America in 100 Days

Paris and Bally's were equally extravagant and we walked through each, making sure to see every corner.  Afterwards, we headed to a slightly less incredible casino that was selling one dollar beers to get people in the door.  Sarah and I had a few and, afterwards, Tom drove us back.  It had been a long and varied day, and none of us had any trouble sleeping.

-Joey

There's no way I was going to let Zion go by on this "blog" of ours without its own photo gallery. I was absolutely stunned by the this place, this strange, secluded marvel of nature hidden away in the rocks of Utah.

Once again, we owe our visit here to advice from our good friend Joe Jansen, who came home with a collection of remarkable photography he'd labored over during a long trip in his RV. The entire park was a living work of art, and I feel very fortunate for being able to capture it for our readers.
I expect to be packing the next post with photos, too; they may be mountainous, but they're far from monotonous. Ha ha ha.

-Tom

I got to drive through the canyon today (the driver’s seat is the best seat in the house on these scenic paths, so needless to say I was excited). We pulled up to the ranger station at the entrance of Zion Canyon National Park park and the ranger told us that we would have to park and take the mandatory free shuttle through the canyon. She explained that they close off the roads to cars during the summer because of the heavy volumes of traffic. I headed off toward the parking lot but missed the turn in. There was one more car in front of us and the boys persuaded me to keep driving to see how far we could get. Evidently the road I was on wasn’t the road through the canyon though, because I drove the whole length without being blocked at any point.

There wasn’t too much in the way of scenery on this stretch of road besides two tunnels built in the 1920s and a somewhat obstructed view of the canyon below so we turned around, went back through both tunnels and took the right turn into the parking lot. We hopped on a shuttle right away (they came to each stop every ten minutes) and headed down into the canyon to check out the eight different stops. The stops were called Zion Museum, Canyon Junction, Court of the Patriarchs, Zion Lodge, The Grotto, Weeping Rock, Big Bend and Temple of Sinawava.

We skipped the museum and headed to the second stop - Canyon Junction. At each stop we jumped out and went on short, one- or two-mile hikes around the gorgeous rocks. We got our fill of the red, brown and grey stone pillars that dwarfed the trees, bushes, flowers and grassy land that surrounded them and jumped back on the shuttle to head the short distance toward the Court of the Patriarchs.

This stop was named as such because of a few tall peaks that were named for different - you guessed it - patriarchs (from the Bible). There was a sign facing the pillars that showed which pillar was named for which patriarch. We stood around waiting for the shuttle but after a few minutes decided to walk to the Grotto just up the road. We wandered around the beautiful scenery snapping pictures and soaking in the atmosphere but we were excited for the next stop , Weeping Rock, because of the chance to see a waterfall.

At the Grotto we hiked a short distance up a hill and around a corner until we heard the soft pitter patter of falling water splashing against a rocky surface below. The waterfall was a very gentle flow over a steep overhang and it was dripping large fat drops around us as we walked up the rusty metal stairs to the stone porch under the falls. The path ended here though so we walked back down the steps and headed to the bus stop waiting to be taken over to Big Bend, the seventh stop. 

Big Bend had a tiny waterfall of its own as well and we thoroughly enjoyed the scenery here as we wandered around the short path that lead around the area. The pictures will do it justice since my descriptions are falling very short. These canyons are in descending order like a set of stairs, and each was more beautiful than the last.

Zion was everyone’s favorite for the day, but the day before it had been Bryce, and the day after some of us would switch to liking Grand the best. We hit the final stop on our bus ride through Zion taking in all we could and snapping pictures to show you later when we tried to explain the majesty that spread out before us. After getting our fill we hopped back on the bus and rode it the entire way back to the parking lot where Joey’s Xterra patiently waited for us to come drive it again.

We drove towards Grand Canyon and stopped in a small town close by the entrance to the canyon park. We stopped at a pizza restaurant for dinner and ordered a buffalo chicken pizza to bring back to our room. When Joey asked the girl behind the counter how much it would cost to add bacon to the pie, I was afraid she had just swept him off his feet- she said, “It’s free.”

We swung by a gas station to grab some local brews and found some uniquely named brands that we brought back to the room to enjoy with the pizza. We drank Wasatch Polygamy Porter, Wasatch Evolution Amber Ale and Squatters American Wheat, and tucked in eager for the morning.

Until next time, America.

-Sarah

The sun shone unobscured over the Utah landscape, which made a rapid transformation from monotonous to remarkable as we approached Bryce Canyon National Park. A good deal of the scenery was reminiscent somewhat of what we saw in Colorado - striking red rocks jutting out of the ground on either side of the road. We flashed our NPS pass on the way into the park and got ourselves a map, which showed a fairly short drive from one side to the other, but plenty of spots to stop and walk around.

One of the first viewpoints was Inspiration Point, which was a very appropriate name for this spectacular vista. The canyon was replete with these strange geological features called hoodoos, which are vertical structures of softer rock topped off with harder rock, and eroded over many years to resemble these oddly shaped columns. There was nowhere else I've seen these in such great numbers and with such pronunciation.

We were visiting on a weekday, and there weren't very many other people around to get in the way. Those who were, were inexplicably speaking French and German in unusually large numbers. There was a higher concentration of native Europeans here in Bryce than we'd seen anywhere else in the country, as if the state of Utah is running some kind of massive tourism campaign on the other side of the Atlantic.

There were a handful of hiking trails that ranged from less than a mile to nearly ten miles long. After our foray into the wilderness a few days before in Yellowstone, we were less than inclined to go for any wild, grand excursions on foot. We did spend some time on the shorter trails, coating my sandaled feet with a layer of dust. The vibrant landscape begged for attention, and I gave it plenty with my camera. Have a look.

When I think of Utah, I've generally thought of it as a bunch of crazies living in the desert. That's not the whole story. So much of the state is undeveloped and uninhabited that it seemed more like a clean slate than anything else. It made me wonder what kind of majestic views might have existed back east, before humans got around to exploiting them for their land and natural resources. Bryce Canyon was a glimpse into the complexity of nature, and the beauty to which human civilization can't compare.

Before the sun was down, we'd scoured our way from one end of the park of the other, and as always, we had a schedule to keep. We drove back out the entrance at the north end of the park and made our way toward Zion Canyon, the next day's attraction, and spent the night in a town called Kanab along the Arizona border. Day one of the canyon tour was a success, and the next day wouldn't disappoint, either. More on that to come.

-Tom

My sister had a flight to catch this morning, so we were up and out of bed on the early side. Our venture into the Yellowstone backcountry had slowed our pace and essentially forced us to skip the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, which we'd originally planned on visiting the day before. But we had just a few hours to kill before Lela had to be at the airport, and the forest turned out to be just a few miles from where we'd spent the night.
So we quickly drove into the forest for a brief morning foray into nature. The entry fee was $3, which was cheap but annoying because our National Parks pass didn't get us into this National Forest. The scenery was pleasant, but the weather was terrible - bad enough that none of us were so brash as to even exit the vehicle.

Again, it was a short drive to the airport in town, and we left plenty of time before Lela's flight so she could go through the inevitably terrible check-in process. But all of a sudden, as we're about ten minutes from our destination, a car pulls alongside us at a traffic light and signals for Joey, the driver, to roll down his window.

"Your tire's goin' flat there, buddy," the other driver said.

Thinking quickly, Joey located a car service center within a mile of our current location, at a nearby Sears. Lela was going to need a cab - and as Joey looked out his window, who's driving next to us but a yellow taxi. He rolled down his window, and flagged this cab down from our moving car, just as we're about to pull into the Sears' parking lot. Lela hopped in and made it to her flight with plenty of time to spare, in what was perhaps the most eventful departure I could have imagined for Lela. It was great having her with us.

Somewhere along the way, we'd run over a small piece of jagged metal in the road, which had lodged itself into the driver's side rear tire and was slowly causing it to deflate. We put these trusty Sears tire technicians to the job and wandered around the nearby blocks for a place to get some lunch. At least the spectacle of Joey in his pajamas was good for a laugh.

We settled on a quiet place nearby called Legends Pub & Grill, where, as our bartender explained to us, things had changed somewhat over the last few months. Utahans are known for their disapproval for edgy substances like caffeine and sugar, and until July 1 of this year, had some pretty screwy rules regarding alcohol service. 
To drink at a bar, we would have had to join the establishment's "private club" by filling out an application and paying a fee before we got our drinks. To boot, the bartender wouldn't have even been allowed to hand them over the bar to us - he would have had to walk them all the way around the bar to hand them to us. But as of July 1, those rules were both abolished in an effort to seem a little less... crazy. We enjoyed a few very cheap domestic beers and ate some lunch while we waited for our vehicle to be serviced.

The car wasn't quite finished when we got back to Sears, so I sat and watched the PGA Championship on TV while Joey nosily stood at the door of the garage and watched the mechanics install new tires on the car. He'd decided to get four new tires, instead of just replacing the one, and footed the bill for the three tires that hadn't gotten busted this morning. Soon enough they were finished, and we were back on the road with a total delay time of about three hours.

The drive south through Utah is absolutely beautiful, but it's a long way from Salt Lake City to our next destination, Bryce Canyon - about a five hour drive. And with a waxing and waning internet connection, we tried to find a place to sleep for the night with Priceline's help - to no avail. Sometimes there just aren't any hotels in an area that are in on the whole Priceline thing, and other times their rates are still about as high, if not higher when combined with the service charge, as they would be if you just called up and booked a room.
So that's what we did, which didn't turn out all that badly, as we found a place in Hatch, Utah called Riverside Resort & RV Park, about 40 minutes from the canyon - which only cost us about $55 or $60 with two beds.

The room was nice and there was a restaurant next door owned by the motel owners. They served beer and wine but didn't generally stay open later than 10:30, so it was just going be a dinner and an early night for us. The food must not have been so impressive because I didn't take a single picture of any of it.
On the way out I noticed a sticker at the counter with the year in which you'd had to have been born to buy alcohol and cigarettes, respectively. Strangely, the age for tobacco products was 19, instead of 18, which I was certainly more used to. I asked the guy at he cashier about it, and he said Utah was the only state with that age restriction of tobacco. "You know why?" he asked me. "Because we're a Mormon state." He repeated the phrase again before we left as if I hadn't digested the point well enough. I would have remembered without the echo.

We were still pretty much on schedule; we'd planned to spend this evening and the next afternoon at the canyon, and even though we hadn't gotten there yet, we still had plenty of time the next day to enjoy it to our hearts' content. We did just that and more, as you'll read more about very soon.

-Tom

I woke up on this morning with my mouth practically sticking shut. We'd broken into a bit of a bottle of whiskey the night before, as we huddled around the campfire and looked for ways to keep warm. I was paying for it this morning, and we were extremely low on water.
But I knew there was a long walk ahead of us. Lela and I were up well before Joey and Sarah, so we walked around the nearby grassland and took some pictures. Our site was right next to Grebe Lake, which offered us plenty of nice views - but was a little too wide for us to attempt a walk all the way around.

Okay, so backcountry camping was a bad idea. We simply weren't equipped for the task. We were all terribly weighed down by dangling balls of gear, and our water supply was bordering on dangerously low. Joey went as far as to collect some water from the lake and bring it to a boil over the fire, and drank it down to Sarah and Lela's chagrin. Thankfully he didn't get sick.
The walk back was terrible, even worse than the day before because this time the sun was beating down on us from directly overhead. Once again, Lela and I got way ahead of Joey and Sarah, and once we reached the car we dropped our stuff and turned around to meet them with some water we got from the car. The whole endeavor was something that I was glad to have done, but would think very hard before trying again.

We drove to the South entrance on our way out of the park, which of course leads directly into Grand Teton National Park, also in Wyoming. This might have been the wrong way to go about things, because after two days in majestic Yellowstone, there wasn't much about the Grand Tetons that was so spectacular. The place was beautiful, don't get me wrong - but especially given how exhausted we all felt from our backcountry experience, we made our visit to the park a short one.

From here we drove through Jackson, Wyo. and the small part of the state that remained before Idaho. Wyoming is such a strange place - the state is about a five hour drive from one side to the other, and has a lower population than any other state in the nation, even lower than Washington, D.C. I don't doubt that the people out here prefer it that way, but I wonder what it is that keeps so many people away from Wyoming. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

The notion of being in Idaho was just completely ridiculous to me. All that this place has ever been, to me, is a place very far away where they make potatoes and kids like Napoleon Dynamite. I knew we could find one of those two, hopefully without much trouble - and as we drove into Idaho Falls, we did a quick sweep on Yelp for a good place to eat a hot meal and a hot potato. 
We found one with the word "brewery" in the name, the Brownstone Restaurant and Brewery, and merrily galloped in the door. I know this is a predominantly Mormon town, so the notion of finding good local beer was one I certainly hadn't considered.

The beer was decent, nothing to write to Grandma about. For me, the main course was the potato, with a cheeseburger on the side. But aside from the zig-zag cut, there was really nothing special about this potato. It was good, but it was a potato. I get the feeling that if they had shipped this potato across the country and eaten it a month from now, it would have tasted pretty much the same. Still, it was one of the better meals I'd had for a few days and it was welcome in my stomach.

After dinner we ran around and snapped a few photos of the nearby scenery, which included this Mormon temple across the Snake River. I thought for a moment that, based on his pose, the statue on top might have been another Vulcan, like the one we saw way back in Birmingham, Ala. Upon further research, I discovered it's actually Moroni, one of the many ridiculous characters in the Mormon faith. It takes some crazy people to make Alabamans look like the sensible ones, but leave it to those Mormons.
Better hold my tongue, though - Lela's flight was the next morning out of none other than Salt Lake City, Utah. We conquered the drive south at night, to avoid hurrying in the morning. More on the next day's adventures coming soon.

-Tom

While we were sitting around enjoying the fire and each other, we heard an animal lapping water in the lake next to our campsite.  Tom got serious look on his face and said “maybe we should go in the tent.”  Lela and Sarah immediately agreed.  I laughed at all of them and said “I’m staying by the fire.”  Chances are it wasn’t a bear, and all of my urban companions were overreacting, but on the small chance that their paranoia-inspired reaction was correct, there was no way I wanted to isolate myself and not see anything around me or have the fire as a last-resort defensive mechanism.
An hour or two later, we walked the leftovers and garbage down the trail and went to bed.  It was warmer out this evening and we were sore and tired, so we all slept well.

-Joey

A short drive from Bozeman, Mont. brought us, this morning, to the North entrance of Yellowstone National Park. This tremendous area comprises the first National Park, established way back in 1872 by the U.S. Congress. Our drive in led us shortly to a visitor center, where a pack of elk were casually relaxing on a large island of grass surrounded by road. They're a great welcoming committee, and they work for next to nothing.

Now when we set aside two days for our visit to Yellowstone, we did so with the size of the place on our minds. This place is tremendous. The roads winding through the park stretch for many miles, but still leave huge parts of the park shrouded in privacy and mystery. On our way in we flashed our handy America The Beautiful pass and picked up a map, which we simply could not have done without in this particular park. We were quick to inquire as to the availability of a campsite, and were informed that they were filling up rapidly - but if we booked it south to Indian Creek campground, we'd hopefully be able to grab a spot.

We made it just in time, picking out one of the ten or so spots that were still available in the campground. From here, it made sense to continue our  initial southward drive down to Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest geyser basin in the park. Before we could even get out of the car, we were all party to some of the strongest odors of sulfur that I can remember.

Scattered all around the walkway - from which we were absolutely not allowed to deviate - were clear blue pools of water, steaming at the top and bubbling from the bottom. The water in these springs comes up from beneath, having been heated by the extremely hot rocks under the ground. In some cases, as seen on the right, instead of gently bubbling to the surface, the water is shot out of the ground and into the air. This was Steamboat Geyser, splashing away like a kid in a bathtub.

I had expectations that this park would be thick with majestic woods and forest. While there were trees covering a large area of the land, many of them were felled, charred black or both - and by many I mean huge sections of them, acres worth of trees that had been scorched by flame. This, apparently, was the product of a series of fires in 1988 that began small and collected together, closing the park to visitors for the first time and affecting more than a third of the park's area. Many of them are still standing today, stark reminders of the months worth of fires more than two decades ago.

Further south, we came to the stop for Old Faithful Geyser. This feature of the park is isolated from other thermal areas, which allows it to erupt on a surprisingly regular and predictable schedule. When we arrived we had almost an hour to wait before the next expected "show", so we took a moment in the lodge for a pit stop and some ice cream.

A circular walkway and two rows of seating surround the geyser, much of which were occupied by the time we came out from the lodge. We found a seat away from the center of the crowd and watched for an increase in activity. The geyser is constantly emitting a steady cloud of steam, even now in the summer months when the steam shows less than in the winter. Right around the projected liftoff time, the geyser abruptly started spewing a stream of water high into the air. This was accompanied by a much larger cloud of steam, which made the spectacle that much more impressive. And it wasn't just a quick spurt or anything - this lasted for a good two or three minutes before gradually dying back down. The whole experience was just as impressive as I'd heard it would be.

At this point the road began to cut back east, and we began to work our way back in the direction of our campsite - with plenty of time to spare, of course. The roads in the park are very long and the speed limit is usually around 35 miles an hour, which meant that we had a long way to go before we got back. 
But there was no hurry. We pulled over with a gaggle of tourists to shoot pictures of a caribou-looking critter, as my sister snapped shots of various birds in the trees. Eventually we came to Yellowstone Lake, which covers a significant portion of the central-to-southeast portion of the park, and got out to touch the water and snap some more photos.

One of the things that makes this park so special is the abundance of animals here. We'd seen a handful earlier in the day, but as we made our northward ascent toward camp on Grand Loop Road, we had our closest encounter of the day, with this fantastic bison walking along the side of the road. He had traffic backed up for quite a while, not because he'd been walking in the road, but because every passing car slowed to a near stop for a few photos before continuing on. As you can see, so did we.

In a hilarious turn of events, however, as soon as we'd passed this tremendous creature, he decided he'd had enough of using the shoulder and hopped in front of the car behind us - so we slowed down and documented the interesting scene. The fellow directly behind the bison was honking his horn like there was no tomorrow, and the bison was ignoring him in spectacular fashion. We all got a good laugh.

We got back to our site with plenty of daylight still in the air. The park allows campers to collect as much firewood as they please, provided this wood is dead wood that was already on the ground - no cutting anything down to throw on the fire. This policy, I would assume, helps them prevent the kind of buildup of dead material that fueled the massive wildfires here back in the '80s. We stayed close to the fire, and huddled closer as the night progressed, the temperature dropping into the 40s and even the 30s after we went to bed.
Would we survive the night? Would we freeze to death, or possibly encounter a gory demise at the paws of one of Yellowstone's hundreds of bears? Find out in our next post, coming very soon.

-Tom

There have not been many times over the summer when we here at A100 have had any kind of time restrictions or deadlines we have felt we have had to meet. This is good. This makes thoughts of professional life seem… distant memories of a past that none of us are yet ready to revisit. However, sometimes in life other people who operate under a normal mode of being expect you to be on time to things and prepared to be on schedule. Since this is rare in our general mode of operation this summer we never minded when someone from the outside “real” world needed us to be “on time” or “at the airport to pick them up so they could enjoy a few days with us on our trip.” 

Tom’s sister Lela – unfortunately – had to spend a few hours dealing with our simple lazy summer outlook as she waited at the airport for us to pick her up. Many apologies Lela – we were quite excited to see you and to have you with us for the few short days you were able to come out to visit- but we were well into our own schedule at the time and woke up when we woke up which was too late for the few hour drive to the airport to collect you. Poor Lela patiently waited for us to arrive after our slow departure from our log cabin – but once we did finally arrive to pick her up we were off to MontanaFair.

If you’ve read our Where We’re Going page for Billings, Mont., you would know that MontanaFair is the biggest annual event within 350 miles of Billings, Montana, drawing in over a quarter million people. So that means that everyone within 350 miles comes to MontanaFair. We arrived midweek so it was slow and we were able to see the sights without being too overwhelmed. We started with a bite to eat; Joey tried a tasty treat called “fried Pepsi” (shown here) which turned out to be dough – which, rather than being made with water was made with Pepsi… and then fried…and was mediocre at best. Tom tried a “Viking on a Stick” which almost made him ill (it was some ground meat-like substance, deep fried and shoved on a stick… so it was about as appetizing as that description makes it sound). 

After this round of questionable Midwestern food stuffs we headed over to see the livestock shows. We walked into a building where little piggies were running around squealing, cows were being displayed to a small group of uninterested onlookers and the most hideous-looking chickens were set out in cages after being judged in an ugliest chicken category.

We walked around and saw all kinds of animals penned up in cages waiting to be displayed in one way or another. Sheep in sleek jumpers lay confused on the hay ground, llamas looked pissy like llamas look, pigs lay around in giant pink and black spotted blobs and roosters strutted in their foot-and-a-half length of cage. It amused me greatly to see a diagram of each animal and the parts it could be broken up into (and subsequently eaten) hanging on the cages where the animals were penned in. It made it seem more like being at a butcher shop than at a livestock show. There is nothing too “live” about a piggy’s body being considered in sections which are labeled not using words like “pig body parts” but rather in words like “pork meat cuts.” I rest my case. And our lovely guest, Lela, happens to be a vegetarian. Welcome to road life Lela!

We saw many things here at MontanaFair besides the livestock show – things like a vegetable canning contest kids could enter, fair rides we didn’t go on, lots of questionable sounding food stands, and probably the best participant in a comedy hypnotist show ever, ever. A young girl, maybe 10 years old, hustled her round, pink-suited frame up on stage to volunteer for the hypnotist. What a ham! (That’s not a fat joke; I’m referring to her love of the spotlight here) This little girl was stretching her arms way up in the air when the hypnotist told her she would feel her arms floating way up in the air, she slumped over in her seat onto the next participant when he told her she would be tired, she reacted strongly to the suggestion that the person next to her smelled bad, and reacted as strongly again when she was told she would see something scary.

I can imagine that you could feel so much in a trance that you might be susceptible to outside influence – take what happens during college parties for instance. However, I draw the line at believing that you would be able to ham it up on stage with your eyes closed and have anyone expect that you don’t have any idea what’s going on. This little girl enjoyed the spotlight so much I really felt she deserved a featured spot on our little claim to fame here on the great internets. Here’s your fifteen minutes sweetheart – ham on, my young friend.

We rounded out the fair by sauntering by the largest tractor I have ever seen and the only tractor I have ever sat in, before we headed towards a park that was supposed to have hieroglyphics painted on the sides of the mountains from a time long, long ago. We had the place to ourselves, aside from a gentleman up the trail who was shooting video for the park service.

It was a very exciting prospect, but as it turned out it was just a nice walk and having a big imagination was extremely necessary in order to see anything painted on any of these rocks. Oh well. We were about to see amazing rocks regardless of the paint job because we were on the way to Yellowstone National Park. We wandered around this faux-hieroglyphic park to our hearts content and then made tracks to our hotel room outside of Yellowstone in anticipation for an amazing few days ahead.

Until next time America.

-Sarah

I’d heard good things about Cheyenne, all of which had fled from my mind during our visit to the Albany Restaurant. We climbed into the car and drove clear across Wyoming, knowing we were on a time limit the next morning on our way to Billings. The sunset lit the sky aflame, and the fields stretched endlessly in every direction. I hope that someday, I can come back to this beautiful land under more amicable circumstances.

-Tom