Thursday, September 13, 2018

Let Me Be Your Salty Dog

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“Standin’ on the corner with the lowdown blues/A great big hole in the bottom of my shoes/Honey, let me be your salty dog.”---The Morris Brothers


Two days in Albuquerque.  Two more in Santa Fe.  A couple in Taos, five in Moab and a grand finale in Salt Lake City.  People look at this schedule and wonder; is it exhilarating or exhausting?  How many times can you load and unload the car?  How about a nice two weeks on the Firth of Forth with an occasional hovercraft ride to Portobello or Kirkcaldy?

We get your angst.  It’s not for everybody.  We weren’t even sure it was for us. When we started this vacation business, it was a single-site adventure.  Several days at the Grand Canyon via Las Vegas, with a stop at Hoover Dam and a side trip to Sedona.  Another year, one solid week at Glacier National Park, the next year at Yosemite, a third at Rocky Mountain National Park with the requisite visit to the old hippie shrine at Nederland.  When we visited Yellowstone, however, Grand Teton N.P. was so close we added a couple of days in Jackson Hole.  The move was no big deal so we decided to trek through California, starting with two days San Francisco, then a two-night stopover in Monterey, the gateway to Big Sur, after which a stop in Camarillo to visit Santa Monica, Venice and L.A. with my sister Alice.  We finished up descending to Laguna Beach to check on my oldest living pal, Jack Gordon.  We didn’t find all the traveling and bed changing bothersome.  We went to Seattle, then Port Angeles to visit the Hoh Rain Forest and Olympic National Park.  Later that trip, we drove to Mt. St. Helen’s and poked around the Ape Caves, then dipped into Oregon, took a look at Multnomah Falls, ogled Mount Hood, climbed up to Crater Lake, stayed at Bend, drove through Eugene and finished with two nights in Portland.  Easy peasy.  Some might hate it but we thrived.  We never felt we were anywhere too long, never got bored.  If we felt the need to return somewhere, there was always next year.

As we remarked, it ain’t for everyone.  But is it for you?  You never know til you try.  Maybe there’s a hidden Jack Kerouac secreted deep in your persona.


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(1) Rugged coffee at the Outlaw Cafe, (2) Scenic delights invade the windshield of the Moab-Salt Lake City Express, (3) Wind farms dot the trail, (4) Nearing the Big City, (5) Arrival.


On The Road Again

Occasionally on these multi-destination trips, a reconsideration is in order.  In the planning stages, Bill went back and forth on Moab--four nights or five?  He decided Arches National Park might require two days and booked five nights at The Gonzo Inn only to discover Arches would be wrapped up nicely in a day.  Sometimes you have to call an audible.  We went to the Gonzo desk, told them we’d be leaving a day early and they could keep the change.  To their credit, they wouldn’t hear of it.  We compromised on half the rent and lit out for Salt Lake City.  Some might ask why not take it night by night, reserve for a day or two and extend it by the day.  Not possible in a tourist town no bigger than Moab.  You’ll be sleeping in your car, something we learned years ago when we got stuck at a motel full of crazed bikers in Babb, Montana.

The drive to Salt Lake is just under four hours, the first part via rural U.S. Rte. 191, most of the balance over scenic interstate highways 70 and 15.  Before you get to SLC, you might want to turn off the highway at American Fork and mosey on over to the Timpanogos Cave National Monument in the Wasatch Mountains for a stiff hike and, if you make it inside the cave, some real relief from the heat.  It’s 46 degrees Fahrenheit in there.  Unfortunately, they only let a few people a day inside to keep it that way.  It might be just as well.  We noticed miner’s helmets and knee pads at the entrance, which suggests crawling around in the dark in a refrigerator.  We had enough trouble in the Ape Caves, where it was 20 degrees warmer.

There are actually three caves at the monument, Timpanogos, Hansen Cave and Middle Cave, interconnected by man-made tunnels blasted out in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, a merry band of jokers which rambled around the country in those days blowing things up and having a great old time.  These caves are full of speleothems, among them helictites--hollowed, twisted, spiraling straws of deposited calcite or aragonite, formed when water travels through the tube and then evaporates.  Also available for your inspection are flowstone, cave popcorn, cave drapery and the requisite stalagmites and stalactites.  We immediately phoned our geologist pal Chuck LeMasters back in Jonesville, Florida, figuring he’d be on the next plane, but his pup Timmy had a presentation at pre-school the next day and Chuck demurred.  It’s virtually impossible to get LeMasters out of the house these days.


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Images from the Timpanogos Cave trail in the Wasatch Range.


The Hike

There is only one way to get to Timpanogos Cave—a strenuous hike up a very steep 1 1/2 mile paved trail which rises 1092 feet to an evelvation of 6730 feet by the time you get there.  Along the way, you meet grim senior citizens and children who won’t budge another foot, testimony to the laborious effort.  Little signs are placed in the rock every quarter-mile so hikers can measure thier progress or be chagrined at the lack of it.  You’d be shocked to discover what a chore a quarter-mile can be.

The trail is scenic and filled with well-placed signs describing the history and geology of the area.  If you are extremely lucky, you may see a bobcat in the nearby woods, as Bill did.  Reservations must be made in advance to enter the caves, which means a family hauling a passle of tots must cleverly calculate how long it will take to drag them to the top.  Arrive late and the Cave Nazi waves a niggling finger at you: “No speleothems for YOU today!”  Siobhan and Bill made it in the customary hour-and-a-half without much trouble.  Siobhan held out hope that one or another straggler would not show up and the kindly park rangers would allow her a peek inside.  Maybe they would have if she’d shown up in her nifty Las Vegas cocktail dress and stilettos, but her hiking outfit possessed insufficient charm.  We hung around for awhile looking for a sympathetic face and finally surrendered.  The trip back down was uneventful until Bill felt a twinge in an outer thigh muscle with 1/16th of a mile to go.  Usually, the culprit on these hilly descents is the shin area, unused to walking on steep downhills.  But that’s why they have massage parlors, right?  Okay, that’s one of the reasons.


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(1-3) Timpanogos Trail views, (4) Bill spots a Bobcat on the mountain; Siobhan is disappointed at the quality of his find, (5-6) Trail views, (7) Entrance to the cave, (8) Hopeful hikers waiting for a peek inside.


Salt Lake City

For those inclined to resort to the nefarious Bucket List, Salt Lake City is somewhere below the horizon, perhaps snuggled in with Albuquerque, Kansas City and Des Moines as a paramount destination.  But then there is the famous story of a man from Arkansas who won a contest the prize for which was an all-expenses-paid vacation to anywhere….the French Riviera….Bolivia….Uttar Pradesh….and he inconceivably chose Salt Lake.  The ultimate example of different strokes for different folks.  There’s just no explaining some people’s tastes.

Maybe he just wanted to see Gilgal Gardens, a fantasyland created by retired Mormon bishop Thomas Battersby Child Jr. back in 1945.  The bishop named his place after the fabled gardens near the River Jordan where the Israelites had crossed on their way to the Promised Land.  Child and his sculptor pal Maurice Brooks spent about twenty years on the garden located on a half-acre behind his home, filling it with 12 original sculptures and over 70 engraved stones, one of them a sphinx with the head of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith.  The acreage is loaded with strange carved images such as grasshoppers and disembodied heads.  There is even a life-sized statue of the bishop himself.  A visitor must walk a stone path to view these wonders, each stone of the path engraved with biblical or literary quotes.

Maybe the Arkansas Traveler just wanted to drive around unobstructed.  Salt Lake City’s broad avenues make motoring a joy, with very few traffic jams and plenty of parking.  Perhaps that contest winner was looking for an open-minded community.  Surprising to some, there are not Mormon recruiting booths on every corner and SLC was once (in 2012) named the “Gayest City in the USA” by Advocate.  The LGBT community is huge and the annual Pride Festival draws 25,000 attendees, including a hundred or so members of the Church of Latter Day Saints who show up to provide support.

Maybe the man from Arkansas was looking for a job.  Salt Lake has a few spots available.  In the space of a couple of days, we asked for directions a number of times with little success—seems everybody we asked had just moved there.  The International Rescue Committee and other advocacy groups have a big presence in SLC.  Each year, hundreds of refugees are resettled there and receive the help they need to become self-sufficient citizens.  We met a newly-arrived waiter from Cambodia and hotel workers from various countries.

Perhaps the contest-winner needed some help with his family tree.  The incomparable Family History Library in Temple Square is the largest genealogical library in the world and whoever is in second place isn’t even close.  The Library is open to the public at no charge.  It holds genealogical records for over 110 countries, territories and possessions and its collections include over 1.6 million rolls of microfilmed records onsite and access the total collection of more than 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records; 727 microfiche; 356,000 books, serials and other formats; 4500 periodicals; 3725 electronic resources including subscriptions to the major genealogical websites.  The Library will assign you a consultant when you walk in, if needed.

Oh, and if you need help getting around, the Salt Lake City, the trolleys are free.

There are tours galore in SLC.  We took a trolley tour (not free) which rambled around the downtown area with get-out-and-take-pictures opportunities at the fabulous Cathedral of the Madeleine and the spiffy State House.  The narrator, in his other life an actor, was knowledgeable, colorful and not shy.  There are other tours galore of the various points of interest, including the Mormon Tabernacle, famous for its unparalleled acoustics, where you can actually hear a pin drop.  Yes, really.

So maybe the man from Arkansas knew what he was doing after all.  Salt Lake is a sprightly city in a spectacular setting peopled with cheerful citizens.  The prices for goods and services are more than reasonable.  You can motor out to the countryside in no time or trolley for free to your heart’s content.  The impressions of a place we gather from far away are often misinformed, unenlightened or dead-wrong.  It’s even possible there’s something to be said for Des Moines. 


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(1) The landmark tower at Trolley Square, (2) A stop on the tour, (3) The venerable Union Pacific building, circa 1908, a model for Disney, (4) Free trolley on the move, (5-6) Inside the Cathedral of the Madeleine, (7) Siobhan surveys the mountains in the distance from the Capitol steps.


The Last Word

And so, another vacation in the books.  We sang with the mariachis in Albuquerque and trammed to its highest mountain.  We invaded the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe and ballooned over Espanola.  We hiked the Ghost Ranch, soaked in the mud at Ojo Caliente, visited the Earthships in Taos and lunched in Durango.  Finally, we explored the vast wonderlands of Canyonlands and Arches national parks, an unforgettable experience.  Bill got an amazing birthday knife and Siobhan collected rocks.  There was even a nighttime boat ride down the Colorado.  We met great people, hardy fellow-travelers like John Whitehouse of Manchester, England, who is undoubtedly standing on a large rock somewhere as we speak.

All this is possible because of the administrative aid of the Ellison family, Stuart and Mary, the devotion to duty of Siobhan’s illustrious Pathogenes crew, starring Julie and Laura, and the animal-care talents of Janis Peterson the hardest working girl in show business.

Next year, it’s off to Idaho to make sure ex-Subterranean Circus staffer Mike (Jagger) Hatcherson is still rockin’ and rollin’.  Coupled with a revisit to Yellowstone, where we never got to see the waterfalls in the southwestern part of the park.  Siobhan says the water in Pocatello is the best in the universe, so we’ll have to bottle up a few gallons for Christmas gifts.

We hope our tales of derring-do and derring-don’t inspire the lot of you to make plans to visit the Great Outdoors while your arms and legs are still working.  It’s a miracle out there and it’s yours for the taking.  The Cosmic Arbiter gives everybody just one spin of the wheel so this is no time to sit back and talk about some day.  It’s up to you whether some day ever comes.


That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com