Leaving Sedona, we noticed the left half of what some people call the air dam or retainer was dragging under the front bumper of our Thrifty Dodge Challenger. This seems to happen to everybody at one time or another and so far we have never noticed any resultant catastrophes; eventually, it falls off and is dispatched to that great air dam cemetery in the sky, never to be heard from again. Siobhan, however, believes that taking no action in these matters is dangerous sport so she called the nearest Thrifty Rental Car desk in Phoenix. Thrifty now being owned by Hertz, the man in Phoenix told us to stop at the Hertz desk at the airport on our way through Flagstaff and they’d saw the piece off. We did and they did.
While we were waiting, however, I got a call from a very nice Indian man who was eager to help me with my problem. “We will bring you a new car from in town,” he said, merrily. “And to repay you for your trouble, we will only charge you for your deposit on the old car, no additional costs.” This amounted to about a $300 savings so I was listening. “Just give me your credit card number for the delivery charge and you will have your new car in five minutes.” Ah, I see now. “I don’t think so,” I told him. “You seem like a very nice man, Mustafa, but if you’ll pardon the expression, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground.” My new friend quickly grew surly and I was forced to say ta-ta. I thought that would be the end of it but he was back the next day to make sure things were going swimmingly with my vehicle. And also the day after that. It’s nice for a harried traveler to know he has kind and conscientious people out there checking in on him. Who says it’s a cruel, cruel world? Pardon me, but I have to take a call. I think it might be that helpful rascal Mustafa again.
A Visit With An Old Friend
Back in the year 2000, when homebody Siobhan Ellison was vacationless in Fairfield and very happy to be so, I suggested a trip to the Grand Canyon. This piqued her interest like no other destination and she agreed to go. We flew west, set up shop in a cheap motel in Williams, Arizona and spent five blissful if sweaty days hiking the Bright Angel and South Kaibab trails, learning the ways of explorers and geologists and people who rise from their beds at 5:30 in the morning. At night, we retired to Williams to have dinner, ponder the day and watch the nightly faux gunfights in the streets. It was such a positive experience that Siobhan agreed to take a couple of weeks each summer to visit the Golden West and, except for one dreadful Covid year, we have returned like lemmings to the sea.
In 2016, the day after our marriage in Las Vegas, we headed for The Big Ditch to ride educated mules to the bottom of the Canyon. Some honeymoon. The trip to the floor took five and one-half hours and the temperature rose from 64 degrees at 6:30 a.m. on the rim to 104 at Phantom Ranch by 1 p.m. And then, of course, the very primitive air-conditioners were overwhelmed by the heat and didn’t kick in until about 3 a.m. There was always the creek, of course, if the mountain lions weren’t using it. Since our trail boss insisted we travel “the cowboy way” with unadorned, hard-as-rock saddles, sitting down became a chore, especially after our return trip the next day. When we got home, my massage therapist asked if someone had beaten me with sticks. On the whole, not a lot worse than my previous wedding night when an earlier wife got drunk at the reception and passed out for ten hours.
Eight years later, we were just back for tea and crumpets and one more opportunity to peer over the edge into wonderland. Unlike us, the view never gets old. About this majestic place, author Kevin Fedarko had this to say: “If there is a point to being in the Grand Canyon, it is to not rush but to linger, suspended in a blue/amber haze of in-between-ness for as long as one possibly can. To float, to drift, savoring the pulse of the river on its odyssey through the canyon, and above all to postpone the unwelcome and distinctly unpleasant moment when one is forced to reemerge and reenter the world beyond the rim. That is the paramount goal.”
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| Dreamland tour guide Natalie digs out lunch in a rare shady nook. |
On The Docket---It’s White Pocket
“Mention my name in Kanab---it’s the greatest little town in the world!”---Hilyard, Mysels & Sanford
Well, it’s not bad, centered as it is among the Vermillion Hills, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, the storied Sand Caves, the infamous Toadstool Rocks, Moqui Cave and the largest critter sanctuary in the United States, Best Friends Animal Society. Their enormous and colorful pet cemetery is to die for. Home base for three days was the cozy Canyons Boutique Hotel, with its award-winning Sego Restaurant just across the lobby from our room. Who could ask for anything more, unless it be a slight decrease in afternoon temperatures, which hovered in the low 100s?
Despite Mr. Twizzle of Sedona fame, we booked a tour to the White Pocket area with an outfit called Dreamland Safari Tours because nobody, but nobody is making that 45-minute drive from civilization down sandy, rut-filled washboard roads except a gutsy and experienced driver with one of those movie chase vehicles which cannot be stopped by anything short of explosives. We did the sitting twist, like we did last summer. We did the bounce and the mash, the monster mash. One minute we were up, the next we’re down, like Donovan on acid. Our driver was the lovely and talented Natalie, an ex-Mormon mother of eight, none adopted, which set her up perfectly for the other difficulties of life. Our co-companion was a mid-sixtyish little photographer named Jordan who was possessed of two artificial hips which were cussing a blue streak. We almost asked “Are we there yet?” seventeen times, but we didn’t want to look wimpy. This is an excursion for which you’d prefer to be anaesthetized and revived with adrenaline shots when you reached the target area. Fortunately, all bad things must end sooner or later and suddenly we found ourselves in Glory Land. The Vermillion Hills of Utah are not like anything else anywhere. What is this amazing place? How did it happen? Where did it come from, where did it go, what’s going on here, Cotton-Eye Joe? Let’s turn it over to Dr. Science.
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| Toto....I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. |
The Vermillion Hills by Siobhan Ellison
When you are walking in White Pocket, you are in the Vermillion Cliffs, treading on sediments deposited by ancient oceans and the immense sand dunes they buried. The dune fields were covered by the ebb and flow of late Jurassic oceans (160-180 million years ago) and the lakes that were created by tectonic mountain building when North America collided with Eurasia forming Pangea. The sand originated, most likely, from 240 million years of erosion of the Appalachian Mountains that appeared over 1.2 billion years ago, once as tall as the Alps and Rocky Mountains. Winds and ancient rivers carried sand to form the dunes where you find them fossilized today. The oceans added minerals that petrified them until the geologic processes of the Colorado Plateau uplifted and exposed the Navajo rock formation to erosion and weathering, creating the second step of the Grand Staircase found in the Escalante National Monument. The Grand Staircase is made up of alternating cliffs, slopes, and terraces with different colored bands of rock and different biomes extending from Bryce Canyon to the Grand Canyon. The five steps are named for the colors of the rocks: Chocolate, Vermillion, White, Gray, and Pink, each unique in the minerals they hold. The rusting of the iron contributes the red hues, manganese tints the sandstone blueish, the greenstone is the Catoctin Basalt from the Appalachian volcanism, and the leaching of minerals and quartz gives the stone a white color. You can pick bits of basalt stuck to concreted sandstone. These stones are evidence of the volcanic action that continued to change the scenery over the last 240 million years. The White Pocket area is continuing to change, you need to go visit now; in 1000 years it will be eroded and forever changed.
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| William of Arabia meets Dune Girl. |
Sand Dunes And Sand Caves And Gravesites, Oh My!
Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park and Best Friends animal sanctuary are near one another on U.S. Highway 89 just outside Kanab. If you like to go to the beach but never into the water, like everyone we know, Coral Pink is the place for you. The imposing dunes were formed from the erosion of pink-colored Navajo Sandstone surrounding the park. High winds passing through the notch between the Moquith and Moccasin mountains picked up loose sand particles, then dropped them onto the dunes as a result of the Venturi effect (the reduction in fluid pressure that results when a moving fluid speeds up as it flows through a constricted section of pipe). The dunes are estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000 years old and slogging through them is no day at the beach. The old baseball pitcher who famously said “The legs are the first to go” was right on the money, these things will slow a senior citizen to a dead crawl in ten minutes. We’re all for sandboarding down the dunes but plumb tuckered out at the mere thought of climbing to the starting point at the top. Where’s the glorious t-bar, the sandlift that carries you to the summit? Where’s the faithful Orange Julius stand to wet your whistle? Where are the EMTs with their trusty paddles? What kind of a State Park is this, anyway?
You could opt for the Sand Caves instead. A piffling five miles north of Kanab, the hike from the parking lot to the caves is an easy half-mile, but then you’ll be clambering up the mountain for a look inside. The older you get, the more you find yourself looking for a Sherpa. If you make it without a sharp rise in blood pressure or a sprained ankle, it’s definitely worth the climb.
Best Friends Animal Society is the wind chime capital of the world. The sanctuary is on a roomy 3,700 acres, and if it that isn’t enough it rents another 33,000 from the United States Bureau of Land Management. The acreage is home to an astonishing 1,500 homeless animals, each with its own neighborhood (Bunny House, Dogtown, Cat World, etc.). Animals which are unable to be placed in permanent homes and wild animals that cannot be released back into the wild can live out their days at BFAS.
The Society also has a very large pet cemetery swarming with windchimes. The critters all have their little gravestones, most adorned with colored rocks, posies and other baubles on their small surfaces. Several tear-jerking written testimonials to the affection, personality and character of the interred animals adorn the area (“Dear Goldie, you’ll always be in our hearts. We can’t wait to share our pillow again.”) You can even paint your own memorial stone in honor of your pet, attend a Pet Loss Workshop or “Move Through Grief With Yoga.” Siobhan was very much taken with the charming rustle of the wind chimes. She’s thinking of buying a couple gross of the things to jazz up our yard and keep the aardvarks at bay. We’re hoping they have a veterinarian’s discount.
That’s all, folks….
Next Week the trip wraps up with a visit to Bryce Canyon and Zion N.P. We’re a little concerned right now, though. It’s been two days and we haven’t heard a thing from that nice Mustafa.
