The Adventures of T&A

We slept in, about 8am, and had had breakfast in the campground.  We’ve planned a long a long hike today.  We both feel better today, sleeping in really helped.  We’re hiking the Fairyland loop; from Sunrise Point to Fairyland Point and back across the Rim Trail.  We hiked down into the canyon and thru the hoodoos for a total of 8.8 miles.  We were pretty tired by the time we got back.  The hoodoo formations were fantastic!!  

We stopped at Ruby’s Campground outside the park for a shower.  Ruby also has an Inn, Restaurant, General Store and Gift Shop, as well as the Diner we ate in last night.  He’s a very ambitious cowboy.  We head out towards the Grand Canyon and stopped on some BLM land for the night.

We headed out today but found out that Cedar Breaks National Monument is closed due to snow.  The North rim of the Grand Canyon is closed until mid-May.  This knocked a couple of stops off of our itinerary.  We stopped for lunch at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park and found it loaded with ATVs.  

We moved on towards Bryce Canyon National Park.  Bryce is kind of a small park with amazing hoodoos.  A hoodoo is formed when a rock fin erodes into odd and fantastic spires.  The main park drive is 18 miles, we drove to the south end and stopped on the way north at he overlooks.  We wanted to do a short hike while we still had daylight, but both of us are feeling a bit icky.  We haven’t figured out if its the change in altitude (however, it didn’t bother us in Death Valley) or maybe it’s something we ate (tofu stir fry is suspect) or maybe just some germs we picked up being around thousands of people in Las Vegas.  We decided to just do a driving tour today and try to hike tomorrow, assuming we feel better.  We got a spot at a campground and crashed after dinner of a greasy pizza at Ruby’s Diner in town.  

Our campsite is right on the Virgin River, so we slept to the sound of rushing water all night.  We received a gift from the campground gods… 2 bottles of propane for our camp stove, left near registration with a “FREE” note on them.  This happens when people buy what they think they will need, have leftovers and can’t take fuel back on a plane with them.  We’ve aquired white gas (Coleman fuel) this way.  We’ve noticed a lot of foreign tourists here, many German and Japanese.  We ran into town, about 15 minutes away for ice, firewood and to refill our water.

We hope to get the bikes out today.  We got them down from the roof and Andrew put slick tires on the mountain bikes.  It took two hours!  It was after lunch before we got on the bikes to ride up canyon.  We rode about 8 miles up to the Temple of Sinawava, also the location of “The Narrows”.  This is a very deep, narrow canyon that when the water is down, can be hiked up stream for several miles.  However, the river is up from snow melt.  We were told at the Visitor Center that if we didn’t freeze, we’d be swept downstream.   We can’t hike the Narrows, but we hiked up to the Narrows trailhead.  There were beautiful canyon walls, thousands of feet high, towering over the Virgin River.  The river is roaring and ice cold.

We got on the bikes and rode back down canyon (and downhill) back to the campground.  We played hopscotch with a couple of buses.  It was much better than dodging individual cars on a park road (like we’ve had to do at Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountain NP).  

We splurged and got a shower at Zion Rock and Canyoneering Guides.  $3.00 and we both got a shower with unlimited hot water.  What a bargain!  Some places have a timer on water.  

We met our neighbors on on side, Matt and Cindy from Washington (State) and our neighbors from the other side, Dean and Rose, full time RVers from Grant’s Pass, Oregon.  All six of us got together around our campfire and chatted about all sorts of things: campers, cities, National Parks, life on the road.  

We left our BLM campsite this morning.  I noticed the water was rising due to snow melt.  A small sand bar in the river was visible last night is now gone, under water.  Rocks on the sand bar were still visible, but by the time we finished breakfast, those were gone too.  We went into Zion National Park and decided to get a spot at the campground there.  We were pleased to find that private cars are no longer allowed thru the park.  They have a free shuttle, powered by non-polluting propane, available every 8 minutes or so.  You can get on and off the shuttle at any stop, hike to another stop, get back on.  It was GREAT!  

We took the tram up to the Grotto where we hiked the Lower, Middle and Upper Emerald Pools.  These are pools formed in a natural spring and they cascade into each other forming beautiful waterfalls.  There were these cute little Antelope Ground Squirrels that were begging and stealing food from people.  There were signs all over the park about not feeding the animals, it’s illegal, it’s bad for the animals.  Of course, there was a guy who thought it was cute that the little squirrel was crawling up on his leg.  When I mentioned that I read they report 15 squirrel bites a year and I wondered how many went unreported, he jumped up and didn’t find it cute anymore.  

We hiked  back to the Zion Lodge and caught the shuttle back up to Weeping Rock trailhead.  Weeping Rock was a short, easy hike to a seep in the wall where mosses and ferns grew.  Kind of a dripping waterfall.

We then went on a longer hike to the Hidden Canyon.  This hike took us up, up and up, across some ledges to get to a slot canyon.  As we got higher, the trail got more and more narrow.  After the first area of very narrow ledge with a chain as handhold and a steep decent and ascent, we reached the second chain as handhold that went up and around the corner.  The exposure was too much for me, I baled out!  I stopped and waited, Andrew continued, but even he only went so far.  It was a very challenging trail.  At the summit, we were hiking with 2 other guys who continued with Andrew to the slot canyon.  We hiked down with them and chatted on the tram back to the Lodge.  

Also on the tram was a woman who started talking with us who is a full time RVer.  Grace was staying at the BLM campsite we stayed at the first night.  We talked with her a while at the Lodge.  We tried to get dinner at the Lodge, but we needed reservations.  Oh well, we took the tram back to the Visitor’s Center and our campground and cooked dinner on the tailgate.

Next stop- Valley of Fire State Park, adjacent to the Lake Mead Rec. Area.  The Valley of Fire is lots of Red Rock formations which would have been a lot cooler if we hadn’t just come from Red Rocks Canyon.  They were shooting a movie in Valley of Fire, “Redline”.  We saw lots of equipment and hot fast cars.  We came back from a hike and found they had filmed a chase scene and wrecked a really nice Porsche.  They apparently shoot lots of movies and commercials in Valley of Fire.  Scenes from Star Trek: Generations, Total Recall, Iron Eagle, Heldorado and many others.  Another movie filmed there in the 50’s (or 60’s) called “The Professionals” left ruins of a building in an area called the “White Domes”.  I think they monitor things better now and Hollywood has to clean up the site when they film now.  We did a hike up to “Mouse’s Tank”, a watering hole where a renegade Piute Indian named Mouse hid out from the law.  White man would not go into the Valley of Fire and the Indians would not reveal his location.  There were lots of petroglyphs in the area.

We drove thru St George, UT.  It was recommended as a place we might like to land.  After driving thru, we decided it was a nice town, but maybe too “nice” for us.  Too small town, a bit too Mormon (Not that there’s anything wrong with that).

We continued to Zion National Park.  Just outside of the park we found a BLM campsite on the Virgin River for the night.  It was a very busy site and most spots were full shortly after dark.

Burning the candle at both ends is catching up with us.  While camping, we go to bed shortly after dark, maybe 8 or 9.  For the last several days, we haven’t been to bed before midnight and we’re still getting up at dawn!  We’re exhausted!!  We got our things together and bid George and Joyce goodbye.  After a trip to the grocery to load up, we head out.  

We stopped by Hoover Dam , one of the engineering feats of it’s time.  Between vehicle checks by Homeland Security and road construction, traffic was reduced to one lane.  There was a line of 50 cars or more.  They would pick out campers and trucks requiring searches (yes, we were searched too).  For the number of cars, they were really moving things quite well.  We parked, took some photos and got back into traffic heading the other way.  We’re heading into Lake Mead Rec. Area for camping for the night.  We found a nice spot off a dirt road.  

We went out to Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area.  We hiked a trail out to a seasonal lake (a tinaja) and a little further to a cliff that overlooks the valley and the city of Las Vegas.  We had to hurry back and shower because we had tickets to an award winning show “Avenue Q“.  This is kind of a R-rated Muppet Show, live, funny as ever!!  It’s about life, love and laughter, in a furry kind of way.  

Before the show, we had dinner at Main Street Station Restaurant and Brewery in downtown Vegas near Fremont Street.  The beer at Main Street was really good!  The IPA had a lot of rye, similar to our Georgia favorite, Terrapin Rye Pale Ale. 

We had to catch a cab to take us to the Wynn casino on the strip in time for Avenue Q.  The show was a scream!  We’ve never laughed so hard!  After the show we walked around the strip and caught “The Deuce”, a double-decker bus for $2.00 back up to Fremont Street.  Fremont Street is several blocks of casinos and restaurants turned into a pedestrian mall with a huge arched covered street.   At night, the vaulted roof becomes an LED light show!  This could be the biggest Jumbo-tron ever, several blocks long.  The Deuce let us off just in time for the midnight show.  Pretty cool, but lots of scantily clad women dancing.  There’s so much skin being shown in this city, it gets boring after a while. 

We got in about 1am.

The sun is up and Andrew and I are up… it doesn’t matter that we didn’t get to sleep until 2 am.  We soaked in Joyce and George’s hot tub for a little while, worked on the computers and had lunch at Dona Maria, a tamale shop that was recommended.  They had a great green sauce and all the food was really good.  

We took Joyce and George out to dinner at  BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse they liked nearby.  Pretty good beer for a chain brewery.  They recommended a few shows to see and cautioned us on a few that were not worth seeing.  They also gave us a tip on parking; the casinos have free valet parking, all you pay is a tip when you pick it up.  Far easier than trying to find on-street parking anywhere.  So the best bet is to valet park and walk or take mass transit to where you want to go.

It was getting late, but we headed back out to the Strip.  This time, Andrew (being the big kid that he is) wanted to check out the Big Top at Circus Circus.  This is a casino with carnival rides and circus acts along with all the usual cheesy Midway games.  I guess the Idea is to keep the kids occupied while Mom and Dad loose all their educational funds gambling.  In comparison to the night before, Circus Circus seemed older and kind of sleazy.  The ceilings were lower and the cigarette smoke was terrible (Bellagio seemed to have a great air handling system, we couldn’t smell smokers at all).  The most annoying thing was the people trying to sell us time-shares in their affiliated condo units.  They were giving away free tickets to crappy shows in exchange for us to sit thru several hours of time-share hard sell the next day.  No thanks!  We were approached by perhaps a dozen people with the same time-share company.  

We left Circus Circus and walked around the north end of the strip, but all the places seemed old and run down.  It was late and we were tired from the night before.  We were back atr the house a little after midnight.