This is the time of year Captain Travel reads his cards and letters from good little children out there looking for someplace to vacation this summer. Now the Captain clearly recognizes that Juneau’s not for everyone and old people sometimes lose their teeth on rollercoasters, so there is no such travel thing as one-size-fits-all. With that in mind, here are the best places to go in two of the better United States, each coming replete with an alternative for travelers who are difficult. Happy trails!
1. Arizona---Grand Canyon. Many visitors have claimed a visit to the Grand Canyon changed their lives, and indeed taking one too many steps backward for a photo on the South Kaibab Trail can do that to a person. If you can’t tolerate a hike down into the canyon on the fairly roomy Bright Angel Trail, the South Rim Trail is a fairly flat, paved 13-mile path connecting Hermit’s Rest with the South Kaibab Trailhead, offering panoramic views and access to viewing areas like Mather Point and the Trail of Time. Not interested in walking 13 miles? The park’s free shuttle service will pick you up or let you off at several points along the way.
For more ambitious hikers, there are several trails to the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon. Rookie hikers need not apply, especially in Summer when temperatures at the canyon bottom can be forty degrees higher than at the top (like 104 degrees on occasion). It’s one thing to make the descent, another to climb back up the same day. Fortunately, reservations can be made (well in advance) to overnight at the primitive Phantom Ranch, where the cabins are spartan and they don’t leave mints on your pillows, assuming you get pillows at all. There is a good restaurant, however, and a nice creek to cool off in. Extra Perk: If a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere in the world while you’re there, it will be at least 24 hours before you know about it.
Another alternative is a mule ride to the bottom and back up the next day. Captain Travel made this very trip himself and he’s here to tell you it’s not for the weak of heart. The ride takes approximately 5 1/2 hours in the saddle and no butt-soothing cushions are allowed. Even if you make it down in one piece, you have to get back on that mule again the next day, so it’s 11 hours of ass-pounding glory. As soon as the Cap’n got back to the top, he jumped in his car and drove straight to the kindly if criminally expensive Amara Spa in Sedona for tender loving care.
If you go, it’s expensive to stay inside the Park and rooms must be reserved months in advance. The drive from lively Williams, Arizona is about an hour, traffic is decent and on a good day you might find a room there for $100. If you have kids, or if you are a kid, they have faux gunfights on the main street most nights. We always root for the dwarf.
Alternative---Antelope Canyon. Located just outside Page, Arizona, Antelope Canyon is that place you’ve been seeing pictures of for years with the smooth sandstone walls lit by sunlight shooting through cracks in the ceiling. The canyon is actually divided into upper and lower sections, each offering unique views and spectacular photo opportunities. The Upper Canyon is famous for its noonish light shafts, the Lower features a more adventuresome hike involving stairs and ladders and significantly tougher physical activity.
The Navajo tribe owns all of Antelope Canyon and all the guides are Navajos well-versed in the better photo op areas (they will be happy to take your photos and suggest the best places). You will be driven to the canyon in the rear sections of bouncy trucks and find yourself wondering whether the Navajos have ever been introduced to shock absorbers. Being a competitive tribe, they like to race their rattling vehicles to the destination, so don’t believe them when they tell you your seat belts are not necessary.
Stay in Page, there are plenty of reasonable hotels and barbecue joints, but be careful not to leave any champagne bottles in the trunk of your car. Don’t miss the dramatic Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River just five miles south of town in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
Got another day? Head for brilliant Sedona, stay at Sky Ranch and eat at the Mesa Grill snug up to the airport. Views of the area from Sky Ranch are unsurpassed and the famous Airport Vortex is nearby. Some say it will cure your lumbago and put added bounce in your step. Others say you’ll skin your knees.
Got an afternoon? On your way to standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, stop at the exciting Meteor Crater, a mere 18 miles east of Winslow just off Interstate 40 West. The MC is the largest meteor crater in the United States, the grateful recipient of a kindly meteor carefully plunging to Earth in the middle of the desert roughly 50,000 years ago, leaving a 560-foot dent in the landscape. It was a big hit, if you’ll pardon the expression, with Siobhan who has an affinity for large objects falling from the sky and leaving enormous holes in the ground. You’ll need a t-shirt from the nice gift shop in the Visitor Center, which also features an 80-seat widescreen theater and Crater Trail access. The trail winds around the perimeter of the crater and no, they will not let you go down to the bottom even if you’re a big tipper.
2. Utah---(tie) Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. They’re like BBQ potato chips, it’s hard to devour just one. Fortunately for you, these two are a mere 80 miles apart and can be reasonably explored in a single week. Don’t make us pick just one. Bryce has its brilliant hoodoos, which you’ll find nowhere else. Zion has The Narrows, a fantabulous 16-mile hike between 1000-foot canyon walls in and along the north fork of the Virgin River. Bryce has Ebenezer’s country music palace and a nightly rodeo, but Zion has more hostelry choices, better restaurants and a death-defying hike to Angel’s Landing. If you want to let attendees tilt the scales, Zion National Park draws five million visits annually, while Bryce gets two million. Zion is massive, with a greater variety of things to do, benefits from a lower altitude, is closer to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, and its bedroom community of Springdale offers all the amenities. But as far as we’re concerned, the two go together like a horse and carriage. As dad was told by mother, you can’t have one without the other. Ask the local gentry and they will say it’s elementary. Had enough?
Alternative---Monument Valley. How do we love thee, Monument Valley? Let us count the ways. We love thee to the depth and breadth and height our souls can reach. We love you in the morning sun and when the day is through, we’ll be looking at the moon but we’ll be seeing you.
Captain Travel is not prone to label a destination “spiritual,” but Monument Valley is the exception to the rule. There’s just something about it that wakes up the echoes and haunts you long after you leave. Merle Haggard famously sang, “If God doesn’t live in Colorado, that’s where he spends most of his time.” We beg to differ. Glorious as the Centennial State may be, we think Merle was off by about 90 miles, which is understandable.
You know you’re in for something special just approaching the place from the south. The long entry on arrow-straight Route 163 feels like driving into an epic Western film. The flat horizon slowly transforms as towering red sandstone buttes and mesas gradually rise from the desert floor. The landscape shifts into vast sweeping vistas framed by spectacular 1000-foot geological formations. You get the feeling you’ve been here before, and you have---as a child watching John Wayne in Stagecoach, The Searchers, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. You wondered as an eight-year-old where in the world this magical place might be but never expected to find it. Now here you are.
Looking out from your balcony at the Navajo-owned View hotel---and you will stay at the View hotel---you don’t see a landscape, you view a painting, set up on a colossal easel in the distance. You know right away it’s a work of art because no natural scene could be so splendid. All the hotel rooms face east, looking directly into the heart of Monument Valley and the iconic sandstone buttes, surrounded by endless cinematic desert. Just after we arrived, dark clouds danced across the stage, followed by thunder, lightning and a hard rain. No more than ten minutes passed and the sky lightened up and sent forth a brilliant rainbow. “Is this just for us,” I asked Siobhan, “or does everybody get the Big Show?” In late afternoon we went outside with several other amateurs and a few pros and took photographs as the setting sun lit up the monuments of this holy place. Eventually, the visitors dissolve into the haze and you find yourself alone with the profound silence, isolation and vast dramatic scale of Monument Valley, and you know deep in your soul you are in a place like nowhere else. The nuns were right after all---Heaven exists.
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| With Timmy of the Navajos at M.V. |
That’s all, folks
