My less-than-60-days-old HP laptop won't boot up....doorstop material. All my photos for the blog are on it.
We are still in Arizona running off-road trails in the desert and won't return to Deming until late next week. Then I will have to drop into Las Cruces to the Best Buy store and drop it on their counter. SO
No new blog posts until I get this resolved.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park
As I mentioned earlier, my old PC started exhibiting signs of demonic possession. It expired the day after I bought a new PC and transferred all my data and photos to the new one. However....the new one doesn't have Microsoft Word, the application with which I created the original post. It's taken me some time to find the document and figure out how to get it over to the blog without paying MS another $350 to re-license the Office applications. (Don't you just LOVE Microsoft?)
Zion National Park
Zion National Park
We set out from Panguitch to visit Zion National
Park. Rained on us the whole 70 miles
down there and then in the park, it was overcast. Same problems we have had in every other
national park this summer: too many
people, not enough parking, no control over numbers or parking. On a sunny day this park is stunning but as
you can see from my photos, dull, dull, dull when the day is gray.
There is a very interesting tunnel which you traverse to
enter the park from the east. It was completed in 1930
and it’s 1.1 miles long through a mountain. One of the rangers told me that two teams
started at opposite sides and when they met, they were only four inches
off. Remarkable. No GPS, no computers, only really good engineering.
 |
| Can you find the entrance to the tunnel? |
Bryce Canyon National Park
Okay, one more national park the next day, Bryce
Canyon. And it somewhat restored my
dwindling faith in the park system.
Bryce Canyon is beautiful and well managed. There were open parking spaces every place we
stopped to admire the view and we saw only two huge tour buses during the two
hours or so we were in the park. They
police the parking lots and have NO PARKING signs posted with an icon of a
wrecker towing a car to encourage people to comply.
It's roughly 8,000 feet at the end of the road into Bryce Canyon. There is a straight drop for thousands of feet at nearly all the outlook points; seems like you wouldn't really need this sign but the addition of the lightning information is useful.
It's roughly 8,000 feet at the end of the road into Bryce Canyon. There is a straight drop for thousands of feet at nearly all the outlook points; seems like you wouldn't really need this sign but the addition of the lightning information is useful.
Painted Desert and Petrified National Forest
Now, here is why it's taken so long for me to get caught up:
The first time we stopped at Heber City UT this summer (outside Salt Lake), we asked one of the park workers what trailers people liked. He said the Lance was both popular and well built, and we went into Salt Lake to a dealer to take a look as neither of us had ever heard of it. (The RPOD was fine when it was just me and the two dogs; with an additional human and two more dogs, it wasn't working all that well.)
I contacted the dealer in Phoenix where I bought the RPOD to see if they carried Lance. They did. After numerous back and forth emails and phone calls, we agreed on a deal, with pickup at the end of the summer in Phoenix as we came back to Deming. The day we arrived in Mesa, it was 106 degrees and trailer A/C isn't designed for this. After a miserable night, we went to the dealer and dropped the RPOD.
Since, when we left months earlier, I hadn't planned to trade rigs, I didn't have the title. Back to Deming (329 miles) over Labor Day weekend. When the DMV opened on Tuesday, we learned they had done a software upgrade over the weekend. No one knew how to do anything. Took an hour just to get a duplicate title. Mike said I was incandescent at the window, waiting and waiting and waiting.
Back to Phoenix (did I mentioned it's 329 miles) and then unload everything in the RPOD and dump it into the Lance. Chaos. We drove to Payson to a park and collapsed.
From Payson, we went to Painted Desert/Petrified Forest, two more national parks on my wish list. My photos don't do justice to Painted Desert; the colors are too subtle for my camera to do them justice.
Native Americans inhabited this area for thousands of years. I would think there had to have been more water available than there is now to support a thriving community.
Route 66 cut across part of the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert. There is an old Studebaker which was apparently abandoned decades ago beside the roadbed.
The first time we stopped at Heber City UT this summer (outside Salt Lake), we asked one of the park workers what trailers people liked. He said the Lance was both popular and well built, and we went into Salt Lake to a dealer to take a look as neither of us had ever heard of it. (The RPOD was fine when it was just me and the two dogs; with an additional human and two more dogs, it wasn't working all that well.)
I contacted the dealer in Phoenix where I bought the RPOD to see if they carried Lance. They did. After numerous back and forth emails and phone calls, we agreed on a deal, with pickup at the end of the summer in Phoenix as we came back to Deming. The day we arrived in Mesa, it was 106 degrees and trailer A/C isn't designed for this. After a miserable night, we went to the dealer and dropped the RPOD.
Since, when we left months earlier, I hadn't planned to trade rigs, I didn't have the title. Back to Deming (329 miles) over Labor Day weekend. When the DMV opened on Tuesday, we learned they had done a software upgrade over the weekend. No one knew how to do anything. Took an hour just to get a duplicate title. Mike said I was incandescent at the window, waiting and waiting and waiting.
Back to Phoenix (did I mentioned it's 329 miles) and then unload everything in the RPOD and dump it into the Lance. Chaos. We drove to Payson to a park and collapsed.
From Payson, we went to Painted Desert/Petrified Forest, two more national parks on my wish list. My photos don't do justice to Painted Desert; the colors are too subtle for my camera to do them justice.
Native Americans inhabited this area for thousands of years. I would think there had to have been more water available than there is now to support a thriving community.
Route 66 cut across part of the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert. There is an old Studebaker which was apparently abandoned decades ago beside the roadbed.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Grand Canyon, North and South Rims
We arrived at the Jacob Lake Campground to drive the next day to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. According to Wikipedia, the north rim gets only about 10% of the visitors to the Grand Canyon. Well, yeah, it's difficult to get to it!
There is a wonderful old, old lodge and cabins perched on the rim. If I were coming here, I would try to get reservations for one of the cabins.
The next day we drove around to the south rim, a location I had been quietly dreading given the unmanageable crowds were had encountered at Yellowstone. What a delight that the south rim wasn't overrun and the Park Service has done an outstanding job managing its visitors.
We had lunch at the famous El Tovar Lodge which overlooks the south rim of the canyon. Usually in a place like this, the view is wonderful and the food stinks. Not so here (just like the Banff Springs Hotel). Food was great.
The south rim of the park has instituted a system of parking lots and shuttle buses which dramatically cuts down on the traffic and congestion. The shuttle buses are all free and you can board and get off anywhere along the routes. Brilliant. And there is one shuttle which takes you into the nearest town which is where we were staying. Nice to finish the main National Parks with a good experience.
In the next post, you can look forward to Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert and an explanation of why it's been SO LONG since I caught you up on the travels. Stay tuned.
The next day we drove around to the south rim, a location I had been quietly dreading given the unmanageable crowds were had encountered at Yellowstone. What a delight that the south rim wasn't overrun and the Park Service has done an outstanding job managing its visitors.
We had lunch at the famous El Tovar Lodge which overlooks the south rim of the canyon. Usually in a place like this, the view is wonderful and the food stinks. Not so here (just like the Banff Springs Hotel). Food was great.
The south rim of the park has instituted a system of parking lots and shuttle buses which dramatically cuts down on the traffic and congestion. The shuttle buses are all free and you can board and get off anywhere along the routes. Brilliant. And there is one shuttle which takes you into the nearest town which is where we were staying. Nice to finish the main National Parks with a good experience.
In the next post, you can look forward to Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert and an explanation of why it's been SO LONG since I caught you up on the travels. Stay tuned.
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