A Lap Around America

by Shawn Inmon

  “I’m done.”

  I drove the rest of the way, a fitting punishment for my navigational ineptness.

  “I hate this freeway,” Dawn said. “They want you to go 80, then 55, then they tell you this is a deer crossing for the next eighteen miles, but they still want you to go 80 in the dark. How can you watch for deer when you’re going 80 and can’t see ahead?”

  I had no reasonable answer, so I turned up the music and drove.

  We pulled into Moab about midnight. I’ve rarely been as glad to see a crappy little roadside motel as I was the Bowen Motel. It wasn’t much, but we made it.

  Day Eight

  I’m not sure what the city motto of Moab, Utah, is, but I think it might be something like, “Hey, we’re really close to Arches National Park. Like, really, really close.” There didn’t seem to be much else to Moab. Cool name, though. I think I’ll save that for a character name.

  I’m not sure why several people had told me things like, “Oh, don’t worry so much about Arches. The other national parks are much cooler. It’s overrated.”

  This is one of those things that is completely subjective, but I can’t imagine what they were thinking. Arches National Park, to me, is mind-bogglingly cool. This may be one of those situations where something becomes so popular that eventually there is a backlash against it.

  When we pulled off Highway 191, we entered a long line of cars, SUVs and motorhomes waiting to take the steep, winding trail up to the park. We were once again glad for our America the Beautiful pass, as the Arches entrance fee is $25 per vehicle. Even at full price, it’s a great deal.

  As cool as Crater Lake and Cedar Breaks are, the visitor experience basically consists of driving around, seeing the same thing from different angles. Arches is more like a zoo with lots of exhibits, and the animals are all made out of rock. I may have taken that example too far.

  We planned to spend the bulk of our day at Arches, knowing that we still would only get to see a portion of it. We set our priorities, then threw them out the window and just took things as they came.

  Here’s the easy lowdown on Arches. It’s a series of rock formations in shapes you don’t see much anywhere else. Our first stop was to take in the breathtaking vista. Did those formations have names? I’m sure they did, as everything in the park seemed to have a name, but I totally missed most of them.

  Balancing Rock, though, is an easy one to remember. As you drive up to it, you think: Surely that big heavy rock isn’t balanced on those much smaller rocks below?

  From the road, it looks like an oblong sitting delicately on a column, as though a good stiff wind might send it tumbling down. Of course, I wanted to take the little hike to walk directly beneath it. A path leads you in a circle around it, and as you get underneath you see Balancing Rock is partially an optical illusion. It’s not really an egg set on its end, as it first appears. There’s more to it than that, but it’s just not visible from most angles. Knowing the secret of it did nothing to detract from the wonder of seeing it.

  Balanced Rock

  Next we stopped at one of the most famous formations—Delicate Arch, which looks just as the name implies. There’s a picnic area there with enticingly shaded tables, so we hauled our Magical Mystery Bag from the car. It was stinking hot already, in the mid-90s, but every table had at least one occupant. So we approached an older gentleman and asked if he minded if we sat down with him.

  He smiled assent, so we spread out the sleeping bag we used as a tablecloth and unpacked. One of the things we had brought along was a container of garlic-infused pistachios. As thanks for sharing his table, I gave a small handful to the man, who seemed a touch surprised when he ate the first one. No one expects garlic pistachios.

  A moment later, his family returned from their walk and filled out the rest of the picnic table. From the looks of them—sweaty, wrung-out, exhausted—it seemed to me he had been the smart one. They told us they were from Japan and were visiting as many of the national parks as they could get to. It gave me an odd sense of pride that so many people come from such distances to see what is in our backyard.

  I offered the garlic pistachios around. Neither we nor the older man gave the others any warning as to the additional flavoring, and we enjoyed watching their reactions. They shared some candy that brought back old memories of visits to a restaurant called the Bush Garden in the International District in Seattle. When I told them that, they insisted on giving me most of what they had with them, no matter my protests.

  They had made the hike all the way up to Delicate Arch. Forewarned is forearmed. We opted to visit the viewing area just a short hike away, and were limp with the heat just from standing around. We couldn’t imagine hiking a mile or more in each direction just to get a slightly better view. Our capacity to justify our laziness knows no bounds.

  One of our reasons for doing this trip is to stretch and grow a bit. Dawn did a lot of that on this day. She is deathly afraid of heights, but she climbed up on a slightly tilted rock, with a massive drop-off just a few feet behind her, and stood triumphantly with her arms in the air. It’s my favorite picture of the trip.

  Dawn, triumphant

  We spent several more hours driving and hiking around Arches. We saw the South Window, the Double Arch, and the Park Avenue Trail. Even after giving the bulk of the day to Arches, we knew we had just scratched the surface. It’s like listening to a beloved band’s greatest hits. Great stuff, yes, and what they are famous for, but there’s so much more if you care to dig.

  Some of the memories we made on this trip are indelible. Arches National Park is absolutely one of those.

  We left the park with a few hours of exploration time left, so we made our way to Dead Horse Point State Park. Here’s a good travel tip for you: if you pay to get into a state park in Utah (and many other states) save your receipt. It will get you into other state parks for several days afterward, which saved us $10 getting into Dead Horse.

  Why do they call it Dead Horse Point, instead of something lovely and more tourist-friendly like Rainbow’s Vision State Park? It’s because of the history. Legend holds that cowboys would drive wild horses into blind canyons, where they would fence off the only exit. Then, they would pick and choose the horses they wanted to break, and left the others behind to die. There was no PETA in the Old West. The horrible thing about the legend is, if it’s true, those horses died of thirst within easy sight of the Colorado River.

  Speaking of the Colorado, it’s responsible for the loveliest sight in the park. For millions of years, it has wound this way and that and formed a snaking canyon that is stunning. In fact, you’ve very possibly seen it without knowing it.

  If you saw the movie Thelma and Louise, starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, you probably remember the ending (spoiler alert!) where the two stars hurtle off a cliff at 100 mph, freezing in mid-air like Butch and Sundance. In the movie, that was supposed to be the Grand Canyon, but the scene was filmed at Dead Horse Point State Park. The more you know.

  Dead Horse Canyon State Park

  Looking down at the Colorado so far below, it’s impossible not to be moved by the power of water, time and nature’s patience.

  Seeing Arches and Dead Horse Point was a full day, but we decided to cram in one more stop. We drove through Canyonlands National Park. Perhaps being worn out or seeing Arches first left us less impressed by Canyonlands. If we’d seen them in reverse order, I’m sure it would have dazzled us. After the rock formations of Arches and the magnificent canyon at Dead Horse Point, it didn’t have the same impact.

  After a quick drive through and a few stops for pictures, we got back on Highway 191 and drove south with the setting sun on our right. There weren’t a lot of big towns in our immediate future, so we pulled off in the small town of Blanding, which reminded me of the old Cary Grant movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. My instinct is that Mr. Blandings would not have built his house in Blanding, which is a completely nondescript town, but it
did have a motel with a vacancy.

  Once again, we were given a room on the second floor, as far from any staircase as possible. Dawn set about getting the room ready, while I carried the bags in, which took three trips. On my Sherpa’s journey, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation two couples were having outside the door of a first-floor room.

  A pair perhaps in their mid-sixties were sitting in plastic lawn chairs, with a cooler between them. Another couple, maybe a decade older, greeted them and asked where they could find the nearest store to grab a six-pack.

  The younger man said, “Nowhere in town. Blanding is dry.” (If you’re not familiar with a “dry” town, it is one where no alcohol is sold. It can be consumed, just not purchased.)

  The older, white-haired man let loose a stream of invectives.

  “Don’t worry,” the seated man said. “This ain’t my first trip through this little shithole. I’ve got enough cases stacked up in the room to keep us and you and your wife happy all night.”

  “Well, that’s mighty nice. I do appreciate it. It’ll just be me drinking, though. Ruth don’t drink no more since she had her surgery. She ain’t right in the head since then.”

  I peeked over the railing to make sure I was hearing the conversation correctly. Ruth, apparently, was in complete agreement with this. She nodded her head and said, “Yep. I’m not right in the head anymore.” She seemed undisturbed by this analysis.

  I dropped the first round of bags off in the room and hustled back down to see if I could catch any more tidbits. By the time I got back downstairs, there were four plastic lawn chairs huddled around the life-giving cooler, and they were in deep conversation, as though they had known each other for years. The conversational grease that is a cold beer had worked once again.

  Day Nine

  Waking up in southeastern Utah, the road forked ahead of us. We could go south, then west, and hit the Grand Canyon and everything else Arizona had to offer, or we could head east to Colorado.

  At the beginning of the trip, Dawn had said she really wanted to see the big hole in the ground that is the Grand Canyon, so I left the decision in her hands. She concluded that seeing the canyons at Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands the day before was good enough for now, so we lit out for Colorado instead.

  Being us, though, we didn’t take the most direct route. A few miles outside Blanding, we saw a sign that pointed in the opposite direction of our chosen route: Natural Bridges National Monument, 30 miles. Since that required heading west when we’d intended to go east, that meant a sixty-mile round trip just to get back to where we were now. How could we resist?

  Ten miles down that road, we saw another sign, reading Butler Wash Indian Ruins, 12 miles. Yes, going in yet another wrong direction. We were starting to jump around like a long tailed cat with ADD in a rocking-chair factory, but who doesn’t want to see Indian ruins? Off we went.

  Twelve miles down that road, we found another sign, saying that Butler Wash Indian Ruins was an easy one-mile hike thataway. I looked at the Silver Bullet’s dashboard. A toasty 94 degrees outside. A mile-long hike over uneven surfaces? Sign us up!

  We were learning that although every mile is 5,280 feet, there’s a big difference between walking a mile on a nice street, or walking up, down, around and across an old wash. At first, the trail was well marked and easy to follow. After a few hundred yards, that petered out and we lost it entirely for stretches. We also realized we had left our water bottles back in the car. Eventually, we came up over a rise and could see a viewing area ahead in the distance. Even without a marked trail, we could figure out how to get to it.

  As soon as we got there, we knew the whole dusty, thirsty hike had been worth it. We were able to look down directly into cliff dwellings built by the Anasazi people a century or so before Chris Columbus crossed the Atlantic. It was fascinating, getting a glimpse into the way they built their shelters, getting an idea how they had lived.

  On the hike back to the car, we didn’t have the advantage of spotting the viewing area to mark our route. All we saw was unbroken desert and tiny little lizards. After about ten minutes of hiking up a dry wash, we realized that we were totally lost. No trail, no clue.

  Dawn started to panic a little. Being the genius I am, I said, “It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t panic.”

  That is exactly like telling her to calm down when she is mad at me. In other words, not good.

  The sun was beating down on us.

  “Two tourists found dead ten feet from highway at Butler Wash,” I said.

  Dawn remained unamused.

  Finally, I climbed to the top of a hill, got my bearings on where the dwellings had been, remembered which way we had come, and found the trail. Another crisis averted.

  On the way back to the car, we crossed paths with two young guys. They were athletic, suntanned, properly attired, and each carrying a water bottle. They smiled sunnily at us as they passed us at a steady jog. We hated them both.

  We drove on to Natural Bridges National Monument.

  And that was when we knew we had overdosed on gorgeous Utah scenery. We drove around the park, stopped at all the viewpoints, and realized that they just weren’t having the impact on us that Arches and Dead Horse Point had the day before. It was time to move on.

  We backtracked to where we had started the day and turned toward Colorado.

  Before we crossed the state line, we made one more stop, at Hovenweep National Monument. There was something about the name itself that grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go. Hovenweep is a Paiute/Ute word that means “deserted valley.”

  On the way up to the Butler Wash Indian Ruins, I had tweaked my ankle a little bit and told Dawn that I thought I would lay off hiking for the rest of the day. When we got to the Hovenweep visitors center, a park ranger who appeared to be about twelve handed us our map and pointed out various possible hikes. As she looked at me – slightly sunburned, gray-bearded, and overweight—her pen hovered over the 60-yard walk out to the observation deck, as opposed to the two-mile walk around the entire perimeter, which included hiking down and back up the valley. That was probably the only thing that could have inspired me to hike those two damn miles at that moment, but it was enough.

  Once again, it was completely worth the hike. Yes, it was 90-some degrees, and the sun was melting us, but this time we remembered our water and loved what we saw. This was another example of Anasazi architecture from 800-plus years earlier. Though these ruins were from that era, there is evidence the Anasazi were living in the area as much as 8,000 years earlier.

  America, especially the western half, is so young that we don’t often get to see buildings this old. It was a little boggling to look at these stone structures and realize that when they were built, Genghis Khan was still running roughshod over the world, and King John was being forced to sign the Magna Carta.

  As I mentioned earlier, the hike took us down the steep side of a canyon, across the canyon floor, then back up the other side. By the time we made it back to the top, we were sure we had to be almost done with the hike. In fact, we were less than halfway.

  Somehow, even as out of shape as we are, we survived. Our lips were chapped and our legs had turned to jelly, but we proved wrong that young girl who didn’t think we would make it.

  Pretty sure she didn’t notice.

  We finally crossed over into Colorado and stopped for the night in Cortez. I hadn’t made a reservation, so we just drove down the main drag, looking for a place. Off to our left, I saw a sign for something called The Retro Inn. Do you remember the Lucille Ball movie The Long, Long Trailer? There was a slightly shrunken version of their trailer parked out front. A statue of Elvis Presley sitting beside it, as cool as The King can be, clinched the deal for us. We were home for the night.

  Day Ten

  My phone had been acting up a bit. Not wanting to take a charge, shutting itself off, and so on, so we stopped in to a Verizon store in Cortez before hitting the road. I’d been w
aiting for the new Note 7 to come out and had meant to get one before we left, but all the kerfuffle caused by finding a new house at the last minute and losing my wallet meant I hadn’t gotten it done.

  Two related things happened in short order. The Verizon clerk told me I was too late—the phone had been selling quickly and the store’s supply was exhausted. Disappointed, we returned to the car. I opened one of my news apps and learned that the Note 7 had been recalled because the phones were exploding when charged. Sometimes unanswered prayers are the best kind.

  One reason we had chosen to stay in Cortez was proximity to Mesa Verde National Park. We had really enjoyed seeing the ruins at Butler Wash and Hovenweep the day before and wanted to see more.

  A quick aside: I grew up on movies with John Wayne, Glenn Ford, and Clint Eastwood. I also grew up in the most white-bread environment imaginable. I didn’t meet any minorities until I moved away from Mossyrock, Washington, population 400, to Seattle in the late seventies. Coming out of that environment, I believed what was fed to me—that the cowboys (and European explorers before them) were the heroes who had brought civilization to the untamed wilderness. I left a lot of that way of thinking behind with other childish things, but this trip really forced me to consider a new perspective.

  When I see that societies and civilizations were existing quite happily here for millennia before the Europeans hit the Americas, then had their lifestyles forcibly taken away in the name of “progress,” it hurts. My ancestors came from Europe. My family helped to settle the West. The more I see of the way the First Nation lived, though, the more my perspective changes.