Category Archives: USA 2023

Red Canyon

After a good stay at the Thunderbird Lodge we hit the road towards Escalante. The morning’s highlight was Red Canyon, a relatively small area with similar geology to Bryce, but many of the rocks are a bright reddish shade. Many of the best views are from the road or a short trail around the visitor centre. We’ve driven past previously without time to stop and explore, so we took our time today.

Scenic Route 12 is over 120 miles from its start near Red Canyon to its end at Capitol Reef, and a large number of those miles are packed with dramatic scenery. In addition the road has had a lot of work since our last visit and is now open, a comfortable width and beautifully surfaced. The drive to Escalante was a very pleasant one.

The Canyon Country Lodge is a nice new hotel and we had a pleasant few hours in the sun. Dinner, however, was complicated by Utah’s licensing laws. We’d already fallen foul of the rule that you can’t order a drink until you’re sitting down with meal ordered, so you go thirsty if there’s a wait for a table. Tonight we had a new version: we sat down promptly, placed our food and drink order, and then they couldn’t find any staff over 21 to open the bottles and carry the drinks to our table, so the drinks only turned up with the last course, carried to the table by a suitably qualified (old) member of staff who looked suspiciously like the gardener. You also can’t finish drinks off outside the restaurant area, so the concept of a relaxing drink in the lounge doesn’t exist. Annoying.

Hell’s Backbone

After a disturbed night’s sleep (what idiot leaves the alarm set for midnight on a hotel room clock?) I did a solo dawn shoot at the Devil’s Garden. This was straightforward apart from the Jag-war’s satnav dumping me in the middle of nowhere 4 miles from target at which point I had to revert to manual navigation and dead reckoning. When I arrived the car park was occupied by several trucks with photographers milling around, but they promptly got into their trucks and drove off, not hanging around for the wonderful golden hour light. Odd.

Back at the hotel we discovered that there is nowhere to get a decent breakfast in Escalante. Every shop, regardless of the nature of their merchandise, will sell you a coffee, but none of the cafes and restaurants do breakfast service. The fare on offer at our hotel was inedible, and the very nice diner attached to the motel where we stayed in 2007 seems to have disappeared.

Mid-morning we set off on the aptly named Hell’s Backbone, a 38 mile high-country unpaved road between Escalante and Boulder, which was the only way to get between them until the challenging engineering of the new, lower road in the 1940s. Most of the drive is in forest, moderately demanding and not very interesting, until you reach Hell’s Backbone Bridge, a short and narrow link (109 ft long and 14 ft wide) between two outcrops. This apparently took about a day off the old horse trail, but it also has the most dramatic views down into the valleys on both sides of a narrow ridge, and for probably a good 40 miles in both directions.

After a relaxing few hours at the end of the day we took dinner at the pizzeria. New variant on the Utah licensing laws: I had to go to the counter to order Frances’ second glass of wine, but I am not allowed to carry it to the table on my own so the proprietor had to accompany me with one glass of wine, apologising as we went. Daft.

You Can’t Win Them All

We had another poor night’s sleep courtesy of a big unexplained thump around midnight and a recurring noise sounding like someone pulling a water tank around the car park. However we then slept a bit longer in the morning which may have helped reset our internal clocks a bit.

I took a walk round the Petrified Forest, which was a pleasant ramble but had only a couple of really dramatic pieces of fossilised wood, so I’m not sure "Forest" is fully justified.

We took lunch at the deli, where delivery of our coffees was somewhat delayed by a rather public employee relations dispute. Not for nothing is the Chinese symbol for war two women under one roof. I suspect there may be a staffing change coming on, but it’s also possible they have been carrying on like that for years…

After a lazy afternoon in the sun we went back to The Devil’s Garden to photograph the rocks at sunset. Four miles from the site a large number of cars were parked up in the middle of nowhere roughly where the Jag-war’s satnav dumped me the other morning. We carried on to the actual location and had that wonderful place to ourselves. Are we growing a race who really cannot cope if the computer is wrong?

Back in town we took dinner at a different restaurant attached to another new motel. The food was delicious, service was prompt and they presented no complications due to Utah licensing laws. On the other hand it had absolutely zero ambience and the music was awful – weird covers of 60s hits. You can’t win them all.

Not only a good night’s sleep but also an excellent breakfast turned out to be included in the $130 per night for the hotel in La Verkin, not quite sure how they pull that off. It does make a difference having a good start to the day.

We’ve visited Zion Canyon three times over 30 years, but previously always come away feeling underwhelmed. We therefore set off into the park with moderate expectations, but a bit more time to spend than under the original plan. First contact reinforced our concerns, as traffic was slow, parking difficult and purchasing our parks pass effectively impossible due to IT issues. We filled our water bottles and headed to the mandatory shuttle bus.

The drive up the valley teased with great views and I worked my techniques for photographing from inside a moving vehicle, however when we got to the end the river walk from the Temple of Sinawava was crowded and uninspiring. Fortunately things got better at the next stop, with a well-lit soaring vista to admire.

Once again Martres’ instructions paid dividends. He has assigned the name "Photo Point" to "40 feet below the unnamed car park between stops 8 and 7" and with good reason as you can get great compositions including both The Organ and The Great White Throne. I was battling flare due to the Sun’s position, but hopefully I have some rewarding shots.

The Zion Lodge has a beer garden, in which you can buy a beer without falling foul of the complexity of Utah licensing laws, of which more later, so that’s icing on the scenery’s cake.

We drove out through the East Entrance. On previous visits we’ve never really been happy with the lighting on that scenery, but today even though the sun was still fairly high in a clear blue sky everything had a warm glow and we stopped for shots at each turnout.

We came away feeling that we’d finally done Zion justice. Maybe it just helps doing it as an early stop not one of the last on the traditional Grand Circle tour. You can’t escape the fact that it’s overcrowded, but get away from the fixed routes and it is a gem.

A Plan Comes Together

For our Autumn 2023 trip we decided to return to Red Rock country, and do a variant on the Great Circle tour around canyon country in Arizona and Utah. We weren’t short of ideas: the map of southern Utah is an almost continuous patchwork of National and State Parks, some of which we’d just skirted on our previous trip 16 years ago. Also that time we’d missed out Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon, and wanted to see them again having only dim memories from our 1994 trip. Our initial idea was a sort of Grand Circle in reverse (going clockwise rather that the traditional anti clockwise), but as Field Marshal Moltke famously pointed out, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy!

Our planning started in earnest about 6 months ahead, and it became rapidly apparent that we should ideally have booked some of the key hotels even earlier. We were also wary having ended up in a couple of alleged hotels in Hawaii which were only one step up from doss houses, so a lot of reference to TripAdvisor was required. However after a bit of juggling we had our hotels for Grand Canyon and Bryce, and could start fitting the rest together.

Once again our primary reference was Photographing the Southwest, by Laurent Martres. Fortunately both the Arizona and Utah volumes were comprehensively revised in 2017, and are now helpfully available in Kindle format. What became rapidly apparent was that while the rocks might still be much the same, a lot else has changed. In particular it’s now very difficult to get access to a lot of sites in the Navajo region, whereas others such as Antelope Canyon are completely overrun. Either way access for meaningful photography becomes almost impossible.

What emerged was a plan to really explore southern Utah, spending a few days each based in Kanab, Escalante and Torrey and taking in more unusual locations such as the North Rim of the Grand Canyon as well as the South. The plan also included several guided tours of more difficult locations, such as the northern part of Capitol Reef, so we would not be entirely dependent on my limited off-roading skills in an unknown rental!

Contact with the Enemy

As part of our preparation for any trip, we try and watch some educational videos to tune into the destination. Our choices might bemuse some people – for Hawaii it included Snakes on a Plane. For this trip we found a couple documenting norms of behaviour in Las Vegas, and another couple featuring the dramatic geography of the area around Page and Kanab:

• Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
• The Hangover
• Evolution
• Broken Arrow

The resilience to unexpected events portrayed by all the central characters in Broken Arrow is particularly salutary.

Packing and preparation complete, we set off for the airport. Contrary to expectations we whisked through check-in and security, although not without the observation that we seem to have to do more and more for ourselves which used to be someone else’s job. This was to become a recurring observation.

Arriving at the gate a short while before boarding it was somewhat disconcerting to see no evidence of any British Airways staff, and this became more concerning as the scheduled departure time came and went without any such appearance. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were trying to avoid contact with customers, especially as no meaningful explanation was forthcoming once boarding did start.

The flight was very smooth, but we arrived very late. On previous trips we flew out of Heathrow at about 11am arriving mid-afternoon with still a reasonable chance of picking up a hire car and finding our own way to the hotel. With a scheduled 5pm flight (let alone an unexplained 1.5 hour delay) there was no chance, and we’d wisely planned to get a taxi and do the hire car later.

We also whisked through US immigration, in about 5 mins total from joining the queue, but baggage collection was a different matter. First it was supposed to be on carousel 31, then it was on 30, then it was 31 again, then a very confused tannoy announcement advised us to keep an eye on both… Fortunately they were adjacent and our bags turned up fairly promptly, but you can see a pattern emerging.

We rapidly became very grateful for our decision to get a taxi. In preparation for holding a Formula One Grand Prix in the streets, the whole area of Las Vegas a couple of blocks to the east of the strip is just a mess of construction, cones and temporary traffic arrangements. We would never have found our way.

Hotel check-in was another "adventure". I handed over the itinerary from The Flight Centre with my thumb on the reference number. Tap tap tap. "I’m sorry Mr. Johnston, I can’t see that. Could you ring your people who did the booking." I explained that this was now about 5am UK time and that wasn’t going to happen, and suggested the young lady get some more senior help. A rather more substantial, older Hispanic lady came over and there was more, focused, tapping. She tried the highly technical solution of checking under Frances’ name. Bingo. It then proceeded to take about 20 minutes for the young lady to find the bell boy with our luggage, but soon after we were reunited in a spacious room with a large bed. End of chapter.

More Fun and Games

The MGM Signature’s breakfast room gets the problem out of the way in the title being mis-named "Delight". The food was disgusting and we were presented with a bill for $60. The days of Las Vegas offering cheap, good food and lodging so you can spend your money in the shops and casinos are long gone.

We set out into sweltering heat, heading into the high 30s C. Everyone was scuttling between buildings and muttering that at least we’d missed the worst of it – temperatures were 10C higher a few weeks earlier. We decided to use the monorail which runs behind the hotels on the east side of the strip. It’s OK, but by the time you’ve walked all the way through an enormous casino, past that hotel’s pool and car park and repeated the process in reverse you might as well just have walked down the strip.

On a positive note the shops in the Forum at Caesars Palace were up to the usual standard but we failed miserably to get a sandwich for lunch and ended up paying over the odds for a stodgy panini and some very uninspiring wine.

Back to the hotel. Vegas strip done.

After a short nap we cleaned up and put on our best togs, ready for dinner at Lawry’s, a highly recommended restaurant specialising in prime rib. Down to the lobby and out to the valet parking and taxi rank, which was deserted apart from an old boy who explained that because the valet parking is full they have blocked the area off and we needed to walk down to the road to get a cab. This, remember, is the posh extension to the MGM Grand, one of Vegas’ largest hotels. We set off but fortunately managed to flag down an incoming cab dropping someone off, although in the confusion Frances managed to pop a button off her dress.

Lawry’s, for a change, worked perfectly. They were expecting us and without delay showed us into an elegant dining room. Our waiter, Steve, was charming, amusing and knowledgeable. The steak was cut to our instruction at the table, wheeled in in what looked like a miniature Airstream caravan. It was all delicious. Sadly they dropped half a point right at the end because we had to scan a QR code to book our own taxi, but otherwise faultless.

The taxi ride back to the hotel was uneventful but complicated by all the road-works, and then the drop-off area at the hotel was still blocked off. On the positive side I found F’s button. However neither of us now had any confidence in our original plan which involved driving ourselves around Las Vegas on Sunday, using what we had now established was non-existent hotel parking, and we felt a re-plan coming on. Plan B?, C?, whatever involved a new hotel booking on the way to Zion, and getting on the road next morning.

Into The Valley, The Valley of Fire

Repacked next morning into effectively flight mode we got a taxi to the Hertz location at the airport. Although we should be on the Gold Club members list I wanted to check a few things, and we joined the main queue. Just as well. The young lady found our booking, but for some reason it didn’t have the right pick-up time, despite the fact that the paperwork in my hand did. The reserved vehicle wasn’t ready and tapping ensued. "I’m sorry Mr Johnston we don’t have that model, but it looks like we have something the same size called a Jag-war e-Pace, would that do?" Frances was trying to get out a sentence about having a look at a picture but I was already biting the agent’s arm off…

Upstairs to the marshalling area, and the old boy checked my reservation. "We have you down for a Chevvy Suburban, is that right?"

"Noooooooooooo!!!" I explained about the change, which hadn’t propagated upstairs. I though computers were supposed to be faster than two sexagenarians pushing a large luggage trolley, but apparently not. Tapping ensued. "Yes, I can do the Jag-war". Result.

We made one short shopping stop, where the only thing that worked was I got about 5 years supply of underwear at the sale price of about $5 a pair. Frances found a nice piece of knitwear in Guess, but in a new experience for us the saleslady refused to swap the large one with the smaller sized one on the mannequin and lost the sale. We cut our losses and hit the road North.

First target was The Valley of Fire. This is a little known, hidden gem of a State Park less than 50 miles from Las Vegas. It’s a relatively small area filled with colourful strata of ancient sand- and mudstones eroded into fascinating shapes, with the bonus that visitor numbers are small and you can still explore under your own power.

What was interesting was that the park rangers were clearly very worried about the effects of Summer 2023’s excessive heat. They had closed off many of the slightly longer hikes, and even the shorter ones had signs warning of potentially fatal consequences, something we’d never seen before. Fortunately a lot of the best sights can be photographed a few feet from the car parks, so it didn’t affect us.

Back on the road it was a straightforward drive up the freeway to our destination in Utah, a gateway town for Zion Canyon called La Verkin. The $130 a night Best Western succeeded where the Signature at the MGM Grand failed. Dinner was taken at the local steakhouse, where Frances pulled off the impressive trick of establishing within the first 30 seconds of meeting the waitress that they have similar health challenges and needed to share notes on medication. Gobsmacked.