“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”
Is there a more enticing refrain, a happier summons, than the siren song of June? The mind smiles at its very mention—June—the month for brides and school closings and the beginning of vacations. It’s not too hot yet in June, unlike the bakery-kitchen conditions conjured up by her descendants, July and August. In June, you can run off to the beach, even in New England, and on a good day you might actually go into the water. June proudly contains the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the day with the most daylight hours. There are meteor showers in June, the Arietids peaking on the seventh day of the month and the Bootids roughly between the 26th and July 2nd.
The Queen of England has her official birthday in June, and—every bit as important—June 12 signals the start of National Dairy Goat Awareness Week. June 2, believe it or not, is National Bubba Day. June is Great Outdoors Month in the United States and National Smile Month in the United Kingdom. June 3rd is widely recognized as National Doughnut Day in this country, celebrated in many American towns with giant fireworks displays and festive parades in which doughy schoolchildren toss glazed pastries from saccharine floats and the Doughnut Queen (you know what her tiara is made of) waves to adoring crowds. June 24 is Take Your Dog To Work Day. It has no equal, this miracle, this June.
When we are considering June vacations, we have many options. Those of us who are less sound of body and/or pocketbook might be sticking closer to home and sad for the fact—but has anyone ever stopped to investigate how many places there are worth visiting within 100 miles of his own abode? There’s hardly a state in the country void of interesting destinations, fascinating sights, lively activities. Okay, there’s North Dakota. But for us denizens of the flat and humid state of Florida, the eyes turn west to the wide open spaces, to Arizona and Utah and Nevada, to Wyoming and Montana, to the desert and the mountains, to starry nights and unincumbered air, to the Lone Ranger and Tonto and the Navajos, to the mysterious vortexes of Sedona and the emptiness of Death Valley. If you’re thinking along those lines yourselves, we have a few suggestions.
The Pioneer Club no longer stands, but its 40-foot neon cowboy, Vegas Vic, still welcomes visitors to Fremont Street.
The Las Vegas-Grand Canyon Loop
Sin City is always an attractive starting point. The flights there are plentiful, the rental cars never run low, there’s a hotel for every budget and your wife will appreciate the glamour, the shopping and the shows. And you can get to a lot of places in good time from Las Vegas.
If you are going just once and want the essential Las Vegas experience, consider staying at Caesar’s Palace, the oldest of the classic strip hotels still remaining and located right in the middle of the action. Caesar’s has a mind-numbing 3960 rooms in six different towers, along with (at last count) seven casinos and an expansive indoor mall with a ton of sexy restaurants. Like Hansel and Gretel, you’ll have to leave bread crumbs on your path to find the way back to your room, but it’s all good. And a lot of significant destinations are within walking distance of Caesar’s. One of them, almost across the street, is the newer Venetian, posh, marble everywhere, larger rooms….with perhaps the only gondoliers you’ll find anywhere west of Venice. The Venetian features 4,049 rooms and its connected sister-hotel, The Palazzo (newer yet), has another 3068. None of them are cheap but no more expensive than many New York or San Francisco hotels, and they don’t charge a fortune, if anything, to keep your cars there overnight.
Many people stick to the security of The Strip but it’s worth a trip downtown to see the original Vegas hotels made famous in movies like Viva Las Vegas. Binion’s, home of the World Series of Poker, is down there, as well as the Fremont Street Experience, a free laser-light show at the outdoor mall, not to mention the Liberace Museum, where you can take a photo for grandma. Or, if you are grandma, for yourself. Nearby is Graceland Chapel, where you can be married by you-know-who. Not that he isn’t available elsewhere. Lots of elsewheres. Too bad they didn’t think of these Elvis impersonators sooner—we might still have Elvis. Back in the day, he shouldered all the responsibility himself, not unlike Santa Claus. Can you imagine waking up every day knowing you had to preside over 200+ weddings before midnight, then do it again next day? Colonel Tom offered to fill in on weekends but that wouldn’t fly. Everyone claimed Elvis offed himself due to depression, and no wonder. Fourteen hundred weddings a week would make anyone want to hit the dusty trail.
Short of sightseeing and shopping, Las Vegas is a sleepy place in daylight, with just a sprinkling of lunatic gamblers still at it. About an hour’s drive in the distance, however, is Red Rock Canyon, which offers less than exhausting—if not exciting—hiking opportunities. The Valley of Fire, Nevada’s oldest and largest state park, is also an easy drive. The Valley derives its name from often spectacular red sandstone formations created by great shifting sand dunes during the age of dinosaurs 150 million years ago, give or take a million. Prehistoric users of the area included the famous Anasazi Pueblo farmers from the nearby Moapa Valley. Or so I’ve heard.
The Whole Dam Story
The drive east to the Grand Canyon takes about five hours, a little more if you stop at Hoover Dam, which a lot of people do. It’s a mere 45-minute drive from Vegas via I-515 and U.S. 93S, and worth the visit. Not everyone is allowed to actually cross the dam. No vehicles over 1000 pounds, no buses containing luggage, no enclosed box trucks or other vehicles difficult to inspect. You don’t want some spoilsport blowing up the Hoover Dam now, do you?
Hoover Dam used to be called Boulder Dam, then the vacuum cleaner company apparently bought naming rights. It was built in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River on the border of the states of Nevada and Arizona between 1931 and 1936, during the Great Depression, and dedicated on September 30, 1935 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One hundred workers’ lives were lost in the bargain.
From about 1900 to the mid-1920s, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam which would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, the U.S. Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to construct the dam was presented by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc, which overcame numerous difficulties to finish the project two years ahead of schedule. Hoover Dam contains Lake Mead, the largest reservoir by volume in the United States. Nearly one million people tour the dam each year. If you visit, try not to have too many kilos of pot in your car. All vehicles are subject to examination.
Your Canyon Awaits….
If you’re planning to stay in or very close to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon during the Summer months, make hotel reservations early. There are not a ton of rooms inside the park and the nearest town, Tusayan, is likewise packed. For latecomers, Williams, about an hour’s drive south is the best alternative. If you’d like to leave the driving to someone else, the Grand Canyon Railway has a train which departs from Williams to the South Rim each morning at 9:30. Unfortunately, this locomotive is propelled by gerbil power and takes two hours and fifteen minutes to travel the 65 miles to the Canyon, a little longer on those occasions when the passengers have to go outside and push. To help the time pass, the railroad hires cowboy actors to move about the cars and amuse the kiddies. These same characters stage nightly sham gunfights back in Williams at 7 p.m.
Most visitors just shuffle around the rim of the Grand Canyon, returning home to rave about a “life-changing experience.” Come on, guys, let’s put on those hiking shoes and get down into The Big Ditch. The well-used Bright Angel Trail is a good starting point, reasonably wide and not expecially taxing. The South Kaibab Trail, reachable by shuttle, is narrow and steeper but also more scenic. On the way to the trails, you’ll notice the mule pen. The mules transport small caravans to the Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Canyon for overnight stays. The trip costs a fat $1000 for two people and must be reserved one year in advance, no compromises. Oh, and nobody can weigh more than 200 pounds including gear, so no binge eating before the trip. And don’t forget your mule-allergy spray, nobody likes a sneezy passenger. It takes 7 1/2 hours to get to the bottom, including Ranger talks and bathroom breaks, and they don’t show movies no matter how much you bang on the cockpit doors.
The town of Williams is well-located for visits to Flagstaff (33.7 miles via I-40) and jaw-dropping Sedona, is a mere hour away. When your visit to the area is concluded, you have the option of returning to Las Vegas via scenic Monument Valley, which straddles the Arizona-Utah state line. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember MV from all those ancient western movies made by John Ford, including Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). The ghost of John Wayne—or perhaps John Wayne, himself—can occasionally be seen galloping across the terrain. Much of the area is Navajo land and the tribe even operates a hotel appropriately called The View in the middle of it all.
A second slightly longer option would be a return via Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park further north in Utah. The former offers the famous Bryce “hoodoos,” tall, thin spires of rock protruding from the bottom of arid drainage basins, brilliantly orange and red and seldom seen elsewhere. The latter park is known for the Zion Narrows, a gorge with walls a thousand feet high and a river as narrow as twenty feet wide running through it. The Narrows hike, a rare opportunity, is a sixteen-mile extravaganza, mostly in the river, aided by a walking stick and special shoes which allow the water to exit. It might be nice to be real healthy for this one. The Virgin River is not deep enough for boat rescue and the gorge is too narrow for helicopters so, once in, you’re committed. It’s a struggle, but worth the effort. Oh, and by the way, if you take this hike, you might want to stop in St. Georges on the way back. They have nice massage therapists there. You’ll need one.
Cartoon Of The Week
That’s all, folks….
