Crapping on a yak.....overland to the other side of the world and the rest

Day 355: 22 July 2010 - Home

2011-08-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

Just ten days short of a year after I left England, I fly back on an overnight flight from Barbados. As the plane flies over the green pastures of the southwest counties in the dawn hours of the morning, I feel a sense of excitement about arriving back home and catching up with friends.

However, this sense quickly dissipates on the taxi ride home. Over the past year, almost everyday has offered a new experience, and I feel that my world has completely changed, but as the taxi turns into the high street of the village where I spent my formative years and where my parents still live, it seems odd to me that everything should look exactly as I left it. It was like a time warp, as if the past year had never happened, and I realised then that my re-integration into a ‘normal’ life would not be an easy one.

Days 343 to 354: 10 July to 21 July 2010: Bequia, and places Mick Jagger has been

2011-08-15T04:15:00.000-07:00

Peak season in Bequia is during the winter months, so the island is fairly quiet at this time of year. This being the tropics, this is not so much because it is too hot, but because it is the rainy season, when the houses in Bequia collect rain in their tanks that serve as the year round water supply. This is not to say that my stay here was marred by the weather, and I had a couple of glorious days taking boat rides and snorkelling the reef at the end of Princess Margaret Beach below the house.

The Friendship Rose is a Bequia built schooner that is captained by one of the brothers that built the boat about fourty years ago. It takes me and about twenty other passengers on a day cruise to Tobago Quays, a serene uninhabited archipelago of fantastical beaches and perfect snorkelling. There are Reef Sharks here, though I don’t see any, but I do get to swim along with a couple of large sea turtles – if these were around Bequia they would probably end up on somebody’s dinner table.

During my stay, my mother takes me on a tour of the local bars and restaurants, and in most of she tells me of the time it was visited by Mick Jagger, who lives on the nearby Mustique. The story always seems to end with him leaving after being approached by autograph hunters. A couple we meet in one of the restaurants tells us of the time they once had dinner with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston there, when they were the Hollywood couple de jour.

So Bequia is a bit of an unknown getaway for the rich and famous on yachts. This is not to say that the local people are wealthy, but it is a community where everybody knows everyone else and people seem generally happy. Willie, who can be found most days on Princess Margaret Beach selling trinkets and offering beach BBQs of fresh lobster, has an eight foot row boat which he takes to the harbour each morning and which he says he wouldn’t sell for a million dollars.

Once upon a time, Bequia used have a whaling station. Indeed whales are sometimes hunted still, the capture of one being a cause of great excitement among the local population. Bequia’s other main product was Bananas, but this faded away with the advent of ‘fair trade’ - Bequia’s banana farms did not qualify for some reason. Most of the Banana growers decided they were better off growing marijuana instead.

the view from 'A Shade of Blues'

on the Friendship Rose

Tobago Quays

lunch?

whale bones...

Bequia in Pictures (click)

Day 342 – Laid Back LIAT

2011-08-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

I find that having not paid an ‘all-inclusive’ rate, I am charged $BB 40 (about £13) nullifying any feelings that I had found a bargain hotel in Barbados.

I have to check in for my flight two hours in advance, though the airtime to St Vincent is only forty minutes. In the waiting room, our flight time comes and passes as various small to medium passenger planes rest on the runway. This is Caribbean time after all, but the relaxed attitude is countered by the fact that LIAT (Leeward Islands Air Transport) is the first airline in the seven flights I have taken on my round the world trip so far to charge me extra for carrying my guitar. Eventually, about an hour after the planned departure time, we are asked to board.

The plane is a Bombadier Dash 8 Q300, a propeller powered aircraft that carries about fifty passengers. Being a nervous flyer, I am not that keen on these old fashioned looking engines, though the interior is comfortable and clean. However, the smiling and languid lone stewardess somehow makes me feel more relaxed, though there are several turns in the air on the way to St Vincent. How many times should a plane need to deviate from its course on a forty minute flight?

After a taxi ride to the ferry port, a couple of hours wait and a heavily oscillating ferry ride of an hour or so, again under grey wet skies, I arrive in Bequia after the last of the sunlight has disappeared. I ask a taxi driver to take me to ‘the new house by Jack’s Bar’ and he knows exactly where to go. A quick five minutes over roads more potholes than tarmac or concrete, I arrive at the gates of my parents house. Darkness has descended by now and when the taxi driver shouts up to the house ‘I have a guest for you’, my own mother fails to recognise me. ‘Oh, whoever it is, he’s brought a guitar....’

arriving at Bequia on the ferry

Day 341 – 08 July 2010: Killing pre-flight nerves at the sushi bar

2011-08-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

At SF airport, I find it full of cops. There is an ‘orange’ status alert, but the police are not saying anything. They don’t seem to be doing much either, as if orange alerts are common place.

Post 9/11, US airports are not a great place for a nervous flyer. I remember thinking when I arrived about six weeks ago that if I didn’t have a US passport, my greeting here would involve having a finger print scan and being questioned by disdainful immigration officials as if I was a potential suspect.

I had to drop the car off before midday, but my flight is not until six o’clock, so I pass the time and kill my pre-flight nerves by chatting to guy at the sushi bar and ordering successive mini bottles of wine. ‘Be careful’, he tells me after ordering my fifth. However, I find that I have drunk just enough wine, because once on the plane I zonk out, waking hours later unsure whether we were in the air or not.

I am not going home though. This flight is the first of a five leg journey (including four flights) to Bequia, an island of six square miles in St Vincent and the Grenadines. The final leg of my journey will be a surprise visit to my parents who are staying there for a few months.

My next flight is from JFK airport to Barbados. This second flight is another four hours plus, but seems to take much longer as I had settled into thinking that four hours doesn’t take that long having woken up half way across the USA on my first flight. When we land in Barbados, it’s raining.

I am staying overnight in a hotel a half hour’s taxi from the airport. It’s one of those ‘all-inclusive’ resort hotels by the beach. It is not in one of the more celebrated parts of Barbados, which is why it is quite cheap, and it is populated largely by young Brits abroad drinking cocktails at the pool side bar, despite the grey skies. However, I am far too tired to join them, despite my room’s patio opening onto poolside, and I doze the rest of the day away.

Days 339 & 340 – 06/07 July 2010: Silicon Valley

2011-08-15T03:10:00.000-07:00

During my day of more scenic driving, I get a text from Petra, one of my Salt Lake City ‘brides’ from the Green Tortoise trip. She works as a nanny in Cupertino, a small town to the west of San José at the heart of Silicon Valley. Cupertino is home to Apple amongst others, while the nearby Mountain View has a Google Avenue.

Being the home of the IT giants of the world, and with a good public (state) school in the area, house prices are eye watering. The house that Petra lives and works in has been valued at $4m, even though it is an indistinct American suburb house, perhaps slightly larger than average. There is nothing overtly appealing about the town, a kind of typical shopping plaza suburbia. In fact, when I join Petra in the evening, the shopping plaza nearest my motel didn’t even have a restaurant that didn’t serve drinks in paper cups. Eventually, we drive to one of the more upmarket plazas and have a pizza in a popular bar restaurant.

The next day, I meet up with Petra again to take a walk up a trail overlooking Mountain View and some of Silicon Valley’s more palatial homes hidden away in the hills.

After our walk, I go on to Santa Cruz on Petra’s recommendation. This is a popular tourist resort and surfer’s area, but I don’t arrive until the end of the afternoon. As I am flying out tomorrow, I don’t have very much energy left for exploring, though I do walk down to the pier for dinner. With sea otters circling below the pier scavenging leftovers, there is a line of expensive seafood restaurants on the pier. However, from the one I choose, I am served a fish that seems less than fresh, an anti-climatic end to my stay in the good old USA...

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Palaces

Google Avenue

Some of California in Pictures...Click Here

Days 338 – 05 July 2010: Biting the Bullet

2011-08-15T03:01:00.000-07:00

At breakfast, I chat for a while with the Native American bass player from the camp band. Improbably, he is called Gordon McQuirrie, so perhaps there was some integration with Scottish settlers in his ancestry. He works at the camp fulltime and when I mention that I will have to find work when I get home, he says that they are always looking for people at Kamp Klamath. I am sure that the pay isn’t great, but I am beginning to see my life as a choice between wealth and fun. Gordon is hoping to buy land to build on some day, but I have my doubts that his Kamp Klamath salary will ever be enough for him to buy anything in this part of California.

Also on the patio at breakfast is a family from Oregon with two teenage girls. The eldest of the two, who may be 15 or 16, spent much of last night screaming hysterically and sparking some angry complaints from neighbouring campers. It was something to do with her boyfriend in Oregon apparently. This morning though, she seems perfectly cheery.

I overhear the family talking about doing the jet boat ride and wondering what it is. Explaining what little I know about the water propulsion system that a jet boat uses, recommending the Klamath trip I had done, while mentioning that jet boats are especially popular in New Zealand. This leads me onto other things in New Zealand, like my stop at the Hobbiton set from the Lord of the Rings films. ‘Are hobbits real?’, asks last night’s hysterical screamer. She then tells me that I have a nice smile, which pretty much puts an end to the conversation as I am taken aback by being flirted with by a teenage girl in front of her parents. I am not sure if the parents were in any way embarrassed, or if it’s not unusual in these here parts.

Leaving Kamp Klamath, my Sat Nav directs me to cross a bridge that was washed away by the river in 1964 and is now just a bridge head monument. I am going to drive through Six Rivers Forest National Park, but this is a more direct route than I planned.

Driving the valley roads overlooking the rivers is another dangerous drive, not because of any shear drops, but because there are so many places where I want to stop. I have fallen in love a little with north California.

I will be leaving the US in a few days, having given up on the idea of going from coast to coast as I only had funds for six weeks in the US and haven’t even managed to leave the west coast. I start heading back to San Francisco.

I stay in Weaverville, a historic gold rush town, and the county seat of Trinity County. However, first impressions are that it is now a town of lodges and motels, being conveniently placed for visitors to the forests and rivers nearby.

Day 337 – 4th of July 2010: The Wild River

2011-07-30T05:24:00.000-07:00

I went to the 4^th of July BBQ last night, but had a few too many beers while chatting to Lauren and Douglas. By the time I hear the camp band, which I later learned consisted of Douglas on guitar, his Native Indian BBQ sous chef on bass and the sous chef’s ten year old son on drums, I am in my tent and ready to sleep. The incessant primitive quality of the boy’s playing, the beat never changing no matter what the song, gives the music a psychedelic quality. Given the setting, I can’t help but think of the film Deliverance, but this time with magic mushrooms. Apparently a bear staged an impromptu stage invasion during the gig too.

I wake up to the sound of woodpeckers on the tree next to my tent, like a woodland alarm clock.

On the jet boat, the pilot takes us first to the mouth of the Klamath, which is lagoon like as it is cut off from the sea by the lower tides. He tells us that Great White Sharks are sometime found here, though at this time of year, they have been chased away by the warrior kings of the ocean, the Orca.

The boat is large for a jet boat, fitting about twenty people, so this isn’t going to be quite so hair raising as those in New Zealand, which are swung and jumped around within inches of rocks. However, the Klamath is like a vast wilderness sanctuary, the real wild, not a parkland set aside for tourism. There are even wild cows and bulls here. However, the highlight must have been seeing Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles. These were both nearly extinct when I was a child, so I never expected to see any in my life, but one swoops down right past the boat, mistaking a floating log for a possible catch.

The other boats on the river are small fishing boats, taking eager anglers to some of the wildest fishing spots in the country. We have to be considerate when passing the fishing boats as they reel in the magnificent river salmon. However, this doesn’t stop the pilot from spinning us around a few times and giving us a good drenching. The best trick though is the ‘turbo brake’. This is when he suddenly puts the jet flow in reverse throwing up the rear of the boat, threatening to fling the passengers out of their seats.

After the boat ride I visit ‘The Trees of Mystery’, one of the commercialised attractions in Redwood. The car park of the large gift shop features a giant talking carving of Paul Bunyan, the mythological lumber jack created by an ad agency about a hundred years ago. The trail through the woods features a number of timber oddities. Redwoods have the ability to grow out of eachother, like the Candlabra tree, which spawned a series of new trees after it fell. The trunk of the fallen tree lies overhead across the path, with younger trees taking root within it and shooting straight up. Other Redwoods twist into odd shapes, but the centre piece of the trail is the ‘Cathedral Tree’, nine trees in one like towers ascending from one base forming a cove. I descend from the top of the trail via the bubble car lift to get a good overhead view of the forest, but the air in northern California can be cool and moist from the sea, even in July, and the windows of the bubble car are fogged up.

I spend the evening chatting to camp commander Douglas and with Lauren too, the latter of whom tells me that his experience in the army has turned him into a communist. I think that is just what people here like to call themselves when they have a strong rebellious streak.

Eagle's Nest

Golden Eagle...or possibly a Kestrel

Wild Bull

camera fogged up after the boat ride

Day 336 – 03 July 2010: Big Lagoon

2011-07-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

This morning I rent a kayak to go across the Big Lagoon, 9.5 miles in circumference and 3.5 miles in length along the shore. The woman who runs the kayak hire warns me that the wind is due to pick up in the afternoon to 35 mph inshore and probably higher here, and advises me not to do the whole circumference. She emphasises later that the kayaks are designed to be paddled into the wind, if I should get caught out.

I hadn’t necessarily planned to go all the way to the other end, but as I paddle along the western shore and go around each bend, I feel the urge to at least reach the next one. After an hour and a half paddling into the wind, after some cigarette stops, I reach the north end of the lagoon. The ocean only climbs into the lagoon at the very highest of tides. I climb up onto the beach and there is no man or beast in site. The water here is too cold to swim in, but even if it weren’t, the rip tides that cause waves to crash onto the beach could batter a body. It’s a brown foamy tide here, so is the prettiest sea view either.

On the way back with the wind pushing me east, I try to keep along the west bank as far as I can, surfing the current now rippling with small waves, before trying to attack across the lagoon back to the south end of the lagoon. For the first half hour, I make good progress, paddling only on my left side to keep the wind from turning me around. I’m having fun now and for a while I think I will get back to the south end in just an hour.

However, the wind picks up violently and my attempts to paddle across the wind back towards the west bank are a waste of energy. I wind up in the sand marsh shallows of a creek flowing into the lagoon from the east. I get out to walk, dragging the kayak behind me. I take off my crocs as they are dragging water and sand with me, but then I cut my foot on a rock hidden by the shiny surface of the floor.

Fed up, I decide to get back into the kayak for one last heaving attack into the wind. I can’t take a break from paddling as I will just get blown backwards into the shallows. This saunter across the lagoon turns into a lot more exercise than I had planned for. Eventually, the wind dies down and as I enter the cove of the boat launch area, I am finally sheltered. I mention my little adventure to the kayak rental woman, who repeats that I should always paddle into the wind, which would be fine if I only wanted to go in one direction.

I have come to a point in my trip where my money is running out and I don’t know exactly where to go next. My rental car has to be back in a few days, which means that I will probably not have enough time to visit Oregon, which Stewart in LA had highly recommended I visit. My original plan when I landed in LA was to end up on the east coast about a month later. Five weeks later I am still on the west coast of California.

To rent a car and leave it on the opposite side of the US works out to be too expensive for me. I consider catching trains, but Amtrak seems to have a ‘can’t get there from here’ network. I even think about getting a Greyhound bus across to Miami, but I have heard too many horror stories about who might be my fellow passengers. Apparently I’ll be lucky to get off the bus still wearing all my clothes, nevermind my guitar or luggage. Hmm, perhaps I am ready to go back to normal life.

Tomorrow I will be taking a jet boat ride down the Klamath River. The Klamath originates in Oregon and its mouth lies at the centre of west coast of Redwood National Park.

I head north to find a campsite nearer the river and the first one I see signs for is called ‘Kamp Klamath’. It is only a few dollars more than the woodland campsite by Dry Lagoon Beach I stayed at last night and has hot showers and a café restaurant overlooking a field by the bank of the river. I spend the rest of the day sat in the patio seating of the café pretending to look at emails while I listen to other people chatter. Most of the people on the patio work at the campsite and are preparing a fourth of July BBQ feast for tonight.

The man chopping carrots for the salad turns out to be a competent German and Russian speaker, chatting amiably with a Swiss man. He eventually volunteers the information, in English, that he served with the US Army as a tank gunner and also as an intelligence analyst, which seems an odd combination. Like Charlie, my Green Tortoise bus driver, he is somewhat embittered by his experience in the Army, feeling that the American people have been fooled by the US media about the country’s role in the world and its supposed enemies.

Lauren, as I eventually learn he is called, also speaks Korean, having served there at one time in his military career. Asked by the Swiss man if he had been an officer, he responds ostentatiously in Korean, before translating, that he doesn’t care for officers.

Meanwhile, Commander Douglas, the camp’s boss, happily guts a huge sea bass, pointing it toward me in mock attack.

notice in men's showers

Day 335 – 02 July 2010: I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood

2011-07-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

The family opposite are not any quieter in the morning, nor any less friendly, offering me their leftover tortilla chips for breakfast while they pack up. They are still trying to place my accent and the little girls come over to say superfluous hellos to get me to say something.

I overhear the younger lady, presumably the mother and also the main vocal force of the family, say that she once took in a cat which, on the first day she had it, crapped on her bible. I think about telling her how I once crapped on a yak, but given her frequent references to the bible, I decide she may not share my sense of humour.

The boys had still not risen and are refusing to. ‘Get Up!’ shouts the mom, volume no obstacle, but the boys won’t budge even after a crescendo of orders to arise. Eventually though, the sound waves defeat their attempts to rest in and the eldest, who I have learned is a fourteen year old called Marcus, emerges from his tent visibly cranky. I missed the prevocational context, but he starts shouting at one his younger sisters ‘shithead, shithead, shithead’ and then, after his mother tells him to stop swearing, ‘kaka, kaka, kaka’. ‘You’ve lost your allowance for a month’, shouts his mom, which elicits whispering under Marcus’s breath. ‘Stop whining you fourteen year old baby!’ bellows Mom. ‘Yeah, stop whining, you fourteen year old baby!’ repeats his sister. ‘Stop that’, exclaims Mom.

The older woman, presumably the Aunty, seems to have much more control over the kids, and is calmer, but only marginally. ‘Did you accuse me of smoking dope?’ she asks Marcus.

‘I said you were smoking a roach’.

‘Don’t accuse me of smokin’ no roaches!’

‘I said roach, not roaches’, protests Marcus.

Aunty, who walks awkwardly due to a slight back defect or injury, asks Marcus if he wants to box. ‘I’ll come at you like a steamboat!’ she says in reinforcement.

‘I’ll come at you like a spider monkey!’ replies Marcus. It’s not clear if Aunty knows what these are, and there follows a discussion about what other fantastic creatures he might come at her like. It is still not 9 a.m.

Eventually I leave them to it to go down to the lake to take a dip. However, it is not perfect swimming, as the edge of the lake is a flooded end of the car park. There are plenty of hiking trails that surround the lake which come recommended by my Frommer’s Guidebook but, as I am keen to get to Redwood to find a camping spot, I only go for a short walk along the lakeside watching the water-skiers pierce the waters across the lake.

The drive to Redwood National Park should take three or four hours, but I find that the area designated as the park, which is an amalgamation of State Parks, doesn’t cover all of the attractions the area has to offer. I stop first at the ‘Loghouse’, a cosy tunnel bungalow carved out of a felled Redwood, next to a roadside giftshop. Nearby is the ‘Grandfather Tree’, a very wide Redwood in the grounds of a giftshop stopover. Next, I stop to see the living ‘Chimney Tree’, a hollow Redwood with a doorway which is seemingly alive, though I am not sure if this is just the greenery growing out of it. The gift shop here is closed though.

After discovering that all of the National Park campsites are full for the weekend, I am directed to a first come, first serve site hidden in the woods by Dry Lagoon Beach. Though it does have drop toilets, the site is deep in the woods and I have to walk a dense forest trail to get to my pitch. At $20, it isn’t much cheaper than a private campsite would be.

I got some pot noodles and tins of fruit and tuna, but with no cooking utensils and no can opener, I have to make do with a granola bar dinner.

at Lake Mendocino

the roads of Redwood

Day 334 – 01 July 2010: On the Road

2011-07-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

Finally, I leave San Francisco, on route to Redwood National Park having picked up another rental car from the airport. I go to Mendocino Lake, a beautiful spot off the more frequented tourist trail. It seems to be mostly Californians visiting here, with families swimming in the lake and boats trailing water skiers speeding around it.

I camp at Chekaka, a basic campground near the lake. The place will be packed at the weekend with campers celebrating the 4^th of July, but there is space for me to stay tonight. In the plot opposite me there is a family of two middle aged women, possibly sisters though one looks notably older than the other, accompanied by a pod of kids who come and go from their pitch. They are a loud but friendly group, who are visibly curious about my accent, though they don’t say anything. They offer me some of their spare firewood, with the eldest boy helping me to carry it.

The boy who helped me with the firewood leaves to go to bed saying to the older looking lady ‘sorry I was mean to you earlier, I love you’. ‘I know you do’ she replies. I remember this only because of what occurs the next morning.

I go to have dinner in nearby Ukiah at what is called here a ‘brew pub’, i.e. one with its own micro-brewery. I drink some wine and have a passable burger while listening to an easy listening jazz band in the background playing for tips. I am not sure what emotions this sort of music is supposed to evoke, but it makes me feel like a lonely loser sitting at the bar for the company of alcohol. Looking into the mirror at the back of the bar, I can’t help feeling that life on the road over the past year has aged me noticeably.

lighting fire in California summer is easy

Day 333 – 30 June 2010: Going Electric

2011-07-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

Feeling that I haven’t really explored San Francisco, I decide to rent a bike. As a hostel dweller, the reception tells me I can get a discounted rate of $18 if I go to a specific shop. However, when I pass a shop renting out electric bikes, my muscles that have tensed up at the thought of trying to push myself up San Franciscan hills walk me through the door. It will be $30 much better spent than on some buffet dinner in Las Vegas I tell myself.

From the west end of Fishermen’s Wharf, I go along the north shoreline past ‘Aquatic Park’, a small beach area almost enclosed by a hooked pier. This area is Presidio Park which originated as a military base founded by the Spanish in 1776 and it is from where the Golden Gate Bridge launches. I drove over the bridge a couple of weeks previously, but cycling over it is rather more hazardous....for pedestrians. Cyclists have to use the fenced off pavements on the sides of the bridge and legions of latex clad cyclists speed along it regardless of the fact that the path is shared with those on foot. Several overtake me as I move cautiously along looking out for people stepping out from the swarm of walkers.

I cycle down to Sausalito, the fishing port turned upmarket tourist stop across the bridge. I have doubts about my bikes ability to get me back up the hill on my return, but I gleefully overtake struggling cyclists, many of whom resort to walking. The extra $12 for the electric motor is definitely worth it.

After cycling back across the bridge, I travel south through Golden Gate Recreational Reserve. I stop by the grand ‘Legion of Honour’ war memorial and museum, which has a Rodin Thinker sculpture taking pride of place in the courtyard. Museums are expensive in California, the state’s notoriously perilous financial state limiting scope for subsidy, and this one charges $25 so I don’t go in.

On the hill up the Legion, my bike’s battery runs out, despite my efforts to only use the electric on uphill slopes. Come to think of it, most of my time was spent on uphill slopes, as the downhill ones don’t take so long. There is very little flatland in SF. From being the best and speediest bike on the road, I now find myself cycling an ill designed lump weight of metal with the dynamics of a tractor.

I get down the hill going along Ocean Beach and then into Golden Gate Park. I get lost in the park again, until finding an exit to establish my position. The hills I have to cycle up to get back to Fisherman’s Wharf are of the type SF is famous for, and even pushing the bike is a strain.

After giving the bike back, I go back to the hostel, and get a massage for $10 from a fellow resident. The masseuse is another Brit from Great Yarmouth. She tells me she loves SF because she can ‘feel the energy of the sea’. Um, that would be the wind coming from the bay and your mouth I can’t help thinking to myself.

A short walk down Broadway is the ‘Beat Museum’, with what I think is a replica, but may be the actual car that once took Jack Kerouac on a long journey. ‘On the Road’ is still near compulsory reading in SF, especially amongst the hostel dwellers. Actually I have a copy myself, which I bought in China of all places. I can’t think that ‘On the Road’ promotes a lifestyle that would be approved by the government of the People’s Republic. I’ve given up reading it though, as its prose has aged badly. It now reads like someone trying too hard to be ‘real hip, man’.

After helping out to cook a free dinner in the hostel, I chat to a photographer from Hawaii who tells me he does wildlife photography work for National Geographic. However, he also does ‘gallery work’. He has the air of someone confident that people will find him interesting, and seems too eager to share his stories with me. But then, what am I doing? He shows me a diverting video on his camera of some homeless people playing drums on upturned garbage bins and an old beat up guitar, a film he tells me he took last night in the small hours.

Later I chat to Tim, a German furniture maker taking a few months off to travel. We are both waiting for a hostel organised bar crawl offering the first couple of drinks free, though of course we will still have to tip the barman. However, after a couple of bars we realise that we are being led to a series of dance clubs with conversation defeating music and I suspect the bar staff are too used to getting 15% of nothing for the free drinks as the bar service is nearly absent. Tim and I retreat back to the hostel ‘ballroom’ for drinks and a few games of pool.

Alcatraz

fishing on the pier

relics from Presidio's time as an army base

Bucket Drummer at Fisherman's Wharf

floating restaurant

The Beat Museum

Day 332 – 29 June 2010: Coco Rosie in Berkeley

2011-07-30T03:44:00.000-07:00

The last stragglers of the tour group leave the hostel today, excepting me. ‘Nice to meet you’, says Cristina as she shakes my hand with as much feigned sincerity she can muster.

I catch the BART over to Berkeley, the home to the University of California. Any of the places at the edges of San Francisco look more salubrious than West Broadway where the hostel is, and Berkeley is no different, except that it is almost entirely populated by students. Berkeley isn’t subject to the bay breeze, so it is much warmer here too.

There is another branch of Amoeba Records here and I have come to see an in-store performance by Coco Rosie, an odd sounding sister duo who employ children’s toys and a human beatbox amongst its musical coterie. One sister wearing a backward baseball cap and with her hair shaved at the sides sings in a squeaky scary fairy tale woman child voice, while the other is a classically trained operatic singer. Get the idea?

Anyway, though I arrive a half hour before the advertised time, there is already a queue and when the doors are eventually opened there are probably two hundred people waiting to get inside. Maybe like me they are deciding whether to pay money to see them do a full gig that night. The in-store performance is a short one of five or six songs, the last song causing a giggle as it broke the slightly hazy druggy feel by suddenly kicking into a techno dance beat leading some to start jigging. For the first time in my life, I queue up like a smitten fan to get my freshly purchased CDs signed. But I am actually just a knackered late thirty something and I don’t bother to see go to the concert in the evening, choosing to go to bed early.

Day 331 – 28 June 2010: Lost in Golden Gate Park

2011-07-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

I catch a bus to Haight, and walk towards Golden Gate Park, passing several Irish / British theme bars packed with Portuguese and Spanish watching their respective teams play eachother in the World Cup.

I had walked this street about fifteen years ago. Then, there was a hangover from the sixties and the characters who hung around this street probably diminished the property values. Now however, the street is tidy and the homes spruced up with a handful of exotic restaurants inhabiting commercial units. There are still ‘smoke shops’ and a smattering of homeless people lie around near the entrance to Golden Gate Park. There is also the elaborately spray painted Amoeba Records, which was a paradise of rare vinyl and CDs to me the last time I was here.

You might expect Golden Gate Park to be somewhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, but it is a few miles to the south. The specific attractions like the Botanic Gardens and the Aids Memorial Garden are neatly manicured, but the rest of the park looks well trodden. There are roads and paths crisscrossing throughout the park and it reminds me of Central Park in New York. There are a couple of popular museums and few historic lodges, though I don’t visit these in my frugal state.

The park is much larger than I had anticipated. After an hour and a half of walking westwards through the park, I randomly recollect that today is the last day that I can pay my fine for parking the wrong way in Pacific Grove before it doubles, so decide to go back to the hostel. I know that I am somewhere in the middle of the park and there are lots of information plaques with maps etched into them. However, none of the maps say ‘you are here’, so they don’t prove very useful. Eventually after passing a road sign I realise that I am walking east on the south side of the park, exactly the opposite of where I need to be, so it takes me another couple of hours to get back to the hostel and my parking ticket.

The remaining National Parks tour group are going to see a San Francisco Giants baseball game tonight, but I always hated baseball even when I lived in Florida as a boy, so decline to join them. Instead I spend the evening in a bar I discovered from leaflets left in the hostel advertising a ‘Britpop / Punk / New Wave’ karaoke night. The leaflets don’t seem to have had much effect as, including me, there are only six people in the bar for the karaoke, and I discover that three of them are the DJ’s friends. There isn’t much evidence of punk or new wave on the playlist, but it is reassuring to know that someone somewhere is singing Happy Monday’s ‘Wrote For Luck’ (you used to tell the truth but now you’re clever) on a karaoke machine. However, I found it difficult to sit through the sensitive looking bloke singing Morrissey with a hoarse voice.

San Francisco Bowls Club

Day 330 – 27 June 2010: the mystery of the missing booze

2011-07-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

For the overnight drive, I grab one of the overhead bunks which double as the baggage holds, my first night on the bus where I don’t have to sleep next to anybody. I awake dozily in the middle of the night as some people get dropped off in LA, but am too tired to rise myself for a wave of goodbyes.

When I finally arise, the passenger list has dissolved to ten and I feel tension easing from me. I am perhaps mildly claustrophobic, but I am glad I don’t have to sleep on this bus crammed with 35 people anymore. I even start talking cordially with Cristina.

The bus stops at a Denny’s for breakfast, a table service fast food chain restaurant like a Wimpy’s in the UK. I don’t remember eating at a Denny’s when I was a boy in Florida, though the prices can’t have changed much in twenty five years. A pancake and an egg costs $2, though I opt for a manwich of sausage, bacon, eggs, cheese, etc. There will be no need for lunch.

The table next to us have two waitresses assigned to them, one being in training. In the UK, you would have to be in a very much more expensive restaurant to expect the servers to be formally trained, but I guess the fixed smiles and perky ‘have a nice day’s take some practice.

Charlie is driving again, and we get off the Interstate at an earlier exit than Jimmy’s normal route onto the 101 to SF. Jimmy is in the driver’s cabin at the back of the bus, but Charlie predicts that he won’t be there long. Within seconds Jimmy comes stumbling down the bus to ask Charlie where he is going. After a few minutes of niggling Charlie about getting off at the wrong exit, we pass a sign to SF that makes Jimmy realise that he has cut about an hour off the journey.

Jimmy then takes over the driving as we approach SF. It is only then that he recalls that it is gay pride weekend, and the parade will be blocking off the central Market Street. Rick offers him some directions to avoid the blockage but after we have been in traffic for about ten minutes, which Jimmy says is half an hour, Jimmy decides it will take two hours for him to drive to Green Tortoise hostel, although it is only a mile or two away. He wants to drop us off to walk the rest of the way, but with everyone laden with luggage, nobody is very keen. Eventually Jimmy refuses to go any further, leaving the remaining passengers somewhat disgruntled. It also means that the leftover booze in the bus that I was planning to bring back for group consumption will have to be left behind, but Charlie promises to bring it to us when we meet up with him in the evening.

By the time we get to Market Street, the parade had passed and the road was on the verge of being re-opened, which leaves some people wondering if they can take back their driver’s tip.

I crash out for the afternoon in my dorm bed at the hostel, which is in the window bay overlooking Broadway. The San Franciscan Broadway is somewhat different to the New York one, with the most prominently lighted attractions being The Garden of Eden and Larry Flint’s Hustler Club and other such ‘gentlemanly’ delights.

There are a few of the people from the tour staying at the hostel with me and we meet up with Charlie and Rick for a Chinese dinner in the evening. Charlie tells me that as soon as they got the bus back to the compound, Jimmy disappeared as did the bag of booze.

By now I am looking forward to being a sole traveller again. Quite a lot of the people on the GT tour will have come away from it feeling that they have made a lot of good friends. Having been on a trip with a similar sized group for thirty-two weeks, I feel a little distanced from this as, in comparison to my UK to Oz colleagues, I know very little about the GT group, though there are a number of them I would like to keep in touch with.

After an over-sized, over-sauced and over flavoured meal, we say goodbye to Charlie, as he walks backwards across the road in his socks, having removed his boots because of aching feet.

The remaining party are going onto one of SF’s famed gay bars led by Rick, but I am too tired and pass a couple of hours in the hostel common room (‘The Ballroom’) while drinking Magner’s bought from the liquor store down the road and listening to drunk musicians destroy many standards, and few sub-standards too. It was almost bad enough for me to think about offering to play myself.

Back in SF

National Parks Tour Web Album (click)

Day 329 – 26 June 2010: Decadence & Folly

2011-07-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight we’re going to Vegas, where some people will be leaving the trip before we go on to LA and finally San Francisco.

First though, we have to do a final ‘bus toss’ before we leave the Grand Canyon, which means getting everything off the bus so everyone can amalgamate their possessions. Jimmy keeps repeating a mantra: ‘the quicker we do this, the more time we have in Las Vegas’, but it takes two and a half hours. I’m not too bothered because I am not that keen on visiting Vegas.

On the way, still in Arizona, we stop in Seligman, on the old Route 66. A diversion was built about forty years ago and the town almost died, but after a campaign to have the road renamed ‘traditional Route 66’ the Seligman was reborn as a 1950s nostalgia trip. There’s a dusty outback feel to the place too, with the garage in the middle of town strewn with beat up cars that will no doubt be recreated as one of the fifties classics that line the street. There is also Delgadillo’s Snow Cap Drive-In, a ‘historic’ roadside restaurant still run by the Delgadillo family, though I am not tempted by its offerings of ‘cheeseburger with cheese’ or ‘dead chicken’, or even its ice cream, but instead walk up the road past the gas station with the 50s pick-ups outside it, and then the tat shop (‘Chevy Parking Only’ outside) where a mannequin of Elvis with a blond sit on the bumper of the old Chevy.

We’re doing good time as Charlie is on the wheel again and get to Vegas a half hour before planned, despite our later than planned start.

What can I say about Vegas? There’s the naff miniature rebuilds of some of the world’s architectural monuments, there are Casinos the size of Wembley Stadium, there are roller coasters swinging in and out of hotel buildings, a legion of Elvis impersonators charging $5 to pose for pictures, as well as the odd Gene Simmons from Kiss or a Slash from Guns’n’Roses. Then of course there is the fountain show outside the Bellagio Hotel, which I enjoyed despite the fountains dancing to the music of Barry Manilow.

However, the first thing that strikes me is just how sleazy this place is. The streets are lined with men and women handing out ticket sized leaflets for call girls or ‘masseuses’ and many thousands of these tickets layer the pavement. Beggars also line the street, with one holding up a sign saying ‘I’m so dirty, even my crabs have herpes’. Meanwhile, inside the Planet Hollywood Casino, the card tables at the centre are backed up with table dancers in lingerie, oddly gyrating to barely audible music. This must be why Vegas is part of the National Parks tour. It’s the national human zoo. Anything goes in LV.

The group decision was to eat at the Planet Hollywood buffet restaurant. At $30 a head, this must be one of the most expensive buffets you can find in the US, and is certainly more than I have paid for any meal I’ve had since I flew into LA at the end of May. We have to queue for a half hour to get tables. When I finally sit down at one, there are eight people at my table which is designated as a seven person table. In any other restaurant, they would be happy if the covers volunteered to cram themselves in, but this is Vegas, which is designed to part us with our money. The waiter tells us that there is a $40 cover charge (i.e. excluding the dinner) if we want to sit an extra person at our table, so Kiwi Emma kindly volunteers to move. So anything goes in Vegas, unless you want to sit an extra person at your restaurant table.

One thing that you can do is bring alcohol from outside into the casinos. It has probably been scientifically proven that the more drunk the patrons, the more likely they are to gamble.

Food-wise, there were plenty of options at the buffet with counters for East Asian, Italian, Seafood, ‘American’ (beef!), etc but nobody comes away overly impressed with it. That said, most of us take advantage of the ‘all you can eat’ policy after two weeks of veggie Green Tortoise bus meals.

The rest of the evening is spent hanging around various casinos watching people play incomprehensible slot machines. I try one which has three rows of five symbols and pushing a button makes some lines go up and down the blocks. I have no idea what any of it means and lose my dollar. That was the sum of my night’s gambling, though Korean Kids comes away gleaming having won $7.50. Meanwhile, San Franciscan Rick is seen getting carried out of the casino by some of the GT crew in an ecstatic display of celebration like he’d just won enough to retire. In reality he could just about buy a round of drinks.

We have several people on the trip, like the Scottish fiddler Neil, who are under 21, and therefore not technically allowed into the casinos. However, the only time anybody’s ID gets checked is when they try to cash their winnings, so you can gamble if you are under 21, you just can’t win.

After some protracted goodbyes to people staying in Vegas which almost costs a few people their rides to LA / SF, we leave Vegas just before midnight.

Seligman, Route 66

Vegas....

Day 328 – 25 June 2010: Recovering at the Canyon

2011-07-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

To minimise the weight, none of us had brought our tents on the hike, which meant sleeping on the sheltered picnic tables or under the tree. This means we are all up at the first break of sunlight, and less than three hours later we are back at the top of the trail. Nearing the top, it starts to rain, which is a cooling welcome surprise. We march back to the bus in the campsite, with me chanting some triumphal nonsense, but nobody pays much attention.

A few hours later, after a shower and a nap on the bus, the hikers who had stayed near the bottom of the valley start to arrive. Kiwi Emma says she passed the two girls who I had escorted to the Ranger’s Hut last night, and the black girl was still stopping every ten steps apparently. And probably carrying her full bottle of water too.

We stay in the campsite for the night. Those who had not hiked yesterday had had a big party last night, and are feeling the after affects, but it doesn’t stop most of us staying up late chatting and drinking beer. Eventually hippy prefect Jimmy tells everyone to go to bed, but with no detention this term, we pay little attention, and I eventually retire close to midnight.

See Kidz on the Datso (Korean Flute) on the video below

Day 327 – 24 June 2010: Grand Canyon

2011-07-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

Charlie is driving overnight again, and he never goes unnecessarily slow so we get to the Grand Canyon before sunrise and well before opening time. We park by the permit office to wait. Green Tortoise have reserved some overnight hiking permits, but some of these are for camping at the bottom of the valley. Given the heat we are now facing, nobody really wants to do this. There is a waiting list for permits so we have to rely on cancellations for the extra halfway permits. In the event we don’t get enough to go around, so we draw straws. Thankfully, I get a long one.

I volunteer to be the leader of our hiking group of eleven who will all be camping at Indian Garden, the campsite halfway down the Bright Angel Trail to the Colorado River at the base of the valley. Being the leader actually means I have to follow the tail to make sure we don’t lose anyone, which leads me to be dubbed the ‘arseman’. Official advice is to bring three gallons of water. There are water taps in the top half of the valley, though the rangers say that these don’t always work.

The group quickly splits into two, with Cristina, the artist Neil, hyperactive Aussie Tenille and her National Parks Tour boyfriend Johannes going ahead as they are determined to get to the bottom of the valley before coming back up to the campsite. I am with the Korean Kids, Hannes the 17 year old German, Line the Danish Aussie, Tom from Belgium, Lucy from Oxford and Emma from Newcastle. We are eventually joined by the bottom of the valley campers Kiwi Emma, ginger haired German Daniel and Brummie Ryan, as they are finding Army Captain K and his wife Jenny are stopping for too many photo ops.

It is no great revelation to say that the Grand Canyon is hot and dusty. Frequent signs warn against hiking between 10am and 4pm. We didn’t set off until after nine and it is a three hour hike to Indian Gardens. We are glad that the water taps do work, as carrying three gallons of water each would be tiring in itself. On the trail we pass a posse of horse riders coming up the valley from an early morning trip, and we spot a snake slithering by the rocks at the side of the trail. I am no snake expert and it is only a small one, but its red diamond markings indicate it is not one that you would be well advised to pick up and put around your neck.

We catch up with the lead group at Indian Garden for lunch. Line and Lucy are keen to continue down to the bottom of the valley straight after lunch, but after consulting a ranger, who references the fact that it is 120°F (c. 50°) in the sun, we decide to hang around until four o’clock before making the descent.

There are food lockers at the campsite, and Cristina has decided that one of them is exclusively for the lead group. On the initial stages of this tour, I got along with Cristina, but by this time I had come to see her as a needy attention seeker and had wearied of her habit of handing out easy compliments to everyone she speaks to as a way of ingratiating herself. I also had noticed that she was the last to be seen when meals needed preparing or bins from the bus needed to be emptied. I had denoted her as the most irritating person in the world, just as I have concluded that the best pizza in the world is in Cambodia. By this time, I was making no attempt to hide my distaste and I tell her how irritating she is. That said, nobody else in the group seems to share my feelings. It is another cliché to regard travelling as a journey of self discovery, but if I have discovered anything about myself, it is that I am fast becoming a grumpy old man. I am turning into my dad....arrrghhh!

However, I am not the most annoyed person here. While we are eating lunch, a Ranger stops by with a man whose fourteen year old son has gone missing from the trail. There are helicopters circling overhead, but the man appeared more angry than worried, saying that if we should see his son, we should tell him that he probably doesn’t want to see his dad right now.

After the little spat with Cristina, I go with Kids and Line to cool off in a small pond a ranger had told me about. It is hidden behind stables off the side of the trail near the bottom of the campsite, but it isn’t a big secret as we find it packed with boy scouts. With the temperature gauge posted to a fence stopped at the highest it can go, it is more than appreciated though.

In the absence of young Neil with his fiddle, we have another hiking musician in Kids, who plays a small type of flute which looks much like a hash pipe. He has a captive audience at the pond but, with his Korean sensibilities, he perhaps doesn’t realise that ‘My Heart Will Go On’ may not be to everybody’s taste. However, in this context, it sounds like a pleasant atmospheric tune.

It takes another couple of hours to get to the Colorado River. We find a small beach at the bottom of the trail, and take another cooling dip making sure to avoid the white water currents.

On the way back up, we come across a couple of college girls hiking back up the valley. One of them, a black girl, is struggling to walk any more than ten steps or so before stopping for another break. She is carrying a gallon of water, but appears not to have taken any drink from it, rather missing the point of the official advice. They had no camping equipment and are aiming to get back to the top of the trail, which seemed a delirious notion. At first, I offer to walk with them, but soon realise that it would be more helpful if I fetched help from the Ranger’s hut at the campsite.

I get to the Ranger’s hut at dusk, but there is no answer at the door. I use the emergency phone line outside, explaining to the voice at the end of the line that I had just left someone suffering from heat exhaustion and unable to walk more than a few steps. The response I get is a sceptical one to say the least, with the voice asking if the girl had asked for assistance. I explain that even if I had asked her that direct question, given her full bottle of water, I didn’t think she was being rational anyway. The voice says that she will report to the Ranger so that ‘she will keep a lookout for her’.

Now dark, I decide to go back down to see how far up the girls had made it. I am relieved to find them near the bottom of the campsite, although the black girl is now unable to take more than a couple of steps each time before stopping. I escort them to the Ranger’s hut, but still get no answer from knocking. I phone the emergency line again, and again the woman at the end of the line asks if the girl has asked for assistance herself. I tell her that the girls is hardly able to speak and that she is outside the Ranger’s hut door and is no state to go any further, but as I am in the middle of the conversation, the door opens. The Ranger had clearly just got out of bed. So much for her being told to ‘keep a lookout’. I leave the girls in the care of the Ranger. The hut is more like a small house and they will be getting a lot more comfortable accommodation than I will. I learn from the ranger that the missing boy she told us about at lunch time had been found back at the top of the trail, having abandoned his father after he had been left behind.

Back at the campsite, my dinner is a melting granola bar and a very mushy sandwich. Drained of energy, I lie down under the tree and go to sleep, though it is probably only eight o’clock.

a snake slithers under the rock

Day 326 – 23 June 2010: The Navajo and Jungle Music

2011-07-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

I get up early to catch the sun rise, the light stretching my torso along the plain.

Later in the morning we stop on the ‘Forrest Gump Road’ in Monument Valley, one of the most impressive road vistas in the US. We do some traffic dodging to get group photos. Regular users must be fed up with people running down the middle of the road clogging up this perfect opportunity for putting the metal down.

By 10am we are in Monument Valley National Park, an official Navajo Reserve. Most of us are booked on a guided jeep tour, which turn out to be a couple of pick-up trucks with seating in the bay, while others have booked a horse ride. I declined to do the latter, as it can’t be a nice life for horses being ridden around this dry hot dry landscape. Looking at the horses when we bump into the riding group during the tour, small, dry and scarred with uneven coats, I am glad of my decision.

Before we meet the Navajo, Jimmy gives runs through some do’s and don’ts, but mainly don’ts. Don’t shake their hands too firmly, don’t look straight into their eyes for long periods as they take this as a challenge from men and flirtation from women, and don’t take pictures of them – in fact don’t even take your camera out next to them as they assume you will take a picture of them. In the event, the two guides encourage us to take as many photos as we like, though they are somewhat camera shy themselves.

The roads in the valley are pot hole ridden dirt tracks. The Chevy GMC I am in has done 212k miles, which is impressive enough, but that 120k of these were on these tracks means it must be bomb proof.

I am sat in the front of the truck with Shane, our Navajo guide. He breaks the ice by talking about the football World Cup, which he knows a lot more about than I do, as it has been going on while I’ve been on the Green Tortoise tour. It seems the ‘beautiful game’ has at last penetrated the American psyche.

The names of the sites in the park were assigned by a prospector called Goulding when he started running tours of Monument Valley in the early twentieth century. One of the people he brought to the area was the film director John Ford, who decided this was the perfect place to film Stagecoach. The central vista overlooking the valley is called John Wayne Point, and the souvenir trading posts, which are run by Navajo, have life size cut outs of Wayne and Geronimo, which seems ironic to me given John Wayne didn’t necessarily get along very well with Native Indians in many of his films.

Shane tells me that he is the father in law of the guide in the other pick-up. Shane doesn’t look much older than mid-thirties, and living in this landscape you would have trouble looking young for your age. He notes that Cristina the yoga poser, who is on the other truck, is spending a lot of time talking to his son in law, and says she must not be a very good listener as she doesn’t seem to realise that he is married with a child. I re-assure him that, though listening may not be her forté, talking is, and that is all she is doing.

In warning us about taking photos, Jimmy had said that we also risk getting our cameras clogged up with dust. In the event, the dust is only a problem when we are driving, but Shane tells me that there were 65mph winds the last time a Green Tortoise group was here. Given the conditions, I am surprised to find a smattering of cows and sheep grazing here, though there is plenty of scrub to spare.

One of the highlights of the tour is a large rock formation that looks like a giant sleeping or slain dragon. There is another similar formation that looks like a T-Rex, while the Bird’s Eye is a whole in the roof of a tall concave formation called The Giant Hogan, a Hogan being the large mud igloos that are the traditional homes of the Navajo.

In the evening we find ourselves a slice of Americana in Page in north Arizona. Most of the group have dinner at a steakhouse to compensate for the mostly vegetarian food we have been served from the Green Tortoise cook outs. Afterwards we find a bar that is doing Karaoke. Before our entrance it was catering only to a handful of tone deaf locals. ‘HelIo Page!’ I announce as I take the mic to belt out a few numbers, these being Folsom Prison Blues, Chantilly Lace, and Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower. ‘Alright’, says the karaoke guy who is about sixty, ‘a fellow fan of the jungle music’....???

a welcome stopover at the reservoir

Day 325 – 22 June 2010: ‘The Om Portal’

2011-07-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

We rise at six o’clock to hike to the ‘Gold Bar’ from the campsite. This is less than hour to a huge arch that looks as if it is defying gravity. When I arrive at the top of the rise to the bottom of the arch, I am surprised to see some small figures walking on top of the arch, as if it was a bridge. I can just about make out that it is artist Neil and Johannes, who are both over six foot tall, but don’t look so big in the context. Of course, as they have done it, I have too, though the slope up is a smooth slippery one marked by carabiners (climbing hooks). When I get to the bridge of the arch, I am alone and my nerve fails me a little and I am only able to go about a third of the way across before I sit down for a while as my legs shake.

For lunchtime we head to Recapture Reservoir to go swimming. Jimmy has been talking about this for a couple of days, saying we will be entering an ‘Om Portal’ and that we’ll all go skinny dipping. Nobody even bothers to ask what he is talking about. In the event, Charlie drives us to the opposite side of the reservoir that Jimmy had intended to go to, Jimmy stays in the drivers bunk at the back of the bus, and nobody goes naked, not least because there is a family there when we arrive. The water was cold anyway, but not cold enough to stop Marion the blonde Swiss doing the backstroke all the way across and back.

Next we visit the ‘Mexican Hat’, a formation with a flat peak with erosive gaps beneath it that have left it standing on a pole of rock. In the background the mountains are red with white zig-zagging lines.

Another one of the oddities of this part of the US is the random placement of shiny new motels, both big chains and local independents, which stand out in the middle of nowhere like they were waiting for a town to be built around them.

Our campsite for tonight is at Goosenecks State Park, which Jimmy describes as the ‘end of the world’. A stream has, over the course of millions of years, created a deep valley creating an oddity where the peak of the valley is flat plain. We stand looking 1,000 feet down into the meandering San Juan River, with thousands of layered lines marking the water’s slow carving of the valley.

'Mexican Hat'

Day 324 – 21 June 2010: The Arches

2011-07-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

Still in Utah, we visit the Arches National Park, where erosion has yet to isolate the rocks into individual pillars. Of over 2000 arches in the park, forty three have collapsed since 1970, including Wall Arch which fell in 2008 after heavy rains causing large boulders to clutter the trail. The Double-O Arch, which is the first notable one we come to on the trail, is like the jaws of a giant beast and below it a lesser sized mouth of scavenger which could still swallow a tall man whole without touching the sides.

I am hiking with Sev the French physicist and Emma from Newcastle in England with the requisite snow white skin but somehow wholly non-Geordie accent. We follow an offshoot trail to the Dark Angel, another tall phallic structure with a mixture of red and black colouring. On the return trail we stop at Partition Arch, perhaps the most spectacular site of the day because of the way it seems stuck in a chomping motion.

In the afternoon, we visit Park Avenue and Wall Street, so named because of the tall rock monoliths line a valley like a street of sky scraping office buildings, though not many office buildings look as intimidating and spectacular as these.

Late in the day we stop roadside to view some Indian Petroglyphs etched into the side of the mountain. These date back as far as 3,000 years according to the signs nearby, but I don’t think the ones saying ‘Custer died for all of us’ and ‘1963’ can be that old.

We camp by Colorado River, where notices warn us not to swim in it because of obvious strong currents and ‘possible high levels of uranium’. Sitting with Charlie by the river and cooling our feet in the water, we watch as a dead cat fish floats by.

the fallen Wall Arch

Wall Street

Petroglyphs

Day 323 – 20 June 2010: Bryce Canyon

2011-07-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

Bryce Canyon is the home of the hoodoos, rows of rock pillars formed into alien looking shapes by erosion on an even grander and more colourful scale than we have yet seen. I do a ten mile hike accompanied by Katie, one of the few Americans on the trip and whose general fitness has led her to being dubbed the passenger most likely to win the physical challenge TV programme Survivor, the elder Neil, an English artist who specializes in portraits of cities at night, German Johannes and hyperactive Tenille, who have become a furtive couple on the trip, regularly bagging the double bed space hidden below the tables on the bus, Swiss blond Marion, ‘Kids’ from South Korea and Cristina. The trail provides an opportunity to get up close to the hoodoos and feel a sense of remoteness, but perhaps they look their most impressive as a group viewed from Bryce’s own ‘Inspiration Point’, a short mile walk up a tarmac path after finishing the trail through the canyon.

After dinner, Jimmy gives a long talk on what we are up to over the next few days, ensuring that we miss the best of the sunset over Bryce Canyon. During his speech he quotes some lyrics from the Grateful Dead, ending his quote with ‘and the Grateful Dead are always right’. This raises the eyebrows of US Army Captain Tim and his wife, a couple who were part of the new batch of passengers collected yesterday.

We are on the road again tonight. Before yesterday, there were thirty people on our trip and I thought that the bus would be much more comfortable if there were a couple less. However, we now have thirty-four, which makes things very cramped and makes me cranky. I have to sleep with legs moving against me and with my feet in Tong’s face and slipping off the end of the cushions.

National Parks Tour Picture Library

Day 322 – 19 June 2010: Angel’s Landing

2011-07-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

We are in Zion National Park today, where we meet the other Green Tortoise bus with whom we will be swapping some passengers. There is a lot of hanging around saying goodbyes until we realise that there is time for people in both parties to do a hike together up to Angel’s Landing, the best place to overlook Zion Canyon but which is a hike that comes with many warning signs.

When we take the park shuttle to the beginning of the trail, the driver expresses surprise that we are starting the trail in the early afternoon, as the heat will be at its peak by the time we reach the landing. ‘I can’t stop you’, he says, ‘but bring plenty of water’.

Teaming up with my Czech brides, I don’t really take the warnings about the strenuousness of the trail too seriously, the US legal system being the originator of the tyranny of Health & Safety. However, from the beginning, the heat is draining and it is tempting to have a paddle in Virgin River alongside the early part of the trail before the climb even begins.

For the first forty five minutes the hike is straight forward if tangibly uphill. Then we hit the hiking equivalent of Lombard Street in SF, when we come to Walter’s Wiggles, a series of twenty odd switchbacks carved to negate the slope. My thighs are aching by the time I get to the top of these. There is a flat part around the bend of the trail, but we can see a peak in the distance with chains marking the steep climbing trail up a rocky slope. More of the Green Tortoise passengers are gathered on the flat and we are surprised to see Rick, the big humoured San Franciscan with a waistline to match, climbing to be the first of us to the peak, so we follow.

Using the chains to aid our climb, we find Rick recuperating at the top with Quan, the gym instructor Vietnamese Aussie seeking refuge from the heat under a tree. We also find that we are not at the peak. Rick points to the continuing trail. I had not thought it was part of the hike as it seems to be just a narrow ledge with near sheer drops into the valley below on each side. The chains that mark the trail are not there so much as to aid the climb, but to avoid the plummet. I now realise why earlier warning signs had not warned of the possibility of fatalities, but had instead warned how fatalities have happened.

We have reached Scout Lookout, but I think ‘Chicken Point’ would be more appropriate as this is where many of us say we will stop. However, herd mentality kicks in as once the first person goes on further, and there is no stopping Petra and Adele, the rest eventually follow, including me after a quick cigarette break under the tree next to Quan.

I lead 6’4” Neil, who turns out to be even more intimidated by heights than me, and Tong, a petite Asian girl up the chain path. At times the chain disappears, not because the trail gets any less hazardous but possibly because it has fallen away. However, with Neil crawling most of the way and with me just wanting to get past the thinnest parts of the ledge, I leave them behind, finally reaching the flat peak of Angel’s Landing sweaty with nerves as much as heat. By this time, most of our crowd are already there, including my Czech brides. As for Neil, even Christina, who would surely have stopped for dozens of photo opportunities, beats him to the top. It’s a good thing he hadn’t brought his fiddle with him this time.

The view from Angel’s Landing over Zion Canyon is spectacular, but after the travails of the ascent, I feel I have earned something more than a view. Maybe I have turned into a drama queen.

After eating up packed lunches on the landing, we start the way down. Probably for psychological reasons, I find the descent much easier, with only one chainless part of the path giving me a moment of heebee geebees.

When we finish the hike in the early evening, it is time to say goodbye to Petra and Adele and others. However, I introduce myself to some more of the newcomers and find others to share a beer with.

trail to Angel's Landing

campsite for the night