Day 16 - 18 June 2009

The campground at the Natural Bridges National Monument is really nice. It is small and has no hook-ups for RVs or trailers, but that is part of the charm. You drive in, park, and you are all set. In the morning you just drive off without having to unhook things. The sites are arranged nicely between juniper trees (they make gin out of the berries, maybe that's why I liked the place). A loop that you can drive or walk leads to viewpoints of the natural bridges or the trails of various lengths that you can walk to view the bridges from close up. The bridges were formed by water rushing up against a wall of rock for many, many (millions) years, finally breaking through and forming a bridge. We drove the loop once more and took a couple of short walks and then were off on our way to Monument Valley.

The lady in the next RV (a Roadtrek, such as we had in British Columbia and one of which we had wanted again this time but none were available - I was jealous!) told us the evening before that on the road to Monument Valley there is a three mile stretch of gravel road which makes a series of switchbacks (tight curves back and forth along the side of the mountain) taking you down about 1,000 feet. She had come up the gravel road and said it was "hairy," but she had made it. My friend tried to talk me out of going down that road, but I insisted that a little gravel road with switchbacks didn't scare me, especially if that lady and her cat made it without "dinging up" her $100,000 Roadtrek. Besides, the long way around would have taken twice as long.

We proceeded down the road and lo and behold, I have traveled "hairier" roads in the Alps, in Vermont, and on Majorca. However, the views of Monument Valley from stopping points on the gravel road were magnificent. Once on the valley floor we followed it until we reached the Arizona sate line. The stone sculptures formed by millions of years of erosion are truly monumental. At every turn in the road there is a different structure, some of which have been given names such as "Mexican Hat" due to their distinctive shapes. In my mind's eye I saw John Wayne and the 7th Cavalry riding through the valley. We opted not to take the tour that takes you to the locations where the movies were shot and where John Wayne supposedly spent the nights while shooting the films. By this time we were saturated with rocks, cliffs, canyons, gorges - you name it - although Monument Valley is grandiose.

Not much else to report, except that we drove north to Moab, Utah, and checked into a campground. When I asked at the campground office where we could buy a bottle of wine for my friend (I didn't mention the whiskey and beer for me) I was told that the state-run liquor store was about four miles away, downtown. Utah has this alcohol restriction (as do other states), putting hurdles in people's path to keep them on the right path (in their view). That's OK, but their recycling laws need updating: There is no deposit on glass bottles of any kind, at most places they are just dumped into the trash. I don't know for sure if they recycle plastic, I didn't see any special containers for that either.

Anyway, we were set now, the KOA people are about to fix the mix up in the site assignments of our neighbors and my friend is cooking dinner. The ground is sandy (its a desert, you know), the sky is clearing and another day, number 16, is ending.

Day 15 - 17 June 2009

This was the day when everything went wrong:

First, I twisted my back such that my sciatic nerve got pinched, causing a bad pain in the right side of my lower back and radiating down my thigh. This happened as I was attempting to attach the sewer hose to the RV to drain the sewage tank. The pain was so bad that I didn't think I could drive, which made my friend nervous because she thought she might have to drive the RV. I would describe the pain as a 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is when you thankfully pass out because the pain is so bad. There was no position I could assume that made the pain go away so I gritted my teeth and decided to drive with the aim of finding a drug store or shopette to buy some strong pain killer because all we had was aspirin, of which I took two. The nearest medical facility was over 100 miles away and not in the direction we wanted to go. As I drove, the pain let up a little, but returned after a rest stop where I got out to use the rest room. My main concern was that, because the pain made it difficult to lift my right leg, I would not be able to respond to an emergency quickly enough when I had to hit the brake fast. My friend continuously lobbied for us to forget about Monument Valley, our next planned destination, and to head straight north toward the city of Moab, Utah, and more civilization. I was bound and determined to see Monument Valley, by golly, where John Wayne and numerous other Western heroes had fought Indians much to the delight of movie-goers. We made it to an intersection of two highways where there was a gas station, a couple of shops, and a visitor information center. While I was getting gas, my friend went into the visitor center to ask where we could find a drugstore or other store that carried pain relievers. A couple, also getting information, overheard the conversation and volunteered to let me have four generic Ibuprofen tablets since the nearest town was a ways down the road in the opposite direction than we wanted to go. The man also advised me to put ice on the places that hurt - he had had several back operations himself, he said. I took two of the tablets and since we didn't have any ice my friend got a package of frozen hamburger out of the freezer compartment of our refrigerator. I put that behind my back while driving and after about 15 minutes the pain in my lower back let up a little. I don't know if it was due to the pain killer or the hamburger. When the hamburger started to defrost I put a package of frozen steaks into the pocket of my hiking shorts to alleviate the pain in my leg, which was still strong. Unfortunately, due to the euphoria I experienced because the pain in my back was bearable, I got out at a scenic overlook and walked a few yards to look over the edge and promptly earned an increase in my back and leg pain. But we pressed on since I was not about to give up on Monument Valley at this point. Along the way we found a market that had pain relievers and we bought a bottle of Motrin. When the pain got so bad again that I had to pull off the road and stop I took a Motrin even though the time since I had taken the Ibuprofen had not yet been sufficient. After that I got better until by evening I was almost back to normal. Knock on wood!

Second, I discovered a small chip in the windshield, probably made by a small rock kicked up by a passing car. These rental people, from whom you rent these campers, are finicky about that sort of thing. I wonder how much that is going to cost, they probably will charge me for a new windshield.

Third, the vent hatch on top of the RV blew open because I was going fast and the wind was blowing strong. When it blew open it broke the mechanism that allows it to be cranked open to various amounts of "openness." We had to tie it shut and I will see if I can repair it good enough to get us by the inspection when we return the RV - when my back gets better.

Fourth, while driving around a curve in the road, one of the kitchen cabinet doors opened up and several of the dishes fell out. What a mess - splinters everywhere. Two cereal bowls, a big plate, and a little plate broke into a thousand pieces. Now we will have to take turns eating our cereal and our soup out of the one remaining bowl.

Other than that, we saw some fascinating landscapes, different at every turn. I decided to take a short detour to the Natural Bridges National Monument which is on the way to Monument Valley. We found a lovely little campground on the grounds of the National Monument and decided to stay there instead of forging ahead to Monument Valley and uncertain campground availability.

My friend thought that she could still change my mind about going to Monument Valley after my painful experience this morning because she didn't want to be stuck with an incapacitated hulk and a big truck (as she sees it) in the middle of the desert, but I assured her that I could make it. As she found out not only with the two nice people who shared their Ibuprofen with me, but also as she chatted with the attendant at the visitor center at the entrance to the Natural Bridges National Monument who offered us his first aid kit, there are always people who are ready to help. Onward to Monument Valley after this 15th day.

Day 14 - 16 June 2009

We departed Zion canyon through the tunnel that was cut through the mountain to let visitors in and out from both directions, west and east. We went east to Bryce Canyon National Park. All along the scenery kept changing, one more interesting than the other. Just before reaching Bryce Canyon the earth became redder and redder. I thought nothing could top the beauty of Red Canyon, just before Bryce Canyon.

But Bryce Canyon is something out of this world! The rock formations sculpted by erosion look unreal. When looking down on them from the rim of the canyon I thought I was looking at a make believe landscape found in Disneyland. We took a hike between the towers of rocks called Hoodoos, to the bottom of the canyon and back up. What nature does is incredible.

We had enough time left in the day to drive on to the town of Escalante at the edge of the Grand Escalante Staircase National Monument. We didn't do any sightseeing, the campground was crummy, but it had a good Wifi connection allowing us to do some computing. That was day 14.

Day 13 - 15 June 2009

We departed Salt Lake City, the proud owners of a navigator which was going to guide us to Zion National Park. The navigator guided us unto Interstate 15 and from there on it was practically useless because the rest of the route was on Interstate 15, how could you get lost. During the last few miles after I-15 there weren't many choices of which way to go to Zion National Park. Nevertheless I dutifully consulted the navigator until we got to the campground just outside the park. The town of Springdale is a nice place with restaurants and shops. They also provide free shuttle service, this time because parking in the park is limited.

We decided to take a free ranger-guided tour through Zion canyon, in the evening. The tour was informative if a little long-winded. The rangers (both she's) told a lot about the origins of the National Parks system and the early Mormon settlers in Zion canyon and a little about the geology. The walls of the canyon are impressive and many faceted, hard to imagine that anything we will yet see could be more majestic.

All in all, it was a long day and I was glad that day 13 was over.

Day 12 - 14 June 2009

This being a Sunday, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed and we had gotten reservations to see the performance through our campground. The Tabernacle is a large theater which holds several thousand people. Because in the summertime many tourists want to see and hear the choir, the performances are moved to the Congress Center which holds more than 20,000 people. We were lucky because this was the last performance in the Tabernacle before the choir went on a 13 day tour and after that would perform in the Congress Center for the rest of the summer.

It was an impressive experience. The choir has its dress rehearsal during which time the audience is let in, then follows the performance which is taped and then broadcast by radio and television stations around the world. Everything has to be very precise, the timing, the camera shots, and the silence by the audience.

The sounds produced by the orchestra and the choir are fantastic and to experience them live makes it even more enjoyable. Needless to say, there were herds of ushers and guides who helped prevent chaos when people entered and left the Tabernacle. Again the free shuttle service transported us both ways.

We had originally booked the RV site for two nights, which we had already had. So we extended our stay one more night so that we could spend the rest of the day in and around Salt Lake City without having to look for another campground. The reasons for the stay were a shopping trip to Hill AFB and a visit to Antelope Island for which we had great expectations. The trip to Hill AFB got us some groceries, a laptop computer, and a navigator. The reason for the groceries is obvious, for the laptop not so (our old one keeps skipping letters and freezes up), and for the navigator there is hardly a reason except that I was in a "buying frenzy" by that time.

Antelope Island was a disappointment. We had a hard time finding the causeway that leads to the island (the navigator was still in the box, I thought it would require extensive study before installation). We saw no antelopes, just more deer, bison, and insects. Originally we had hoped to go swimming in the Great Salt Lake because one can float almost completely on top of the water (well, 25% of the body is still in the water) because it has 16 timed the salinity of the ocean, only the Dead Sea has more. However, the water is brackish and stinks, not smells, stinks. The beach, if you can call it that, is covered with little bugs. In short, not conducive to swimming. There is a visitor center on the island that is built like a bunker and a coffee shop that didn't have any coffee.

At that point I decided to unpack my new navigator and much to my surprise got it working right away and it guided us back to our campground expeditiously. Unpacking the computer and trying it out concluded day 12.

Day 11 - 13 June 2009

This was a "no-travel-day." We caught the first shuttle to downtown Salt Lake City, to Temple Square, the heart of Salt Lake City and the Mormon universe as well.

Right off the bat let me say that I am impressed with what the Mormons offer tourists (mainly non-Mormons) in Salt Lake City. First of all, there is a free shuttle bus from the airport to Temple Square and back (this bus happens to pass by the KOA campground where we stayed and it picks up and delivers anyone from there who wants to go downtown). The shuttle buses are driven by volunteer members of the Church. The aim of the free shuttle service is to avail people who have a few hours layover at the airport to spend them seeing the Mormon version of Rome's Saint Peter's Square. Then on Temple Square there are many ushers, guides for most languages, and generally nice people willing to point things out and to assist in any way. How the Church manages to mobilize these numbers of people is beyond me: Men dressed in business suits, women in long (almost formal) dresses befitting the rules of the Mormon Church, and young people also dressed befitting the surroundings. I surmise that the overall aim is to put the Mormon religion in as positive a light as possible. Everything is clean, neat, and well organized. Although the references to the Church, it's leaders past and present, and the all-present thesis of the Book of Mormon are evident, no one directly proselytized or even mentioned other religions.

We were given a tour of Temple Square and some buildings by two young women, one from South Korea, the other from Mexico. They spoke in glowing terms of the achievements by the pioneers who braved many hardships in reaching this valley after being persecuted out of two different locations farther east. The temple itself is sacred and can only be entered by members of the Church in good standing. Don't ask me exactly what "in good standing" means, the best I could gather was that once a year every Mormon has to have an "interview" with a bishop who ascertains and certifies the worthiness of the member to enter the temple. The mystery of it all makes me more than a little suspicious, but I took care not to embarrass the young ladies by asking too many skeptical questions.

We also visited the Museum of Family History, also known as the Genealogical Library. Again, the people were all very friendly and accommodating. The Genealogical Library is huge and like any large library has several floors, reams of books, masses of computer terminals, and a large vault with thousands of microfilms. All of it is accessible to the general public with the aid of the library staff. I really didn't make this trip to Salt Lake City to do genealogical research, but since we were there it interested me how and why they maintain such a library. The "how" is that people (presumably Church members) go out and obtain family histories from archives around the world. This information is put into a database and shared with the world. Then if someone finds his or her ancestors and adds his or her own records, this information in turn can be added to the database to augment it. The "why" is that the Mormon Church emphasizes the unity of families. By tracing one's roots and completing the family tree the whole world could eventually be united as one big family - sort of. Mind you, I'm no expert on the Mormon religion, this is only my "take" on the situation.

We then wandered around aimlessly a bit and had "a little lunch" at a cafe in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. As we finished our lunch we strolled out into the main part of the building which looked like the lobby of a grand hotel, but without reception desk or bellmen. My friend wanted to take a picture of the richly ornamented lobby, but didn't dare because a greater-than-life statue of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints - also known as the Mormon Church, kept watch over us, and many people in wedding attire moved about the lobby and the corridors. I spotted a dapper gentleman in a light gray suit and a name tag who was standing at the entrance to the hall as if ready to direct anyone who needed directing. I approached him intending to ask if it was OK to take a picture, but first I asked him what the function of this building is. That started a relationship that lasted for over an hour, got us a private guided tour of the building and tons of information ranging from the customs of the Mormons to the use of unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan.

In the early 1900s the building which is now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building used to be the Utah Hotel, a grand gathering place for the rich and famous in Salt Lake City and surroundings. It is now a place where Mormon Church members can have their wedding receptions (there were nine going on at the time we were there), and where Church banquets and meetings are held. The president of the Church used to live in a private suit upstairs. There are two restaurants in addition to the cafe where we ate and viewing areas on the 10th floor where one has a wonderful view of Salt Lake City and the surrounding valley.

The gentleman opened doors for us that are usually closed to the public. Everything is of the finest quality. The drinking fountains are golden, spotless, and work well! When the ceiling in one of the main dining rooms was refurbished, only a lady from Germany knew how to do it. No expense seems too great to demonstrate the power of the Church and to extol its virtues. It turned out that the gentleman we had stumbled upon was a Salt Lake City native, Church member of course, and ex-Navy-man who had worked for Lockheed Martin Corporation (just like me) after retiring from the Navy. That brought out the fact that he had been to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to train US Air Force personnel in the use of unmanned aircraft such as are used in Afghanistan and maybe elsewhere today. When I told him that I have some moral qualms about launching missiles from an aircraft without a pilot who can make last second decisions about whether to fire the missile or not, he assured me that the drones (as the unmanned aircraft are called) are as completely under the control of a pilot as a conventional jet aircraft, except that the pilot is not in the aircraft but thousands of miles away. He also stated that no strike is carried out without several levels of permissions that have to be received, including that of a legal expert. Well, if a member of the Mormon Church...

After visiting another edifice or two we hopped aboard the free shuttle for a ride back to the campground in a torrential downpour. The nice man driving the bus told us that they have had twice the amount of rain that usually falls in the entire month of June in just two weeks, but that they need it because the summers are hot and dry. He not only took us to the campground, he drove us right up to our RV so that we wouldn't get wet. "Hats off" to the nice people in Salt Lake City. So much for day 11.

Day 10 - 12 June 2009

I had the great idea to spend another night or two at an Air Force base - Hill AFB in Ogden, Utah, just a few miles north of Salt Lake City. Before departing the campground at Montpelier I tried repeatedly to call Hill AFB to make reservations - no luck. So we left the campground and drove into the town of Montpelier which used to be called Clover Creek, then Belmont, but was finally named Montpelier by the Mormon leader Brigham Young because it reminded him of a town in Vermont near where he was born. To me that name fits about as well as the name Montpelier fits the Vermont capital, that is, not at all.

Nevertheless, Montpelier, Idaho, is a nice little town. It is the place where the pioneers that traveled the Oregon and the California trails rested and refitted their wagons after coming over the Continental Divide. The travelers going to California split near here from those going to the Oregon Territory.

Right at the spot where they rested there now is an information center where we received about an hour long description of what the pioneers had to have for supplies and equipment. The description actually was a tour through reproductions of a gunsmith's shop and a general store where we received a detailed descriptions of the kinds of items that were necessary for the long journey. In addition, there was a reproduction of a camp as it was set up at night by the pioneers and a simulated ride in one of the wagons to get a feel for the twisting and bumping the freight or people in the wagons experienced. Very worthwhile!

My friend, with the infinite curiosity of a woman, discovered that a few miles (out of our way) north of Montpelier there lies the town of Soda Springs. The pioneers discovered that carbonated water came out of the ground there. Some years later the carbonated water was bottled and sold all over the region or country. However, in the 1920s prohibition supposedly took away a large part of the market for soda water (scotch and soda, etc.). Simultaneously, methods for artificially carbonating water were developed, leaving the town of Soda Springs "high and dry" so to speak. Then some townspeople wanted to get at the mineral water for a municipal pool and drilled a hole about 300 feet deep, thereby creating a man-made geyser because the water shot 70 feet into the air out of the hole. The water turned out not to be suitable for a swimming pool, but the geyser became a popular attraction for tourists. It "geysered" constantly and reliably so that it became competition for Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park. Consequently, someone (the government?) caused the town to cap the geyser so that it would not spew constantly. However, in order to leave the town one attractive feature (it has none otherwise) the geyser was put on a timer and now it goes off once a day, exactly - and predictably - at noon. I can see that the water is unusable for a swimming pool because the area around the geyser is reddish-brown, almost orange. Probably from the iron content.

After a little lunch and a nap near the geyser, in the camper, we left and passedfa town with hot springs at which my friend drooled for she hates to pass up an opportunity to get wet, especially if the water comes from a hot spring. However, I prevailed because I wanted to reach the Hill AFB campground before it was all filled up. As it turned out, when I finally managed to get hold of someone at the campground they were all filled up already. The nice lady gave me some rather vague directions to another campground.

To make a long story short, we got to Salt Lake City as planned, got lost as programmed by the vague directions, called a KOA campground for directions, backtracked to the campground because we were past it, and settled in for the evening. One more unusual aspect: The KOA hospitality lady who escorted us to our campsite was extremely helpful in giving us information about Salt Lake City, the free shuttle service provide by the Mormon Church, signed us up to see the Tabernacle Choir perform, and told us about the guy in one of the RV slots who sells barbequed spareribs and other items which he barbeques there on the spot. We partook of some of his excellent wares. Day ten ended with a full stomach.