woke up at around 8p, breakfast was included, which was nice, and so we had that and were out of the door by about 9a.  We then made our way out of denver to the rocky mountains national park via the twin peaks scenic route (so we had to pass through boulder colorado first).  Rocky mountains are quite rocky indeed; plenty of pine trees and the like. Definitely a lot more lush and green than Utah and Arizona and Nevada.  But apparently this is abnormal for this time of year; normally it should be brown.  Since the scenic route was rather slow, we didn't get to the fall river vistor center until like 12p (accidentally took 34 instead of 36). Had a lunch at the visitor center restaurant (tony had a shrimp wrap and I had a salmon burger, both with delicious sweet potato fries). We then made our way into the park and to the fern lake trailhead.  We hiked the ~3.7mi one way trail up to fern falls--it was a nice little waterfall, complete with an obese chipmunk.  Then walked back to the car and headed off for south dakota.  Drove through wyoming, past cheyenne and into south dakota.  Holy crap there are way too many bugs in wyoming. After about 5 mins, the entire windshield was full of splattered arthropods.  Unfortunatly, we were also struck with a rock or hard object of some sort on the lower left corner (drive side) of the windshield, which created a small, round crack.  Very uncool.  The wyoming landscape is quite different from the rocky mountain landscape. No more mountainous highways, pine trees, quaint little creeks that follow the roadway and have people kayaking on them.  Instead, it's just bunch of rolling hills and grazing livestock.  Feels like the plains, but not quite as flat. Still, those damn bugs! Sunset over wyoming is quite nice though. Wow, finally updating this thing in real time. So we're still going through wyoming on our way to newcastle and then east to south dakota.  The road is really boring; it's completely straight and it's just pasture to the left and to the right.  The night sky is amazingly beautiful. You can see the milky way! If only this camry didn't have such bright interior HUD lights.  And strangely there's no moon, so you can really make out the stars really well.  And and, I saw a shooting star! A really amazing and long one. Caught me completely by surprise. So excuse me while I admire the night sky some more. Current music: the Wicked soundtrack.

 

While stargazing, I was annoyed by the fact that there seemed to be some light pollution coming up on the horizon.  It was only until I saw some faint, orangy-yellow dome-like structure in the distance that I realized the origin of this light pollution: the moon.  This would explain the absence of moon in my previous observations.  The moon had not risin yet.  It was about 9:50p when I first spotted the moon rising.  And yes, it was polluting away my beautiful night sky. Darn moon! It's not a full moon--we had that a week ago; more like 3/4.  At least when we started heading east, the moon shifted to the left of the car (north) and so I could still enjoy the milky way from the passenger side. The night sky is truly beautiful when there's no light pollution and you have plenty of time to view something that we seldom notice, but that happens every day: the moon rise. It's like the sun rise, only less colorful and easier to stare at.  It still fills the world with light.  If I were a nocturnal animal, perhaps I'd treat the moonrise as such a beautiful event as we day-dwellers regard the sunrise.  And maybe there's some nocturnal equivalent of the wonderous colors we enjoy in our sunrises.  In any case, for one who sees color, I love how the moon transforms from that amber cookie to a small jet-puffed marshmallow as it rises further into the sky. Why does the moon go from being large to small as it rises? (and for that matter, why does the sun do the same?--answer: they actualy stay the same size, it's just that you don't have anything to compare the size to when they are not at the horizon) We're in South Dakota now.  Strangely no state sign as we entered, so I couldn't take a snapshot of it.  I'm curious to see what this state looks like in the sunlight.

 

Saw another shooting star; tried to see crazyhorse memorial, but the lights were off; mt rushmore lights were off so no use driving over there; checked into hotel and that's a day!

 

late day today and was spent mostly just driving.  Woke up later around 9a, had a quick breakfast, checked out of the sleep inn, and then were on our way to denver.  Had lunch around noon, and tony had carls jr for the first time (six dollar western burger for him, six dollar regular for me).  I was still driving at this point; went to get some gas, got some gas, and then made our way to denver some more; our stop was in grand junction.  Then drove some more and then switched drivers.  Finally crossed into the colorado area and the landscape was changing from the crumbling red mountains and desert-like landscape of utah to a more brown rock, but very green (full of pine trees) and beautiful colorado river colorado.  We passed by many ski lodges and went thru a big tunnel past the continental divide; our highest elevation was around 11000 feet (at which point the full loaded car was having trouble scaling the mountain on I-70.  Made it to denver around 6 because of heavy traffic coming down on I-70.  Checked into the summerfield suites (hyatt) and to our surprise, had a two bedroom, two bath apt suite all to ourselves, courtesy of tony's hyatt points.  More beds than people. But really awesomely comfy.  Then went to the cherry cricket for dinner and met up with tony's old friend from ny, paul goldner. I had a gyro, tony had another burger (small cricket burger) and some beer.  It started thundering and there was lightening; then it started raining and then it started hailing and got pretty cold.  Interesting weather.  After dinner, we went back to the apt and prepared for tom'w. Rocky mount national park and a long drive up to south dakota for mt rushmore.

 

woke up early like around 8a and immediately made our way driving to arches national park.  Utah scenery is much different from, say, arizona or nevada.  A bit more green.  Still dry though, but with some small streams here and there and plenty of big mountains.  Some odd looking crop watering devices that water in a big circle (anchor a long tube on wheels to some central water source and then rotate the device around your field).  Plenty of livestock as well.  Made a quick pitstop in Richfield, UT, where there was a Walmart and we got some breakfast donut holes as well as some more water, fruit, and a new stereo cable for the ipod (old one was kinda broken).  Then made our way over to Moab, UT, which is just south of Arches.  Got there around 11 or 11:30a, and had a lunch at McDonald's (third pounder angus for both of us; the portobello for tony, the deluxe for me) and then did an early check-in around 1p at Sleep inn and moved everything into the hotel room.  we then made our way back up to arches national park.  It was quite hot (like 80-90) and still dry. Not as hot as vegas I suppose.  After a quick stop at the visitor center for advice on what trails to hit up and when, we made our way to the northernmost portion of the park and looked at a variety of arches there: tunnel arch, pine tree arch, landscape arch---the landscape arch is crazy long and crazy thin.  I think that'll be the next arch to fall, sadly.  We then made our way back to balanced rock (a rock that is sitting precariously on a little golf-tee-like support; really this was formed naturally because the rock below is softer and erodes faster than the rock above).  We then made our way to the windows section of the park and checked out the double arch--this was neat in that you had, well, two arches that started from different locations but ended in the same location.  And they were big. And it was cool.  When the weather cooled down a bit, we started our way to the delicate arch (it was maybe around 5p by this time).  A quick hike up to the upper viewpoint of the delicate arch kicked off our big hike of the day.  We then went on the main delicate arch trail.  It was about 3mi round trip and was a fun hike.  About half of it was on the actual rock face--hiking up a huge rock face and then around some rock with a precipitous drop to the left (well...not too precipitous, maybe 100ft?) and then the arch itself, which was quite delicate indeed. The arch was surrounded by a rock formation that looked like an amphitheatre or a coliseum.  It was maybe around 7 or 7:30p that we finally arrived at the car after hiking down the trail.  We then made some final quick hikes to the sand dune arch (a small arch tucked inside a small region between hulking rocks) and the broken arch (not actually broken, but has a crack in the middle and a pretty attractive arch too).  By this time, it was around 8 or 8:15 and the sun was setting and I was able to get some pretty good panorama shots of the sunset as well as a nice video of the sunset.  After that, we went for dinner at Eddie McStiff's--much better than the crappy lodge food from last night.  I had a portobello pasta and Tony had a chicken w sundried tomato pasta.  Was quite filling and quite tasty.  Then we went back to the hotel, washed up, took care of photo organization, and that's that.  Tom'w we'll be off to Denver!

 

woke up relatively early; didn't bother to eat breakfast at the lodge, just made our way to Page, AZ for rafting (12:30p appt); made a quick stop at walmart to pick up a sunshade and then a bit lunch (2x meatball subs, 12'' for me).  Then found our way to the colorado river rafting place.  We were pretty early so we decided to browse safeway a bit.  Then decided to head back to the rafting place; hung around there until they loaded the buses around 1p and left for the dam at lake powell.  It was pretty cool actually: in order to get us down to the river level, the bus took us on a 2mi tunnel trip through some gov't restricted property.  Pretty cool.  At river level (and at the bottom of what is glen canyon), we got to see the glen canyon dam from the bottom; also pretty cool.  From there, we got onto our motorized rafts (smooth water rafting and motor boats).  The water was quite frigid--47 deg farenheit, yet other than that, it was really really dry and hot and sunny.  So although we got splashed by the frigid water, it was quickly whisked away by the dry air.  We got to see the inside of the canyon and it was really crazy.  Like, it didn't look all that big, but really your whole conception of size was quite distorted (case and point: there was a plant that had a long stem sticking up with flowers (the plant is used in some sort of beverage and it only blooms like once every 25 yrs) and it looked like it was only lik 6ft tall, but really it was apparently 20ft tall.  We got to see horseshoe bend and, again just to see the size of the canyon, could see really tiny tiny people looking down on us.  The boat ride then took us to Lees Ferry, which was one of the few original crossings of the colorado river and was used a lot by mormons to get to one of the mormon churches and wed.  We also saw a sunken steam ship still with its boiler on there.  Our trip ended at about 5p at the mouth of the grand canyon, so we got to see all of glen canyon that could possibly have been seen.  After the rafting, we changed our clothes and had a dinner (beef tortellini for me, veggie lasagna for tony. slightly too salty) and then proceeded to bryce canyon.  Before getting out of page, AZ, we stopped to take a picture of lake powell.  Then we drove to bryce canyon pines and got there around maybe 11p, checked in, unloaded, went to sleep and were ready for a late day the next day.  During the car ride, I had planned our day in bryce canyon

 

Day 5: UT (Bryce Canyon)

 

started out late today, maybe around 9 or 10 we headed out of bryce canyon pines and drove to bryce canyon.  No breakfast really; cereal for tony and orange + breakfast bar for me.  First stop in bryce canyon was fairyland point (which we actually missed...we went to the visitor's center first, then turned around, went out of the park and went to fairyland point).  Then we took a picture at the national park entrance sign, and then went to sunrise point.  We then took the rim walk to sunset point.  From there, we went to the bryce canyon lodge and grabbed an early 11:30a lunch to make sure we had enough food in our stomach for our hike.  At around 12:30, we took the shuttle to bryce point and started our 4.7mi hike into the canyon.  All this time, bryce canyon was quite cold actually.  The temperature was maybe 80 degrees tops, it was sunny, but the wind was very strong and very cold actually.  So we kept pretty cool, though we still drank a lot of water to help keep ourselves hydrated in the dry dry air.  The hike itself was very good.  It wasn't really too strenuous (1555ft down, then 570ft up) and very scenic.  Definitely got to see our fair share of hoodoos.  This hike took us to actualy only about 3:50p.  After which we took a break, had a snack (yogurt and such), and then made our way to explore the southern part of the park, which was out of bryce amphitheatre (which was what where we had spent the entire day so far and where most of the trails and people are).  There were at least 5-6 lookout points, all of which we stopped at, snapped some pictures, and enjoyed the views.  Even tigger got a chance to see the view.  The last top on the southern end was rainbow point, at an altitude of about 9100ft.  We did a quick 1mi bryce pines hike and got to see another lookout point (with some weird name).  After this, we then pack ourselves up and drove back to the motel.  Then we had a very filling dinner at the bryce canyon pines restaurant (it wasn't all that great, elk burger for me and roast beef open sandwich for tony, but their pies were freaking amazing! I had apple pie ala mode and tony had a strawberry bananna cream pie).  The dinner was crazy filling and put us into a food coma.  So we went back to the room, washed up, and went to sleep.  Still need to plan out what we're doing in arches national park tom'w, which we will be driving to first thing in the morning.

 

woke up really really early to get to the mule ride checkin on time; I think I set my alarm for like, 5:20 plus two snooze bars; mule ride was like 7:25a; mule ride was fun, though it wasn't nearly as scary as it could have been because we were not hanging over the side of the canyon as the later part of the kaibab trail does (we only went as far as the tunnel).  The mules were extraordinarily farty, poopy, and urinaty.  I didn't realize that such big animals literally pee like a liter every time. Kinda gross.  and they farted a lot too (sometimes followed by poop). I think my mule was particularly flatulant.  Got back from the mule ride around 11a.  Had lunch (pizza); sent a post card to mom and dad; went on a quick .25 mi hike near the grand canyon lodge; then made our way to cape royal point and imperial point; there was a fire actually in the surrounding pondarosa pine forest, so we needed to get escorted by a fireman car (us and all the other cars that wanted to go too); the trees were quite burnt; there were still small fires going on (mostly set by the firefighters themselves to get rid of brush and wood), and the places that had been scorched were ash white (because of all the ash).  Cape royal was cool; got to walk over the angel window (which is this random hole in a piece of rock jutting out into the canyon that you can walk on); next up was imperial point--the highest point in the canyon.  took some pictures there.  all throughout this, I had been sleeping in the car from place to place because for some reason being at this high altitude/still sleep deprived makes me really sleepy. I had enough energy to drive back and tony slept; got back to the kaibab lodge; had some snacks; then went to the lodge and realized there was wifi; so took care of some stuff via email and whatnot; then it started to thunder and pour; there was a nice looking rainbow; played a bit of piano; played some Braid; then had dinner (club sandwich for me...only it was more like a chicken burger with bacon; turkey dinner again for tony); then went back to the cabin and washed up and went to bed; off to rafting tom'w!