A week of grand canyons (Part 1)

Two posts in a row which have taken me 6 months to write.....does anyone else see a trend developing here? This is less of an essay and more like a travel show, still after this long you should be happy to see anything....

Around October last year sometime Purple Homme & Violet Femme came across to pay us a visit. However rather than do the usual 'this is New Orleans, wow' tour, we decided to meet in Las Vegas and tour around the 4 corners region of the US. For those who someone aren't up on US slang, the area is called 4 corners for the very simple reason that it's the only place in the US where four states meet at a single spot - Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The whole area is famous for being canyon country, one is known for being particularly grand....

We started off catching up in Vegas and cruising the strip for something not horribly tacky. Giving up, we decided to get in the spirit and hopped on the replica roller-coaster above the New York; New York casino. That was actually a lot of fun, a really good coaster.

Later on we headed out to see a late-night showing of "Spamalot". For those of you who've managed not to hear about this, this is a stage version of the Monty Python movie "The Holy Grail", with a bunch of extra songs thrown in and done (at least in Vegas) by Americans. It's hard to know exactly how to describe the result in a phrase, I'm trying to choose between:

Horrendous.

Cringe-worthy.

Just plain not funny.

Take your pick. Anyone who can make Monty Python not funny has really worked hard. Afterwards we spent some time trying to figure out exactly where they went wrong, and we couldn't really figure out precisely what was wrong. Somehow they made the excellent source material really unfunny.

The next morning we grabbed our hire car and headed out east of Vegas for a quick side trip to drive across the Hoover dam. Right now you can drive across the top of the dam wall, but pretty soon you won't be able to as due to "concerns around terrorism" they are building a bypass over the top of the canyon.

By the way, our hire car was a really nifty Volvo. Yes, I really just typed that sentence. I must be getting old, as I really enjoyed driving it.


Back to the dam - it's an impressive piece of engineering, but it's actually really difficult to get a decent photo of the size of the dam from the front. So you'll just have to put up with the upriver side pictures that we did manage to get. It's impressive, and I'm sure it does provide hydro power to the entire continent, but it's probably not exciting enough to go out of your way for.

The bypass being built across the top of the canyon.
The upriver side of the dam.

After that we retraced our steps and headed north into Utah towards Zion national park. I have no idea what the entrance to Zion looks like as I slept through that bit. But the canyon itself is truly spectacular. The place was apparently named Zion by Mormon settlers in an attempt to encourage people to live there. I can't really see why this was necessary, I would have thought a couple of photos would do the trick.

Anyway, lots of pictures below of stunning sheer cliffs, waterfalls and wildlife (ok, just a single deer). Enjoy.

A cool waterfall without much water which we hiked up to. After we got to the top, Purple Homme decided he'd walked enough and wandered back down, while Violet Femme; Gator Girl & myself went for a longer hike up to the base of the cliffs.
Violet Femme pondering the universe.
The views from the bus stop.

That night we stayed in Springdale, then hopped back in mean Volvo machine and headed further north into Utah to Bryce Canyon. This canyon was one of the freakiest places we visited. The camera really doesn't do justice to the amazing colours of this place. If it wasn't for the large amount of tourists that were also wandering around with us, it would have been quite eerie. As it was, we had to settle for stunning.


Stunning...and weird.....Violet Femme & Purple Homme posing on the hike downhill.
This picture is mainly here just to show off my "Utah Rocks!" cap....
These pictures never work out as good as you hope.

Violet Femme taking a break.
That's what I call determined. 20 years or so of effort by that tree to finally see the sun.
The hike back out.

More odd and stunning scenery.

We stayed that night in a little nowhere town called Torrey on our way between Bryce and Moab. It's a long drive with interesting variations on desolate. There's not much vegetation, but the rubble changes colour in different ways. After 5 hours of this drive, you notice these kind of things.
Red desert.Grey desert.Light brown desert.Sunrise over desert.

Stripy-rock red desert (with Gator Girl showing her excitement at the latest change in the rocks).

On the trip we passed by Goblin Valley state park, which is another in what you're probably gathering by now is a long stream of really odd scenery. This place feels like another planet, by a strange and predictable co-incidence was actually used as another planet in a recent movie...anyone pick the movie?


After that long and rather brown trip, we ended up in the quite un-Mormon town of Moab. Moab is nice little town between the Arches and Canyonlands national parks. It's a bit of a tourist town, but in a good way. For a start it was the first place for ages where we were able to get a decent coffee. It's also home to a thriving mountain biking community, which I'll come back to later.

The ended up staying in cabins about 10 miles out of town, mainly because they were cheap, but they were also a pretty good place to stay. The first day we went up to Dead Horse state park to look down on the Colorado river. Despite the pretty name it's a stunning view over the Colorado river. In fact, the amazing meander loops, cliffs and rock formations meant that the eyes of this pseudo-geologist were misting up a little. Probably the altitude.

We also spent some time checking out the other rock formations in the Canyonlands park, including the top of some sheer cliffs and some rather funky rock arches.
Like this one...Violet Femme getting very close to the edge...This edge.....

Anyway, I'm running out of time to finish this up today, so I'm going to call this part 1 and return soon with the rest of the story. Coming up next time: more arches, more rock formations, mountain biking, clifftop dwellings and a final very large canyon.

I'll leave you with this final thought from Moab:

The Miami Dolphins (are tasty)

Way way way back when I was still only in my early 30's (ie: April), Gator Girl and I spent a weekend in Miami. GG had to work there on the Friday, so I caught a plane across on the Friday night so we had the Saturday and Sunday to explore. As most of you with access to an atlas would know, Miami is a long way south, near the point of the Florida peninsula. We got up early on the Saturday morning & headed to the other other side of the peninsula to visit the Everglades National Park. It's an interesting national park, technically a 'subtropical marshland'. To the rest of us, this ends up being a large expanse of flat, submerged grassland with occasional highly vegetated islands, just slightly above the waterline. Effectively it's a flood 160km by 60km wide that's gradually draining down to the south.

As a national park it's not really in great shape. Being a marshland it relies on regular influx of water, most of which is now diverted to the water supply of Miami. It's not helped by a concerted effort to drain it in the late 1800's that helped trash a lot of the native vegetation. It is, however pretty spectacular.

GG showing off the swampy grasslands. Note the mound of green in the distance - this is one of those islands.
Up close you can see the water sitting a few cm deep, with occasional holes in the limestone which make it up to 1/2 m deep.
From a distance it looks like grass, but in reality it's all underwater.



The lush vegetation on one of the islands in the middle of the grasslands.

That evening we drove back to Miami and went and explored the art deco district. Miami is a strange city in some ways - full of construction and skyscrapers, stunning views at every turn, yet home to an funky 50's art deco area and a wide array on influences due to it's proximity to the Caribbean and Cuba. So it's a mix of the fascinating and the standard American.

Menus say a lot about the place you live. Nawlins will have the words "roux"; "ettouffe" & "spicy" on almost every menu you see. Texas always has "biggest"; "fried" & "extra cheese". Whereas in Miami I had flame grilled Cuban beef with Hoisin sauce on Mexican tortillas at an Italian restaurant (served to Australians in America by a Spanish waitress). Now that's fusion cuisine.

Next day we cruised South Beach and checked out all the beautiful people sunning themselves. I lowered the beauty quotient by going for a swim in the Atlantic (after wussing out in Boston). We then headed around some of the islands and checked out places we'd like to live.

Here's me admiring my potential new floating home.

What a lovely bunch of coconuts.

We then headed back to the beach for lunch, and the reason for the title of this blog. We looked at the menu (checking out the healthy choices, of course), to find.....


.............something shocking..................


Check out the third option down on the low calorie options. Oh, if only the Desert Rat were here.

And to finish, I'd just like to say to Violet Femme that again, I haven't blogged about the grand canyon. Well, I'm sorry, but I've got a backlog which I'm working on.....so please have patience with me.

The Weekday Water Park Warriors

Back in August, Moistie (see blog link to the right) travelled across the Pacific to visit us in the deep south. Yes, it really has taken me that long to get around to writing this tale down. Moistie was travelling through New Orleans on his way to a wedding in Mexico, then continuing onto London before eventually travelling around the world back to Western Australia.

He was supposed to arrive at the airport around midnight, which would have given me plenty of time to get some sleep, then head off to work while he recovered from his jetlag. Thanks to the wonders of US airlines, the arrival time turned from midnight, to 2am, to 4am, and finally to 5:30am. By the time I picked up him up, I'd had no sleep and had to head straight to work. Not a fun day. Whereas Moistie was able to sit back on my comfy couch, watch cable and surf the internet. Tough life. Gator Girl wasn't around to keep him company, as she was exploring Florida with her parents who were also visiting at the same time.

I got back from work that evening to find him asleep on the couch, against my very strict instructions to avoid jet lag. So I dragged him to his feet, stuck him in the car and started the driving tour of the Northshore. Naturally we ended up at our local pub (the Tap Room), where we sampled the local brew and ate a tasty burger.

I'd managed to score the rest of the week off work, so on the Tuesday we packed up and headed down across the lake. We did our now usual tour 'o devastation, then headed to the airport, as we were on a surprise trip to Orlando! Trip went fine, Gator Girl picked us up at the airport at the other end, and we had two days to spend at Disneyland.

First day we got up stupidly early so as to avoid the crowd and headed off to the 'magic kingdom'. This is the classic Disney experience, and I thoroughly discourage adults from going. But if you do go, whatever you do avoid the 'It's a small world' ride. Basically everything is designed for kids, so the rides are really not that exciting. The only decent one was Space Mountain, which is basically a roller coaster completely in the dark. The rest ranged from average, to boring, to lame. Look, I'm sure it's awesome if you're young, or young at heart, but I'm old and cynical so it didn't really work as well for me. I'm there for the rides. And you spent a lot more time queuing than you did on the rides.

Having said that, we did run around like kids a lot of the time. And Gator Girl had a great time, so perhaps she's not a cynical as me. Space mountain was great, the wild west roller coaster was ok, splash mountain was very dull with one really exciting drop, and pirates of the carribean was more an experience than an actual ride. Oh yeah, and the jungle cruise was dire. However the teacups were impressively nausea inducing.

The crowds straight after opening charging to the castle.

It's a castle!

Can you tell we're tourists? Gator Girl, GG's Mom, Me & Moistie out the front of our disney hotel.

A sight we saw a lot - people backs in queues.

Passing time in the queues for Space Mountain.

Passing time on the wild west roller coaster.

Aaarrrrr, there be pirates!

Come out of the barrel, and put the silly accent away.

Desperately holding my lunch down.

The queue for the lamest ride of all time - the Jungle Cruise. We waited over an hour for this.

And this plastic hippo was probably the highlight.

GG Mom showing her excitement after the jungle cruise.
We stayed at the magic kingdom until about 2pm, then we headed over to the part of the Disney trip I'd really been looking for - Blizzard Beach water park! Woo!

Now to set the scene, the temperature was easily 35+, it was school holidays for some of the schools, and we'd been wading through crowds all day. We were hanging out for an exciting ride, preferably involving water, and when we arrived at the water park we saw in the distance.........

.....the tallest free-fall body water slide in the world waiting for us. Oh yes.

The place was seriously packed, so we started out with a relaxed family water slide. Moistie and I then couldn't wait any longer and started queuing for the summit plummet (yes, that's what the big slide was called). It took about an hour to get to the front of the queue, an hour happily spent discussing who was likely to win the speed race, as naturally they had a radar gun trained on the slide. Moistie had the edge in weight, I had the edge in talent (in my opinion of course). When we got to the top, it was a little nerve racking as you couldn't actually see over the edge of the slide - it was too steep. 36m pretty much straight down. Who won?


Fun on the family slide.

The rest of the afternoon was mostly spent checking out the many other water slides they had in the park. The most fun was probably the 3 side-by-side mat slides which went down a slalom course. It even had starting lights so that the races were fair. At least fair for most people, GG's Dad had a tendency to ignore the light and just go whenever he felt like it :-).

The evening rounded off by watching a shuttle launch from Kennedy space centre from the top of the waterslides. We were about 40km away from the launch site, so we got a spectacular view.

That evening we went the 'adult' Disney. Now this isn't what it sounds like, no skimpy pictures of Mickey. Instead it's a series of bars and restaurants where, sadly enough, every night is new years eve. However after a hard day, we didn't even make it as far as midnight, so we didn't see the celebrations.

As you can tell from the photo......

Next day (Wednesday only by now), Gator Girl and family headed off to Daytona for some Nascar craziness - I'll leave it to GG to blog about that one (should she blog again this year...ooooooh, narky). Moistie and myself had a flight back to Nawlins about 4pm, so we realised we had just enough time to head to the other water park for another morning of water slides.

Being the slightly fanatical people that we are, we planned our day properly. We decided that the major attraction (the crush 'n gusher) at this park would get packed early, so we'd get there as soon as the park opened, then sprint to this and go on it as many times as possible until the line gets too long. Then we'd check out the rest of the park.
First run down the crush 'n gusher.

The slide was a two-person slide on an inflatable mat. The highlight is that in three spots it actually goes uphill, blown upwards by a jet of water. This is an incredible amount of fun, thought with the amount of water being sprayed around it's pretty hard to see for the second half of the ride.

It's probably worth pointing out at this point that generally the oldest people getting really excited were about 14. Anyone older than that was acting a little more maturely. However Moistie and I made so much noise (read: screaming) coming down the water slide, that a couple of park employees took us aside.......

.... and gave us special mickey hats for really getting into the spirit of the occasion.



Which we of course wore on the next run down the slide.



And the next one.....


By this stage the queue was getting pretty long, so we skipped out on a fourth run and explored the rest of the park. Lots of different waterslides, and lots of fun, thought the only thing that really stands out is the time I uncrossed my legs doing down a speed slide. It took several minutes to extract my togs after that experience.

We ended the day with a casual float around the outskirts of the park, only occasionally trying to sink each other's inflatable rafts. All in all it was a huge morning, and we headed back to the airport fairly exhausted.

So back in New Orleans my store of photos starts to run out, so I'll try and wrap this up a little faster. We had rented some accommodation in town on the Friday and Saturday nights so that we could get really really drunk and not have to drive home. This seemed like a foolproof plan.

Everything went to plan on the Friday, we cruised Bourbon street, listened to morbidly obese Al Carson play some blues, drank the local ales at the crescent city brewhouse, wandered down to the Marigny and Snug Harbour to listen to some more blues, only to find a whiny jazz singer. Wandered back to Bourbon St, found a Gyros for a late night snack, then eventually staggered back to the hotel.

Woke up the next morning with a nasty hangover and a stabbing pain in my ear. Several litres of water and some panadol removed the hangover, but the stabbing pain continued. Luckily Gator Girl was home by this stage, so she arranged a doctor's appointment for me - turns out the water parks had given me an ear infection. This kinda cut short the drinking weekend, as I had to go home and lie on the couch and complain about the pain. This probably wasn't the finish to the week that Moistie was hoping for, but we did manage to feed him some more po-boys so at least he wasn't too unhappy.

Sunday night I was still no good (ended up off work Monday & Tuesday as well), so dropped Moistie in town so that he could get to his Monday flight on time. And if you want to know the rest of his adventures, you'll have to wander over to his blog (and wait for him to update it).

So in summary, it was great to spend a week catching up with the moist one as we hadn't seen each other since we'd left Oz. Disneyland is pretty lame unless you're a Disney fanatic or you enjoy queuing - however the water parks are spectacular and really worth a visit.

And I beat Moistie in the water slide speed race 97kph to 92kph. Yeah!