Utah Rocks

I don't think there is a square inch of Utah that isn't geographically astonishing. Pat and Ed left us Thursday night and Friday afternoon we packed up and headed out of Vegas to Hurricane, Utah. It is a small spot between St. George and the big events: Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. I was suffering from gastroenteritis, thank you Vegas, so didn't care where we were. I saw a 12 year-old MD in Hurricane who gave me some coping meds for the tummy and despite nausea and wanting to sleep forever, the next two days were incredible.
At Zion you are at the bottom of the canyon and the rocks soar overhead. It was a lovely warm Saturday and a lot of people were there enjoying the hikes and general gorgeousness. There is a mandatory shuttle service, magic, for the scenic loop and we spent several hours at that before heading up the canyon to Bryce. If you skipped the scenic loop it would be a shame but the canyon drive is so unbelievable you would not realize you had missed anything down below.

We stayed at Ruby's at Bryce, an enormous motel/lodge/restaurant/store and the only show in town. Well there were other places but Ruby's obviously had the IT factor in a town dedicated to nothing more than travelers. Bryce is completely different than Zion though only about 100 miles away. At Bryce you are on top of a plateau and the canyon falls away below. It was cold. 24 Farenheit in the morning and got up to about 40 by noon compared to the 75 of Zion the day before. Mind you we were at 9000 feet and both feeling the effects of thin air. It was a bit of a set back for me and despite loving the place we both felt better as soon as we went down hill a few thousand feet to heavier air.

That night we stayed just south of Salt Lake City and the drive was wonderful. We ignored the urging of our GPS to follow the interstate and wandered up a very good secondary road through more rocks and a lot of cattle. Our friends Jim and Hilda Colodey would love Utah because they only seem to raise Angus cattle; by the hundreds of thousands, complete with the appropriate smells!
Somewhere in the midst of more rocks we came across Big Rock Candy Mountain Resort! The exclamation mark is not for the resort, a humble establishment in the middle of nowhere, rather for the song of our childhood originally recorded in 1928 (no I am NOT THAT OLD) and covered by everyone including Burl Ives and Johnny Cash.

Too many pictures and memories of those two days to give anything here but the very briefest temptation.....I'll do a book!

 

Wild and Wacky Las Vegas

It isn't for everyone though it tries to be and there is no easy description. According to Wikipedia there are 62000 hotel rooms on the 4.5 mile "strip" that most people think of as being "Vegas". Everyone of the mega casinos is structured so that guests don't have to leave for any reason with multiple restaurants, bars, shows, recreational amenities including massive pools, the casino of course, and usually some other attraction like: the aquarium at Mandalay Bay; wildlife habitat at The Flamingo; Botanical gardens at The Bellagio, the canal at The Venetian, etc.

the bar at The Wynn

canal rides in The Venetian

and outside!

The architecture is nothing if not imaginative, the shows extravagant and exciting, and the casinos dark and smoky.
I think it would be fun to stay in one of the big resorts in the middle of the action but it's very nice to be 2 miles off the strip in an apartment! Not to mention buckets less expensive.

Crazy as it sounds, it's Vegas after all, we overlapped with Paul and Sue for a couple of hours. The best bonus!

For entertainment we chose 3 events: Love, Las Vegas The Show, Donny and Marie
First, we went to The Mirage for the Cirque de Soleil show "Love" woven around Beatles music and all 4 agreed that we've never seen anything like it nor likely ever will again - and it's not our first Cirque show. It is truly remarkable and there's nothing much else to say.

Las Vegas The Show is in the tiny Saxe Theater at Planet Hollywood and it tells the story through song and dance of the evolution of Vegas entertainers. The performers are really good and it made us wonder what twists and turns makes a singer/dancer a mega star or a chorus girl in a perennial revue.
Tonight Donny and Marie, which we saw a few years ago and enjoyed. I can't say I ever loved their TV show but they are excellent entertainers in person and the showroom at The Flamingo is a classic Vegas design; maybe the last one left.

In between, we've wandered to look at some of the buildings, and taken two excursions out to the adjacent desert. Monday it was cold so we did a car day with the long drive out to Death Valley. Besides the crazy scenery, we came across Death Valley Junction, an adobe building housing a hotel, cafe, opera house (I kid you not), and museum. The story is that the company who owned the local borax mine, built the facility in response to a scathing magazine article, written by Zane Grey, about the miners living conditions. Later, the energy and artistry of Marta Becket kept the theater alive for years.

Today we did the much shorter distance to Red Rock Canyon, a small jewel of a park with a lovely visitor center. Both trips brought us to the brilliant variation of colours and formations that are prevalent in this area. And the profound silence and serenity of the desert on a beautiful day. The austerity of terrain, the sheer mass of rock, the never ending sky, help me with perspective and ground me in the reality of the insignificance of any individual, idea, fad...

        

The Bad and Beautiful

Today is our last day in AZ, only a week here this time, and it has been interesting as always. Last night we decided to make a quick trip to Sedona for lunch because it's always a good idea to go up there. Traffic on the 101 Loop was busy and our GPS has been determined that we use that road virtually every time we leave the apartment because of our location. Once on 17 heading north it thinned out and we made good time. The desert is astonishingly green this year because it's been a wet winter. I don't know what that might mean in terms of the indigenous flora and fauna but it certainly looks different to us and there is actually standing water in some locations. Some of the pleasure of going to Sedona is to pass through an area with thousands of saguaros on each side of the road and then up to the high desert plateau above Camp Verde. Place names like Horse Thief Basin and Bloody Basin evoke the old and wild west.

Sedona was busy busy unlike our first few times there, but still beautiful and with a great sense of serenity. People seem to speak more softly and not hurry. We had lunch Uptown at the Cowboy Club and for the four of us it was a titch unsettling that one of the servers was wearing a holstered pistol. AZ is an "open carry" state but it feels like a movie set when you actually see it in action.

Yesterday we went to a Cactus League ball game: AZ and The Padres. We thought The Diamond Backs were going to romp away with it but in the 7th and 8th innings, to quote Ian Hyde-Lay, they managed to "wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory". The game was at Salt River Stadium, part of the Talking Stick Resort, a very nice design and apparently no bad seats. Only 5700 people at the first of a double header set but the evening game was sold out.

After the game we went to Old Town Scottsdale for the Thursday evening Art Walk which was a Native American theme complete with a fashion show. I wish someone could explain to me how tottering on 6 inch heels is attractive because for me it just isn't. If I were any one of the designers I would have insisted on a heel that allowed the model to walk gracefully. I guess I'm officially an old codger. 

A couple of random pics here: Arizona Mills is an enormous outlet mall that we usually manage to spend a little money in. Not his time though for some reason like maybe a $.75/$1.00 ratio. The mall has changed a lot and add a Legoland feature for entertainment. This is a giant octopus outside making it easy to remember which exit to use. 

 And just in case we forgot we are in the desert, I did say it is surprisingly green this year, here is a reminder:

Off to Vegas tomorrow which all the craziness that implies but also a bonus hook up with Paul and Sue Griffith, there this weekend too from Halifax. Yay team Griffith!