some trees, but they looked like shrubs from the road). Sometimes the sides of the mountains would be bare, but mostly they looked like a green blanket thrown over a big dog.
(I have since learned that this is what is called "high desert".)
There were two stretches on this highway that descended from ridges in incredibly straight lines, one eight miles and the other over twelve. I couldn't see cars on the far side, as the road went back up, but I could sometimes see sunlight reflecting off the windshield of a car I wouldn't meet for five minutes.
I won't give any details, but I will say these two things: if you ever want to see how fast your car will go downhill, this is the spot; and the speed governor on my car actually kicks in about six miles per hour slower than they claim (the computer shuts off fuel to the engine).
I saw the entire town of Milford six miles before I got to it. It was a collection of trees and buildings sitting in the middle of a seemingly empty expanse of grey-green. I was coming down out of one mountain range, and I could see the road leave the town on the far side and climb into another range in a straight line.
After Milford I started seeing more signs of civilizations: cattle ranches, cultivated fields, and other cars.
There's a large white letter B on the side of a mountain behind Beaver, Utah.
I pulled into a Texaco station in Beaver to buy gas. Someone came out from the garage and started washing my windshield. Terrific, I thought, I've pulled up to the Full Service pump and I'll pay too much. But I checked, and it was self service. He asked if I needed help pumping the gas, and I said I could handle it.
Finally the story came out: the station had just gotten new pumps, with the pay at the pump option, and this was the first one that was online. He just wanted to watch.
I asked the cashier inside when the letter B was first put up, but she didn't know, and no one else working there did, either.
From here I headed toward Bryce Canyon. The road passed through Red Canyon, a pretty section of eroded deep red hills beside a dry riverbed. A couple of times the road passed through very short tunnels (just a few feet long) cut through the rocks.
It had been raining off and on for the previous hour, and the last few hundred yards of road going into Bryce Canyon National Park were covered by a half inch of sleet. It was sleeting as I entered the park and went to the lodge and gift shop, along with hundreds of other people.
Here's another digression: I am willing to bet that a larger percentage of the population of Germany has visited three or more U.S. National Parks than that of the U.S. population.
The sleet stopped, but it was still raining. I thought it would probably blow over, so I started driving to the far end of the park. Then I'd start back in the good weather and hit all the viewing points.
There was some brief sunshine as I was passing the Natural Bridge area, so I hopped out to take a picture. The sunlight went away before I could. There would be no more sunshine during my visit.
When I got to Rainbow Point, at the end, I started taking pictures, even though pea-sized hail was stinging my arms and legs.
The
rain let up from time to time, but the sky was always cloudy. I took several
pictures, but, without direct sunlight to bring out the orange in the rocks,
I doubt they will look very good.
I'd pretty much given up and was ready to leave when, on impulse, I followed the side road to, well, I left my map in the car, but it's the scenic view point south of Inspiration Point.
These pictures probably won't come out, either, due to the low light, but it doesn't matter. From here I could see how deep the canyon is. It is roughly shaped like a C, with a broad, green, open plain extending into the distance. Ahead of me was a cliff that must have been hundreds of yards high. Wrapping around to the left and back to me were the staggered orange spires and cliffs that Bryce is famous for.
I can't really describe this accurately, but I felt that this thing was big, huge, tall, and imposing. This view alone was worth the trip here, hail or no.
As I was driving away from the park, it occurred to me that, if this canyon was so impressive, so imposing, so impossible to describe, then what was the Grand Canyon going to be like?
It was still raining as I hit the point where I had to decide if I was going to Zion National Park or not. I decided not to, and continued south to Kanab.
I am sorry to report that the chicken wire and plaster dinosaur that formerly protected the entrance to Moqui Cave is gone. In its place is a faux American Indian façade; flat stone and cement walls.
Inside are exhibits of Moqui artifacts, wood carvings by the former owner, dinosaur footprints and fossils, and "one of the largest collections of florescent rocks in the country". They were right on this last point. I've never seen so many. I'm not sure it was worth $3.50, though.
I asked the younger staff member about the dinosaur. She said that it was in bad shape and had been removed five and a half years ago for safety reasons. She said that, in her youth, it was always a landmark, a way to know when she was almost home from a trip.
The other staff member, a bit older, maybe in her thirties, was tied up explaining to two hikers that their map was out of date during this conversation. After she was done, she joined in.
She said that the dinosaur wasn't likely to attract anyone unless it was a high tech "animatronic" one, and that that was out of their reach. They also wanted to emphasize the Moqui Indian aspect of the attraction.
Then she started getting sentimental about the dinosaur, too. She said that when she was a child her father always planned every step of their vacations, and they never stopped anywhere that wasn't on the itinerary. Her father would always wake them up to point out the dinosaur, but he would never stop.
I love the mottos that towns have adopted for themselves. Kanab's is "The Greatest Earth on Show". It is pretty great. The mountains are red, layered with different shades. They have flat tops and flat areas along the sides that have green vegetation on them. They come in groups, with the ones behind sticking out, and the layering is the same. They look like large ships, or the toes of boots, or something like that, all in a row.
(I have since learned that these are mesas, those things I learned about in elementary school.)
In Kanab I stopped at a grocery store to buy some Diet Dr. Pepper, water, PopTarts, peanut butter, jelly, and bread. I had intended to buy some gas, but I forgot.
In Arizona, the land was almost flat. Rolling, I guess. There was very little grass. Mostly the ground was covered with dark green ball-like shrubs. In the distance were mountains like the ones near Kanab. It was hazy but no longer raining, and the mountains looked very distant and faded.
Ahead was what appeared to be another green mountain range, but I knew that this was the near edge of the Kaibab Plateau and would continue another sixty miles or so until the Grand Canyon brought it to an abrupt end.
The foothills of the plateau were covered with gnarled little trees, but in time these gave way to, yes, ponderosa pine and aspen.
At the turn to head to the Grand Canyon (still almost an hour away) I bought gas at what I thought was the Last Chance station. I still had half a tank, but it would be two days before I got to another station. It was $1.669 a gallon!
At least it was full service, with windshield cleaning and oil checking and everything. The boy working there asked about where I was going and where I had been. He said that he'd like to go visit the salt flats some day.
As it turned out, there was another station closer, and cheaper, but that's life.
It was still a long drive to the canyon, but a very pretty one, all pine and aspen, with the occasional grassy meadow.
My first glimpse of the canyon was off to the side of the road after I'd entered the park (it would have been $20 without the pass). Later I saw it from the lodge, when I checked in, and I walked along the edge beneath the lodge taking pictures.
I just missed sunset by a couple of minutes (it was still on the top edges). I will catch it tomorrow, if it isn't too cloudy.
I have no idea how to describe the Grand Canyon. It's like another world, seen from a distance. The tops of some of the formations in it are like the mountains in Kanab, but then they go down and down for six times the height.
In the canyon are mountains and valleys and cliffs, and on different levels, always with something else above them or below them.
It's everywhere, to the left, to the right, down, out, then out farther, then out farther. It's like looking at a fractal image on a computer, where you can focus in on a detail and see more detail, and do it over and over and over again.
At Bryce Canyon I felt a twinge of vertigo as I looked over an edge, as I do with tall buildings and such. I didn't here, because "down" is so far away, and in so many directions, that it just doesn't register as a place I could fall.
I guess the biggest thing about the Grand Canyon, the reason no one can describe it, no picture capture it, is that there is just too much of it.
I'll go look at it a lot more tomorrow.