Showing posts with label Huntsman Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huntsman Games. Show all posts

Thursday, October 13, 2022

No Bad Days

Life in Havasu
 I bought a t-shirt today to give to a friend, a souvenir of this year's Huntsman Trip. (Normally, at this time of year, we come out to Lake Havasu, on the Arizona-California border, and spend some time just hanging out; then my wife goes up to Utah and plays soccer in the Huntsman Senior Games while I go hiking in various places on the Colorado Plateau with my dog Carly and my former law partner, who now lives in Las Vegas. We call it the Huntsman Trip.) Things are a little different this year, which is why I'm still in Lake Havasu City and able to go shopping for t-shirts. 

 The t-shirt I bought says "Lake Havasu City: No Bad Days." That seems to be the current motto for the local tourism industry. And it got me thinking about the time I've spent here this year. Let me tell you about it.

 The house we have here is reasonably spacious. I could wish that it was furnished more with tall people in mind: there is one chair that isn't too close to the ground, and some bar stools that are high enough to be comfortable; so I make do. This year my brother in law and sister in law were here, too. Well, she's usually here when we are, but it was unusual for him to come along. Until this semester he's always been otherwise engaged and unable to come, but now he's retired, so he could come. He's even taller than me, so I insisted that he should have the one good chair. (He's older, too, so that's the official reason: respect for my elders etc., etc.) Besides, I spend a good part of my time out back under the gazebo, and this year I spent another good chunk of time in the home office, writing a treatment for a television series that will surely go nowhere. (I had planned for that project to encompass the entire three weeks of this trip, but it went faster than I'd expected.)

 My wife and her sister are able to have fun on the lake. Usually that means taking the boat out, or the jet-ski, but this year they've taken up SUP-ing (stand-up paddleboarding) and, after a week and a half of fairly steady progress, seem to have attained a level of competence at it. Or at least comfort. It's a work in progress, I guess. My brother in law went out with them once or twice, too, but it's difficult for him just now because, at the moment, he's kind of attached to some kind of medical device that makes it a little inconvenient. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for that he'd have been out on the lake a lot more than he was. But as for me, I don't care for boating. I'll drive the boat if somebody wants to water ski, but I'd just as soon not be out on the lake. I just find it ... well, kind of boring. Likewise jet-skiing: I don't get a thrill from taking turns going in circles on a jet-ski; we only have the one, and even if we had two, where would we go? The same places we'd go in the boat. Watersports on Havasu means going to this or that cove and floating in the water. I suppose we could go across the lake to the casino, but we're not casino-type people. (And I don't imagine it's much of a casino anyway.) Plus, they always wait until the hottest part of the day to go, because it's too cold before that to get wet. So when they go out on the lake, I stay at the house.

This is a rail.
 The other thing we have equipment for is railing. A "rail" (or a "sand rail") is like a dune buggy, but without a body. It's a VW engine and transmission mounted on a slab of sheet metal and surrounded by a cage of steel bars. It, too, is not built for tall people, but it can take a lot of punishment, and driving it out in the desert, up and down barely-there tracks and creek beds, over steep hills and down sharp slopes (and hoping there is a sharp slope on the far side of each steep hill) can be fun. But every year, there's something wrong with the rail. One year it was just a flat tire, I think; one year it was the steering; one year it was ... I don't know; I don't remember. I was out here three times before the rail was operative at all. Most years, it goes in the shop when we get here and we hope we get it back before it's time to leave.

 This year, the rail was, as far as we knew, fully operative. But nobody suggested taking it out. Each day's plans involved the boat and the paddleboards instead. Then, after my wife had left for Utah, my brother in law mentioned that he would like to go out in the rail. At that point, with only one afternoon left before he returned home to Colorado, it was almost pointless to mention, but as my sister in law and I got ready to drive the rail over to the North End to pick up the Tahoe, which was being repaired in anticipation of our drive up to the airport in Las Vegas the next morning for their flight out, she told me what he'd said, and I said, Well, I guess you'll be going out in the rail this evening.

 Nope. The transmission went out on the way to get the Tahoe, so we had to have the rail towed home from the repair shop. Next April, it will be in the capable hands of its dedicated mechanic Ronnie, and maybe will be in operating condition in time for next year's Huntsman Trip.

 My former law partner, the one who lives in Las Vegas, has been kind of out of touch this year. He has serious medical issues in his family that he's having to deal with, so I was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to go hiking. (I planned, instead, to spend that time working on my television treatment, the one I finished in about a week.) Last year all we managed was to meet up for lunch in Laughlin, about halfway between Vegas and Havasu. But I haven't been able to get a hold of him, by email, or text, or telephone to arrange even that. So I intended to go up to Las Vegas and knock on his door. That was why I undertook to deliver my sister and brother in law to their flight: killing two birds, so to speak. I wasn't comfortable driving the Tahoe up to Las Vegas and back, a 300-mile-plus trip, with the "check engine" light on, so my sister in law made sure to get it into the shop before that trip. (The light went out on the way over to the shop; the mechanic said that was because it automatically resets every hundred or so times you start the car, but pointed out that "that doesn't mean the problem goes away." I learned the hard way not to ignore that light when I had my old black Firebird.) We picked it up on Tuesday afternoon, had the rail towed -- an adventure in itself, as the insurance company that covers the rail didn't have its act together, which meant we sat out in a mild version of desert heat for an hour and a half trying to get that straightened out -- and then headed up to Vegas early Wednesday morning. I dropped them at the airport, then went to visit my friend. 

 The Google Maps app on my phone wasn't working ("You seem to be offline.") I stopped at a fast-food restaurant and had breakfast while trying to figure out what the F was wrong with it. Finally did, though why that problem should occur is beyond me. Anyway, finally got the directions to his house, drove out there and knocked on the door. I was greeted by the new occupant of the apartment, who moved in last Saturday. No idea where he'd moved to, of course, and the apartment manager refused to give me any information, of course. So. Back to Havasu. (I'd figured on stopping in Laughlin if I had no luck at his house, but wasn't in the mood. I was more concerned about leaving Carly cooped up in the house for too long, though I shouldn't have worried; so I skipped a repeat visit to the Laughlin Automobile Museum.) 

The view of The Island from the island.
 A trip to Las Vegas and back from Havasu uses a full tank of gas in that gassucking Tahoe. I wasn't comfortable with the gauge so close to E, so I stopped along the way and bought a little gas, knowing that I could get it for a lot less in Havasu, if only I could get there without running out. (I did.) Then I noticed two tiny chips in the windshield. So this morning, after taking Carly for a walk around Water Safety Island (that's just what I call it; I don't know that it has an actual name) I spent an hour or so arranging to get the chips filled. That was the exciting thing I did this morning. And then, as long as I was out, I stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant very close to a t-shirt shop. The great Circle of Life.

 That's what it's been like, here in Havasu. It's a little too hot for comfort during the afternoon, and the furniture in the house isn't made for people like me, and technology continues to disappoint and frustrate, and all kinds of little things go wrong and get fixed. And I've already seen London Bridge like a dozen times so I'm a good two and a half hours from anything to do. But you know, there are, in fact, no bad days in Havasu.

 Though of course I'd still rather be in Los Angeles....

Thursday, October 21, 2021

2021 Huntsman Trip, part three

This is part three of a multiple-part post. You really should read them in order. You can find Part One here, and then click "newer post" at the end of each section. Pictures taken on this trip can be seen here.

 So, a couple of developments. First, I'd planned to go over to Los Angeles for a couple of days, to tour a car museum or two and visit with a friend. I'd made arrangements to see my friend, but I got no response from any of the museums I'd contacted about interviews; so I decided to cancel that little side-trip. I'm sure that was more a disappointment to me than to my friend, but I had seen him not that long ago when I was out there for the stained glass exhibit

 Second, my friend Curtis can't go hiking this year. Those few days of hiking each year are the real reason I come on these Huntsman trips; the tournament my wife plays soccer in is only the excuse to justify wandering around in Nevada and Utah with Curtis and Carly. But this year, Curtis has to stay close to home to look after his wife, who is having some serious medical issues. 

 The upshot of these developments is that, this year, I'll be spending the entire trip here in Lake Havasu City, which I often say is two and a half hours from anything to do. That's not technically true, but compared to any major city, it's pretty well devoid of things I like to do, especially alone. And I don't know anybody here. So after Nancy and Bryan return to Colorado, and Sherry goes up to Utah, I'll be sitting here twiddling my thumbs, unless I can get more ideas on my List of Activities than "Watch old DVDs," "Walk dog," and "Play on computer." 

 So far, though, all I have is a plan to visit a car museum in Laughlin and meet up with Curtis there, to hand over the small box of stuff I've been holding onto for him for the last year or so. That will occupy one day; one other day, there's a soccer match I plan to watch at some local bar; leaving me with three and a half days to fill on my own. I suspect that DVD player is going to get a workout, and Carly will sniff a lot of gravel landscaping. (Grass lawns are most definitely not done in Havasu.) I expect I'll also shop for T-shirts and fridge magnets (like I need more of either) and I suppose I might as well spend an hour at the LHC history museum. If I weren't such a cheapskate I'd go drop a C-note at one of the local casinos (Laughlin, where I'm meeting Curtis; Parker, half an hour south of Havasu; and across the lake at Havasu Landing; I hear there's a ferry that will take you across). But that just seems like a waste of both time and money. We'll have to see how desperate I get. Can I convince myself that I might actually win something?

 Saturday, the finest weather returned; the sky was a cloudless blue, the morning temperature around seventy degrees, the forecast high in the low-to-mid 80s. A perfect day for a short, easy hike through the Crack in the Mountain.

 Every time I've made that hike -- this may be my fourth time -- I've gone through the Crack both ways. The hike is about three and a half miles each way; it starts with a more or less flat walk along a wash until you get to a slot canyon that is so brief and so wide (maybe twenty yards) that you hardly even notice it. Then another stroll through a gravel-bottomed wash to the Crack, where the main attractions of the hike reside. Here the walls of the slot canyon are so close together that you have to brace yourself against one side and slide your butt along the other side to get down over an eroded channel that drops just a little too far to jump; getting back up it on the return trip depends on being able to get some traction on the smooth rock. In one place, there's a belayed rope, and you have to rappel down a short drop, maybe nine or ten feet, over a large boulder. This spot is my entire experience with that technique. Somewhere beyond that, another boulder has recently (within the last 3 years or so) gotten lodged in the Crack, and there are stumps of a metal ladder placed to help hikers over the obstruction. 

 Other than that, it's just a very narrow passage with a floor of gravel mixed with rocks: not easy, but not hard to pass through. 

bighorn sheep
The Crack opens onto a longish stretch of wash that curves between two low ridges. Here, for the first time, we saw a couple of Desert Bighorn Sheep, a threatened species that has a wildlife refuge a little farther to the south. They look like deer from a distance. This is probably the longest discrete section of the overall hike, about two-thirds of a mile through loose sand, gravel, and rocks. At a certain point, the trail rises onto the right-hand ridge, then you can either go left to the trail bottom at three tall mushroom-shaped rocks on the lakeshore, or right to a point higher up that gives a view of the lake, the rocks, and a picnic area on a point of BLM land.

 This time, we decided to take a different route back, the Blue Trail, which winds along the top of the right-hand ridge parallel to the Crack trail. It involves a few short climbs; one scary point (for people with acrophobia, like me) where the trail crosses a saddle that is just wide enough for the trail; and a few very badly marked junctions. At one, the trail marker had an arrow pointing diagonally down on one side, and diagonally up on the other. It seemed to indicate that the trail goes up a very steep slope for about a hundred and twenty feet. While Sherry and Carly went up that way, Bryan tried the lower trail, which turned out to be the correct one. Thank God. I really wanted that to be the right trail.

 And there is no shade at all along the Blue Trail. Even Carly was completely exhausted and had to be carried for a stretch. The last mile or so was like a Death March, except without the Death part, just an air-conditioned vehicle at the end. I ran out of water, then got resupplied by Nancy or Bryan, then ran out again. It's now two days later and I'm still feeling the aches in my feet and legs that came from this "short easy hike." A sure sign of aging. As if I need one.

Carly at the Lake
 The plan for Sunday called for trail riding in the rail and the Jeep in the morning, and boating on the lake in the afternoon. Now, Nancy and Bryan have a lot of experience with all manner of outdoor activity, and they are our Source Authorities for all such things. Sherry has more experience with it than me, but her knowledge of such things isn't nearly as exhaustive as Nancy and Bryan's. Their knowledge of The Outside World seems to me literally comprehensive, and I defer to them in almost every detail.* They grew up doing these things, while my childhood experiences of the Great Outdoors consisted largely of rare occasions wandering around undeveloped lots bordering edge-of-town subdivisions. 

But they (and Sherry) seem to have no concept of how long things take at the house. Specifically, the getting-things-together part of each expedition. 

 I've noticed the same circumstance applies at home: whenever Sherry announces to me that she's going to take Carly for a walk, on average around 45 minutes will elapse before I hear her phone say "Begin workout"; and it's only at that point that the walk begins. I don't know what goes into the preparations for a railing expedition or a boating trip, but on those occasions when I am a part of the planned activity (that is, the land-based activities), the group seems to be ready, and then not ready, and then ready to go, and then not ready, and then ready. And then we're not ready quite yet. And then we're ready to go. (And if you're thinking, "Why doesn't he help?" rest assured that that's been tried, and it doesn't move things along. I stay out of the way while those who know what they're doing do what they know needs doing. My job is to drive in the direction I'm instructed to go.) To the uninitiated eye (mine) it all appears as random slow-motion chaos; yet everything gets done, eventually, and we never end up out in the middle of nowhere with somebody saying "Oh, we should have brought such-and-such." Well, almost never.

Jeep & Cactus
 So when they told me the plan was a trail ride Sunday morning and boating Sunday afternoon, I snorted derisively to myself, in the manner of Sheldon Cooper. (I didn't do it out loud, because there was just the slightest possibility it might actually happen.) And sure enough, about an hour elapsed between the first "Let's go" and the actual "Let's go." I put my hat on and took it off four times, perhaps five, each time thinking despite my own experience with this phenomenon that we were really ready to go trail riding.

 Our ride lasted until late-late-late in the afternoon. But it was great. Bryan had plotted a course out farther than we normally go into the desert, out beyond nearly everyone else; and we encountered some trails that proved to be a real challenge for the rail (though not, of course, for his Jeep, which seems almost to glide serenely up or down any available slope). We even found one hill the rail couldn't climb at all, but there was another, easier route up a short distance away that Sherry found after going up in Bryan's Jeep. 

 By the time we got home, it was way too late for boating, which got pushed back to today -- Monday. Preparations for that expedition got started around nine this morning, and owing to an unexpected problem with the truck (which got a trip to the auto-parts store for a new battery) they continued long enough to make lunch at the house appropriate. That done, further preparation ensued until a shade before 2PM, i.e., just now, when Sherry came in from the garage to tell me that the wind had picked up too much and they weren't going boating.

 All this seems meaningful right now, while it's happening; later on, not so much.

* The one occasion on this trip when I didn't was when they formed an ad hoc committee to discuss which of four paths to take at the start of the Blue Trail. I got frustrated standing around in the hot sun while they debated the pros and cons of three paths that were, to me, obviously wrong, so I just said "This is the trail" and left. They caught up with me about three quarters of a mile along. At the time I felt pretty smug about the whole thing, but further reflection has softened that as slight possibilities for great disaster begin to appear among the fog of what might have been.

Postscript: If you're interested (and why wouldn't you be?) you can read the article I wrote for AutomotiveMuseumGuide.com about the Laughlin museum at this link.

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

2021 Huntsman Trip, part two

This is part two of a multiple-part post. You really should read them in order. You can find Part One here, and then click "newer post" at the end of each section. Pictures taken on this trip can be seen here.

 Unfortunately, the blog post I'd written about this trip for the days between Monday, October 4 and Friday, October 8, got deleted. I don't know how; I'd highlighted a single sentence near the end that I was going to rewrite, and hit "delete," and the whole post's text was replaced by a symbol that looked like two wavy lines. I then hit "undo" (Command-X on this Mac computer) and an Omega symbol appeared. At that point the blogging program saved the post. And there is no way I can see to get it back. 

 So I can't really say what-all happened on those days. I apologise for the rambling nature of this replacement post, and who knows; I may actually be able to reconstruct something like a cohesive narrative. But it will never match the lost original, which was perhaps the single most significant piece of non-fiction literature written in the past two and a half centuries, a classic to rival, nay, to surpass Common Sense, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Walden and The Glory and the Dream. Such a loss to the world of letters. I blame technology.

 I remember that the other folks took the boat out one day, and they took the jetski out another day; I know I went to watch Italy lose to Spain in the Nations Cup, and I recall that the fly perched on the screen for most of the second half was the most interesting thing on that screen. At some point, while everyone else was out on the water, I watched a movie on DVD called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, with Judi Dench and Dev Patel, which was pretty good; and another called Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith, which was not. I also remember that I rode out into the wild lands in Bryan's Jeep, with Nancy following us in the rail, one evening, and that it was kind of eerie being out there in the dark. But we saw not a single bit of wildlife, not even the reflection of headlights in eyeballs. Not so much as a rabbit. 

 I know that on one afternoon, I went next door and talked to the neighbour who trades in antique cars. He has just acquired a bug-eyed Sprite, a '49 Chevy, and a Rausch Mustang. The cars he currently has that are most of interest to me, though, are a '71 or '72 E-Type and a '52 Rolls. If memory serves, he spends his working life, about half the year, in Wyoming where he owns a craft brewery, and the other half of the year he's here, tinkering with his collection of old cars. The garage on his property holds about a dozen cars, and the garage attached to the house holds two more. He's serious about it. So you'd think he'd be a great person to get to know, a man with interesting stories to tell. So far, though, there has been no spark to suggest an incipient friendship there.

Carly in the English Village
 And I remember that Sherry and I went downtown to watch the US beat Jamaica 2:0 in a world cup qualifying match. That must have been on Thursday, because it was Old Car Night in Havasu, and the main drag downtown was full of maybe 100 interesting cars, mostly authentic American classics like Chevies from the 1950s and '60s, many of them modified, with a smattering of European cars (I recall a '60s-vintage Volvo and a Triumph TR-6), and there were a couple of replica cars, including a beautiful 1933 Mercedes replica in candy-apple red. And it was Taco Night at the bar where we watched the game, but we didn't have any because later that night, we had plans to get together with some friends of Sherry's family who live here now. This we did, at a restaurant in the English Village by London Bridge that had a nice outdoor seating area and live music. And finally, I remember that on Friday, we went back to the English Village to do the walking tour of London Bridge, which none of us had ever done before, despite having come to Havasu over and over for the last 30 years (longer than that for Sherry and Nancy).

Maybe I could dredge up a few more memories of that missing four days, but who really cares?

 

Monday, October 11, 2021

2021 Huntsman Trip, part one

All the pictures taken on this trip can be seen here.

Something went right to start out this trip. Actually, two things went unexpectedly right, but I can't remember the second one, so let's not dwell on it.

The thing I remember that went right is that Sherry noticed there was a yellow jacket inside the car before we had gone very far, and before it got warmed up enough to start flying around in the cabin. That would have been more excitement than either of us would care for. 

Against that one good thing, and the second good thing that I can't remember -- Oh, plus the fact that Carly didn't throw up all the way to Havasu, a first for her -- there's the fact that none of the electric window switches in the Subaru are working, for some reason. This means that we can't leave Carly unattended in the car when it's the least bit warm out. Which in turn means lunch is a take-away sandwich eaten at a city park -- once in Fort Stockton, Texas and once in Tucson, Arizona. Not really too bad, except that the Subway sandwich we bought in Fort Stockton cost like ten bucks, which is way more than it costs back home.

Also, the electric door locks on the driver's-side door don't work now. A minor inconvenience that probably has something to do with the window switch malfunctions.

And the rearview mirror came off in El Paso. That was more of a surprise than a problem, since it was easy enough to slip back onto the holder. Just a weird thing to have happen, and of course it happened where there was no place to pull over for a couple of miles

Other than these oddities, the trip over to the Lake was uneventful. We listened first to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, one of those books you're supposed to read in High School, so of course neither of us had ever read it. A short book, a novella really, and in audio form only about four hours long. So now we're familiar with it, and neither of us is entirely sure why it's considered such a classic and important piece of fiction. (I had chosen it because I've seen so very many references to it in the last few years.)

After that finished, we started the new murder mystery featuring the Thursday Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman. I actually thought to myself, in one of those moments where you reflect on Life In General and Your Place In It, that I was happy to have lived long enough to hear (or read) the first two of these amusing mystery stories. We're only about 2/3 of the way through the current story, so I won't talk more about it.

We got to the Lake in time for dinner yesterday, Saturday. Nancy and her son Bryan were already here, and Nancy had prepared dinner for us. My only function was to figure out where we'd be able to watch the Liverpool-Manchester City match at 8:30 this morning. Juicy's, a burger bar near downtown, opens at 7am on Sundays, so we thought we were set.

Headed out this morning to watch the match, only to find that Juicy's has only one full-sized TV, which  was tuned to an NFL Preview show, and they "couldn't" change the channel. So we started back to the house. (All the other places listed under "sports bars in Lake Havasu City" open at 10am or later on Sundays, by which time the match would be almost over.) Sherry noticed a little grey building with several cars outside that looked like an open bar or restaurant, so we circled back to check it out. They didn't open until 9, but they were perfectly happy to have us sit in there and watch their television; they put the game on, coffee was available, and we were as happy as Granny Clampett with a fresh batch of potion. They had a buffet that included all the Mimosas you can drink, so the price was a little steep but no more than we would have spent on food and drink at the bar back home for a match that isn't available on our TV at home. (There are a few.)

After a disappointing but not upsetting result (a 2:2 draw, leaving Liverpool in second place, a point behind Chelsea and a point ahead of both Manchester clubs), we went back to the house and planned an excursion out in the wild lands east of town. Bryan had driven his Jeep down from Colorado and wanted to take it out on the trails; and we took the rail, which is like a dune buggy without a body: it's basically a VW engine mounted on an open chassis. 

Made it! Bryan tops a rise

Something goes wrong with the rail every time we take it out. Last time it was the steering. This time it's the suspension. But it was functional, in a minimalist sort of way, and we had a great time. Nancy drove this time, and started out nervous and overly cautious (just like I do when I start driving it), but by the end of the afternoon she was slammin' over rocks and up and down steep hills like a pro. Which is a fortunate thing, because Bryan led the last segment in his Jeep (because he had some kind of satellite software on his phone that would enable him to figure out a way back to the part of town our house is in), and he was like a stately ship on Disneyland's Jungle Cruise, while we followed along like we were on the Runaway Mine Train at Six Flags. 

Bryan's planning to go out on the trails at night some time soon, and I said I'd like to go with him. He's used to much more challenging excursions in his Jeep Club back in Colorado, so none of the trails out here will be beyond his capacity, I don't think; probably nothing to require the use of a winch and a second vehicle, which seems to be par for the course from the stories he tells of his club trips.


Friday, October 7, 2016

This Year's Huntsman Trip Pictures Posted

The pictures for this year's trip to the Huntsman Games are up now. They include photos taken at Bisti Wilderness in New Mexico, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Capital Reef National Park, Utah. My favourites are the pics from Calf Creek Falls, the high point of a six-hour hike. Carly liked that part best, too.
Bisti Wilderness

Capital Reef


Devil's Garden
Calf Creek Falls

Friday, October 23, 2015

The 2015 Huntsman Trip

Fresh from my trip to Wisconsin in September, after a week of decompression (and laundry), the wife and I took off for Utah, where she was registered to play soccer in the annual Huntsman Games, a seniors' sports tournament with any number of different competitions. She has found herself a team out of Dallas (with a few stray members from Oregon --- don't ask me how that happened), and this is her second time in the competition. As we tend to do, we combined the trip with other, theoretically less strenuous, things.

We prepared for the trip by getting our new dog Carly medications to deal with motion sickness: she pukes when we drive. We had the same problem with our dog Homer, of beloved memory, but he grew out of it fairly quickly, and we hope Carly will, too. In fact, after two days of medication (during which she was somewhat listless, though not as drugged-out as Homer had been), we decided she didn't really need it all that much, at least on the highway; and indeed, after that she only threw up once, in city traffic. So I guess it's not the motion so much as the unanticipated stops, starts and turns that upset her.

Study in Black and White

We spent the first night in Alamogordo, at a barely-acceptable motel in the run-down part of town, then went out early to White Sands. I had been there a couple of years ago, both in the afternoon and the morning, and am still amazed at the differences in the light there. But this time, sadly, the sky was heavily overcast, so the pictures aren't as eyepopping as they were back then. But doesn't Carly look good in that landscape!

De-Na-Zin

From there, we drove up toward Farmington, in the northwest corner of the state, stopping at Bisti (or De-Na-Zin) Wilderness. (Not sure why the two names.) Not an easy place to find: county roads, some unpaved, and almost no signage. The wilderness area stretches some miles across an Indian reservation, and photos I've seen of it make it look like a spectacular landscape. We, however, were (it appears) at the other end of the wilderness area, which was nowhere near as eerie. Pretty, but not up to expectations. In any case, storms were coming in from the west, so we spent only a short time hiking in the stark desert valley.

the other end of the Wilderness
(photo from Roadtrippers.com)






and there's a rainbow, too!



Next morning we were off early again, and happened to be at Shiprock, New Mexico, just as the sun was hitting the eponymous rock. 



Sherry waving from the promontory
Natural Bridges NP
From there, we went up to Natural Bridges National Park, one of the older parks in Utah. There are three main natural bridge formations in the rock --- rock that is far, far older than at Arches, and not as colourful, but still impressive. We found a trail to one that didn't look too strenuous, but there were ladders along the way that we couldn't traverse with Carly. So we took turns: I waited with the dog while Sherry hiked out to the viewpoint, about twenty minutes' trek each way, then I went while she waited. (There was another trail that led down to the actual bridge, but that was much, much longer and about a 600' drop.) By the time we got to the last bridge site, those storms were about to hit again, so we went for the car and headed off to Torrey, Utah, the other side of Capitol Reef, for the night. I had planned originally to spend time at Cap Reef, but we decided that it was better to spend more time exploring Natural Bridges instead. We'll have to go back to Cap Reef (again) some day --- after all, that was what prompted me to buy an off-road-capable vehicle in the first place --- but other than a drive through it on the flooded highway, we didn't see any of it.

I had, of course, no intention of spending 3 days watching old women play soccer again --- after Escondido, I probably never will --- so I had arranged for my friend Curtis to come up from Las Vegas, and he and I went up to Bryce Canyon for a little hiking. We got to the park in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, and after a really, really bad lunch at a really crappy local fast-food joint -- the only place we could find -- we went into the park and hiked the Queen's Garden trail, so called because there's a rock that looks like a well-known statue of Queen Victoria. And it really does. 

Next morning we drove over to the optimistically named town of Tropic, Utah, and hiked into the canyon on the trail from there, a good morning's travel, during which I was confirmed in my opinion that Carly is not a good hiker's companion. Yet. Maybe when she's older.


That night, Curtis having returned to his digs in the Sin Capital of America and I to my hotel in Hurricane, Utah, we went to a team dinner at a really nice restaurant on a cliff overlooking the small city of St. George, where the Huntsman Games are held. Wish I could remember the name of it. On Saturday, Sherry's team won the Silver Medal in the women's over-60 soccer tournament, and we headed down the road to Havasu for a week's visit with her dad Ben and his wife Lana. 

When they bought the house out there, they brought the boat out from Phoenix, and bought a pair of waverunners and a rail (sort of a dune-buggy), so I was looking forward to some novel and exciting activities. But one of the waverunners had been sold, as junk apparently, and the rail had a flat tire and no clutch, which left one waverunner and the
London Bridge
boat. And of course the first few days were spent just visiting, though Sherry got her exercise by digging a trench in the back yard for electric lines going out to the gazebo her dad had put in. (I helped a little, just to have something to do besides walk and go take pictures of London Bridge.) Finally came the day when we took the surviving waverunner down to the lake and put it in. I took a couple of rides on it. It's fun, but would be more fun if somebody else could have come along. It's like a motorcycle, but with a soft landing when you fall off. (I didn't.) I'd do it again, but living where I live I don't see much point in owning one (or two). That part of Lake Havasu, slightly south of the bridge, isn't very crowded, at least on weekdays, but there were enough kids on loud machines churning doughnuts in the no-wake zone to keep me irritated.
Fritz and Carly

Carly had the best time of her short life in Havasu, since Ben & Lana have a puppy -- a giant puppy -- about her age, named Fritz. They kept each other entertained the entire tie we were there.

We were going to take the boat out the next day, but the weather called for thunderstorms, so that was out; and the day after that, when we actually got some lightning (though not much else). And after that, we headed home.

To find a giant crack in our bedroom ceiling. It collapsed today. Ain't life grand.