Antelope Canyon is a spectacular slot canyon, near Lake Powell. Over millions of years, flash floods have carved smooth, wave-like shapes into the sandstone leaving narrow passageways of orange, pink and purple. As the sunlight filters into the canyon the walls seem to glow from within. It is on Navajo Nation land and the only way to visit it is with a guide. Visitors aren’t allowed to carry anything more than their phone. When we asked why, the guide told us that in the past, they have found everything from tools to spray paint to human ashes in people’s backpacks.
Just like with clouds, if you look long enough you can see the shapes of different animals in some of the formations, like this lion
And this woman, with here hair flowing out behind her
This rabbit
And this seahorse
The canyon is not easily visible in the surrounding landscape and if you didn’t know where to look you could easily miss it together. Here are two members of our group exiting the canyon.
Horseshoe Bend is one of the most spectacular and most terrifying places we have visited. It features a dramatic, horseshoe-shaped curve in the Colorado River surrounded by 1,000 foot cliffs. It attracts around 2 million visitors a year or 5,480 per day. Most go when we went at sundown. Much to our surprise, there were only 8 documented deaths there between 2010 and 2022. We expected to see that many fall just in the time that we were there, with crowds of people taking selfies right against the edge of the cliffs with no railings in sight.
A few posts back we discussed the largest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam. Up the Colorado River before it flows through the Grand Canyon is the second largest reservoir in the United States, Lake Powell, created by the Glen Canyon Dam. Unlike a typical lake, Lake Powell fills a vast network of sandstone canyons. At full capacity, it has almost 2000 miles of shoreline, which is longer than the Pacific coastline of the United States. Sadly, it is only about 25% of capacity at the moment. However, there is some hope that the upcoming super Niño will lead to larger than usual snowfalls in the Rockies, which on melting will flow via the Colorado River into Lake Powell, increasing its capacity. The lake is named after John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who led an 1869 exhibition down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. Like the Hoover Dam, the Glen Canyon Dam is accompanied by a spectacular bridge.
We went for a cruise on the lake. The bathtub ring on the surrounding cliffs shows just how below capacity the lake is.
Part of the original Planet of The Apes movie was shot in the lake.
It is a very popular spot for boating, with lots of kayaks but also very large boats with as many as twelve bedrooms. Apparently, even large boats like these can be rented and driven by anyone after an hour or so of training, which seems like a recipe for disaster.
On our way to our next stop, Lake Powell, we stopped for lunch at the picturesque town of Kanab. It is sometimes called “Little Hollywood” because hundreds of Western films and television episodes were shot in the surrounding countryside, including such classics as The Lone Ranger and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Unusually from our experience so far in Utah, the early Mormon settlers, rather than giving the town a new name, simply adopted the Native American name for the area, which translates to “place of willows”, referencing the willow trees that grow along the creeks and waterways in the area.
We had lunch at a cute little cafe which apparently has a cool chef. We can’t verify how cool he or she is, but the food was certainly excellent.
We also dropped in and talked to the proprietor of the local pawn shop, which sold an interesting assortment of Indian arts, jewelry, music instruments, but mainly guns. Unfortunately, we did not have time to take one of the private shooting lessons he gives out in the surrounding canyons. He gives the option of shooting with new or old weapons so it would have been an opportunity for Mal to act out the games of his youth, when he and his friends would reenact the westerns they watched on television. He did let us hold one of the old six shooters which was unexpectedly heavy.
We weren’t staying in town, but if we were, we definitely would have chosen Aikens Lodge, which apparently is not too choosy about who stays there. We assume the vets on the sign refers to military veterans and not to animal doctors.
Here are some other photos from our stroll around town.
On our second day at Bryce Canyon, we rented E-bikes and rode through the forest to The Lodge at Bryce Canyon, the only lodging in the park itself. It is a beautiful old lodge surrounded by historic cabins made of stone.
The small scrubby tree next to Lauren in the next photo may look young but, in fact, is likely hundreds of years old. It is a Great Basin bristlecone pine (pinus longaeva), one of the longest-living tree species on Earth with some over 4,000 years old. These remarkable trees can survive centuries of drought because they grow extremely slowly, have dense, resinous wood, and can remain alive even when much of their trunk has died.
On our way out of the park, we stopped in nearby Red Canyon and went for a brief hike along the Cassidy Trail. It is named after Butch Cassidy, the famous outlaw who reportedly used the area’s rugged terrain as a hideout. Some of our older readers may remember the classic 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford as The Sundance Kid.
Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most beautiful and distinct place that we have visited during our travels. Despite, its name, it is not actually a canyon but more a series of enormous natural amphitheaters. What makes it truly spectacular are the hoodoos, tall narrow fantastically shaped pillars of orange, pink, white and red rock. Apparently, the hoodoos are formed when water seeps into cracks, freezes, expands and fractures the rock. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles gradually transform cliffs into fins, windows and eventually isolated hoodoos. We were reminded of Cappadocia in Turkey, which has similar formations, although without the bright colors. The park is named after Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon pioneer who settled nearby in the 1870s.
Zion gets its name from the Mormon pioneers who moved into the area in the 1850s and 1860s, being a biblical term referring to a place of refuge or a sanctuary. They were not, however, its first inhabitants. Indigenous peoples, ancestors of today’s Southern Paiute communities, have lived there for thousands of years. In fact, the park was originally named Mukuntuweap, an indigenous name that roughly translates to straight canyon. It was not until 1918 that the name was changed to Zion, partly because officials believed it was easier to pronounce and market.
It is a spectacular place, where tall orange sandstone cliffs rise above sage green trees and the Virgin River which meanders through the canyon. Looking at the sedate river today, it is hard to imagine that over many eons, it carved the massive canyon that surrounds it. Flash floods can still transform the peaceful slot canyons very rapidly. In fact, the day before we arrived heavy rains had made many of the park trails too dangerous to hike on,
Leaving the park, we drove up over a pass on our way to our next stop, Bryce Canyon. We stopped at the top for a short hike to a spectacular overview that looked down over the valley that we had just driven up. Only a short time after we went on our way, there was a rock slide that crushed a couple of cars (fortunately no one was hurt) and closed the pass for a few hours.
Boulder City is less a city than a sleepy little town. Its sole reason for existence was the need to house workers building the nearby Hoover Dam. It was jointly built in 1931 by the Federal Government and the companies that had contracted to build the dam. It was designed to house approximately 5,000 workers whose status was reflected in the house sizes and locations. The most important employees’ residences were situated on top of a nearby hill while the laborers were located furthest away from the public buildings and parks. The town doesn’t look as though it has changed much in the ensuing ninety years. The hotel we stayed in even still used keys.
The city was founded during the Prohibition era and in the basement of the hotel is a speakeasy. It is so secret that we were its only patrons.
The Hoover Dam was built between 1931 and 1936. It remains one of the world’s great engineering feats. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before and some of the techniques used were unproven. Nevertheless, the dam was completed two years ahead of schedule. It was not without cost, however, as at least 94 and perhaps as many as 110 men died during its construction, due to the brutal heat and extreme danger. Facing such inhumane and dangerous conditions, the workers attempted to strike on a couple of occasions, but as the country was in the middle of the Great Depression, there was no shortage of replacement workers and the strikes quickly failed.
The dam sits across the Colorado River which divides Arizona from Nevada. It is not just only an engineering wonder but also has beautiful Art Deco touches.
There are clocks on two of the turbine intake towers, one showing Nevada and one showing Arizona time. Interestingly, they are an hour apart because Arizona is one of only two American states that have not adopted daylight saving time (the other is Hawaii).
The dam created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States in terms of water capacity. The lake is named after Elwood Mead, who was the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation during the building of the dam. It provides water to Arizona, California, and Nevada as well as some of Mexico. Due to increased water demand and drought, the lake is currently only about a quarter of its capacity. In fact, the last time the dam had to divert water through its spillover channels was back in 1983. In some of the above photos, it is easy to see how high the water once was by looking at the clear line between the white rock that was once below water level and the dark rock above.
Lake Mead is also a prime boating spot for the residents of nearby Las Vegas. We dropped by the lake and admired the view as the sun was starting to set , but soon were forced to take cover from a dust storm that seemed to come out of nowhere.
San Pedro is a neighborhood sitting next to The Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach. From its earliest days the neighborhood attracted a widely diverse community. It is home to the largest Italian-American community in Southern California and is also considered the heart of the Croatian and Norwegian communities in Los Angeles. The Croatian community, originally composed of seafarers and fishermen from the Dalmatia region, has been present in San Pedro since the settlement began more than 200 years ago.
We were in San Pedro to visit the annual cannabis convention that takes place in a warehouse down by the port. As most of you know, our sons, Jake and Ben, own a cannabis company called Dompen which they started over ten years ago. The convention provides a forum for producers of cannabis products to introduce their goods to buyers from dispensaries. Although the sale of cannabis is legal in California, it is still technically Federally illegal. It is, therefore, somewhat surreal to see so many companies openly shopping their wares.
Three of the dompen crew, including our son Jake in grey T-shirt.
Somebody is apparently doing well in the industry. This Lamborghini was parked outside the convention.
For a neighborhood that is known for its Italian, Norwegian, and Croatian communities, it is perhaps surprising that San Pedro’s most well known attraction is Korean. The Korean Friendship Bell, located on a point overlooking the neighborhood and surrounding ocean, is made of over seventeen tons of copper, tin, gold, nickel, lead and phosphorus. One of the largest bells in the world, it was presented by the South Korean government to the United States to celebrate its bicentennial. The pavilion that houses the bell was built by South Korean craftsmen over a period of ten months. Movie enthusiasts may recognize it as the location of the jewel exchange in the 1995 movie, The Usual Suspects.
If you were a lighthouse keeper you could do worse than the Below Point Fermin Light, which sits on the point just below the Friendship Bell. Built in 1874, it is housed in a beautiful old mansion.
We drove by Redmen’s Hall, a local lodge of The Improved Order of Red Men, a fraternal organization established in North America in 1834. The Order’s rituals and regalia are modeled after those assumed at the time of its formation to be used by Native Americans. Despite the name, the Order was formed solely by, and for, white men. The whites only rule was, in fact, part of the Order’s bylaws until 1974. In 1935, the organization claimed a membership of about half a million people, now it has a little more than 15,000. It’s hard to imagine in these more enlightened times, that it exists at all.
