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T h e O l d S t a t i o n e r - N o 8 1 far as you roam GO WEST (OLD MAN!) In 2012 I discovered that my old friend and Old Stationer, Martin Burr, and his wife Beverley, had not visited the American West. I and my wife, Diana, have been fortunate enough to have made several trips to the Northern and Southern Rockies, often driving a camper (aka an RV) and have visited numerous of the spectacular National Parks in the region. We thus decided to organise a trip in the late spring to the amazing region of southern Utah & northern Arizona. We spent many hours discussing, agreeing and booking a roughly circular tour, starting and finishing in Las Vegas. Las Vegas We flew with Virgin to Las Vegas, booking premium economy, mainly for better seats and to avoid noisy infants, which can be a pain on long haul flights. The flight was excellent. We had booked a hotel in Las Vegas — Trump Tower. It is a 5 star hotel with, thankfully, no casino — the main hotels on the ‘strip’ have literally acres of slot machines, crap tables etc. on the ground floor and gaggles of rinsed haired widows spending their ex husbands’ life insurance money on the slot machines. The hotel rooms were exceptional, even having an LCD TV inset into the mirror in the voluminous bathroom! All this (no breakfast) for £62 per room, per night! We spent a day and a half cruising the strip. If you have ever been to Las Vegas you will appreciate that the place is so over the top as to be a complete hoot. There are replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, Venice (St. Marks Square) and virtually all the wonders of the world. We lost our obligatory $50 on the slots and blackjack tables, but none of us were real gamblers, so watching the antics on the crap tables was pretty amusing. By the way do any Europeans understand this uniquely American game? We took in a show in the evening and watched the wonderful fountains set to operatic music at Belagios before collapsing into exhausted jet lag sleep. Zion National Park After 36 hours in Las Vegas we left. Having picked up a huge Ford Expedition, a 4x4, we travelled to St. George in Utah where we stayed overnight. St. George is close to the western gateway to Zion National Park, our first objective. We drove from St. George to Zion the next morning and parked our ‘truck’ and took the courtesy coach tour. Zion apparently is a Hebrew name for Jerusalem and the park is mainly based in a valley, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide and five miles long with towering mountains reaching five thousand feet above the Virgin River on either side. There are rivers, waterfalls, ‘weeping’ rocks and nature trails in the park. It is a scenically splendid valley. On leaving the coach we picked up our ‘truck’ and travelled east through a mile long tunnel dug during the Great Depression by ‘unemployed’ labour. On exiting the tunnel, still within the park, we were confronted by mile after mile of the most extraordinary rock formations — the like of which I doubt exists anywhere else in the world. One of the strangest of these is called ‘Checkerboard Mesa’ (see photo). Here the rock strata are parallel (surprisingly rare) and are intersected by rivulets that run perpendicularly down the mountain. This creates thousands of squares — hence the name. Bryce Canyon On leaving Zion we headed for Bryce Canyon — my wife’s favourite place on earth! —and stayed in the small town of Tropic, just outside the park. Tropic is a half-horse town and Bryce Canyon 24
T h e O l d S t a t i o n e r - N o 8 1 one of the (few) locals confided in us that for groceries she had to travel to Cedar City — a journey of over two hours, whilst if she wanted a selection of clothes she travelled to Salt Lake City — over four hours away. The next day we visited Bryce Canyon — for my wife and I - the third visit — and again marvelled at the quite astonishing rock formations. Here the soft red sandstone has been worn away into thousands of stacks, called Hoodoos, each one surmounted by a small cap of harder rock. The Canyon covers several square miles and can be viewed from the canyon rim in a number of places. For those with poor hearts be advised that the rim reaches 9000 feet above sea level. Detailed below are some of the more fascinating views. Hell’s Backbone and the Burr Trail We left Tropic and finally drove a road that I had always wanted to travel — Hell’s Backbone — but one needs a four wheel drive and it is impossible in snow. However, were driving the granddaddy of 4x4s and it was May! The road is a dirt one, carved out of the mountains in the 1930s by unemployed labour (the Federal Civilian Conservation Corps). It is some 40 miles long between Escalante and Boulder (Utah) and rises 9000 ft to the Aquarius Plateau, passing such interesting places as Death’s Hollow and climaxing at Hell’s Backbone Bridge, which spans a deep gorge between two mountains massifs. In the event the drive was uneventful, except for the odd large boulder in the road. The view from the bridge was pretty spectacular however. On completing this drive we arrived at Boulder and stopped for lunch at Burrs Trail Diner at the junction of Burrs Trail and Highway 12. Martin, who of course is a Burr, was intrigued by the trail, which bears his name. It wanders for fifty or so miles east, being mostly a dirt road towards a high plateau in the general direction of Capitol Reef National park. In the diner, having lunched and bought the inevitable baseball cap (Burrs Trail) for Martin, we were told that some eleven miles down the trail there was an impressive canyon called Long Canyon some seven miles long. We promptly decided to make a detour and visit this. We passed such evocative places as Deer Creek Gulch and arrived at Long Canyon. It turned out to be spectacular. Try to imagine a dirt track winding along the canyon floor, which is about 60 yards wide. On either side are sheer cliffs of dazzling red rock over 200 feet high. You might also image the Indians on top of the cliffs waiting for the cowboys below! Capitol Reef, Arches National Monument and Monument Valley Leaving Burrs Trail we rejoined Highway 12, heading north to Torrey, another half¬horse town, still in Utah, where we overnighted. That evening we found a gourmet restaurant virtually in the middle of nowhere. Apparently people travel for scores of miles to eat there. The next day was to be our most interesting, although in unexpected ways. We visited Capitol Reef National Park, so named as one of the mountains was said to look like the Capitol building in Washington. None of us thought so, however, and the park was a disappointment, except for two adjacent mountains (see photograph) — remind you of anything? Capitol Reef We left the park early and headed east for Hanksville, which is the furthest north we were to travel, and is at the northern end of highway 95, the route to Natural Bridges National Monument and thence Mexican Hat and Monument Valley. On route to Hanksville we passed through an area of ‘bad lands’ i.e. no trees or vegetation and sombre black mountains on either side of the road — quite depressing. It turned out to be a rough drive as we ran into the mother of all hail storms with heavy black skies. The hail buffeted the 4x4 for nearly an hour, creating a din that made it difficult to speak let alone drive. We fully expected to see dents on the bonnet and roof when we stopped — but surprisingly our truck was undamaged.. I turned the wheel over to Martin when we stopped for lunch at Hanksville. The hail, of course, had stopped by then, leaving a coating of ice on the windscreen (aka windshield). The two hour drive from Hanksville south to Natural Bridges National Monument was uneventful, albeit along a high plateau, about 7,000 feet above sea level. The Natural Bridges National Monument was a bit of a disappointment. Although there are three natural rock bridges to be seen they are not as impressive as those in Arches National park, some 150 miles to the north east. On leaving NBNM it was my turn to drive again and we headed for Mexican Hat. Shortly we came to the junction of the 95 and 261 highways. Our satnav instructed us, as they do, to stay on the 95 and head east, then south on Highway 191 and then west on 163, a total of some 75 miles to reach Mexican Hat. The map we had, however, showed that the alternative 261 went due south to Mexican Hat, a distance of only 25 miles. There was a road sign at the junction which muttered something about switchback roads, and speed and heavy vehicle restrictions but we blissfully ignored this and set off down the 261. It was a pretty road, and for the first twenty or so miles was fairly flat. Then we crested a small rise, the tarmac road ceased and we were presented with an awe inspiring panorama. We were on the top of a cliff, more like a sheer precipice, about 700-1000 feet above a vast plain. We could make out Mexican hat, a high stone stack capped with a larger harder rock in the shape of a Mexican sombrero, and in the distance perhaps as much as fifty miles away, we could make out Monument Valley, one of our objectives for the day. Wondering where the highway went we looked to our left and saw to our trepidation that it had degenerated into a dirt track, about 30 feet wide inching its way down the escarpment with a one in fifteen slope — not quite Muswell Hill — more Denton Rd! This dirt track hugged the face of the precipice, wending its way around blind buttresses for some three miles 25
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Page 11 and 12: OSA CHRISTMAS LUNCH 2015 at STATION
Page 19 and 20: Hi Geraint perring32@btinternet.com
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Page 47: Old Stationers Fantasy Football - S

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