Ramblings around National Parks

With moments of wonder...

Arches National Park

In contrast to our rather more urban adventure in Las Vegas, described in last weeks post, the final week of August we spent several days immersing ourselves in four National Parks in Utah.

After leaving Las Vegas we arrived late afternoon in Zion National Park. To enter the park we got to buy my lifetime Senior pass, good at all National Parks in the United States for the rest of my LIFE! Yes indeed, I was over the moon excited to reach this milestone, available only to those over a certain age (ahem). As we arrived later than planned, we decided to take a short hike. Even at 5 pm, however, it was still well over 100F/±38C, and after only a mile, I struggled to climb up the gradually steepening mountain. Chagrined, but also depleted, I gave up and turned around. Perhaps the drive without air conditioning a few hours earlier had taken more of a toll than I thought…

Earlier in the day, about an hour outside Las Vegas (having left our friend Chad at the Starbucks, you may remember) a funny sound started coming from the fan. It slowly warmed up inside the car, and we realised there was no cold air, and then eventually no air, coming out of the vents. It was over 104F outside, the sun was pouring in and we had no means to move air around in the car except by opening up the windows.

This was our second rental car since replacing the first one which had died a week earlier. The roar of truck traffic was deafening with no windows to seal off the volume. We had no cell/mobile phone service as of course we were in the strange nowhere lands of the Nevada-Arizona-Utah border. We slowly melted. Another hour (or maybe a hundred hours?) passed by the time we reached a town with any services. It was Sunday in Utah, the home of the Mormon Church and a revered day of rest.

No phone service and so so so hot

An oasis appeared ahead. Oh please let there be something open!

We found our way to a lone coffee shop that was actually open, and also—bonus!—had air-conditioning and iced drinks. The cheerful young women quickly served our drinks; we gulped them down to reduce our core temperatures enough to think more logically what to do next. In our slightly fevered state we imagined the worst. We had another full week in the Utah desert ahead of us, with no big towns until Salt Lake City, 300 miles ahead, which we weren’t planning to get to until later that week. Even though it was closer we did NOT want to drive all the way back to Las Vegas.

As we were now in a land of phone service, we called the rental car company and after several minutes on hold, amazingly, we were told there is an airport nearby that happened to have an open rental car desk. On Sunday! Apparently lots of people fly into St. George, Utah. Who knew? We were able to get a new car with fully-functioning air conditioning. A couple of wrong-turns later we were back on our way.

After this long day of driving, the air-conditioning delay leading to a car swap, and our shortened hike in Zion, at least one of us was a bit tired and testy (🙋🏻‍♀️). We arrived at our hotel, and the two couples ahead of us were told they had to wait for their rooms to be cleaned. We exchanged worried glances.

When it was finally our turn, we gave the clerk our names to check in. She said great, here is the info I need from you, here is your room key, here is when and where breakfast is served, and so forth. We said thanks and quietly put our heads down and skulked out as the other couples glared at us watched. And no, we have no idea why we got our room before the others…..

The rest of our time in the National Parks was much less eventful, thankfully, and we focused fully on our red rock and canyon immersion. The next day we got up early for a several hour hike in the canyons of Zion long before noon and were rewarded with cool temperatures, rising sunlight, and after getting off the main trail, solitude. That is the thing about almost every one of the National Parks I’ve visited: if you are prepared to put on comfortable shoes and walk a little farther, you’ll be rewarded with quiet and solitude, with very few fellow travellers. 

Zion NP, Bryce NP (L,R, top) Capitol Reef NP, Arches NP (L,R, bottom)

The National Park Service have made accommodations for people with all ranges of abilities and interests to move around the parks and see their splendour. They have suggestions for people who have limited time constraints, or who for any number of reasons aren’t able, or desiring, to get out into rougher ground. It makes me proud that my birth country had the foresight to put aside these lands in perpetuity, and manage them for ALL. They really are jewels in an otherwise very thorny crown. 

Every National Park I have visited, I think: WOW, this is even better than I imagined. I am always delighted to have been there and often can’t wait to visit again. However, on this trip, perhaps because time is moving on, I’m getting a bit more picky about how I spend it. Of the four parks we were able to visit, here is my quick and highly opinionated summary¹: 

• Zion NP is slightly overrated. I had been before and it is nice; if you only go to one park you will be pleased that you saw this one. But I don’t need to see it again.

  

  Morning walk in Zion National Park

• Bryce Canyon NP brings me the most delight and makes me the happiest. I will always want to visit again, and even though I had been there once before, I was not let down. 

  

  Bryce National Park, Utah

• Arches NP may be slightly overrated; however, we did miss one of the featured areas and we weren’t there at dusk or sunrise. Still, I don’t have to go see it again.

  

  Arches National Park, Utah

Capital Reef NP is unexpectedly jaw dropping. I would go again, and also would like to go at night to see the stars. They have a special focus on this.

Capital Reef National Park

Sadly we missed Canyonlands NP. As my UK friends say, you are indeed spoilt for choice in this part of the US: there are National Monuments and other federal and state parks in Utah (and next-door Arizona and New Mexico) that are astonishing in their own ways, (you may have heard of the Grand Canyon, for example).

Also: there are unnamed parts of Utah that also hold strange and beguiling rock wizardry. They are not even special enough to be national parks or monuments, just random stretches of highway through surreal places that look like maybe you saw them in a sci-fi movie sometime or they were the inspiration for one. If I watched more sci-fi perhaps I could help you out here with examples, but instead I will regale you with some of my drive-by photos:

Driving from Capital Reef National Park to Green River, Utah

But I haven’t even really described the glory of these landscapes. And they were ALL glorious! I felt honoured to be fit enough to walk for two or three hours and immerse myself in rocks so red, weathered by aeons of wind and rain and uplift and rivers…

Each day after we left the main paths, we were alone with the rocks, the trees, sometimes a chipmunk or lizard, the dry air and sunshine warming our bodies as we strode along. I could hear my breathing, my shoes hitting the crushed gravel paths or firm slick sandstone, water sloshing in my bottle, backpack resting lightly on my shoulders. 

We brush against the juniper and sages with their small scented leaves folded against the bright sun, and find some shade in deep rock canyons for a rest. We point at a vista or an astonishing balanced boulder, one after another. We took so many photos, knowing full well it was only to trigger the full sensory memory, which we can hopefully retrieve now and again, for awhile. 

Zion NP (top) Bryce NP (bottom)

We looked at the numerous ‘named’ rock formations to see if we could see the resemblance; for example:

The photo on the right is supposed to look like the Queen Victoria image on the left. Maybe?

But mostly, we relished the quiet: time to consider and feel the presence of a landscape so immense, so strong and old, and our tiny beings just a speck of dust in its presence. It was not just the few biological living things we could see, but it was all of it that we could feel: the rocks, the underlying ongoing movement of the earth’s tectonic forces pushing the rocks further up, always, at the same time as the wind and the water were forcing those grains of earth down, down river, down into their own canyons. It was the scale of the web and movement of it all, unseen but felt, the sense of an earth still pulsing and, yes, giving us hope. 

The few days spent in a glorious part of the world dominated by our bare earth and it’s most fundamental processes is a fine balance to my people-centred time. It centres my body and gets me back in tune with fundamental drivers: flowing water, earth rhythms, pure dry air, leaves in season and the heart beat of all of it working together. 

Arches NP, Utah

That’s it from me this week. Now I’d love to hear from you!

• Have you been to National Parks in the US? Which ones? What did you like about your visit? Which ones do you recommend and why?

• If you live outside the US, do you have National Parks? Do you go there?

• What places give you good earth vibes and seem to be magical? If you are ok with sharing that information-I understand if you don’t want to!

And to all of you, thanks so much for reading this. It means the world to me!

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1. I suspect a lot of other people will disagree with my choices, which is fine with me!