"You know what it is? San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away."

Jackson dragged the curtains back flamboyantly to reveal, somewhat staggeringly, yet another sensational day, slightly hazier than the previous but still, on the scale of things, pretty damn awesome. After a few days of bleakness at Zion and the Grand Canyon I was beginning to think that on the weather front at least our luck had failed us, but thankfully it wasn’t the case.

We managed to defy physics and squeeze an ever increasing amount of crap into the same space in the back of the Escape and headed for the Golden Gate Park, given we only had to make it to Monterey. It was, as mentioned, a perfect day for walking but we’d pretty well walked ourselves out the day before so we limited ourselves to the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Gardens, then a quick lap of  Stow Lake. Based on past experience I’d promised Jackson and Elise they’d see turtles, sunning themselves on the lake, then after constant reminders I started to drad the possibility we’d dip out on this front. Thankfully, we spotted them, quite possibly the same turtles, sunning themselves on the same log they were using 11 years ago. Yet another crisis averted, more by dumb luck than anything else. Story of my life.

We went back to the car and finally bit San Francisco a teary good-bye. Well, me anyway – Nic and the kids were fine as we swung onto Highway 1 to finally, truly, head for LA and, ultimately, home. I tend to get a little morose at this point, travelling - when I can no longer argue that the adventure is still continuing, when it’s painfully obvious it’s winding down, it’s a bit of a bleak sensation. Thankfully, the scenery heading south down Highway 1, through a surprising amount of traffic for mid-week, was awesome enough to snap me out of it. We passed through Half Moon Bay, all treacherous, pounding surf, rolling fields of farmland studded with timber barns, and hills still covered in lush greenery and continued through to Davenport, which had a feel more like an Aussie sea-side beach town than what I’d have imagined in the USA – weathered timber shop-fronts, sagging fly-screens and creaking doors. We stopped for a coffee and a few snacks, then attempted to fly through Santa Cruz but ground to a long, agonizing halt in near gridlock for 45 minutes, before the traffic finally eased and we progressed, unimpeded, along coastal road draped along sheer mountainsides crashing into the Pacific surf, down onto more rolling country, and, Elkhorn Slough, a wildlife reserve about 15 minutes north of Monterey, which is – apparently – a stepping off point for sea-otter spotting.

After reading about the California sea-otter and discovering the perfect time to see these once critically-endangered animals was from early April, we basically organized our entire trip around them. We hadn’t decided which direction to do our holiday when we first started planning it, but because of them we’d opted to drive in a counter-clockwise loop so we’d arrive at Monterey as late as possible on our holiday, to give us the best chance.

Naturally, Elkhorn Slough was closed. Elkhorn Slough, for those planning on visiting, is closed Sunday through Tuesday. It was Tuesday.

Somewhat disheartened, we drove on to Monterey and swung by the Visitors Centre, where I proceeded to get even more disheartened, learning that Highway 1, including Bixby Bridge and Big Sur, was closed due to massive mudslides that had washed out big chunks of the highway only a couple of weeks before. We conceded it was just one of those things and started kicking around alternate routes in our mind as we headed onto Fisherman’s Wharf where – lo and behold! – sea otters were frolicking, in a manner only sea otters, presumably, can, maybe 50 metres from the jetty. The camera was largely useless, and a manual-focus only tele-converter I’d bought with me from a friend of mine did nothing to help, so for once I gave up on any ideas photographic and just watched them, floating on their backs, pounding at clams and crabs on their bellies with rocks sought specifically for the purpose. Without a doubt it was the highlight of the day.

We bypassed the food on offer at Fisherman’s Wharf – plenty of it looked, and smelled, great but when you’re traveling with three others who aren’t massive fish types, it limits your options a smidgen – and instead went to Troia’s Market, where six or seven items including such opulence as hotdogs, buns, juice and a frozen meal inexplicably and jaw-droppingly added up to $37.

Handy Travel Tip – give the place the big swerve. I’ll go on the record. Troia’s Market is a rip-off.

To make matters worse, the hotdogs expired at the end of February. We decided to run the gauntlet and have them anyway, so, given I’m still typing this happily enough, I guess they were

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco

After a ridiculously good sleep (which wasn’t really expected, being smack bang in the middle of San Francisco) we woke up to an absolutely perfect day for walking – no humidity, blue skies, and sunshine. Not wanting to squander too much of it, we had odds and sods for breakfast (which wasn’t included) and hit the streets, heading south east toward the gates of Chinatown, and stopped off fleetingly for a cup of coffee at Starbucks on the corner.

A woman standing nearby seemed almost normal at first. She seemed sort of neatly dressed and turned out, but something wasn’t quite right – the black eye she was sporting was probably a bit of a pointer. At first she seemed like she was just waiting for the lights to change, engaging us in idle conversation, telling us that we should hold onto our children tightly because they grow up so fast, then out of the blue she was berating passers by, begging for someone to give her a cigarette because she hadn’t had one for days, then the switch would flip back and she’d return to normal, asking where we were from and what we were planning on checking out. We drank our coffee and headed north up Grant St through Chinatown, leaving her to her erratic rantings, then clambered up a road so steep the kids were casting about for cams and carabiners and made it up to Coit Tower. I’d been there back in 2000, and the kids seemed pretty disinterested in going up to the top, happy enough just to check out the murals surrounding the gift shop and elevators, so we shot through a couple of minutes later and continued down Grant, and onward to Pier 39.

As has been the case for the past 21 years, the Sea Lions were still there, although from my memory at least there were a lot fewer than last time. Still, they were in fine voice, putting on arguably the best free show in San Francisco for visitor and local alike, jostling and biting one another constantly for the perceived best spot then playing up to the crowd like wrestling performers before others attempted to usurp their positions, .the ritual repeating itself.

After a quick lap of the tourist stops at the pier, some fish and chips and a massive battle with the kids over their refusal to eat ‘orange cheese’ (can’t blame them really, it’s pretty plasticky and not too flash!), then walked along the waterfront until the smell of Boudin’s hit us.

Apparently it’s a San Francisco institution, although I’m not so sure whether that’s for the locals or the tourists. Boudin’s specializes in sour-dough bread, and deploys a fearsome attack weapon which should be banned under the terms of the Geneva Convention – they vent baking smells from their ovens directly to the street, so you have to walk through a bready, sour-dough flavoured cloud. Even if you didn’t buy anything, you’d smell like a walking loaf of bread – free advertising, in a way, for Boudin’s. Having said all that, the bread is definitely good, and the front window and shop represent yet another show – automation moulds bread into the classic loaf, baguette and stick shapes, but hands-on bakers stand in the window, sculpting custom pieces of edible art – crabs, lobsters, rabbits, even alligators – by hand. Baked products are then delivered by an aerial tramway of baskets suspended from a cable, from the bakery to the storefront. It’s hypnotic to watch, and needless to say I was suckered in to buying a normal 1lb loaf, plus a ‘mama bunny’ loaf, ostensibly ‘for the kids’. I got away lightly at under $10 – people in front and behind me were spending anywhere up to $50 on sourdough of various shapes and sizes. Who are these people? What planet do they come from? I have no answers.

In full tourist mode, we walked to the end of the ‘tourist’ section of waterfront, waited 45 minutes for the Hyde/Powell cable car, and rode it back to Broadway – we could have probably walked it in less time than we spent waiting for it, but the kids loved the open air nature of the thing, and I have to admit I’d have been a bit miffed if I hadn’t been able to score a spot on the outside, hanging off the railings. I did it back in 2000, but honestly, who wouldn’t say no to doing it again… if they could just do something about the wait.

Nic and the kids returned to the hotel, where I knocked back a beer and managed to summon sufficient energy to do battle with the late afternoon San Francisco traffic and head to Alamo Square. I’ve got to say, San Francisco is hard work driving around. The blocks are pretty small, and the intersection of every block seemingly comes with a four way stop sign, lights, or a sign declaring no left turns when you want to turn left, or one-way signs in the opposite direction to that which you want to travel in. It took me 15 minutes to travel 20 blocks south and 6 blocks west to Alamo Square. Still, on the upside, San Francisco drivers – at least from my experience – display legendary levels of patience and courtesy compared with those in other cities. I was behind a trolley bus which had to stop, mid intersection near Haight Ashbury, while a guy stood in the middle of the road, on crutches, having a chat with a guy in his car, stopped at a sign. No one tooted, gesticulated madly, or yelled obscenities. I either happened to randomly encounter a ridiculously blessed out group of people, or it’s representative of the greater whole. I’m sure I’ll hear back from someone, one way or the other.

Eventually I made it to Alamo Square, parked on Fulton in what I suspect might have been a tow-away zone, and ran for the square to catch the late afternoon sun of a perfect spring day on the ‘Painted Ladies’, a group of beautifully decorated houses facing west, with the city behind them. Trust me, if you’ve seen any movie set in San Francisco, you’ve seen them. I wasn’t the only one with the idea, however, as groups of people were picnicking on the square, enjoying the sun. Still, with visions of my car being impounded I ran back, jumped in and went back to the hotel, then maybe 15 minutes later decided to continue pressing my luck to head out and take photos of the sunset on the Golden Gate bridge from the headlands of Marin County.

Naturally, I should have quit with Alamo Square. After completely missing my exit travelling north I finally turned around and made it a few minutes after sunset, got some hopefully reasonable shots, then managed to take an exit off 101 and ended up on Highway 1 south. Figuring I’d just head east until I hit a street I recognized was, for me, something approaching a cohesive plan, but as previously highlighted San Francisco doesn’t like to do anything in too straightforward a manner – streets you want to take are either one-way, you’re prohibited from turning, or they dive into tunnels. When you don’t know your way around, it’s a recipe for complete disaster, and I love it. I finally crawled into the hotel maybe two hours after I left, wrote, then nodded off around midnight, somewhat disconsolate at the thought that this was my last night in San Francisco.

For now, anyway.

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?

After the complete driving balls up of the previous day, we weren’t in any rush to go hit the freeway too quickly, so we instead treated ourselves to a fully cooked breakfast, as provided at the Pacific Inn - packet pancakes warmed up to seem like fresh pancakes, artificial scrambled eggs made up to look like real scrambled eggs, frozen, fully pre-cooked sausages heated in a bain-marie to resemble genuine, ‘cooked this morning’ sausages, and chopped bacon floating in a sea of broth designed to resemble… well, chopped bacon floating in a sea of broth, I guess. Truth is, it wasn’t too bad – it just resembled they typical US budget hotel approach to food: something to fill you up and get you on your way. Which, come to think of it, was pretty well exactly what we did.

Sadly our run to San Francisco was cut short by a Toys R Us spied on the left so we took the first exit, bought yet more must-have purchases (a Lego Ninjagu Ice-Dragon and more Zoobles) and passed through heavy traffic, all the more surprising given it was only around 11:00am Sunday, on Highway 101 north, turning into Van Ness and going straight past our hotel at the corner of Van Ness and Broadway, before I finally got the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.

We headed north through Marin County, which is a sensational place, and no doubt heinously expensive – it’s essentially a country hamlet located only a couple of miles from the Golden Gate, and hence, civilization. You’d never know how close you were to the rat race by the feel of the region, as it’s all pick-up trucks, weatherboard houses, and a relaxed, bucolic pace. Apparently it’s one of the most affluent counties in the United States. I’d believe it.

Ultimately we successfully navigated our way to Muir Woods, only to find it was the mad-house which might be expected given everyone no doubt had the same idea as us: a walk in the woods on a beautiful Sunday morning. We ended up parking a mile away, and began the slow trudge up to the main entrance, collected a couple of treasure hunt brochures for the kids on the way in (which ultimately, after much effort, ended up rewarding them with a sticker each, much to their collective disbelief), and started our way up the man boardwalk through groves of Coastal Redwoods, one of the very few remaining stands left in the San Francisco area thanks to the foresight of William Kent, who not only  bought it with his own money, but then gave it over to the greater public and, with one last act of outrageous humility, insisted it be named after the naturalist John Muir, despite others nearly insisting it be named after Kent himself. Somehow I just can’t imagine Steve Jobs buying a massive tract of land, donating it to the public and insisting on it being named the David Attenborough Woods. Prove me wrong, Steve.

Needless to say it was a magical place, all slanted beams of sunlight, fast-flowing brooks and impenetrable groves massed with dense, natural plantings of various native flora. Regardless however, I’ve got to run the risk of incurring the wrath of friends of mine who live in San Francisco and admit that the coastal redwoods just can’t hold a candle to the sheer, outrageous bulk of the giant Sequoia redwoods in Mariposa Grove out near Yosemite National Park. Sensational, absolutely, but not the most sensational.

Not in any rush to get back to San Francisco, we took our time, only to find the weather change for the worse and what was initially just a heavy mist finally settled into permanently, steady drizzle. Somehow though, it was of little impact – the rain falling in the forest just heightened the experience, even when I opted to go pick up the car to save the kids from getting soaked, and had a one mile walk along wet roads, water streaming off me. How bad can it be, after all? I’d rather be walking in Muir Woods on holidays, soaked to the bone, than be soaked to the bone pretty much anywhere else.

The car steaming up thanks to the crush of bodies and wet clothing, we rejoined bumper-to-bumper traffic on Highway 1, forked out $6 to take the south-bound route over the Golden Gate, and a few minutes later were squeezing into an impossibly small carpark in the basement of the Manor Inn. For $69, plus tax, it’s a bit of a bargain given its location – nothing flash, and no breakfast, but a decent sized room with two queen sized beds, coffee and tea making facilities, a microwave and a fridge is hard to argue with.

We ended up having a night in, making a dinner – of sorts – cobbled together from random pickings in our suitcases and backpacks, ready for an early start, a hopeful end to the drizzly conditions, and a day of walking tomorrow.

~ Herb Caen

Road to Nowhere

For the first time on our trip, we were faced with the prospect of a day of driving with nothing to break the monotony – no visits to pueblos or national parks, in fact nothing much at all. Our sole objective was to try and go from Ridgecrest to somewhere-close-to-San-Francisco, nothing more. A bit of a change, and a somewhat depressing one at that.

After a breakfast that’s seemed to have the staff at the Hampton Inn on the hop due to unexpected numbers of people staying (we ended up getting doled out with small cartons of frozen juice to keep us from running amok when the normal juice dispenser had long run out) we hit the road once again, driving south at first toward Mojave then swung west to Bakersfield, finally joining I-5 north for a distant San Francisco through steadily driving rain and uninspiring scenery.

Thankfully everything changed when we finally turned off I-5 to head to Gilroy, past the San Luis Reservoir State Recreational Area, where the bland, recurring scenery finally transmogrified into something straight out of Middle Earth, all luminous green hillocks, bodies of water glinting in sunlight shafting through heavy grey clouds, and small clusters of hobbits running merrily about, displaying absolutely no road sense whatsoever.

We passed through Gilroy, somewhat depressed that the drive to the town was better than the town itself. Nothing wrong with Gilroy, as such – it’s the quintessential California farming town, with quaint roadside fruit stalls with names like the Cheery Cherry, Glorious Grape and Murderous Melon, still mostly, sadly, yet to re-open from the winter break. Driving through fields awash in water – well, not literally though the fields, but on roads through the fields, we joined 101 north, mashed the foot to the floor (which, in the Ford Escape, achieves nothing whatsoever except a slight increase in engine noise and a drop in MPG, all for no perceptible forward momentum) and joined the throng of traffic heading toward San Jose.

Our plan was sketchy, at best, as it often seems to be, and could be summarized as “find accommodation somewhere”. For reasons unknown, this stretch of the USA was completely devoid of any signage advertising ‘gas, food, lodging’ at any exits we passed. With San Jose looming closer, and nothing spotted thus far, we opted (possibly in error) to join 280 north in the hopes an Interstate would yield better prospects.

It didn’t.

Eventually, strategy went out the window, we drove past the first of three exits to Redwood City, and decided to take the middle of three alternatives – “when in doubt, choose the second exit” has been our mantra for some time, though rarely, if ever, tested. Turns out it was yet another error of judgement.

Redwood City – at least, the part we passed through – seemed like a great place to raise a family, all large blocks, weatherboard houses and hilly, tree-lined streets where you can apparently still leave bikes in the front yard without fear of them being stolen. We descended hill after consecutive hill, hoping for something – without success - and eventually landed downtown, milling about aimlessly. After some period of driving back and forth, we stumbled upon the salubrious Pacific Euro Hotel, but I realized it wasn’t the place for a young family when I walked into a small lobby to encounter a dozing denizen in a wooden chair, and a counter behind seemingly bullet-proof glass.

We opted to press on.

Ultimately, success was close at hand. After a couple of hot laps of El Camino Real and Woodside we found the Pacific Inn (seemingly unrelated to the its more international namesake encountered earlier), made a quick pit-stop to Target to pick up yet more urgent toy purchases for the kids, then drove onto Denny’s for a thoroughly forgettable meal served by the forgettable Sonya, who forgot about our cutlery and a request for more water… so we forgot about her tip.

Tomorrow… San Francisco. It’ll be great to be back.

The lowest point in my life

After a day of outlet shopping, and an evening of gondola rides, water volcanoes, musical fountains and a couple of things closed outright due to sudden, high winds (the pirate show outside Treasure Island, and more critically the Eiffel Tower at Paris) we were ready to get away from a city and back into relative wilderness. We went for one last lap down the eastern side of the Strip from The Venetian to Paris, found (with some relief) the Eiffel Tower elevators were open once more, and headed up to the top floor for what is arguably one of the best aerial views of Vegas, without hiring a helicopter. About the only minuses are the level of haze present in the air, and that from this altitude you really can fully appreciate what a dive Vegas is once you get a couple of blocks away from the Strip.

We returned to the Venetian to collect the car and check out, and finally left Las Vegas via a quick visit to New York, New York and Excalibur, heading via 160 West to Tecopa, then Shoshone, and finally into Death Valley from the south.

It was not at all what I expected it to be – in my mind, Death Valley would only be canyons, salt-flats and sand dunes but it’s a far more complex environment than this. Approaching from the southern end, you drive progressively lower through a long, wide, valley, and at the time of year were visiting, wildflowers were starting to bloom in a myriad of colours and shapes, including a truly weird thing which looked to be hair-like, bright orange spores or fungus, tangled around host plants.

Regardless of this initial surprise however, Death Valley’s primary claims to fame still have to be that it possesses some of the most freakishly wild and colourful looking desert country in the US, and that it is home to the lowest spot in the United States, and one of the lowest on earth – Bad Water, at 282 feet below sea level. Even more remarkable is that it’s only around 80 miles from Mount Whitney, the highest point in the ‘lower 48’. Bad Water has nothing, but in the nothingness is its beauty. We stopped at Bad Water, and experienced both the scenery and the slightly surreal sight of dozens of people wandering, often seemingly slightly dazed, off onto the salt flats as though being called to attendance at a religious cult.

A few miles on from Bad Water is the Devils Golf Course, which can perhaps be most accurately described as a coral reef made out of mud and salt. It’s a sea of small, jagged-edged hillocks crested with razor sharp salt crystals, all designed to tear your clothes, boots, and even you to bits if you fell on it. There’s nothing to stop you from walking out into it as far as you’d like, but after ten or twenty metres most visitors have had enough and turn back to the safety of their car. It’s apparent how Death Valley got its name – crossing from one side to the other would either mean blistering heat and razor-edged salt flats in summer, or those same salt-flats in a freezing winter, made worse by their weakening with rare amounts of rain, ensuring you crack through the buckling crust and sink into deep, thick, black mud like axle grease. As a visitor, today, it’s a sensation. 100 years ago it would have been avoided at all costs.

We drove on through truly alien landscapes featuring hills, mountains and canyons the colour of dropped tiramisu and choc-mind puddings, turning into Artists Point and, ultimately, Artists Palette where literally almost every colour of stone, sand and dust were on display, from the expected browns, blacks and tans through to orange, red, pink, white and green, then swung back onto the main road and to the small town of Furnace Creek, known as the place where the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in the US was experienced – 56.7 degrees Celsius, on July 10^th 1913. Only one other place, Al’ Aziziyah in Libya, has ever beaten it, and then only by 0. 1^o C. I’ve experienced days in Australia over 45^o C, and truth is it doesn’t seem a hell of a lot more ridiculous than 40, so perhaps beyond a certain point, any measure is redundant, at least from a human experience. Regardless, I can’t begin to imagine what it was like back in 1913, with little water and no air-conditioning. They must have bred them tough in California back then. I’m sure they still breed them tough in Libya…

Thankfully when we were there it was a considerably cooler but even in March the environment has an ability to suck the moisture from you. We stopped in for a couple of ice-creams and drinks, sat in the shade for 15 minutes knocking them back, then realizing we were running out of time and had yet to line up accommodation, we headed off west once again, via a quick pit-stop at Zabriskie Point and the Mesquite Dunes (location of minor pick-up filming of Tatooine in the original Star Wars, for any fanboys in the audience) then continued on in gathering darkness over causeways across salt lakes, and up and down narrow, winding mountain roads, finally clearing the small town of Trona and onto Ridgecrest for the evening, completely stuffed.

Thankfully for the kids at least, the local Hampton Inn had a spa, so while they frolicked (I assume they frolicked playfully, as from my experience at least it’s impossible to frolic miserably or dispassionately) I knocked over a local Walgreens and came home with a swag of American junk food. Everyone was a winner. Well, except for Walgreens.

*note some artistic license has been used in the preparation of this blog. Ridgecrest Walgreens was not robbed that night, at least not by me.

Viva Las Vegas

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth. 
~ Hunter S. Thompson

Las Vegas has all the amenities of modern society in an habitat unfit to grow a tomato.
~ Jason Love

After a couple of trips to Vegas, to be honest I’m no closer to knowing what I think of it, and more likely I’m further away from knowing than I was before I first went there.

Vegas is a charmless, heartless, grim city. Step away from the Strip and you have a mean, bleak town in the middle of the desert devoid of charm, personality or any reason to visit. It’s a soul-less, soul-sucking place, brimming with places offering constant reminders of the cost of gambling, once you peel the pretense of glamour and fun away – the 'real' Vegas is Pay Day loans, pawn shops, bail bonds, hookers and kitsch.

Vegas is a town constantly hovering somewhere between a party and a melee, far more likely to erupt into sudden, unprovoked, shocking violence than it is into a sudden good time. Vegas is less looking for fun than it is looking for a fight.

Vegas is excess, masquerading as success. It is fun, in a muddleheaded way - just don't look, or think about it, too deeply. The lights are brighter here than anywhere else, the gold more golden, the marble is more marbled, yet the effect is overkill; your senses are carpet bombed into submission. Vegas is saccharine instead of sugar – everything is even sweeter than the real thing, yet all that sweetness comes bundled with a bitter aftertaste no amount of marketing can hide.

Everyone’s a winner in Vegas, except for the losers, the down and outs, and those on the inexorable downward slide toward rock bottom. Those who have already hit the wall and have all but given up are found crouched on pedestrian over-passes holding up brown cardboard signs hoping for change, unable to even make eye contact. Those who are still desperately trying to crawl out of the quicksand sell cold bottled water to tourists, or stand on street corners wearing fluorescent orange shirts, flap-flap-flapping business cards flogging bordellos and strip clubs. Their shirts guarantee girls, delivered to your door, in 15 minutes or less. In Vegas, people are pizza.

Everyone’s your new best friend in Vegas, until you have nothing to offer, then they suddenly find a new best friend. Walk into a hotel and you’ll be swarmed with people wanting to know your life history, all about you, where you’re from, how long you’re in Vegas for…  whether you’d like a cheap show, a free show, any show at all. When you decline, the winning smile and attention fades instantly, their eyes alight on someone else, you’re history, gone, an opportunity no longer worth pursuing. Hang around in their line of sight any longer and you become a hindrance*.


Vegas is crass, masquerading as class. It’s the desperate attention-getter of high school, doing whatever it can to be noticed, yet for all its strenuous efforts it's quickly forgotten. It’s a city where the meek attempt reinvention into what they wish they'd become as adults: in Vegas, everyone’s just won at the tables, or is a suave, cocktail lounge type in a crushed velour jacket, or is a totally extreme party dude, or a princess on the town. Everyone’s a roaring success. Everyone’s a winner. Everyone has limitless quantities of cash. All possess superhuman endurance and livers immune to cirrhosis. If everyone in Vegas partied the way they’d like everyone back home to believe they’d partied, only cockroaches and Charlie Sheen would survive.

Like any party, it comes to an end. Eventually there’s always a tomorrow, even in Vegas. People still walk the Strip by daylight, of course, still clutching drinks. The content of the cup provides no indication to the time of day – 10:00am could see it full of coffee, or full of tequila. Yet like any other party coming to an end, even Vegas is eventually caught in the daylight on its way home, with its make-up in a mess and its dress torn. The harsh light of day does Vegas no favours. The gold seems less golden. The marble seems less marbled. Yet the bitter aftertaste remains.

Vegas has the ability to make conservatives out of liberals, and liberals out of conservatives. It makes people blind to the misfortune of others, yet acutely aware of their own misfortunes. In Vegas, anything goes, and nobody cares. No-one has any dark secrets, or regrets, or wishes they could undo the events of the previous evening, or apologise for being such an ass, or not even come to the damn town in the first place. Nobody gets hurt, and nobody has any bad dreams in Vegas. It’s just a pity that such things only happen in fairy tales.

*Big shout out to the wanker outside Excalibur – I’ll put your photo on my website shortly.

What Happens In Vegas...

...stays in Vegas

This is the greatest case of false advertising I’ve seen since I sued the movie “The Never Ending Story.”

Lionel Hutz is wrong on this one - the Grand Canyon far exceeds any reasonable expectations. A must do activity, even for those who hate such things, is to watch a sunrise over the Grand Canyon

We set the alarm for the hideously disturbing time of 5:45am and, despite my doubts, everyone decided to wake up with me and come to Yavapai Point. Our timing would have been perfect for the forecast 6:31 sunrise, except for the fact we’d ignored the constant falling of snow the previous night. Walking out to the car park over crunching newly formed ice, to a car half buried under snow, was an exciting experience for still bleary-eyed kids, but having to scrape ice off the windscreen with a loyalty card and having to open the door to back up (the electric windows on the car had frozen shut) only served to make us late.

By the time we arrived and dashed through snow to the lookout, the sun was already just starting to crack its first rays of light over the northern rim of the Canyon. I set up as quickly as I could in half darkness with numb fingers, managing to get away a couple of hopefully decent photos before the sun had fully risen. It was an awesome experience, all golden light backlit fur-trees on the canyon walls covered in frost and snow, and a slowly sinking, dissipating mist. Fifteen minutes later it was all over - the kids were restless, Jackson’s toes were wet and cold from incessant jumping into snow banks, and we were in need of a coffee so we drove onto the café at Yavapai Lodge for a middling breakfast of pancakes, sausages, danishes and the ubiquitous, crap coffee, then returned to the hotel to book it for another night, and returned once more to the Canyon.

It was a far better day than the previous one, all blue skies, fluffy clouds, and only the fresh snow betrayed the conditions of the previous day. We walked the rim from Pipe Creek Vista toward Yaki Point for maybe 20 minutes before Elise had decided she’d had enough, so she and I returned to the car while Nic and Jackson walked on to Yaki Point, then got a shuttle bus (the only means of transport allowed from Yaki Point) back to the car.

Well, that was the plan anyway. After an hour and a half of waiting, including maybe half a dozen or more return drives from Pipe Creek to the Yaki Point turn-off, looking for Nic and Jackson, they finally turned up, all chuckles, wondering why we didn’t collect them. To add insult to my complete waste of half a morning sitting in a car on the Canyon rim, they’d also spent 15 minutes photographing elk only a few metres from them. Glad they had a top time, while I sat around fuming. Apparently they didn’t realize that only shuttle buses were allowed from Yaki. I’d have thought people getting constantly on and off shuttle buses (without being dropped off in cars) every 15 minutes might have been a subtle hint, but apparently not.

We drove back to the Visitors Centre with me still in surly silence, and Nic took the kids to the Visitors Centre to attend a Ranger talk necessary for them to complete their Junior Ranger certification. I took the opportunity along the way to be dropped off at the Yaki Point turn-off, where I completed the walk from there to the Point, then back along the rim to Pipe Creek. I got to see the elk – from maybe 50 metres away – which partially lessened my anger, but with such awesome conditions and scenery it was impossible to stay angry (despite trying as much as I could), and by the time I’d made it back to Pipe Creek I was over it. I picked up the bus back to the Visitors Center around 4:30, dropped Nic and the kids back at the hotel so they could watch the Grand Canyon IMAX movie, and I headed back once again via shuttle to Yaki Point to run off a time-lapse of sunset over the Grand Canyon. It was an epic, perfect sunset and my camera clacked away once every twenty seconds looking toward the north rim, then east toward the Temple of Vishhu, while I chatted with a very friendly young couple from Montreal who were also taking photos on the rim, and dreading the thought of returning to camp in a tent in the snow. I had to physically restrain one of them from leaping off the cliff when I told them, upon hearing they were heading to Bryce Canyon in the next couple of days, that it was even colder and snowier there. Not really, of course, but they were discussing, in French, the possibility of staying in a hotel instead. I wouldn’t be so proud as to insist on camping either, in those conditions.

Waves of tourist came and went, with a large glut of highly irritating Japanese turning up 10 minutes before sunset, fighting on the cliff, yelling, throwing snowballs at one another (and nearly collecting my camera in the process) then thankfully, and with sweet, sweet relief, then left 5 minutes after sunset.

Fifteen minutes later the last group went, leaving just me and the rim, alone, in darkness. The camera was the sole source of light, continuing to fire shots every 20 seconds until one by one the stars started to appear over the rim. I fleetingly thought of taking some star trails but the thought of a 3 mile trudge in darkness back to the Visitors Centre in sub zero conditions strangely didn’t appeal. Finally I conceded defeat – the snow, ice and biting cold had gotten the upper hand despite four layers of clothing and two sets of gloves. When the lights of the second last shuttle of the evening lurched out of the darkness I experienced a strange sense of relief, as though its arrival had highlighted my isolation. It was clearly time to return to the hotel.

I was the sole passenger on the oddly long, slow drive back to the Visitors Centre. He and I chatted about travel, his desires to visit Australia, and prime Canyon points (he recommended Pima, for those who are interested) then I was out of the bus, alone once again in a snow-swept car park, pools of orange sodium vapor lighting marking the way back to the car. The drive back to Tusayan was bitter-sweet – I was mindful that I wouldn’t have the chance to do any more sunset trips, and we wouldn’t be doing any canyon walks due to the icy conditions, making an already perilous walk for small children an insane proposition.

Next time, maybe.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

When I peeled the curtains cautiously back at 8:10am, fully expecting to see a magical sunrise, it was with massive relief that my lack of optimism was finally rewarded. Yet another miserable day, incredibly even more miserable than the previous one, was on show – flat, grey clouds and flat, grey light. Only a flat, grey fog draped like a funeral shroud over the tops of the mountains made for anything even slightly different to what I’d turfed myself out for the past few days. I could barely contain my joy.

We took care of breakfast in short time, then headed off for the Grand Canyon, pausing at the Mean Bean for a couple of real coffees instead of the dishwater you get at hotels. While there, watching the rain come down, I noticed it had finally stopped coming down and was instead coming sideways, and occasionally coming up, landing on the windscreen in small, white flecks. It was snowing at Zion. Only just, but snowing all the same.

Heading up through the tunnel on our way back to Orderville it was clear what we had experienced in Springdale was only a fraction of what was happening in the hills – a thick blanket of fresh snow covered Utah Juniper and red rocks, with large clumps of snow, like soap suds, continuing to fall. Ten minutes out of the tunnel we finally found a decent pullout and stopped, taking photographs as the snow continued to fall and the kids finally had an opportunity to get smacked in the head with a proper snowball thrown in anger (by me, mostly), rather than the icy, potentially deadly missiles of a couple of days earlier at Bryce. Half an hour later, faces and hands numb, boots wet, we finally tore ourselves away, set the heater on the car to “rotisserie” and drove through a half-sleet, half snow to Orderville, then Kanab. It was an absolute blast. I’m sure people who live in places where it really snows hate the stuff , but every time I’ve been lucky enough to drive in snow it’s been magic – I love the way the stuff comes in at you sideways as you drive, making you feel as though you’re flying upward into it. Every bit of scenery , from bland to spectacular, is made better by its addition, and the juxtaposition of a desert landscape and a blanket of downy white, as was the case at Zion, is just about impossible to resist.

In time, and with a descent in elevation the magic inevitably disappeared along with the snow as it slowly sublimated to sleet, then finally to thoroughly charmless rain. Darting into Kanab fleetingly for some supplies, we turned east through relatively unspectacular scenery, until finally, descending once again, with the first fingers of Lake Powell extending toward us from the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area I spotted a sign highlighting a dinosaur exhibit, and hung a right into Grand Escalante National Monument, and it’s visitors centre, maybe 10 miles north of Page.

It was a fortuitous decision, for along with an excellent exhibit of dinosaur remains found in the area, we happened to be lucky enough to encounter a talk by Merle Graffam, a largely self-taught paleontologist from the area who happened to discover a fearsome predator armed with 15 inch claws, Nothronychus Graffami. The eponymous Merle was an excellent talker, explaining a brief history of dinosaurs and their now widely-accepted descent into modern birds, in a simple yet unpatronising way that Sir David Attenborough would no doubt approve of. For my mind, the most sobering thought was that modern humans have only been practicing agriculture for around 11,000 years, about the same time that the last ice-age abated. Unfortunately for us, we’ve only got another 8,000 to 9,000 years left before everything in the continental US from Kentucky, northward, is under masses of ice up to several miles thick. His belief was that global warming is likely not having as significant a global impact as many believe, yet is definitely having significant impacts in more localized environments. Who knows – without a hint of sarcasm, maybe the return of the ice-age and global warming will offset one another, to at least some degree. If they don’t, we’d better learn how to grow strawberries in tundra real quick.

We continued on to Page and, a few miles south, found the trail to Horseshoe Bend. After a brief clamber along an undulating path over sand dunes and a rocky path we found ourselves, suddenly and precipitously at the top of sudden, sheer cliff-tops, the Colorado River following a huge, sweeping ben a thousand feet below. As seems to be standard issue, there was the usual smattering of morons all standing on vertiginous, crumbling ledges, acting desperately, thoroughly gnarly and extreme, and at least in part I’d love them to have had a massive and sudden scare. Not death, of course – that would just be perverse, right?  - but maybe just a 50 foot drop, a broken leg, that sort of thing. Still, as I’ve noted before, it appears humans have an innate ability to tempt fate without Fate taking the bait. Thankfully. For the morons, anyway.

We returned to the car, noticing new scratches on the doors that we hoped Budget wouldn’t, and pressed on to the Grand Canyon. I’d been lucky enough to have been here before, back in 2004, but truth be told I’m sure you’d never get bored, or fully come to grips, with the scale of the canyon, nor it’s sensational viewpoints. If anyone ever asks you to nominate the best spot, the correct answer is ‘anywhere’. It’s all awesome, yet unlike almost any other place on the planet, no photo ever comes anywhere near close to doing it justice. I’ve seen photographs of the Grand Canyon by the very best of the world’s photographers, and, to varying degrees, everyone is just wasting their time.

We visited the famed, Mary Coulter designed Watch-House (which is now nearing the completion of an extensive renovation project) at the Desert View lookout, and drove on to Najavo Point, then Lipan Point, crunching about on frosted snow and half-glazed puddles, yet by the time we got to Moran, then Grandview Point it was no longer worth the effort – we didn’t even get out, as a thick fog, aided and abetted by the resurgence of falling snow, had reduced visibility to almost nothing. Still, driving along the Canyon rim at 20 miles an hour, watching for wildlife as the snow slowly piled up on the road was a pretty sensational experience. Still, it was getting dark, the snow fall was becoming heavier, and we were keen to get to our – for once, reserved – hotel room at the very nice Canyon Plaza Hotel, where I’d stayed with my parents years ago at a bargain rate.

Naturally, it didn’t quite work out that way. The Canyon Plaza Hotel had no knowledge of our existence, despite us booking the room on their own website. To make matters worse, the dolt behind the front desk had rooms available, but wouldn’t give one to us at the rate advertised on their own website – I could have actually used my phone to make a booking in the lobby of the damn place, and would have saved $10. In the end we couldn’t be arsed arguing, and drove on to the Red Feather Lodge which had big, warm rooms rooms for nearly $40 less.

My recommendation to you – skip the Canyon Plaza Hotel. That is, unless people from the Canyon Plaza Hotel are reading this and want to get in touch with me to offer me a return trip to Arizona and a free night’s accommodation to make up for it, in which case I’ll shamelessly change my tune.

Sunrise at the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Well, that’s the plan anyway. Here’s hoping.

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals…except the weasel

Surely there can’t be that many non-sunsets in a row? Yep, surely there can. Woke up at some hideous time of morning – in part inspired by Chris West’s photography (damn you, Chris!) -  loaded up the car, and drove out to Zion in somewhat brisk darkness to the Towers of the Patriarchs.

I headed up into the hills in near complete darkness, wondering fleetingly what animals were out there with me – deer or wild turkeys most likely, rather than the more elusive mountain lions or bears. Regardless, if I’d heard a noise in the bushes behind me I’d have been out of there. Trudging along, tripod banging against my legs, gear strung around my neck, I finally found what looked like a pretty promising spot about 100m up and started setting up, only to realize I’d left the camera mount for the tripod. Without much choice in the matter I went back down and up as fast as possible to not miss any blazingly glorious sunrise, only to discover yet again that mother nature failed to play ball. No magnificent blue light (see Wankers, Photo) – in fact no light at all other than a now typical watery greyness slowly building in intensity from insipid to spectacularly uneventful. Another morning of lost sleep, for nothing.

With the wise words of Homer J Simpson in my head (see title), I surrendered – yet again – and decided I wouldn’t waste my time again, at least not on tomorrow’s last morning at Zion. I headed back to the hotel, picked up everyone, and we hit Zion in what, thankfully, turned out to be sensational walking weather, even if it was lousy photographic weather.

A morning spent doing the Riverside Walk at the end of the road into Zion yielded brief but rewarding sightings of a squirrel and deer for the kids, then headed to Weeping Rock – it’s a spectacular sight, and arguably offers one of the best views of the valley. After a brief clamber up a steep path you end up either in a cliff cave, or under an overhanging cliff (depending on your viewpoint), constantly dripping, and with access almost completely behind the waterfall. Along the way are endless interpretive boards explaining all the different plants, which Elise insisted on me going through one by one.

Deciding to make a quieter day of things given the breakneck pace of the past couple of weeks, we had lunch back at the hotel, then drove once again back out of the tunnel to do the Canyon Overlook walk, a 1 mile walk along a rough stone and step path wrapped partially along the side of cliffs (where we finally got to see, and photograph, Big Horn sheep for the first time), then for the last third or so out over the plateau, ending in a sensational view right the way down the valley and over the tunnel access road. The hazy conditions didn’t matter one bit, but my time was spent worrying about what the kids were doing on a largely unfenced cliff-face, as well as shaking my head in disbelief at the halfwits attempting to balance on precipitous drops in strong winds for photo opportunities, without any apparent care, regard for their own well being, or utilization of any brain-cells. The sheer number of morons out there fascinates me, with the only thing more fascinating being that the vast majority don’t manage to kill themselves. It’s not for lack of trying. Perhaps they’re so dense they can’t even manage that successfully.

At Jackson’s insistence, we rounded out the day at a Mexican restaurant where a huge margarita (followed by a scotch or two in the hotel room afterward) helped put the morning’s complete waste of time in perspective.

I won’t be getting up early tomorrow though. Knowing my luck, it’ll be a sensational sunrise.

I'm going to be Iron, Like a Lion, in Zion*

A frosty morning beckoned at Bryce Canyon – we woke up to a scene unchanged from the night before. A thick carpet of sparking, iced snow still clung to the roof of the hotel, coffee coloured heaps of it pushed to the sides of the car park. After a sensational breakfast just behind the lobby we headed out to pick up the trail where we’d left off the night before, starting with Natural Bridge and finishing with Inspiration Point, sliding gracelessly over icy paths and watching idiots take their own lives in their hands, inching out along snowy cornices in the hopes of a slightly better photo opportunity, hoodoos and gulches a thousand feet below.

After a brief snow fight, a somewhat lame snowman build exercise (the snow was frozen pretty well solid – it was more like trying to build one with ice than snow), me disappearing up to my thighs in a rare patch of the soft stuff (attemping to photograph trees burned black by a forest fire some years before) and an impromptu snowball fight with minor collateral damage we collected a pretty wretched cup of coffee at Ruby’s then left Bryce, headed down Long Valley for Zion National Park.

Apart from a brief bit of misfortune at a combination Buffalo farm and log cabin B&B (where we took a look at the cabins, decided they were too much at $109 for a standard cabin and $229 for a two level one, then endured the kids griping for next half hour about how much they’d like to have lived in a log cabin, despite never mentioning it before), we finally arrived at Orderville and headed west, to the eastern entrance of the park.

I’d been to Zion before, but only via Springdale to the south - heading this way in was a magical experience. We passed through a tunnel built back in the early days of the park, so narrow that modern RVs require an escort to proceed through it, while traffic from the other side has to wait. It’s an amazing engineering feat, positioned only a few metres behind the cliff faces, and has multiple bends. At the apex of each, a window framed in concrete and cut into the cliff face offers a brief, spectacular vista of the park to come. The only tragedy was that you couldn’t stop. Ultimately, with the exception of the windows, the entire drive of around ¾ of a mile is a quite dark, relentless, claustrophobic experience - even though I don’t suffer from it, there’s still a palpable sense of relief when the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel comes into view and you pop out the other side.

We continued down through switchbacks, layered rock formations, Ponderosa, Utah Juniper and Pinyon Pine and sheer cliffs, until we hit the Zion valley floor. As had been the case for the last few days, the prospect of a spectacular sunrise was looking unlikely so, after confirming there was no accommodation at Zion Lodge inside the park, we headed out to Springdale and picked up a Quality Inn room for a song.

Springdale has changed colossally since my last visit in 2004 – my impression back then was a small, scrappy town at the entrance of the park, with a small cluster of shops and old house under cottonwoods and aspen. Now, it bears a similarity to Sedona, my reference point for small towns grown large. Although it’s increased in size, it’s a rare exception to the rule in that the expansion has worked in its favour rather than against it – it’s still a small town, but the more tatty places have been swept away and replaced with art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops and a general feeling of prosperity, well being and optimism.

My own well being and optimism was swept away in a tsunami of envy when I visited the photographic gallery of David J West – the guy takes simply masterful shots of not only Zion National Park, but pretty well anywhere the guy happens to point his Linhof, Hasselblad or, no doubt, box brownie. If he has an Arca Swiss ball-head or $10K Leica Noctilux f/0.95, he’s entirely entitled to it. Just to really add insult to injury, he was at the gallery, introduced himself, and was a sensational, down to earth guy, happy to chat, share ideas and talk. To make matters worse, he’s only young – 35, maybe – and his wife, and their kid, were both in the gallery, which felt more like you were walking into someone’s home than their office. It’d be far easier to just hate him and be done with it!

With stomachs rumbling we left, passing shops selling artistic brass windmills, and headed for the Pizza and Noodle Company on the main street to carb up on a couple of pizzas and a microbrew, then had an early night, optimistic that tomorrow’s sunrise would be better than today’s.

*No, I have no idea what Bob Marley was thinking either. Dude had clearly scored some bitchin’ weed, though.

Sure is a hell of a place to lose a cow

…which of course, didn’t eventuate. Yet another bleak day, a leaden sky, a wall of clouds, and no prospects whatsoever. About the only source of mild amusement was a couple of Proper Photographers.

It’s my experience, regrettably, that nothing attracts wankers like photography. And yes, I freely say this knowing I’ve just lumped myself into the same group – guilt by association. Generally, photographers seem to fall into three broad groups:

·    Point and shooters. People who want to use a camera to take a photo of a scene, or a group of people, as a keepsake rather than setting out to create Art with a capital A.

·    Serious photographers. I’d put myself into this camp – I take photography seriously, but figure it’s still meant to be an enjoyable pursuit, and shouldn’t need to result in the complete loss of personality which comes with the third category…

·    The Photo Wanker. This person continually talks about megapixels, f/stops, and circles of confusion. They typically believe Nikon is better than Canon, or Canon is better than Panasonic, or Leica is better than God. They happily shell out $2000 on an Arca Swiss ball-head, or $10K on a Leica Noctilux f/0.95, so they can tell everyone how they happily shelled out $2000 on an Arca Swiss ball-head, or $10K on a Leica Noctilux f/0.95. Above all, they’re a surly bunch, rarely making eye contact with anyone else, sighing loudly when anyone asks them a question, and they have a fondness for cable knits and snow-white beards, especially the males.

The Proper Photographers I met at Moab were, without doubt, Photo Wankers. There they were, a man and a woman, both retirees, lining up shots of the Three Gossips in miserable, flat, featureless light, doing their best to ignore me. Eventually the old guy engaged me in harrumpfed converstion, but his female partner (I assume she was female – they both had beards) resolutely ignored me. Eventually she latched onto my comment about the lack of a sunrise. “Oh”, she sighed through ill-fitting dentures, dribbling a little, “you should have been here half an hour ago – beautiful, blue light. You’ll have to get up earlier in future if you want to take good photos”.

I told her I was travelling with a couple of kids, but when I’m an old retiree like her, I’ll probably do the same. She looked up from her Arca Swiss ball-head, aback, as I walked away, leaving them to their digital posturing, muttering about circles of confusion and boring the living shit out of anyone within earshot. Sadly, it was only me who was suffering.

I surrendered to the lack-of-sunrise and headed back to the hotel, picking up a couple of coffees along the way, and collected the balance of fellow travelers to head back into Arches National Park for a brief, final time. They did the Park Avenue walk, I took a few mostly half-hearted shots of the La Sal mountains and various rocks in the way of them, then we turned the car around, leaving what looked, tragically, like a rapidly improving day in our rear view mirror.

On the way out, and having collected the latest round of Junior Park Ranger certifications for the kids (they returned to the car rattling with their NPS bling) we dropped by at Copper Ridge maybe 20 miles up the road, drove up a short dusty track then walked up another one, and eventually, squinting at rock formations, saw Apatosaurus and Allosaurus footprints frozen in time, like Neil Armstrong’s boot-print on the moon.

With a solid day of driving ahead of us we continued north to Green River and started west along I-70 through scenery far too spectacular to be associated with an interstate. Capitol Reef, a ragged spine of saw-toothed mountain ranges jutting abruptly from the landscape, the tops of the peaks catching the sun ran with us for 10 miles or so, then we cut through them and continued our climb, ever higher, passing remnant pockets of snow scattered in shadowed nooks under Juniper and Pinyon Pine.

Three quarters on the way out of Utah we finally turned south toward Panguitch, through winding valleys, past the quite possibly legendary (and, no doubt, world famous) Big Rock Candy Mountain store, then took a left, headed through Red Canyon in Dixie Forest, and around 3:30pm finally made it to Bryce Canyon.

Given we had the luxury of sunshine for the first time in a couple of days, we decided to get stuck into the Park, heading to the end of the one-way road to then return back to Bryce, viewpoint by viewpoint. Rainbow Point was the first, and although very different in character from the classic images of Bryce Canyon – all hoodoos and abrupt canyons and gulches – it was still absolutely sensational, and waist deep in powdery snow. This, of course, led to all manner of mayhem, hair and clothing matted with snow, and early onset hypothermia.

Arriving at Black Birch Canyon we bumped into a family of Aussies – amazingly, from Brighton in Adelaide, who’d lived in Canada for a year on a teachers exchange program and were slowly, half-heartedly making their way back to LA and, ultimately, home. They seemed like top people – the guy was a serious photographer and, to the best of my determinations, was absolutely not a Photo Wanker (hell, he didn’t even carry a tripod!) – so we exchanged contact details and agreed to at least try and get back in touch when they returned to Adelaide.

Racing through Ponderosa Canyon, Agua Canyon and Natural Bridge, we went straight to Sunset Point where I proceeded to freeze off any changes of future offspring, firing off a time-lapse and listening to Chinese tourists yelling to one another, despite standing shoulder by shoulder. I can only imagine they weren’t there for the serenity. As would also be expected, the place was knee-deep in Photo Wankers, awash in digital testosterone, all furiously attempting to out-nerd one another with gadgets, HDR photography, mad-crazy bracketing, and coyly casting covetous glances about to try and discreetly see how big their Canons were compared with everyone else’s.

Finally the nerds left, the crowds melted (oh! The irony) away, and I was left with a couple of foolhardy desperados capturing the last, stray rays of light peeking over the rim. Ultimately though, enough was enough, and we headed to the oasis like warmth of the entirely awesome Best Western Bryce Canyon, where an impromptu feeding frenzy of room-nuked hot dogs and apple pie ensued. Decided to skip sunrise photos in favour of some desperately needed sleep, and to try and wait until Grand Canyon.

I got up when it was still dark for THIS?

Having to set an alarm to wake up early isn’t the best, but it completely rocks compared with the effect of having someone else set an alarm for you without your knowledge. Around 6:30am the clock-radio decided to spring into life, with seemingly no amount of pounding it, pressing every button, and pulling at the power cord making a damn bit of difference. Eventually I managed to kill it, fell back into bed, and decided after a few seconds to get up anyway, to capitalize on an early start with some sunrise photography.

In retrospect it was a dud decision. Driving past a park entrance booth in darkness and heading up switchbacks under towering Kayenta cliff-faces it was pretty apparent there wasn’t going to be much of a sunrise, and when I arrived at Turret Arch and started up the sandstone path my pessimism wasn’t rewarded. Hoping there might be a slim chance of something worth photographing, I set the camera up on a time-lapse (maybe hoping to get some of that Monument Valley magic happening), and left it clicking away every ten seconds while I trudged about looking at South and North Window once again, just in the off chance of finding something better. Nothing presented itself, I sat down in the dirt next to the tripod, and after forty more minutes of nothing happening, a fleeting, watery beam of sunlight finally broke through a wall of dark cloud, weakly lit Turret Arch - for maybe 30 seconds -  then left it in darkness once again. I packed up, less than impressed, dragged everything back down hill and headed back to Moab to wake up Nic and the kids and head out for blueberry pancakes at the Pancake Haus next to the Ramada. It was staffed with a team of interchangeable, affable young guys all apparently from the same, unnamed, eastern European country, where presumably pancakes are the national dish. Wherever it was, it wasn’t Germany. Maybe it should be called the Pancake Hostel.

After successfully negotiating breakfast we headed back to Arches and drove through to the end of the park to the Devils Garden walk. The weather I’d experienced earlier that day hadn’t improved to any great degree but it was perfect for walking a trail, so with Jackson and Elise leading the way, discovering various hide-outs, animal bones and secret passageways during their progress, we made it through to Landscape and Double O Arch.

Landscape Arch is ludicrous in its dimensions – over 300 feet long and in some places barely 6 feet thick, it’s surely in imminent danger of collapse. Since 1991, three separate instances of rock falls have been observed, with one event resulting in around 70 feet of rock dropping away from the thinnest section of the arch. The trail, which once led under the arch, has since been cut short, and rangers now recommend in light of this, that if you’re going to see Landscape Arch, you should see it today rather than put it off. Their advice may sound dramatic, but the 71 foot wide Wall Arch (formerly 12^th largest of all the arches at Arches National Park completely collapsed, without witness, sometime between August 4^th and 5^th 2008. It really does happen, and looking at Landscape Arch, if I were a betting man, I’d be putting money on it being gone within my lifetime. Then again, it could stand for another thousand years. We simply don’t know.

Obviously concerned that the arches were getting too much attention, a chipmunk put on a bit of a show for the kids, darting back and forth across the end of the Landscape Arch pathway, presumably having had some success in extracting food from tourists with this gambit in the past. On this occasion, at least, he performed without the customary tip, and eventually gave up in apparent disgust and slipped away between boulders and fallen logs, lying in wait, no doubt, for the next group of passers-by.

After enduring still more secret hide-outs and mysterious dead ends deemed worthy of investigation, we left Devils Garden and headed to Sand Dune Arch, one I’d never seen before and which was, in comparison with the majority, quite startling. It’s only small, maybe 30 feet across, but it’s in a location unlike any others, reached by a short walk around a sandstone monolith, then through a couple of relatively narrow, sandy-floored fissures. In its isolated position, wind howling about it, sand drifting up against its walls, it’s very impressive and evocative, and feels like it’d be far more at home in Petra, Jordan than Moab, Utah.

I left Nic and the kids completing their certification for Junior Park Ranger induction and did a quick, 2km return trip to the apparently incorrectly named Broken Arch, then, deciding I was pretty well arched out for the day drove on to the Wolfe Ranch, start of the Delicate Arch climb. I’d done it alone back in 2004, so given Elise had decided she’d had quite enough of walking for the day, I left Nic and Jackson to head off in light drizzle, and kept her distracted for the next hour and a half. We drove aimlessly around the park as the rain really began to come in, so I headed back to the hotel to get dry clothes and towels, thoughts of the pair of them careening down a wet slickrock hillside in my mind. By the time I’d returned, they’d already made it back to Wolfe Ranch, had photographed the arch in a likely pretty rare state – wet, and without tourists – and we called it a day in the park.

Back at the Visitors Centre Jackson and Elise were solemnly sworn in and presented with certificates and gold coloured plastic park ranger badges to add to their collection from Joshua Tree and Petrified Forest, and we headed back to the hotel, with me convinced tomorrow was bound to offer a far better sunrise.

In Utah, nobody can hear you scream

After a sensational afternoon and evening of successful time-lapse photography, excellent Navajo food, and a bottle of wine on a balcony overlooking monument valley I wouldn’t have been the least bit regretful if I’d set the alarm only to wake up to a scene of foggy bleakness, but thankfully my good luck continued – iridescent multicoloured bands of illuminated cloud rippled behind mesas, mittens and buttes, receding into distant, pre-dawn mist. What little life was left in my camera batteries was spent taking photos as fast as I could until the sun came up, and the warmth of the early rays cooled off into normal daylight. A sensational experience, and one I’d love to have the opportunity to experience again.

We had breakfast in the room, packed up suitcases, jackets, hiking boots and assorted frippery collected along the way which now threatened to overwhelm the boot and start spilling into the back seat, then drove from the visitors centre to the campground for a “3 mile” Wildcat Trail around West Mitten butte. Everything started beautifully, it was sunny yet cool – perfect walking weather – but somehow we missed a trail marker coming around the back of the butte and had to resort to a little off-road navigation over shale hillocks, sand dunes and low scrub, using our distant car on the mesa as a point of reference, before we finally made it back onto the trail. We arrived back at the car hot and tired, and it occurred to me this was still very early spring – I couldn’t begin to imagine how insufferably hot the valley floor would be in mid-summer. To say I’m staggered at the abilities of the Navajo to survive, and even thrive in this climate, is an understatement. Many of them living in the valley still exist much as they always have, many still without running water. Coming from our cool, air-conditioned resort, a little perspective is always a valuable thing.

I started the car and swung it’s heaving, wallowing bulk around to the north, and Moab, stopping fleetingly at Mexican Hat and Bluff then pressing on, bypassing Canyonlands National Park for another time, and ultimately, through bleary eyes, to Moab. The town has changed markedly since my last visit – what was a rather small, relatively non-descript town has grown dramatically, the streets busy with traffic, and clusters of new tourist, coffee and souvenir shops, and businesses offering tag a long 4WD, kayak, and white-water rafting tours of the Colorado River. It, now, is like Sedona was back in 2004. I can’t help but wonder if its growth will continue at the same furious pace, and when I next come to visit Moab I find I barely recognize the place, all over again.

After left briefly gasping for air at the cost of some of the hotels along the main street, we eventually checked into the Ramada Inn, and off-loaded a decent proportion of our ever burgeoning kit then headed for Arches National Park for a lightning visit in fading light. We drove toward the lower viewpoint of the famed, unofficial emblem of Utah – Delicate Arch – passing from wild red-rock country down through hills smeared with copper oxide the colour of bread mould, and thin, dark mottled patches of biological soil crust – a groundcover of cyanobacteria, mosses and fungi which slowly grow over hundreds of years, is destroyed with a single misplaced boot, and without which would cause death to the vast majority of desert plants in the region.

In increasingly blustery winds we clambered up slick-rock and irregular stairs chopped into the surrounding rock for a brief look, across a wild, windswept gorge, to Delicate Arch. In an environment of arches, Delicate Arch literally stands alone at the edge of a sweeping bowl of rock, unarguably the star attraction of Arches National Park and, quite probably, the single most famous rock arch on the planet.

We headed down along a slippery, dust-covered path – Jackson wiping out in spectacular fashion a couple of times – then continued onward to South and North Window arches through a landscape plagiarized from a Roadrunner and Wile-E-Coyote cartoon, stacked with hoodoos, arches, turrets, spires, balanced rocks, and abrupt mesas thrust up from the ground like remnant shards of broken glass left in a window-frame.

Thankfully luck was again on my side, the sun was playing ball, and I managed to capture some of its last scraps of goodwill on camera before it finally dipped below the horizon and we returned to the car, Moab, a couple of take-away Pizza’s from the friendly folk at Pasta Jays, and an early night in anticipation of a morning starring Turret Arch shimmering in alpenglow, a killer sunrise, and walls of red, red rock.

Monumental

After, for once, an outstanding sleep we headed downstairs for breakfast at the Riverwalk restaurant, styled in non-threatening Midwestern hues, dark wood paneling, and the occasional brass relief of a rodeo rider where we were met by a small, troll-like woman with long, lank red hair and a face reminiscent of someone who’d overloaded on extreme sour warheads candy. With a dour gesture and a mumbled greeting she led us to our tables then grimly went off to delight other guests with her miserable presence. Why she was grumpy, I cannot say – maybe she’d rather not be serving anyone in Farmington. Maybe – and this is a distinct possibility – she’d rather be anywhere else than Farmington.

I breakfasted in a disinterested manner, only sparking up when I noticed biscuits and gravy curdling slowly in the bain-marie. It may be an acquired taste, but I’d acquired it quickly. The lot was washed down with some of the most unrelentingly wretched coffee I’d had so far, but hey, it was hot, coffee-like, and kick started my day. Perhaps I was being slowly imbued with the spirit of the Southwest. Or maybe I was just hungry and desperate.

I went to the front counter where a very nice guy called Hoss checked me out. I wanted to ask him what Hoss meant – I thought it Southwestern for Horse, but then I read it’s also slang for a friendly person. I wondered if he was born a Hoss, or became a Hoss over time when coworkers and friends decided he was a top bloke. If his parents did name him Hoss, wasn’t it awfully presumptuous of then? Was he a Hoss, Junior – son of a Hoss, from a long line of Hosses? I’ll never know.

We loaded up the last of the gear in the car, when I was approached by either an old American Indian man, or a middle-aged one who’d lived rough. He asked if I could give him something to eat, or, failing that, some money so he could buy something to eat, and it was here the flipside of the American Dream was made real to me. I’d often laughed to myself when watching CSI: Miami – everyone lives in palatial splendor, drives BMWs and Mercs, wears designer clothes and is perma-taned and perpetually blow-waved. Sure, it’s tongue in cheek fantasy, but to my mind it perpetuates the myth that everyone is, or can be, rich, beautiful and successful.

Sometimes, sadly, poverty is not the fault of the person living in it, and it just leads to further, ongoing and stlll more crippling poverty. In the land of the free, the riches country on earth, roughly 15% of Americans at any given time are living below the poverty line, and roughly 40% fall below the poverty line at some point within an arbitrary 10 year span. The top 1% of households own more than one third of all privately held wealth in the US with the next 19% owning 50% - the 15% of remaining wealth left in the USA is shared between the remaining 80% of all Americans. More often than not, the Horatio Alger myth of hard work and determination leading to wealth and riches is exactly that, no more.

So what did I do redress this imbalance? I lied. I told him I had no food, and no money. He thanked me and walked on, and sat on a kerb at the end of the parking lot.

I walked back to the room, thinking of him, considering how he’d asked if I’d had food first and foremost, not cash, then walked downstairs, headed over to him and gave him $5. He looked at me, shook my hand, and thanked me, and to my surprise I felt tears in my eyes, told him to look after himself and walked away. For all I know he could have smoked it, injected it or drank it, but in my mind he used it to get some food, and I think I’d rather continue to believe that than to know the truth.

Lost in thought and oblivious to the irony, we headed to Wal-Mart where I bought a replacement digital camera for my six year old son on his third overseas holiday, then continued our drive westward through the balance of New Mexico, past still more weatherboard houses, ratty diners, pawnshops and pasture land strung with low, barb wire fences. One guy was being patted down by a policeman and was laughing about it, as though it was either common, or he didn’t care, or a combination of the two.

We passed Ship Rock, rising from the plains near the town of the same name, and fleetingly headed back into Arizona before heading north for five minutes to Four Corners, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet. I was a little surprised by being charged $3 a person for the privilege of standing on the spot. Oddly, it was Apache who manned it – odd, because the states, in their modern cartographic sense didn’t exist when the Apache were the dominant regional force, yet here they were charging us to visit. Perhaps, in a way, it’s some sort of partial justice. We stood, as does everyone, with hands and feet in a separate state, took photos, bought a replica Apache arrow made in the traditional style from a trader, then continued our way into Monument Valley.

In my opinion there are very few places that live up to their reputation in print and film, and Monument Valley is one of those few. Entering from the north, via Mexican Hat, it’s more like ‘guess the movie’ than a driving holiday – “that’s where Forrest Gump stopped running”, “that’s where John Ford filmed Stagecoach”, “that’s where Michael J Fox was chased by Indians in Back To The Future”.

We’d arranged to stay at The View motel after I’d learned of it at a video seminar run by Philip Bloom only a couple of weeks earlier, and it’s an awesome place, with every room having a balcony view out over the classic, Monument Valley landscape of mittens and buttes. Our room wasn’t ready, so we hit the floor , literally, doing the self-guided valley loop by car, photographing everything liberally, then returning around 4:15 and checking in.

Against my better judgment from my miserable time-lapse experiences at Joshua Tree barely a week earlier, I set the camera up on a tripod on our balcony room and set it snapping a photo every thirty seconds for the next four hours, and thankfully this time it paid off in spades – a drab, flat mid-afternoon light finally broke through a wall of clouds, projecting a spotlight across the valley floor before fleetingly lighting up the mittens in a flood of blazing red and orange light. All of it, thankfully, and with great relief, caught successfully on camera.

We ate at The View restaurant (which, for a resort style hotel was ridiculously good value, knocking back Navajo Tacos, Green Chili Stew and Chili Con Carne, all accompanied by frybread, powdered sugar (icing sugar, to those back home) and honey, before returning to the hotel proper. We sat on the balcony knocking back a California Chardonnay (the kids opted for scotch and tequila), then called it a night but before I went to bed, fired up from my success earlier that day I decided to have a crack at time-lapses of star trails. Once again –amazingly – they worked perfectly, running from 10:40 til I happened to wake up around 1:15. Hopefully the misfortune of Joshua Tree has been banished forever.

Hardly, but I live in hope.