Chapter Seventeen
Lena Breaks a National Monument
May 8, 2009—Bryce to Arches: Another icy morning here at 8,000 feet. I always try to get the coffee started before Lena wakes up. She usually appreciates this. However, I did this in Vegas by going down to the Starbucks and bringing her a cup while she was still sleeping. “Where’s the stirrer?” she said. But usually she appreciates it.
The fire was started with some nice dry wood that we brought from Zion. The menu was scrambled eggs, lightly charred whole wheat toast, coffee, hot cocoa, and OJ.
The eggs were scrambled in one of our disposable frying pans. Yes, I said “disposable.” Here’s the great tip: Before you go on a car camping trip, pick up a bunch of pots and pans from garage sales. Where we live you can get them for 25 cents each. Pan gets charred on the bottom because you’re cooking on a wood fire? Food sticks to the pan? Who cares? Use it and lose it. This is much better than crouching by a icy faucet scrubbing away. Is it environmentally wasteful? Yes, but most of those pans wouldn’t have found a new home anyway.
Another tip: Use Egg Beaters type egg substitutes when camping. They taste almost as good as real eggs, but they don't break. I’d much rather have a real egg, but sifting egg yolks out of the cooler water is no fun.
After breakfast we did a quick hike down into the canyon. We wanted to get on our way quickly, because it was a Friday, and we figured that campsites would go fast at Arches National Park, our next stop. Little did we know, but they were already all taken by 7:30 AM. It would have been nice to call ahead and ask "When do you think the campground will fill up?" However, if you call the Arches number you get "Press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish" and it's all downhill from there. That is, you generally can't get through to a real person. Permit me to dream about how it would be in an ideal world, with a genuine human answering the phone:
“Hi, Arches National Park, this is Shirley.”
“Yes, we’ll be driving in this afternoon, will the campsites fill up by then?”
“Let me check … Yes, I’m sorry, they will all be taken, but Fred’s campground up the road will have sites available. His number is 555-1234”
“OK, thanks!”
Automated telephone menus are great for companies, but lousy for customers. The main reason is that speech is slow. If you have three menus with 10 options each, it takes forever to get through them. Plus, you have to “Listen carefully because menu options have changed.” Here’s a solution: you go on a company’s web site and make your selections there. The site gives you an extension number, you call the company, and punch in the extension number. With thousands skipping the slow phone menu, hold times would be significantly reduced.
And could we all sign an agreement saying we realize that “Your call may be recorded or monitored for quality assurance”? Then we could skip that, and save the millions of hours of productivity that are wasted listening to those announcements.
OK, and here’s another message to companies: When you put us on hold, perhaps we’d like to do some work. We may have to sit for 10 minutes, and we might like to check email or do some writing. So don’t interrupt the music every 20 seconds with advertisements (”Did you know that you can save 10% if you sign up for …”).
So, rants over, back to our hike. It was cold but heating up fast as we descended into the canyon. Bryce is “HooDoo” central (Googleimage it). They are formed because different rock layers erode at different rates. With a resistant layer on the top, a hoodoo forms. This is the same principle governing Bruce Jenner’s plastic surgery.
The bottom of the canyon was fascinating, and worth the climb down. We would have enjoyed a longer hike—maybe next year.
After the hike we went to the lodge where I played the piano to keep my hand in. It was horribly out of tune, and Ab above middle C was missing, so I just played one song and left.
It was at this point in the trip that we looked at our progress on the map, and realized we had better get our happy asses in gear if we were going to arrive in St. Louis on the 13th. We had thought to visit Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and/or Escalante, but instead went right to Arches.
We arrived at the entrance station at around 3 PM, only to be told that the campground had filled up early in the morning. They gave us a list of other campground possibilities. So we worked our way through these very nice campgrounds, each with 3 to 19 campsites, located right on the Colorado River. It wasn't an easy process, since the windy road was narrow, and checking a campground consisted of driving on bumpy dirt roads and looking at the tags on each site. We repeated this process at 7-10 campgrounds, until we were about 30 miles from Arches. Neither of us cracked.
At the Hittle Bottom campground, we decided that if there were no sites, we'd continue on to Colorado. But we got the last site. We were pretty tired at this point, but figured that we'd regret it later if we didn't see Arches National Park, so after setting up the site, we drove the 30 miles back. The alternative was to sit at the campsite in the direct sun. It wasn't too hot, maybe 80, and it was a dry heat. But still.
So, back to the park it was. Pictures don't do these structures justice, of course. The hoodoos are huge and weird. My favorites are the gigantic, narrow wall-type structures.
This next shot is of a hoodoo called "Balanced Rock." The shock waves from Lena’s crunchy apple caused the hoodoo to become “unbalanced rock.”
This was terribly embarrassing, so we lowered our heads and got out of there fast.
Next, back to our campsite for a cold beer. There was an actual cowboy herding cattle while we did this. I'm 90% sure that it is not something that they stage just for the tourists.
At first sight, the campsite appeared barren and exposed. But it was just perfect for experiencing the feeling of this big-sky kind of place. You don’t get that driving through.
As soon as the sun went behind the cliff, it got even more pleasant. We had the second pair of hamburgers for dinner, and they were just as good as the charred/raw burgers from Bryce. We would have to atone tomorrow for our three burger meals in a row. The Eldertang is still missing.