The South Trip

My wife and I finally hit the road today on our big trip. It was a long time coming. We drove to Pinnacles National Park, and did a nice hike there, and we are spending the night in Bakersfield. As we were driving out of the bay area, we passed by a hotel in Milpitas where, a little more than 20 years ago while on a business trip, I was awoken by a frantic call from my wife telling me to open the TV and see what was unfolding in the twin towers in New York City. A little more than a year after that day, we immigrated to this country along with our two young kids, and ended up staying at the same hotel while searching for a home to rent. It was interesting to reflect on the years that have gone by and how much has change in the world and in our personal lives. We’ve established ourselves in this country and put down roots, our kids have grown up here and are now taking their first steps as adults in the world, and we are embarking on a road trip in the south west and southern US that we’ve been planning for a long time. ...

The drive to Death Valley from Bakersfield was long and meandering. It mad its way through canyons up and down a range of mountains, and finally gave way to more open land, only to again climb up and back down into the park. Along the way. we stopped for a quick lunch in Ridgecrest, the last major city before the park. It was very obvious that the little place we stopped at was geared towards a very different crowd than places we frequent in the bay area. The setting was plain, with no decoration or detail on the walls. The space looks like it was a small factory that was made into a restaurant with minimal renovation. Some parts of the space still had an old and dirty drop ceiling, there were very few windows and the light came from artificial light, cold and white. Why does a place like that even exist? Obviously, people find it useful in some way, otherwise it would go out of business. The food was decent and the owner seemed nice and welcoming. But the thought that the world would be a better place if this place was just a little more aesthetically pleasing, if it was put together with a bit more attention to the look and feel, was inescapable. ...

We left Death Valley in a rush. All night long, a strong wind was blowing, sometimes gusting up to 50 mph. Our tent rattled and shook all night long, making for a restless sleep. In the morning, we packed up our stuff in a hurry stuff, hoping to drive away from the wind storm to a place where we can get organized and calmly put ourselves and the car back together. As we drove, we got to death valley junction, a tiny city with a hotel and an opera house with a very interesting story. Unfortunately we missed the guided tour of the operate house, so we only got this one picture of its outside. ...

Sunrise over the Grand Canyon Grand Canyon was beautiful. We did the drive up to it at the end of the day and got to our hotel, the El Tovar Hotel right on the rim of the canyon after dark. When we walked around looking for something to eat, we came across three grazing Elk, chewing calmly right in front of us, completely oblivious to our presence. Later on, we ordered room service because all the restaurants were fully booked, and woke up really early the following morning. We were able to appreciate a beautiful sunrise over the canyon, followed by a nice hike along the rim. We did another good hike in the evening while we were waiting for a table at the hotel restaurant - the wait was an hour and 40 minutes… ...

We left Grand Canyon National Park to make the ~150 mile trip to Sedona, AZ. Along the way we got a few last looks at the Grand Canyon and the Colorado river deep inside it. Looking east from Lipan Point, Grand Canyon Looking west from Lipan Point, Grand Canyon We then continued east to highway 89 and stopped at the Wupatki National Monument, where you can see the remains of a communal living space built by Native Americans around 500 AD and inhabited for about 700 years. It has 100 rooms, in its final years benefited from a layer of ash deposited by the eruption of the nearby sunset volcano that made the soil more fertile. ...

Sedona is a beautiful place. It is set in a unique landscape of towering red rock buttes, and because it contains no tall buildings, you can see the view from practically anywhere in town. It is also a spiritual place. Something about Sedona, perhaps the beautiful surroundings, seems to have drawn to it an exceptionally large population of healers, artists and spiritual guides. There are even several vortex meditation sites (whatever that means) nearby. ...

We drove out of Sedona on our way north. We stopped for a nice breakfast at a busy cafe in Flagstaff, and stocked up on some food and supplies. We then drove up back through the high desert landscape near Grand Canyon, but this time we kept going further north, towards Page, AZ. Right outside town there is a massive tourist attraction - Horseshoe Bend. An area where the Colorado river does a perfect horseshoe. There is of course a parking lot, an entrance fee and a 0.5 mile walk to it. The walk is short enough that everyone goes - young and old, people with disabilities, everyone. ...

This image above is actually still from Lake Powell. I took it to try and capture how low the water has gotten. As you might be able to see, there is a line of camper vans up on the left, and if you continue that line all the way to the right, you get the the transition area in the big white rock on the right where the color turns from white to brown. That line is where the water level used to be. So I would be 30 feet under water taking this picture. And to get to the water you actually need to go down further. ...

Traffic jam in Sedona (image credit: David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers, Red Rock News) When we visited Sedona recently and got stuck several time in pretty terrible traffic jams like this, it got me thinking about the causes. I think that traffic issues are often caused by cities scaling faster than their roads do, and while Sedona is not a very big city - around 10,000 people according to the 2020 census, It does get a fare amount of visitors - 3 million visitors in 2018 according to the Sedona chamber of commerce. Most of those visitors are not a surprise to Sedona city leaders. The visitors are all coming to hotels, campgrounds or registered Airbnbs, so the city knows where they are staying, and can get data on how long, and use that for planning. So if we assume each of those guests stays for a week and that they are mostly spread around 8 busy months of the year, we get about 87K visitors in Sedona every day. So let’s call it 100K residents and visitors who are all moving around Sedona every day. ...

The past few days have been a whirlwind of parks, hikes, overlooks and driving. Orit and I both feel like we would like to take a few days to slow down and digest everything we’ve experienced, so we changed our plans for the coming weekend and will try to stay in one place for 3 (!) nights. The day before yesterday was probably the toughest we’ve had in our trip so far. There is no external reason or constraint that caused it to be like that. In other words, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We started the day with a fairly strenuous 2.5 mile roundtrip, 1000 feet elevation gain hike in Capitol Reef National Park, to see a really nice arch. We then drove 2.5 hours in beautiful terrain to Arches National Park, and spent 3 hours exploring its various lookouts and short hikes. Though we didn’t do any strenuous hikes there, we were completely exhausted by the time we arrived at our hotel. By then we had walked more than 10 miles, some of it in rough terrain, and have been in the car for hours. Delirious, we went out for dinner, wolfed down some salad and pizza at Antica Forma, a really nice Italian style pizza restaurant, got back to the hotel, dipped in the hot tub for a bit and collapsed into bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. ...