USA road trip, Post 2: Death Valley and Yosemite National Parks

On Sunday afternoon, September 15th, Mum, Dad, Roxy, Ben, Finley and I headed west out of Vegas with the aim of being at the sand dunes in Death Valley National Park, California, for sunset. Three years ago, Ben and I had done the same thing with Delle and got some awesome photos.

This time, however, our timing was slightly off and we missed getting to the sand dunes in time! You'll have to click on the link above to see what they're like. On this drive we had a little boy who napped very well for the start of the drive, but later on was (quite understandably) unhappy about still being in his car seat. I had gone to the trouble of finding out the exact sunset time in Death Valley that day, but hadn't factored in quite enough stopping/ feeding/ changing/ cuddling time, so it was already dark by the time we reached the dunes. Oh well, it's all part of the experience of road tripping with a baby!

Here are some family photos we took at the entrance of the National Park...

Once we knew we wouldn't get to the dunes in time, we stopped at a lookout that seemed surprisingly busy considering how deserted the roads felt. Only Ben and Dad had the energy to walk up the hill to see the view though! Did I mention that Death Valley is the lowest, hottest and driest place in North America? It holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth: 57 degrees Celsius in 1913. It would have only been in the 30s while we were there this time, but that feels plenty hot enough to me now that I've acclimatised to Canadian temperatures! Here's the view from the lookout...

That night we stayed at the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine, California. It was the same place Delle, Ben and I had stayed in 2010. This time we'd booked one room for all six of us, but due to an extremely fortuitous mistake on the part of the front desk clerk (he'd accidentally cancelled our booking weeks earlier when someone else had called to cancel theirs), we ended up getting the motel's last three double rooms for the same price! I particularly liked this little sign in each of the rooms...

View from the Dow Villa

Monday was our biggest driving day - about 6.5 hours (550 kms) in total. We were en route to San Francisco, via Yosemite National Park. Again we were a little unlucky with our National Park intentions! There were wildfires in parts of the park, although that didn't affect us other than seeing some smoke and burnt areas, and having to drive at 10km/hr for about half an hour while we passed through a fire zone. However, the waterfall we had walked to on our last visit to Yosemite, and decided to walk to on this visit too, had dried up due to it being the end of summer! We still climbed up on some rocks, saw a deer and some squirrels, and ate a picnic lunch in the park.

Passing through Bishop, CA

"Aussie" licorice at a shop in California

Yosemite National Park

Spot Ben and Finley!

Winding hillside roads after Yosemite

That afternoon we drove the rest of the way to the California coast, and stayed the night in Alameda, a town outside of San Francisco.

To be continued...

USA road trip, Post 14: Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon National Park had been on my "to go" list ever since I saw Megan and Justin's photos from their USA road trip last summer. Remember the hoodoos (all 12 of them) that I raved about after our Alberta trip last summer?

A hoodoo is a "tall, thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. Hoodoos consist of soft sedimentary rock topped by harder, less easily-eroded stone that protects each column from the elements" (from Wikipedia).

Well, Bryce Canyon is all about hoodoos. And not just a handful of them... hundreds, probably thousands, of them! It is totally awe-inspiring. I'm glad we saw the Alberta ones before Bryce Canyon... because now the memory of how impressed I was by the dozen-or-so Alberta hoodoos is rather laughable!

Like the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon has a number of viewpoints along the road that follows the edge of the Canyon, so we spent about 1.5 hours enjoying the view from the first few viewpoints. There are a few hiking trails allowing people to walk down into the Canyon, but we only walked a little way down at the first viewpoint as we didn't have time to do the 1.3-mile walk I had hoped to do (refer to the previous post to see why!).

This is Bryce Canyon...





















The best photo Ben got of the gorgeous little chipmunks that were running around...





As far out as I dared to go... this little side path was only about 30cm wide!







This formation looks like a fort...



Deer beside the road...









A panorama of the Canyon from the highest viewpoint (which only Ben was motivated to walk up to)...

A pretty impressive little spot, isn't it?! Some people say they think it's better than the Grand Canyon. We thought Bryce Canyon was absolutely spectacular, but it didn't quite evoke the level of awe inspired by the sheer scale of the Grand Canyon. Although, interestingly, my fear of heights was not triggered in the least at the Grand Canyon - I felt perfectly calm standing at the edge of it (despite having just read about the number of people who have died there). However, I was much more nervous at Bryce Canyon! Weird.

After dinner at a restaurant in the national park, we set off on the 4.5 hour drive to Las Vegas, the last destination of our trip. To be continued...

USA road trip, Post 12: Grand Canyon

On Thursday, July 8th, we drove all the way from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, about 8 hours east. Much of this drive was through the Mojave Desert, which was a lot of very hot nothingness. At one stage we were worried we would run out of fuel before we came upon civilisation again... but then we found a service station in the middle of nowhere, where we fuelled up and ate lunch. Check out the sign they had on their wall!



We reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the late afternoon. The South Rim is the one that most people go to (as opposed to the North and West Rims), and where there are more facilities and accommodation options. (However, we had another 1.5 hours to drive before reaching our hotel for the night - the convenience of staying at the Canyon did not outweigh the inflated prices in our minds!)

Here's a panorama showing our first glimpse into the Grand Canyon - not from an official viewpoint; we just pulled over when we saw it through the trees beside the road. The panorama is 7 photos wide (probably about a 150 degree view). It's quite a feeling to just walk through the trees and see this in front of you!



We went into a visitor centre at the first viewpoint we came to. There we saw a model of the Canyon, and I flipped through a book about the 600+ people who have died there (most of them by falling in or not being properly prepared for hiking). After reading that, I made Ben promise not to take unneccessary risks to get the "perfect photo", or try to scare me by pretending to fall off the wall - as people have died doing just that!! We also listened to a ranger give a talk on how the Canyon was formed.













The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide, and over a mile deep (1.83 km/ 6000 feet). Our photos are not going to convey the reality of that to you! The thing we've most often heard said about the Grand Canyon is that "photos don't do it justice". This is absolutely spot on... for while photos do indicate that the Canyon deserves the adjective "Grand", they cannot bring to life how it feels to stand on the edge of it. It is immense, spectacular, powerful, beautiful... and head-shakingly, jaw-droppingly enormous. A masterpiece indeed.

It is absolutely the most impressive natural formation I have ever seen in my life.

The South Rim consists of many viewpoints/ lookouts along the road that winds along the edge of the Canyon. Here's what we saw from various viewpoints as we drove east along the South Rim...





































Sunset...













And that's the Grand Canyon for you! (Check out the Picasa album to see more photos.)

After sunset, we set off for Tuba City, Arizona, were we were staying the night before continuing on to Bryce Canyon in Utah the next day. On the way, we ate a huge dinner in the restaurant of a native-owned craft centre in Cameron, AZ. I had "chicken fried steak" - so unhealthy but I had to try it at least once while in America! Ben enjoyed a stew and a type of American Indian flatbread. And Delle's enchiladas were covered in lots of that orange cheese she loves...



Our accommodation in Tuba City was the Moenkopi Legacy Inn and Suites. This was a brand new hotel that had opened in the time I was organising this trip... when I first started searching for hotels there were only a handful of poorly-reviewed options in Tuba City, so we were originally going to drive a couple more hours that night! The Moenkopi Inn is native owned and staffed, and the first hotel to be built on Hopi tribal land in 50 years. We certainly recommend it if you're ever in the area!