Johnny Cash said it, “I’ve been everywhere, man,” and wandering across the western deserts, I knew what he meant by “a road with so much dust and sand.” After leaving Capitol Reef National Park, we only made it as far as Delta, Utah, about 50 miles from the Nevada border, where we stopped for the evening at the Antelope RV Park. It was quiet and shady, but we waited 45 minutes for the manager to make an appearance after we called the number on the office door. Finally she called back and registered us over the phone. She was in an apartment upstairs from the office, but for some reason never came down. We had a nice dinner of stovetop chicken enchiladas, which have become a Scamp specialty, and caught up on our sleep again. I was amused that the folks in Delta know their Greek letters and made their sign a giant delta Delta is one of the few towns in Utah that was not founded by Mormons. It is hard to tell any more; every little town in Utah, at least around all the national parks, has...

We left the campground near Bryce National Park fairly early in the morning, heading north–northeast to another national park, Capitol Reef. The Utah state highway we took was a well-maintained road, but the landscape it traveled through made it quite a ride. Up and down, around hairpin curves, and my (least) favorite, over narrow saddles with treacherous drop-offs on either side. It was not for the faint of heart. On the way to Capitol Reef, we passed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and we could see the huge rock formations that do in fact give the appearance of a sort of staircase effect. However, I discovered that although escalante is a Spanish word for “ladder,” that is not how the monument, nor the nearby town or river, got its name. Instead, they were named for Padre Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Spanish Franciscan missionary who led an expedition through the region in 1776. He chronicled the expedition and eventually the river and town were named for him. And w...

One of the crazier looking hoodoos at Bryce Canyon I didn’t know what a hoodoo was until our son Cyrus moved to Oregon—the dictionary definition is “a tall, thin spire of rock formed by erosion in dry environments; most feature soft rock columns capped by harder rock.” We saw hoodoos first in the Cascade Mountains and surrounding area; Smith Rock in Terrebonne, close to where Cy first lived out there, has some impressive hoodoos. Smith Rock hoodoos along the Crooked River But Bryce Canyon National Park is on a whole other level. There are hoodoos as far as the eye can see in the numerous “amphitheaters,” or basins, that make up the park. They are big, small, enormous, and multiple. So many hoodoos! We were not completely over our illness, colds and/or weird pollen we were not used to; whatever it was, we were moving slow and feeling sluggish, but we still managed to wander through Bryce Canyon and take a whole lot of photos. Just a few of the many, many hoodoos at Bryce Canyon Nation...

On Sunday morning on our way out of Page and the Lake Powell area, we filled up all of our water bottles at the other Glen Canyon campground that we didn’t know about, where they had potable water. It was very hot and very dry and we had been going through a lot of water, especially camped where we were at a dry campground. Then we headed back to US 89, first a bit north into Utah and then west to the town of Kanab. By the time we got there, we realized we were both battling a cold. Either that or we’re allergic to deserts. Kanab, Utah, has the nickname Little Hollywood  because so many western movies and tv shows were filmed there over the years So we decided to stop, not continue on to Bryce Canyon, which was our original destination for the day because it was a bit cooler than at Zion. And we once again went the motel route, because we both felt pretty rotten, it was very hot, and we just wanted to feel better. Turns out Kanab is a nice little town, though we didn’t...

We ’ ve seen a lot in the past couple of weeks, and I think I have fallen a little behind in posting all the wonders of the West that we have visited. So for awhile, the new blog entries are going to come a little closer together until I feel like I have caught up to near where we are in real time/real space. First, our visit (finally!) to the Grand Canyon. It is kind of a long post because of the need to catch up, and also, well, it is quite overwhelming.  Obligatory iconic photo of the Grand Canyon from the Rim Trail We had our tickets for the train to and from the Grand Canyon, but they were for two days hence, because there was rain predicted for the next day, and it was going to be fairly cold, too. So we decided to splurge on our Grand Canyon interlude, and took our hotel room in Williams for two more nights. They were right about the cold, and in fact, the rain turned out to be two short downpours of hail during the afternoon. We were happy enough to be undercover, and the h...