We could have had Bryce Canyon National Park all to ourselves too, but as it was predicted to be 20 below (!) we decided to skip that one and head to… well, Brian Head.
We knew we were going to be here at some point this week, so we had our mail from Florida sent to us, marked “General Delivery Brian Head, UT 84719”. It was fun trying to find the Post Office. Turns out, it was at Apple Annie’s – a general store near the Brian Head Ski Resort. How convenient.
Since Peter would like to be able to ski in any & every state that he can, we knew we had to check it out. Plus, they offer snow tubing for those of us who hate cold weather. (ahem).
Rachel was a champ & went skiing with Peter. Then Peter went snowboarding while I took the girls snow tubing. Grandma Fran stayed in the nice warm lodge.
Zion National Park is so busy April through October that only park shuttle buses are allowed in the park. Naturally, we had the park and the roads all to ourselves.
We were interested in seeing the Court of Patriarchs – these three peaks are called: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s not everyday you can see a sandstone prophet.
We hiked a little and Peter decided to ambush the girls with some snowballs. Rachel managed to hide, but Summer wasn’t so lucky…
Lake Powell is technically a reservoir, formed after the Glen Canyon Dam was constructed & it took 17 long years to fill. The lake has dropped about 100 feet since the current drought began in 2000 and now the lake is only at about 45% capacity. But, it’s still huge, and beautiful. The lake is 186 miles long and has 1,960 miles of shoreline, which is longer than the entire west coast! We saw it from the Arizona side, but most of the lake is actually in Utah and is more than 500 feet deep in places.
So, the Loch Ness has Nessie
Lake Winnipesaukee has Winni
Lake Tahoe has Tessie
What does Lake Powell have you ask? I had to ask (Google) too… apparently 500 feet of water is deep enough to hide “Skin Fin”. It’s a silly name, but if you do come across this creature, there is a zoology group collecting information. The Arizona Big Foot Hot Line is set up for reports. Seriously.
Anyway – Lake Powell is really cool and we would love to come back during season and check out all this houseboating stuff we’ve heard so much about. Apparently, there are 96 major canyons to explore by boat and the views must be amazing. My little camera really doesn’t do this place any justice. It’s much nicer in person. Let us know if you want to come & rent a houseboat with us…
Oh yeah, we did take a short hike to check out Horseshoe Bend, a well-known, well-photographed spot of the Colorado River near Page, AZ. There is no guard rail at the edge of this 1,000 foot cliff down to the Colorado River so I was too chicken to get close & get a decent picture, but that didn’t stop Rachel:
Yeah, I wanted to say damn dam… but we actually liked this one. The Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona is what created the beautiful Lake Powell. The second largest man-made lake in the US (behind Lake Mead) and home to all those cool houseboats. But, more about that later.
Since we are traveling off-season and seem to have all these interesting places to ourselves, we had our own personal tour guide of the Glen Canyon Dam & found it very informative. Summer was in charge of the camera, and after our lovely tour guide told us not to photograph any of the security guards, she made it her mission to snap pictures of all them. Repeatedly. Each of them are glaring at her in the photos. In the interest of keeping Summer off any government ” watch list”, I’ve chosen not to publish those pictures.
We were all strangely fascinated by the recent book titled Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon co-written by two Flagstaff authors. It’s for sale in all the gift shops around here. The book chronicles the “Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders”. Yeah, all 683 of them since the early 1860’s. The most common cause is actually aircraft, mostly scenic, which accounts for 379 victims.
Even so, we kept well away from the edge… it’s a long way down.
Sedona is the land of red rock. At least, that’s what we were calling it. I looked it up & found this info about the geology of these red rocks: “Over millions of years, layers of sandstone and limestone were left in the area by a receding ocean. Iron oxide eventually covered the grains of sandstone and, in a natural process, rust formed. The stunningly beautiful red rocks of Sedona are the result of this process.”
Some of these rock formations have fun names like Courthouse Butte, Bell Rock, Cockscomb, The Fin, Coffeepot Rock, Steamboat Rock, and lots more. We liked Snoopy Rock. Can you find him? He’s laying on his back, head to the left, just below the largest rock formation. His big nose is sticking straight up.
We knew that Sedona was supposed to be an artsy community with crystal shops, spiritual healers, psychic readers, etc. etc. but what we didn’t know was about the vortexes. There are lots of them around & they are described as a place, usually on or near an interesting rock formation, where people have reported feeling inspired by a beneficial source of energy.
One piece of literature stated that vortexes are “believed to be spiritual locations where the energy is right to facilitate prayer, mediation and healing. Vortex sites are believed to be locations having energy flow that exists on multiple dimensions. The energy of the vortexes interacts with a person’s inner self. It is not easily explained. Obviously it must be experienced.”
So, naturally we had to experience it. We didn’t pray, meditate, or do any healing, but the static electricity up there was incredible. Check out Summer’s hair:
And then, out of nowhere, it started to rain. Big, fat raindrops that quickly turned into hail. The hailstones were actually blue! Just as quickly as this weird storm started, it suddenly stopped.
Here we are at the top of the airport mesa, vortexing. Click through really fast, it’s fun.
Leaving Las Vegas, we decided to check out the Hoover Dam before heading to Flagstaff, AZ. We are sure hoping for warmer weather in Arizona.
The Hoover Dam was very cool to see. There was such an incredible amount of work put into it & an unbelievable amount of concrete! It was also amazing to see the high water mark – check out the pictures to see what I mean.
Rachel, in particular, really enjoyed our visit. She giggled when she said she had to use the Dam bathroom, when we went to the Dam giftshop, the Dam visitor center, the Dam cafe…
Ok, not really. But I think we did hit every casino in town. Just to walk through and warm up a little bit. As our luck would have it, they were having a cold spell here. Good news for Summer and Rachel as the Adventuredome, the world’s largest indoor amusement park was literally steps from our campground. Yep, we stayed at the KOA at Circus Circus, on the famed Las Vegas strip. It’s at the very end of the strip, but it did make for a nice “urban hike” as Peter likes to call it.
The Adventuredome, at Circus Circus, bills itself as “the largest indoor amusement park in the world”. Who are we to argue? They were open until midnight, and the girls and I closed the place down.
Rachel is wearing the gray hoodie with arms outstretched
Summer & Rachel waiting for inverter to invert
Yep, it’s inverted
The girls had to get clay sculptures done. They came out great.
Summer
Rachel
They were also desperate to get t-shirts custom air-brushed. These came out great too.
The girls built up an appetite for a make your own ice cream… Guess who had which one?
We saw all the sights – the fountains at Bellagio, the volcano at the Mirage, the roller coaster at New York, New York, m&m World (yes, Uncle Shawn – there is an m&m store here!), the Eiffel Tower at Paris, the gondola ride at the Venetian (ok, we were suckered into the ride and we shall never speak of it again), and we walked through most of the casinos, just to get out of the cold. Did we mention that it was cold here??
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