Random Thoughts from the Trip

Some Fun Facts

• 1 million buffalo (OK, a bit of an exaggeration, but lots of buffalo)
• 8,705 miles
• 4,800 vertical feet of elevation gain (highest hike)
• 3,996 photos
• 38 days
• 31 tanks of gas
• 19 bags of ice
• 14 holes of golf (before it got dark)
• 13 campgrounds
• 13 states
• 10 national parks (if you count the two Canadiens)
• 3 grizzly bears
• 3 Best Buys (bought iPod transmitter in FW, traded it in OK, returned it in SD)
• 2 provinces
• 2 brake pads
• 1 bull moose
• 1 night of freezing temperatures (and rain)
• 1 failed attempt at backcountry camping
• 1/2 dome

A lot of people I met on the trip asked me what my favorite park was. It's impossible to sum them up and pick one, but I have tried to pick out the highlights from along the way.

• Most beautiful - Glacier National Park - so green, so much water, so many flowers
• Best hike - Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
• Best waterfall - Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park
• Best campground - Canyon, Yellowstone National Park
• Worst campground - Bridge Bay, Yellowstone or whatever its name was in Whistler
• Best single view - Lake Louise from the Fairmount Chateau, Banff National Park tied with Grand Canyon from anywhere on the South Kaibab trail
• Most accessible park - Yellowstone National Park
• Most expensive lemonade - Lake Louise, Plain of the Six Glaciers Teahouse, Banff National Park - bring your own water
• Most expensive gas - $3.75 a gallon in Banff (California is a close second)
• Least expensive gas - $2.07 a gallon in Tucson
• Prettiest drive - either the road from South Dakota to Yellowstone through Cody or the road from Jasper to Whistler - Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper and Sea to Sky from Whistler to Vancouver should have won here, but it was rainy and cloudy for both of them
• Fastest speed limit - 80mph in West Texas
• Best hotel - "The Springs", Banff
• Best meal - Bow River Grill, "The Springs", Banff
• Best salad - the wedge, Snake River Brewing Company, Jackson, WY
• Most expensive shower - $5 Curry Village, Yosemite
• Least expensive shower - $1.38 Glacier National Park
• Best beer - Pyramid Thunderhead IPA
• Most expensive beer - $9.75 at "The Springs"
• Biggest disappointment - Yosemite - picked the wrong time of year (little or no water), didn't have a camping reservation, fire cut off the valley, etc. I would go back, but earlier in the summer and not without a confirmed reservation.
• Worse fashion trend - young males piercing their ears and implanting progressively larger disks to stretch out their ear lobe. The California kid at a gas station with a dime sized disk was bad enough, but the kid at Phantom Ranch with a hole the size of a hockey puck was a bit much

Things that confused me.

• In Wyoming and Montana, nothing but round bales of hay. In Washington and Oregon, nothing but square bales of hay. Does Obama really think he can get a consensus on nationalizing health care if we can't even agree on something as simple as the optimum shape for a bale of hay? I think not. Instead, he should be focusing on the escalating cost of showers - from $1.38, to $2, to $3.25 to $5 at the end of the trip - shower inflation is the number one problem facing our country!
• Likewise, I counted at least six or seven different ways that states ban trucks from using their engines to brake - No Engine Braking, No Exhaust Braking, No Engine Retarder Braking, No Compression Braking, etc. Do we really need so many ways to say the same thing?
• Why does Oregon not allow self-serve gas? With pay at the pump, its kind of stupid to have to pay an attendent. Is the gas station attendants union really that powerful? The two teenaged girls that pumped my gas didn't appear to be hardcore union activists, but you never know.
• Canada spends millions on freeway overpasses - FOR WILDLIFE ONLY! All I could think of was putting a deer blind at one end of those things and thanking the Canadian government for bringing the wildlife straight to me. What happened to survival of the fittest? Its a necessary survival skill to be able to cross a freeway without getting run over. When will these entitlements end?
• Why do Europeans always order Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite when quality beer options are available? If anyone should know good from bad beer its them. Very disturbing.
• Germans I met were almost universally friendly and Brits I met were generally jerks. And the Germans spoke better english too. Go figure.
• Why don't Japanese people get english speakers to look at their tee-shirts before they buy them? INTERCOURSE Canning Co. is offered up as an example.
• How do you take a horse and a donkey and come up with a mule which is bigger than either one of its parents? No more GMOs unless of course they are carrying your dinner and trash! I'm putting all of my money into a new mule breeding venture I heard about - DOH!

Carlsbad Caverns

Friday, Sept 18 - Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

I didn't have a lot of time to spend at Carlsbad as I needed to be back in Austin Friday night to prepare for the UT football game on Saturday.

I did spend a couple of hours touring the Big Room, which is in fact quite big (six football fields big).

Took several pictures, but my skills with long exposures and low lighting are not that great yet. One thing that surprised me a bit was the lack of color of the formations, at least with the naked eye. Some of the colors do come out a bit more in the photos, but there in the cave, everything is pretty white and gray.

It's a bit awe-inspiring to think that these formations "grew" silently in the dark over tens of thousands of years.

After finishing the Big Room tour, got back into the car and headed east to Austin. About eight hours later, I was back in Texas, donning a UT shirt and headed out for some dinner on 6th Street. God Bless the USA and God Bless Texas! Amazing trip and experience.

Last Day at the Canyon

Tues, Sept 15 - Grand Canyon, Arizona


A shot from one of the Rim overlooks. After hiking into the canyon, the view from the rim looks less impressive - only two dimensional.










The now virtually unused Grand Canyon rail station. Back in the day, it brought virtually all visitors to the park. I saw an old poster that asked if "will you be one of the 25,000 people to visit the Grand Canyon this year?". Thanks to autos and highways, I think they might be exceeding that number a bit now.






The El Tovar hotel - it was the first large lodge at the canyon and was designed by the same person (Mary Colter) as designed Phantom Ranch.







Mule depot (right)











Back to the grind. After enjoying a steak dinner and breakfast at the bottom of the canyon and hiking out, I developed a greater appreciation for mules!






Back to break camp and head out. Who's there? about a dozen mule deer lazing around my campsite - did they help share the cost? No, they're deer.

Bob the mule deer (left) off by himself, guarding my tent for me.

Bob's close-up. I just sat there eating cheese and crackers and enjoying a farewell beer and Bob and I just stared at each other for about thirty minutes. Finally, I needed to break camp, so I had to approach him a bit too closely to take down my tent. Bob got offended by my proximity and stood up, walked exactly six feet away from me and plopped right back down. Offended? Yes. Ambitious? No.

Driving from the Grand Canyon back to Phoenix, drove through the Red Rocks of Sedona.

Enjoyed a couple of lazy days in Phoenix visiting family (Mom, Dad, two sisters) before heading back to Texas via Carlsbad Caverns.

Climbing out of the Grand Canyon

Monday, Sept 14 - Grand Canyon, Arizona

Up at 4:30am to get dressed and ready for 5am breakfast at Phantom Ranch, which was really good. While waiting for a bit of light, got this shot of a ringtail hiding in a hose closet.

At first light, walked about a half mile from Phantom Ranch down to the Colorado River - we'll be taking the silver bridge today to go up the Bright Angel trail.

Doesn't look too high!

Mule train coming out of Phantom Ranch with mail and trash.

Waterfall and creek along the trail.

First good rest stop at Indian Gardens.

I'll bet these people were the ones cheating off everyone else in school. Only consolation - I never saw a mule rider that really seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the hikers. At dinner the night before, one of the mule riders asked me how long it took to hike down and was surprised that it only took four hours - I think he thought the mules were the express train.

Looking back down at Indian Gardens - looks a bit like an oasis in the desert and it is.

The tunnel near the top of the Bright Angel trail. If you see this, you are virtually there. However, don't be surprised when you get to the earlier tunnel on this trail and think you are near the top - you're not.

Finally made it to the South Rim about 11:30am, so about five and a half hours to hike out - lots of short rest stops.

Back at the campsite enjoying a beer with cheese and crackers and a small herd of about eight or ten elk waltz right through my campsite as though I wasn't there.









Hiking the Grand Canyon was a pretty incredible experience. It is the single most spectacular feature that I saw on this trip and to see it in three dimensions was fantastic. From a hiking standpoint, it wasn't as grueling as I thought it was going to be. By comparison, the Half Dome hike of four days prior was by far the most difficult. I was still sore from that hike when I started down the Grand Canyon, yet the day after hiking out of the canyon, I wasn't hardly sore at all. Its also not very technically challenging - just a constant steady grind uphill, but it didn't have the killer steep steps that the Dome had. I think anyone in reasonably decent physical shape can take on the canyon - just make sure you leave at dawn, go slow, take short breaks and bring plenty of water. On the way up the Bright Angel trail, you can bring less water because there are numerous water stops along the way at Indian Gardens and the three and one mile rest houses.

Grand Canyon the Easy Way - Going Down

Sunday, Sept 13 - Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Woke up at 3:45am to break camp and drive to a parking lot to pick up a 5am express shuttle to the trailhead (since there was no parking at the South Kaibab trailhead).

Picture to the right is shortly after heading out down the trail - the sun hasn't even come up yet but its light enough to start walking.

Looking down on the South Kaibab trail. The trail has great views but the trail needs some work. Between the cedar posts laid across the trail are large ruts that you have to step down into. My legs were still sore from the Half Dome hike of four days ago, so they were feeling it almost from the beginning of the descent into the canyon.

Sunrise at the Grand Canyon - the picture doesn't come close to showing how beautiful that is when you are inside the canyon rim.

It was so windy that I took off my hat and tucked it into my waist - makes for a pretty dorky picture!

The first decent view of the Colorado River.

More of the South Kaibab trail. I must say you got pretty tired of stepping over those cedar posts. I didn't count them, but there must have been five or six thousand to step over.

I thought this was a cool view within the canyon and the sun was lighting it just right. One of the cool things about leaving at sunrise was that as the sun came up, the same views got painted in completely different ways, which made it great all the way down - except for those stupid posts!

Our first view of Phantom Ranch - its up and around the corner a bit from the trees - you can barley see the roof of one of the buildings in the picture to the left.

I had never seen a blue and green squirrel before this morning. His coloring was exactly the same as some of the rock formations on the way down.

The silver bridge from the Bright Angel trail over the river. There are two suspension bridges over the Colorado - the black bridge will be the one we cross over from the South Kaibab trail.

And there it is - I liked the reflection of the bridge on the river. Today, the river was green, but the next couple of days it was the more traditional reddish brown that originally gave the river its name. I think the boys upstream controlling the dam decide how much water and silt to release and that dictates the color of the river.

We're starting to get close and its starting to get a bit hot too.

See the rafts sitting on Boat Beach to the right.

The mule train delivering dinner and hopefully beer to Phantom Ranch.

Mules on a bridge! Mules on a bridge!

I thought this was a cool shot coming out of the tunnel that leads to the black bridge.

View from the black bridge looking downstream to the silver bridge.

The cabins at Phantom Ranch. I was in a bunkhouse with ten beds. Tough night's sleep, since the beds were all squeaky and I had a USC fan in the bunk above me.

Bright Angel creek and campsite next to Phantom Ranch. If you stay there, you can always walk up to the Phantom Ranch canteen for air conditioning and a cold drink. Reserve meals in advance though - they don't have any express mules to go fetch extra food.

Timed shot from the bridge - lucky my camera didn't end up in the river.

It was so hot at the bottom, I really, really wanted to jump into this boat as it came under the bridge. Looks like a much cooler way to see the canyon than hiking down into it.

Had a beer upon arrival at 10:45am - probably a record. That evening, had a steak dinner at Phantom Ranch. The steak wasn't that great (probably mules that couldn't cut it), but when else are you going to get a steak at the bottom of the freaking Grand Canyon? And the beer was cheaper than at a baseball game - three cheers for mules!

Drive to Grand Canyon and Elk Infiltrating the Campground

Saturday, Sept 12 - Grand Canyon National Park

Spent the morning with the family and breakfast, then took on the four hour drive from Phoenix up to the Grand Canyon. When I arrived at the park, I immediately checked in and got a site at the one campground inside the park and this is what I found in the campsite next to mine. I had been disappointed that I hadn't had a single good elk encounter on this entire trip, but not any longer. What an incredible creature!