Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is exactly as awe-inspiring as you have heard. Even with all of the times I've seen photos of the Grand Canyon throughout my like, I had no idea just how large it was. It is hard to comprehend the 18-mile wide and 6,000 foot deep canyon until you see it.


In the morning, we went for a hike. We decided to hike down a few miles of the Bright Angel trail, one of the most popular trails at the Grand Canyon. We didn't start quite as early as we should have, so it was already pretty hot out. We hiked about a mile and a half down into the canyon and then back out.

The hike was good, but I think the Canyon is better suited -- at least on a short trip -- to a scenic drive. It is around 13 miles to the river on the Bright Angel trail, so unless you have a few days, you can't really hike the whole way. Some day I would like to do that, but with our one very hot day we decided to go for a drive instead.

There are many overlooks along the Canyon, each with a stunning view.

After our drive we went back to the campsite and cooked up a fine meal. Wood-grilled steaks, roasted lemon garlic asparagus, and herb roasted baby red potatoes.

With full bellies we headed back out to watch the sun set over the Canyon. The changing shadows and colors of the sunset were amazing.


There were some terrifying precipices as well.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas is a pretty bizarre place. It felt more like an amusement park than a city. We stayed at the Stratosphere. The hotels are pretty cheap in Vegas -- in the middle of the week, at least. Below is the view from the top of the Stratosphere.


The Stratosphere's gimmick, on top of the nice view, is thrill rides. At the top of this tower, way above the city, they have a few rides that look absolutely terrifying. The worst of these is essentially a tethered fall. It begins as a free-fall, but a cable attached to a harness slows your descent as you near the ground. I had absolutely no desire to try any of these things, but they did make a good spectator sport.

We tried to have, in one day, an authentic Vegas experience. We gambled a bit at the Stratosphere, a bit more at Caesar's Palace, saw a bit of the strip, and ate at two hotel restaurants, one of which was a buffet (and was actually pretty good).

It was an interesting place, and I had a good time. If nothing else, a shower and a soft bed was nice after four nights of camping.

We stopped at the Hoover dam on the way out of town the following day. It was about a thousand degrees out, so we didn't stay long.


The water level in Lake Mead was pretty low.



Becca informed me that this bridge didn't exist a few years ago. Apparently, prior to 9/11, to get to Arizona from Nevada one simply drove across the top of the Hoover Dam. This was determined to be a national security threat, so a bridge was built to bypass the dam.

Sequoia

The size of the giant sequoias is pretty awe-inspiring. When we first arrived I was taking pictures of practically every tree. It is just amazing. Unfortunately, the photographs do not convey this very well without some sort of reference point.


The above picture gives you an idea of just how enormous these trees are. Look at how tiny Becca looks at the base of that tree.

The picture below also gives you some idea of the scale. The tree pictured is General Sherman. It is neither the thickest tree nor the tallest tree, but it boasts the greatest volume of any tree in the world at 52,508 cubic feet.

The top of the tree is dead, so it no longer grows upwards, but it does still grow outwards. If you look closely at the base of the tree in this photo, you can see people, which will give you a reference point with which to judge its girth.


We never found the place where you can drive your car through a fallen sequoia, but walking through one is pretty neat too.

Becca standing inside the hollowed trunk of a Sequoia.

Sequoias are very resilient to fire. Many, perhaps most, of the giant sequoias in the park had some signs of fire scarring at the base. I am not sure, but I believe that this is intentional. There are a few reasons why fires are beneficial to the giant sequoias.

First, it is one of only a few ways in which the seeds are released. The cones need to be destroyed or dried in order to free the seeds. In addition to fires, squirrels free some seeds. There is also a species of beetle which is responsible for freeing some of the seeds. It lays its eggs on the cone. When they hatch, the larvae bore into the cone. This allows it to dry and the seeds to come free.

The other reason that fire is important to the giant sequoias is that for the young sequoias to grow, they need a great deal of sunlight and little competing understory vegetation. Historically, this situation was created by wildfires.

Due to fire-suppression from the Park Service, for an extended period of time there were no significant fires in the area, and there were also no young sequoias. In the 1970s they began to correct this by instituting prescribed burns as well as allowing natural wildfires to run their course.

This is a picture of Becca climbing up the fire-hollowed trunk of a fallen sequoia.

I like this pair of photos because these look like normal trees until you put a reference in.


And then they look pretty giant. Or it looks like I photoshopped a tiny Becca into the picture. And these aren't even sequoias.

Here's a picture of the Senate. Along the Congress trail there was also a President Sequoia and a larger grove called the House.

Sequoia was full of bears. At Yosemite we saw a bear from the bus, and we were pretty excited. While walking the Congress trail at Sequoia we had five bear sightings. Apparently the only bears around are black bears, but their fur was pretty light in color. And they are all pretty docile and accustomed to people walking around. They just ignored us.

This one was snoozing forty yards or so off the trail.

This was my favorite of the bear sightings. This guy was tearing the bark off of this fallen tree, I imagine he was looking for bugs to eat.

At the end of the day we stayed at a campground located in the park. We had the prettiest campsite I've ever seen. On one side we had no neighbors, and behind us was a little gully with a creek. Below are a couple pictures of the campsite.

Yosemite

Our next stop was Yosemite. It was about six hours from our campsite, so we had to get underway pretty early in the morning. We arrived at the park around midday. Nowhere else that we went, not even the Grand Canyon, had this many other tourists. In the picture of the Lower Yosemite falls above, if you look closely near the bottom, you can see tons of them.

The first part of the day I was in a pretty bad mood. We'd come to Yosemite, this amazing, gorgeous valley, and I couldn't enjoy it because there were just so many damn people everywhere.

Eventually we managed to separate ourselves from the masses by climbing about 1300 vertical feet and getting drenched by the spray from the waterfall pictured below.

As soon as we were at the top and able to find a little bit of peace and quiet, my mood completely changed. We took our shoes off and dipped our feet in a calm eddy of the river that fed this waterfall, and I was elated. I have never seen a landscape more beautiful. The tall trees, fast rivers, and exposed granite were stunning. This is my new favorite place.




The river we were dipping our feet in made the news recently. We didn't realize it when we chose our hike, but the waterfall we climbed up was the same waterfall that three hikers were swept over a few weeks prior. I believe they jumped the guardrail and waded out into the water for a photo before they were swept away by the current. There were signs all over the trail because they were never able to locate the bodies.

After hiking down from Vernal falls, we decided to make one last stop at Mirror Lake. The name is a bit deceptive, as the "lake" is no wider than a river and only a few feet deep. It was getting to be pretty late in the day, so most of the crowds had gone, and we had a nice way through the icy waters.




By the time we picked up postcards and beer and got back to the car it was nearly sundown. We left the park, continuing south, to the campground we had booked. To our right, on the way out of the park, was this gorgeous sunset over the mountains. Photographs never really do justice to a sunset, but this one turned out alright.

I saved the best picture for last. On our way out of the park we stopped at one last overlook. It turned out to be the site from which Ansel Adams took his iconic photograph of the Yosemite valley. Just on the brink of sunset, it was truly breathtaking.


We saw as much as we could, but it was nowhere near enough time. I can't wait to go back.

Crater Lake

The first day of our trip was hastily planned at the last minute when I found out that I would have to leave the house earlier than expected. We drove down to Bend, which only took a few hours, and had a nice time browsing some shops there before having dinner at the Deschutes Brewery Pub and watching the Barca match. We camped at the nearby Lapine state park. A pretty relaxing start to the trip.

The following morning we woke up pretty early and set off for the first of our big destination of the trip: Crater Lake. Crater Lake is Oregon's only National Park. It is the deepest lake in the United States at a depth of a little over 2,000 feet. It was formed in the caldera created by the massive explosion of Mt. Mazama around 7,700 years ago. Over those years the crater slowly filled with water and left us with this gorgeous blue lake.

The approach to Crater Lake is nothing to write home about. There are areas of pumice desert, but nothing spectacular. The makes it all the more amazing when you reach the top of the ridge and this enormous, magnificent lake stretches out before you. It was absolutely stunning.



The road runs along the ridge all the way around the lake. We came in at the north entrance and drove down to the south, where the visitor center in located. The drive was gorgeous. The road was flanked on one side by tall trees and the last remnants of what must have been enormous snowbanks, on the other by the vast expanse of brilliant blue water. It is an amazing sight even if, like us, you only have a few hours.

The picture above is of Wizard's Isle, an island formed by volcanic activity that occurred after the initial eruption of Mt. Mazama. There is a boat trip that takes you out to the island, where you are free to stay and hike before picking up the next ferry back, but it costs $40 per person, so it was a bit out of our price range.


This picture is a depiction of a Native American legend regarding a giant crayfish that would pick unwary travelers from the rim of the crater.

The above picture is of Phantom Ship, a small island also formed by volcanic activity after the initial eruption. I didn't really see it, but they say that when there are strong winds on the lake, the island looks like a ghost ship breaking through the waves.

As I said before, we only had a few hours to spend at Crater Lake. Our final destination for the evening was a campground in Northern California on Shasta Lake, a few hours away.

We stopped for provisions at a local market and discovered this incredible product: Blanco Basura. For those of you that don't speak Spanish, this is bad Spanish for "White Trash." It is a box containing 5 beers and 5 shots (200 ml) of whiskey or tequila. We picked one up expecting terrible things to come of a $7 product containing un-branded whiskey and beer.


We were pleasantly surprised. Upon closer inspection, the beer was produced by Tecate, and wasn't bad. It was a bland Mexican lager, but it didn't taste bad. And the whiskey was actually pretty good. Much smoother than the bottle of Evans Williams we picked up later in the trip.

I don't think they can sell these in Virginia, what with all liquor being sold through the ABC stores, but I'm thinking of starting a petition.