Utah and the Four Corners
                       A travelogue by Mark R. Leeper
                                 Highlights
May 13: Dinosaur National Monument
May 14: Arches National Park
May 15: Canyonlands National Park
 (Island in the Sky & Needles)
May 16: Anasazi Heritage Center,
 Hovenweep & CRIMSON TIDE
May 17: Mesa Verde National Park
May 18: Canyon de Chelly National Park
May 19: Bridges National Monument
May 20: Bryce Canyon National Park
May 21: Grand Canyon National Park (North Rim)
May 22: Zion National Park (inc. Kolob)
May 23: Kodachrome State Park
May 24: Capitol Reef National Park
 & Goblin State Park
May 25: Powell, Provo, & ENGLISHMAN WHO
 WENT UP A HILL
May 26: SLC Museums & Hill AFB
May 27: LDS Museums
May 28: Promontory Point & A MAN OF NO
 IMPORTANCE
     Prologue: This part is actually being written the last day of the
trip but it better answers the question of why go to Utah than what lies
below.  People we have talked to have wondered what is so special about
Utah.  After all, we tend to go to exotic places like India, the Baltic
Republics, Eastern Europe, and Africa.  What is there that attracts us
to a state in the United States that has big rocks and Mormons?  Well,
most places we go we go for shock of some sort.  Often it is culture
shock.  We love the sudden discovery that people are not really all the
same no matter what well-meaning people have told you.  There are very
different people in this world and very different patterns of thought.
Culture shock is what you get when you assume someone really is like you
and then suddenly discover his mind is working from a totally different
set of assumptions and probably assuming you are working from those
assumptions also.
     There is some of that in Utah with the Mormons, but it is not the
highest quality culture shock.  It fact it is pretty low-grade culture
shock.  What you do get here is what I would call "dimension shock."I
am not a big fan of geology generally but in Utah that is really whatis
impressive.  Let me explain by stealing an example from later in the
log.  Let's assume you are walking around Manhattan and you walk overto
the Empire State Building and look up at it.  Most of us have done this
and strained our necks to see that building and the way it goes up and
up and up.  Okay, now imagine you are having problems seeing the Empire
State Building because it is hidden behind this round boulder every bit
as tall.  So when you look at this boulder it also goes up and up and
up.  How did this absolutely immense boulder get here?  Well, about a
million and a half years ago erosion brought it here.  Yes, you see it
fell off of that piece of rock over there.  The one three times as wide,
three times as deep, three times as tall.  And this was less than a 25th
of the size of the above ground part of that piece of rock so it was
hardly missed.  The big one back there is 0.78 miles high.  I just
borrowed it from Zion National Monument in Utah.  Dimension shock is the
realization of how big an object that can stand in front of you really
can be.  Oh, sure, there are mountains, but they generally rise up
gradually.  It is hard to think of a mountain as a single object.  Itis
just an irregularity in the shape of the planet.  It does something to
you when you realize you are looking at a single rock as tall and as
massive as these things are.  Photos don't convey the feeling.  Thereis
little in a photo of a rock that size that conveys the scale.  Even
memory doesn't convey it.  The sense of awe at what you have seen just
fades after a day or so.  You have to stand in front of that sucker and
just look up.  You do that in Utah and the Four Corners area.  There are
a bunch of really strange rock formations and some are that scale, some
are only half that scale but interesting because of their odd shapes.
We wanted to see so we went to Utah.
     May 12, 1995: Well, here we go on another trip.  People have been
giving us one of two reactions when they hear our destination.  Either
it is "Wow, Utah!" or "Only Utah?"  I guess some people have come to
assume that our trips would be something amazing and exotic, certainly
something that requires a passport.  This year we are taking two smaller
trips.  Later we will be going to Scotland and Wales--that is at the end
of the summer.  This time it is Utah.  And why?  Well, this is sort of a
sequel-trip.  A few years back we did Arizona and New Mexico.  That was
sort of a laid-back trip.  We just took our time and drove around to
National Parks, National Monuments, historic sites, that sort of thing.
Dinners we would alternate between barbecue and Mexican.  And we just
enjoyed ourselves on a vacation where we were not constantly pushing
ourselves.  As we get older, that sort of vacation is sounding better.
But I think I am going to be happy that I didn't follow the not-so-sage
advice "See America first."  Hopefully there is time enough for the easy
trips later.  For those unfamiliar with the term, Four Corners is a
region around the intersection point where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and
New Mexico come together.
     There is a difference this time in how I am keeping the log.  Until
now the way we have done it was to handwrite the log and Evelyn would
type it in when we got home.  This time I will be typing the log in on
Thing, my palmtop computer, as we go.  That should make publishing easy
and faster.  Actually, Thing is not the same Thing I used on previous
trips.  Last big trip it was an HP 95LX.  It was near death on that
trip.  These days Thing I is in honorable retirement.  This trip Thing
is a 2-Meg 200LX with a 5-Meg card in my A-drive.  So if this isn't
really Thing, why do I call it that?  Well, "Thing" is a name of honor,
I guess like "Pharaoh."  When one Thing dies its replacement becomes
Thing.  Evelyn is also bringing a palmtop.  Hers is a 1-Meg 100LX with a
5-Meg card.  I have loaded on mine The Book of Mormon, but I doubt I
will read it off Thing.  It will probably be in our motel room in a form
that doesn't take batteries.  Thing will be slightly less useful this
trip in some ways.  For one thing, I can figure the exchange rate
myself.  But this time my log is going to be kept in Thing.  I was
afraid to do that before because I as afraid I would lose memory.  And I
did lose it once in Tallin, Estonia.  This time I am not going to Tallin
so I feel safe.  Actually the difference is that I have the memory card.
I figure a power failure can kill at most one day's notes.  I hope.  And
it is probably as fast to type it into a palmtop, in spite of the small
keyboard, as it would be to write it into a book.
     My suitcase caused some problem going through security.  It is the
kind that converts to a knapsack.  I put my briefcase down to be X-rayed
but forgot I had the suitcase on my back until I had to be gently
reminded.  You know they call these people the "civil authorities" but
they really are not.
     Well, Evelyn will like having the palmtop this trip.  I used to
pester her to tell me what page she was on in her log to compare how
much she has written with how much I had.  Of course I had always
written more, but my handwriting is larger than hers.  Now she will be
able to tell me how many kilo-bytes she has written and I will be able
to tell her how many I have.  I may even go back to publishing a
separate log from hers.  That may mean more redundancy in what the
readers get, but at least that way my readers will know that all the
really funny jokes are mine (and always have been!).
     Well, in the past we have started out on trips on better days.  It
looks from the weather map that there are clouds over most of the top
half of the country.  That must include where we are in New Jersey and
also includes Salt Lake City.  The lower part of the state looks clear,
but it will take us two or three days to get down there.
     We had been waiting at gate 80, but we just got a gate-change to
96.  According to another couple, this is the third gate our plane has
been scheduled for.  I think the pilot at 96 has a girlfriend in
Houston.  I do hope he knows the way.  Of course, looking out the window
at the wet runway, it could be that our plane just skidded 16 gates.
The desk also did not have our Frequent Flier data which they were
supposed to have.  I wonder if Continental Airlines is trying to be the
successor to Eastern.
     Well, we got on the plane.  Technology has now made it possible for
them to project a slide show on a little window on the seat ahead.  It
tells you all about electronic services you can get on this plane.  Just
what I needed, a slide show of projected ads when I fly.  And they fit
it all into the back of the seat.  Just shows what imaginative minds can
do if they decide to eliminate seat padding.  Everyone on the plane will
spend the flight leaning back on a slide projector.  And one of the sold
services is for videogames you can rent and play.  So I bet every kidon
the plane will be doing it.  Oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun flight.
Hey, I hear what you are thinking.  Why even bother to fly?  I could
spend my whole vacation complaining from the comfort of my home.  And
now the insidious little TV screen comes on and of course the sound is
much to loud.  You should have seen Evelyn jump.
     Our 2:30 PM flight took off at 3:06 PM, made a steep ascent and was
quickly above the lower clouds.  Eventually more light came in through
the windows.  Now we are above the clouds and finally are seeing some
blue sky.  Evelyn forgot to request a vegetarian meal.  When they asked
for passenger Shah to identify himself.  I told Evelyn to pass herself
off as Shah, but she just smiled.  Well, then she can just eat meat.
She does it at home all the time of course, but she prefers airline
vegetarian to airline meat dishes.  I think it's a toss-up.  Of course
if it turns out that way there is that little white bag in the seat
ahead.  There is also the catalogue for the "SkyMall."  There are a lot
more electronic gadgets than there used to be.  It certainly makes it
more interesting than chocolates, whiskey, and perfume.
     Last time we flew, on a flight over roughly the same hours, I made
sure to have lunch before the flight.  Then we got a meal on the plane
and it was too much.  This time I skipped lunch.  They announced we
would have a light meal late in the flight.  It is now 5:30 PM by home
time and all I have eaten today was a bagel and a glass of juice.  Soit
goes.  Well, it will be good for my diet.
     Actually, it was only a few minutes later that a small dinner was
served.  It was pasta salad, a turkey sub in a "Subway" wrapper, a beige
brownie (if that is possible) and a half-ounce packet of cheddar
Goldfish crackers.  Do you know why they picked goldfish rather than,
say, turkeys or sharks?  This is the mathematician in me coming out.It
is because you can tile a plane with goldfish shapes.  They probably
swell a little when you bake them, but when you cut them out of cracker
dough they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle without any wastage.  The
curve where the tail meets the body is probably exactly matches the
curve of the bottom of the head of the next fish.  From one strip of
dough you can cut out a fish facing right, then one facing left, then
another facing right.  And there is almost no dough left over.  M.C.
Escher would be proud.  I just wish they didn't draw a smile on the face
of the fish on the package.  How do you eat an animal while it is
smiling?  Frankly I don't like to see any animal I am going to eat
personalized.  I feel like I am eating a friend.  What was the ad-line
in MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE?
    This little piggy went to market
    As meek and as mild as a lamb.
    He smiled in his tracks
    As they slipped him the axe
    'Cause he knew he'd turn out to be Wham.
Well, the in-flight movie isLEGENDS OF THE FALL.  Now that was a filmI
enjoyed in a theater, but I was not anxious to watch it in a plane.
While I think that airline food may get a worse rap than it deserves,
airline movie watching more than gets even, being a far worse experience
without the bad reputation.  Even with the system they have on this
plane with the monitor high enough that people almost never get their
heads in the way, the screen is small and there are far too many
interruptions.  Our screen also has a yellow line constantly down the
center that none of the other monitors has.  If we are passing over some
city the pilot recognizes or if he just feels lonely and wants to talk
to someone, the soundtrack goes out and it is his voice you hear.
(Okay, to be fair, on this plane they actually stop the film.)  When I
am watching a movie I couldn't care less that I am flying over the Grand
Tetons.
     I will say one thing for Continental Airlines: their classical
music program was one of the closest to my tastes of any I remember on a
plane in a long time.  Most of the music was from the romantic period
with music from Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Dukas, Grieg, and several others.
There was a whole subsection with music with macabre themes, which isa
particular interest of mine.
     Well, in good time we started landing.  I think the captain heldit
off as long as possible until so LEGENDS OF THE FALL could finish.  I
looked out the window onto a breath-taking view of the water.  There was
a gentle curve of the horizon.  Somehow the surface of the water seemed
dimpled at regular intervals.  I wondered what I was looking at.  Offin
the distance was some huge structure coming out of the water that looked
almost like two huge eyes.  As I looked past I saw what looked like a
cloud coming up over the horizon.  I suddenly realized I had made a fool
of myself.  I was not looking at an expanse of water, I was looking at
the wing of the plane.  The dimples were rivets and the eyed structure
was a towing hook.  Well, what can I say?  It really did look like
water.
     Well, the plane came in about 45 minutes before our next flight.
The air on the jetway coming off the plane reminded me of my dog's
breath after he had been running.  It was hot and wet and had an
unwholesome smell like my dog's breath.  Well, like it was.  The dog
died in 1974 and if I stood in this kind of humid heat for long I might
have joined him.  The man who sat behind me in the waiting room smelled
like he had been out in the hot, wet air and would be much improved when
he got where he was going and had a nice shower.  Three air hostesses
off to our side talked about a restaurant where the picante sauce was
just dee-licious and discussed a good place to find bargains on
lingerie.  Someone tells me that dogs sweat, men perspire, and women
glow.  Well if dogs sweat, it is only from the bottoms of their feet.
(That is a biological fact.)  The men here do perspire and on a dark
night you could read by one of the women.  Ain't nobody's fault but the
sun.  This is a warm town.
     Apparently they overbooked our flight and the people have been
asked to move as many as three times, to the uproarious amusement of the
two women sitting ahead of us who were asked only once to move.  The
attendant gave a 100% enthusiasm-free safety schpiel.  She looked like a
bad cheerleader after a hard day as she went through the motions of
pointing to doors.  Even more half-hearted was the woman actually doing
the talking.  She lost herself in the half-memorized speech and took a
moment before she could find the words for the next part.  She was the
same attendant who referred to flight 1003 as "flight ten-oh-oh-three."
     Takeoff at twilight is always nice and something we rarely have a
chance to see with all our flying.  The guy sitting next to me is
listening to a Sony Discman playing a CD by someone called Seal.  His
eyes are closed and he slightly nods his head in time to a rhythm I
think I am glad I cannot hear.
     The "snack" is mini-pretzels and a pack of "ballpark style"
peanuts.  I am not sure what ballpark style means in this context.  They
were just ordinary peanuts.  They were skinless (and boneless).  I think
calling them "ballpark style" just makes them seem more exciting.  I
don't know why that is.  Nobody gets excited about a ballpark style
restroom, for example.
     I slept a little on the plane.  Usually I can't do that.  Evelyn
has read through one novel already and is 200 pages into another
already.  I wish I could do that.  Across the aisle there is a young
woman who as some sort of protest or punk fashion had dyed her hair a
Pepto-Bismol pink.  Now it was growing out so that it was about one-inch
auburn at the root.  On the whole she might have looked better if she
had just left her hair alone and put a few discrete, fashionable
safety-pins through her nose and eyelids.
     Salt Lake City at night from the air looks beautiful, like most
cities would.  As we landed the stewardess said, "Welcome to Salt Lake
City."  Now I am just estimating, but I suspect we were going something
like 200 MPH when we entered the city limits.  The stewardess is
something like twenty-five feet ahead of us.  Very roughly speaking
then, I estimate that she has been in Salt Lake City maybe 0.08 seconds
longer than I have.  Somehow that doesn't seem enough to qualify her as
a welcomER.  If anything she would belong in the class of the welcomED.
     Well, to make a long story short, we landed, found National Car
Rental had upped the rate on our car to about $55 more than they had
agreed to over the phone.  On top of which we had been hoping the car
would have a cassette player.  No such luck.  I will run my Walkman with
speakers and rechargeable batteries.  I will just have to recharge each
night.
     May 13, 1995: Well, our room had no thermostat.  Apparently it was
climate-controlled for our comfort.  Only it wasn't comfortable, it was
darn cold.  It was like being back in Lithuania in May.  Evelyn figures
that they have already turned off the heat for the warm weather that
they have overrated.  In any case, it was chilly.  I got a chuckle from
Evelyn when she saw snow on the hills and I told her I was surprised we
did not see it on the bed.
     We went for breakfast at a place called Country Fare.  I was going
to be good and order just eggs and toast, but they had a breakfast
burrito and at the last minute curiosity got the better of me.  It
turned to be a tortilla wrapping beans, meat, and an omelet, in sauce
and cheese--murder on my diet, but darn tasty.  I saw another table had
hot sauce so requested it.  The waitress asked me if I meant Tabasco
Sauce or salsa.  "Bring me everything that's hot," I asked.  I got salsa
and two different kinds of Tabasco Sauce.  One was traditional, and one
was a green Jalapen~o sauce.  I had never seen the Jalapen~o sauce before
and I had all the salsa she brought plus a fair amount of the other two
sauces.  I understand there are still some Thais who like their food
spicier than I do, but no other nationality.  And I am catching up with
the Thais.
     We drove out through the foothills covered with snow.  There is
some beautiful country around here.  Further on we went through the
Wasatch Mountains, more than a mile high where it was still winter in
mid-May.  There was a lot more snow.  Our real destination was Vernal
near the Dinosaur National Monument.
     We went through Heber City, the livestock center of the Heber
Valley and home of the Heber Creeper Scenic Railroad.  The name Heberis
real popular.  It seem Heber C.~Kimball was a counselor to Brigham Young
and it never hurts to be in good with The Big Guy.  We continued on
through the Uinta National Forest.  That is a big recreational area.We
passed a large lake still covered in ice.
     As we came out of the mountains, we started getting into some nifty
geology.  Suppose your boyfriend was in jail serving five to ten for
armed robbery and he asked you to bake him a souffle with a file and a
gun.  Well, you do, but you open the oven at the wrong time and the
souffle falls.  It doesn't fall enough so you see metal, but the whole
nice surface is ripped up by the egg being able to fall in some places
but not over the gun.  Where you have tears, you actually see layers of
the souffle that were under the crust before.  That is the geology of
Utah.  The ground used to be higher and it collapsed and fell.  The
downward pressure of gravity and the uneven support of the rock
underneath did a real number on the surface of the ground.  All over you
can see layers of sandstone and sediment--stuff you were never meant to
see.  This was stuff that was supposed to stay buried, but the great
collapse caused a terrible mix-up.  And scientists are exploiting it to
find out about what used to be deep underground.
     There are deer-crossing and cow-crossing signs a lot of places
along the road.  I would like to think that some have not been shot up
for target practice, but I see no good evidence for that theory.  The
sun is not that strong but you do see cowboy hats.  People in Western
wear visit trading posts that have satellite antennae on the roof.  This
was as we were moving toward Vernal.  The AAA book told how a bank was
built from bricks sent parcel post from Salt Lake City.  The railroad
charged such horrible rates that it was cheaper to mail the bricks than
ship them by train.  There was a maximum sized package the mail would
accept so the packages were sent to seven different people.  There was
good reason for the railroads to have a bad reputation.
     One thing they do seem to still have here is drive-in movies.
Those are completely gone from New Jersey and most of the East.  There
are two FM stations on the radio.  One had classical music at a later
point.  The state police cars have beehives painted on the side.  The
beehive is the state symbol and represents industriousness.
     With our luck we hit town on a very special day.  There is a
ground-breaking for a new Mormon Temple that was tangling up the
traffic.  I knew I was in the West when the truck next to us started
making mooing noises.  There must be trucks like that where we are but
somehow we never see them.  And I am happy about not seeing them.  There
are cows or steers that have made their contract with the two-leggers.
They have more or less behaved.  They have not wandered off too much.
The two-leggers have more or less regulated their lives and the cows
have learned to live with it.  They went out to graze when they were
told.  It hasn't been a bad life.  They have learned to trust the two-
leggers and did what the two-leggers wanted since it generally was in
their own best interest.  The two-leggers became sort of dieties to them
as much as they have had deities.  What they never knew was that this
ride was part of the bargain.  And at the other end of the ride the
contract will end in one nasty shock.  The caring, loving two-leggers
are going to have a serious change in attitude.  It is going to be one
heck of a shock.  I am told often cattle see what is coming and go down
on their knees as a sort of begging to be left alive.  Then their turn
comes and if the two-legs know what they are doing it is over quickly.
And perhaps they don't and it isn't.  I try to stay away from red meat.
Part of the reason is my own health.  Part of the reason isn't.  Did you
know, by the way, cattle in herds recognize different members and form
friendships and personal attachments?
     One thing about Vernal, dinosaurs are big around here.  No pun
intended.  But all sorts of motels and groceries have either large
plaster dinosaurs or pictures of dinosaurs or something of the like.
The most common tourist mascot of the town is a sauropod who shows upin
many forms.  A sauropod has a long neck and tail like apatosaurus,
formerly known as Prince, oops, no make that brontosaurus.  The whole
economy of the town seems built on them.  In town we went to the Utah
Field House of Natural History, built 1942 by the Lion's Club.  It isa
small but effective little natural history museum with a strong emphasis
on the town's favorite type of animal, the dinosaur.  There are
specimens of fossils and minerals and stuffed animals from various parts
of the world but they have a large room and a garden devoted to
dinosaurs.  One thing I thought was odd, a case had a model of a
tyrannosaur with cat's eyes.  Of course, nobody can say it is
inaccurate, but it seems like an odd detail and it certainly makes the
model look strange.  They have an exhibit showing dinosaur footprints.
They also have a mixture of casts and original fossils.  I was surprised
how small was the saber-tooth cat skull.  I expected something closerto
a tiger skull and it was more like that of a mountain lion.  The museum
was mobbed with something going on here also.
     It looked like a lot of school students were collecting information
for a school paper.  That was somewhat odd because it was a Saturday.
On group of about eight were ringed about an exhibit having a spirited
discussion of whether Tom Cruise is gay.  Ah, teenagers.  In a side room
there was a tape playing with a fairly good documentary on dinosaurs and
how we know what we know about them.  Robert Bakker (whom I know as the
author of THE DINOSAUR HERESIES) explained that we know the dinosaurs
were warm-blooded by analyzing their footprints.  And the odd thing was,
it made sense.  If you know the length of the lower and upper leg of an
animal you can figure its speed from the length of its stride.
Tyrannosaur footprints are always far apart, meaning it always moved
very fast.  But a cold-blooded animal like a lizard cannot be a fast
mover.  It has to move very slowly and langorously.  Hence the strideof
a Tyrannosaur tells us it had to be warm-blooded.
     Another well-known paleontologist, Jack Horner, talked about how
they discovered that Maiasaurus must have had an active community life
based on egg fragments that have been found.  Outside the garden had a
large collection of full-sized dinosaur models.
     We hit the souvenir stand and I got three dinosaur models.  Back
when I was young, the dinosaur models you got at museums were all from
one series.  They were decent but not great representations.  After a
while you didn't see them being sold in museums any more, though I did
see them show up in some sort of Flintstones sandbox set.  They were
oddly realistic for that usage, considering that the cartoon does not
have realistic dinosaurs.  For a long time museums were really hard put
to find decent dinosaur models to sell.  One museum even stooped to
selling a construction model kit that showed a caveman fighting a
dinosaur.  And I think what made it harder to make a good model of a
dinosaur was the revelation that dinosaurs did not drag their tails but
carried them off the ground (there are lots of fossil footprints and
nobody has ever found a fossil tailprint between them).  That makes it
much harder to make model that doesn't fall over.  Nowadays there are
two good competing brands of dinosaur models, one from the Carnegie-
Mellon Institute and one from the British Museum.  Each is better and
more realistic than the ones I got as a kid.  So I guess if you wait
long enough, some thing do get better.
     After the museum we dropped into a grocery for some snack food for
the car and room.  Most of what we got was Nabisco Snackwells of
different types.  I am avoiding fat.  Nabisco foods used to be terrible,
but they have gotten religion and now they have a fairly good line of
products with Snackwells.  From the soda machine we got a US$0.25 canof
soda.  It was an off-brand, but it tasted fine.
     From there we headed off for Dinosaur National Monument.  I am
finding I am getting used to the scenery.  Views I would have jumped to
take this morning I now ignore since I know that there is much better
scenery around.  I pointed out to Evelyn a peculiar sort of field
sprinkler--the mechanism for watering a field of crops.  You used to see
sprinklers that have a pipe going across a field held up on legs and it
would sprinkle crops.  The legs have been replaced by a sort of wagon-
wheel that uses the pipe as an axle.  I asked Evelyn why the wheel
arrangement.  Actually it makes a lot of sense.  If supported on a leg
the pipe could fall over, but a wheel is always stable.  Also, the wheel
arrangement also make it easier to roll the whole arrangement across a
field.
     We stopped at Dinosaur National Monument.  We try to buy our Golden
Eagle Pass at the gate, but they just let us in without paying.  The
Golden Eagle Pass costs US$25 and is good for one year.  It allows you
to take one carload of people into National Parks or National Monuments
for a year.
     By the entrance they have the stegosaurus model from the Sinclair
exhibit at the New York World's Fair.  They call it an "historic
dinosaur" (as opposed to a prehistoric dinosaur, I guess).
     There are in this world natural collecting points for junk.  Dead
bugs tend to collect on car windshields and near air intake valves.
Dust collects in air filters.  Hair collects in drains.  It is just in
the nature of things.  Generally if you have gas or liquid flowing past
a tight space, that is where junk will collect.  And it is junk because
who wants a bunch of dead bugs.  Ah, but if you were interested in
learning about hair and could find hair no place else, an old shower
drain would be a real find!  Thinking on a larger scale, suppose you
found an area where dead dinosaurs tended to collect?  Not enough to
collect in a jelly like bugs on a car windshield, but someplace by a
prehistoric river where carcasses or dead thunder lizards just sort of
accumulated and fossilized.  Now that would be a find!  The most
valuable dinosaur fossil site in the world is a piece of land we now
call Dinosaur National Monument, the site of a Mesozoic river where junk
collected and fossilized for eons later that the geology poked up to the
surface.  As you would expect, this place is set in the mountains which
were formed by the upthrusts that pushed this buried section of crustto
the surface.  In the Visitors Center you see an exhibit explaining the
place and a big tilted wall of rock with many obvious fossil bones.  The
visitors are kept away from the wall and there is a section where a man
is working on precision drilling to free fossils.
     There are brochures around for a tour of the area.  After visiting
the Visitors Center we took the Tilted Rock Tour.  You follow a map and
see diverse parts of the park, none really having much to do with
dinosaurs.  The first stop is to see Fremont Indian designs of a
thousand years ago in sandstone.  They are mostly human shapes, many
with horned buffalo heads.  There are one or two areas in the rock where
the designs appear.  There has been a serious problem of people defacing
the rock--after the time of the Fremonts, I mean.  Nobody mentions it
but the Fremonts did just exactly what all the signs tell contemporary
people not to do.
     There is a stop to see the prairie dogs.  Curiously tame prairie
dogs come to see what you are doing and to beg for handouts.  One came
close enough that I could tell she was a female.  Probably some of the
tourists feed them.  I would have loved to myself, but it is probably
ill-advised.  In the Galapogos they had problems with tourist just
feeding lizards from the leaves on the bushes around them.  All the
lizards would come to that end of the island to beg.  Eventually the
custom was outlawed.
     Split River is a river that seems to have taken an impossible
course cutting a canyon through the hard rock of a mountain.  It seems
unlikely that it would not find an easier course around the mountain.
The explanation seems to be that it first cut through softer rock toward
the outside of the mountain and that kept the course of the river
directed on the harder rock until it was worn away.  The result is a
canyon with walls several hundred feet high.  I estimated one dome on
the wall to be five hundred feet above the river.  This canyon was
explored by the one-armed John Wesley Powell in 1869.  He also was the
initial European-American who explored the Grand Canyon.  Having lost
his arm in the Civil War, he still managed an amazing expedition
exploring the Colorado River, all the more amazing because of the number
of literally cliff-hanging episodes.
     As you drive through, the road winds among the sandstone giants
going up hundreds of feet.  You see a lot of people exploring with their
dogs on a leash.  Nobody brings their cat.  Lots of the areas are fenced
off to keep cattle from crossing.  Now here is a puzzle: how do you have
a fence go straight across a road so that cars will go through, but
cattle will not?  It is too expensive to have an overpass, and it might
not stop cattle.  You don't want a gate that has to be opened.  What do
you do?  Well, you dig a pit and put a steel grating over it.  Cars
drive over it fine.  Cows look down and get scared.  They won't cross
it.  Around an individual house, you build a fence and have an opening
that people can just walk through, but they have to walk a tight hairpin
curve.  A human is only a foot or so from front to back, a cow is a lot
more.  A cow would get stuck.  Such a fence is around the tiny homestead
of Josie.
     Josie Bassett Morris born was in 1870s and lived by herself on
these grounds, living much like a hermit.  She set up a small ranch and
lived here to 1964 without modern conveniences.  But she liked the life
away from people.  There are lots of nice informative signs to tell you
about her and many signs telling you in almost a nice way what to do and
not do.  One tells you about the bacillus that lives in the running
water so you shouldn't drink any.  Another tells you about the timbers
of the house and how they served their master but are now rotting so you
mustn't come too close.  At one end is a box canyon Josie used as a
corral and we took a fifteen-minute walk to the back of the box.  On the
sides there are huge sandstone cliffs that dwarf the ego.
     We went back to Vernal to find a good restaurant for dinner.  The
selection was not overwhelming.  It was mostly places with names like
Taco Jack's.  We drove all the way through the town and I decided what I
might want to try would be the Ranchhouse Restaurant.  We were going to
order off the menu, but the waitress recommended "the Chuckwagon," a
buffet including chicken, barbecue ribs, beef stew, etc.  None looked
very well made, but then probably nothing would here.  We took the
Chuckwagon.  We went to wash the dust off of our hands.  The bathroom
had a white wooden board that said "Shithouse writers, write here."
There was the usual "For a good time call ..."  One said "Kill the
Clinton's."  "The Clinton's what?" I wondered.  Clearly this was not a
deep political thinker.  I am hardly going to be convinced by someone
who thinks a plural needs an apostrophe.  (That's a "single quote" to
you computer jocks.)  Education in America?  What education in America?
For US$5.95 the Chuckwagon wasn't bad.  At US$6.25 it might have been
overpriced.  The restaurant did seem to fill up while we were there.I
think the restaurant appeals to people for its willingness to let people
stuff themselves for one low price.
     From there we started the drive to Moab.  When you drive this time
of year the weather changes quickly depending on whether you are driving
under a rain cloud or not.  We did hit a stretch of rain and saw an
impressive rainbow.  At one point in the hills it started to snow.  It
won't stick, I reassured Evelyn.
     We passed a train that looked like it was pulling 200 cars.  Evelyn
guessed that it was more like 100 until I told her to count off ten cars
and figure the proportion.  It sure wasn't a tenth of the train.  I
doubt it was even a twentieth.  There may have been 300 cars.  I told
Evelyn that the engine was going to get a hernia.  She claimed they
didn't get hernias.  I told her this was the little engine that could.
     We got to Moab about 9:30 PM and found that every motel was booked.
We frantically searched and found nothing.  Then we got a referral at
the Ramada Inn for a bed-and-breakfast that still had one vacancy.  It
was a place called The Purple Sage and it was US$50/night.  We took it.
The room was tiny with one double bed and just enough room to put our
luggage down--the luggage always suffers on a trip like this, and the
time had come to put it down.  Apparently it is not that anything
special is going on; Moab just fills up on the weekends.  I wonder ifit
is worse on Mother's Day?  We took the room for two nights.
     May 14, 1995: I have successfully adapted to time zone.  I wake up
too darn early at home these days, something like 5:15 PM, and that is
exactly when I wake up here.  I am hoping if I stay active I will sleep
later.
     At 7:30 PM we joined our host, Sabrina, for breakfast and talk.
The bed had been a bit small and so was the breakfast, French Toast
Peach Melba.  We talked to Sabrina about her background.  She comes from
San Jose, California.  She is a school guidance counselor who runs the
bed and breakfast in her spare time.  We talked about how we met and
what our jobs are.  We talked about what we were seeing this vacation.
We even talked about the current outbreak of Ebola on Zaire.  People who
read my film reviews will probably know that is a subject of particular
interest to me.  Other people follow the World Series or football; I
have this interest in emerging viral diseases, just because I think the
public has not realized how really dangerous they are.  Ebola loose in a
real population center is a darn frightening proposition.  This one
could be a continent jumper.  I would not put a whole lot of faith in
the assumption we are better equipped today to fight Ebola than the
people in the Middle Ages were prepared to fight the Plague.
     After breakfast we went to a small store called the Back of Beyond
Bookstore.  It is small but has a tremendous selection of books on this
part of the world, particularly on tourism.  We spent better than US$70.
Put us around books and we are dangerous.
     There is a problem about using a palmtop computer.  I am temptedto
be writing my log when I should be sight-seeing.  I started writing logs
so that I could fill my spare time on trips rather than taking pictures,
which takes time away from sight-seeing.  Now I have come full circle.
I take a fair number of pictures, more than 45 a day, and now I am
tempted to write my experiences as I have them.  I can do that at any
time with a palmtop, where a hand-written log I need someplace where I
am not jouncing up and down.  When I am walking trails I could be
simultaneously writing my log.  With a little practice I find I can type
as fast as I would hand-write a log and I can do it more places.  That,
incidentally, is the big advantage of a palmtop over a laptop.  Who
takes a laptop down a trail like this?  Okay, I know what you are
asking.  Who takes a palmtop?  The answer is me, Evelyn, and few other
people.  Visionaries all.  The point is they are really useful.  This
log will occasionally list specific products.  These are all unsolicited
testimonials.
     Well, from there we went to the Arches National Park.  The placeis
known for the impressive stone arches.  Each National Park and Monument
seems to have carved out its own niche.  They respect each other's
franchise.  There are no arches in the Dinosaur National Monument.  No
dinosaur shows so much as a fossilized femur in Arches National Park.
Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but this seems to be the
only park that makes a big thing of its arches.  An arch is really a
naturally formed bridge.  It is a rock with a big hole through it.
     How is an arch formed?  Well, I already have explained how pieces
of the crust are pushed up.  As pieces were pushed up with uneven
pressure, large cracks formed due to stress.  Water falls into these
cracks and erodes the sides.  Eventually the cracks widen until there
are gaps between the pieces.  And eventually the pieces are free-
standing with large gaps between them.  Sandstone is really fairly soft,
and the wind and rain erode the pieces like bars of soap.  Like bars of
soap they get thinner and thinner.  These thin rock up-juttings are
called fins.  Eventually a small hole will be worn through the rock.
Then erosion works around the borders of the hole and gravity works on
the top and bottom.  The window in the rock expands until the rock
structure collapses.   I suppose what you get then are fallen arches.
It is Entrada sandstone that commonly erodes and forms arches.
     We got to the park about 9:20 AM and 9:30 AM was an orientation
slide show.  Mostly what it was about was how the geology of the area
was formed, but there also was a generous dollop of "Do not touch," or
warnings to stay on the trail, etc., because the desert ecology is so
fragile.  I don't blame the officials for beating us over the head with
this message.  It just irritates me that so many people do not follow
the instructions and the park officials have to repeat them so
vehemently so often.  It is a lot like being in a poorly behaved second
grade class where the teacher lectures the whole class incessantly
because the same three kids keep misbehaving.  The teacher has a job to
do so you don't really blame her, but she really is very tiresome.  You
really just want to take the few bad students and do them some sort of
painful physical harm.
     Our first event was a Park Service talk at one of the scenic turn-
offs.  While we were waiting for it to start I asked what was the
difference between a National Park and a National Monument.  Apparently
it is a question of who designates it.  The president declares something
a National Monument; Congress declares a National Park.  Parks get
better care than do monument and sometimes a monument will be escalated
to park status.
     Okay, here is the straight scoop on water in the desert.  This is
desert country by about an inch.  It gets 7-9 inches rain a year, and10
is the cut-off for desert country.  That rain tends to evaporate rather
than collect.  For an area with this humidity 81 inches of rain would
evaporate.  There is some snow, but it doesn't make the ground wet.  All
the moisture evaporates off the top and none sinks into the dirt below.
Underneath the snow the ground is dry.  Our guide, Andy Nettell his tag
read, said this year they had had the local equivalent of a monsoon
season.  One rain a few days ago dropped 0.74 inches of rain.  That
isn't much, but it was the most the guide had seen in this area the
whole time he had been here.  It doesn't soak into the ground but comes
ripping through the low areas and runs off.  They got their rain from
slow-moving Pacific fronts.  Still in the desert there is water and
animals know where to look for it.
     Andy discussed some survival strategies of desert.  The kangaroo
rat gets all the moisture it needs from the insects it eats; it avoids
water in any other form.  It pays a high price for that.  It eats its
own feces to reclaim the water and it urinates solid crystals.  It
cannot be a very good life.  Some frogs have been seen to have eggs
dormant for 19 years.  Add water and they come to life.  So they live
only when there is water.  There is a frog that lays eggs that hatch
immediately but die if there is no water.  But it also lays eggs that
wait for water.
     Many parts of the desert are covered with cryptobiotic crust which
holds water better than soil and makes nodules of nitrogen, for the
plant.  However, stepping on the dirt kills its ability to fix nitrogen.
That is why the desert is said to be so fragile and why they insist on
people staying on the trails.  I guess all this shows that humans are
powerful.  We saw a juniper tree that when there is not enough water,
survives by letting pieces of itself die so that what is left can get
enough water.  I think General Motors uses the same strategy.  One of
the woman on the tour was from California and when the guide mentioned
that there had been a drought in California, the woman wanted to turn
the lecture into a diatribe against California farmers who use far more
water than she did and didn't pay as much.
     When the lecture was over one of the men who was on it with me
began a conversation starting with water and the natural balance of
things.  Then we got into film somehow.  He teaches film at an elder-
hostel in Florida.  I am, of course, a big film enthusiast and we talked
for a while about film.  Also we talked about what is good to visit in
this area.
     The park is devoted to a lot of the effects of erosion.  Balancing
Rock is really an erosion effect.  When you see a large rock seemingly
balanced impossibly on another what probably happened was that they were
both part of the same rock and the neck between them eroded away.  They
are not really balanced but carved.
     This is an area that is particularly high in the sort of stone that
tends to form arches.  Basically you just go around and look at arches.
We walked out to Skyline Arch which lost a big piece in the late 1940s
and went from a medium and uninteresting arch to being a much more
spectacular one.  In one night, all by itself, from something boring and
prosaic it made itself a natural attraction.  I mean is this a great
country or what?  Of course that is an old story.  Marilyn Monroe, who
had roughly the same IQ, also became a great natural attraction just by
the forces of nature.
     We did some hiking in an area called the Devil's Garden.  The Devil
had not done a good job setting up his garden because it was mostly
rocks.  But this gives you a chance to look at arches and walk in among
fins.  I would have called this area the Devil's Harbor since the fins
seems to remind me of nautical shapes.  There was one near the entrance
that suggested a huge ocean liner that dwarfed the Titanic. On the other
side of Pinetree Arch was a line of three that suggested huge
submarines.  And besides, a few references to water might brighten the
desert up a bit.  We walked in the Garden to Tunnel Arch and Pinetree
Arch.  Of course there were a lot of people walking on the desert ground
and ignoring the request to stay on the paths.  I could tell that
telling people to keep off the ground was good, steady work.
     We walked out to Landscape Arch, which is the longest natural arch
in the world.  Apparently arch-making is one thing humans now do better
than nature.
     We did some more hiking at North Window and South Window and at
nearby Turret Window.  This area has had many films shot here.  INDIANA
JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE filmed the early scenes with the late River
Phoenix in this Park.  GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND, the recent film
with Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Wes Studi, had major photography
here, though if you see real Geronimo territory it is less spectacular.
This was also the area where the last part of THELMA AND LOUISE was
filmed.  It occurs to me that Wes Studi's name may not be familiar,
though he is a man for whom I can say I have admiration.  He was at one
time active in the American Indian Movement though I think their
philosophies may have diverged.  He played Geronimo, and earlier he
played Magua in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS.  I was very impressed with him
when he was interviewed on our local station WBAI.  That station has a
left-wing leaning and seemed to be intending to get Studi to complain
about the bad treatment that Geronimo got at the hands of the Army.
Studi refused to turn Geronimo into a martyr saying that Geronimo had
many sides but he very likely was a sociopath.  When the interviewer
tried to change to course to being a condemnation of the government
treatment, Studi said he didn't want to be considered a victim by
anybody.  The man is articulate, well-educated, and dignified.  He is
the sort of person I would like to vote for.
     Dinner was at Fat City Barbecue, which has decent but
undistinguished fare.
     The Canyonlands by Night Sound and Light show is conducted from a
boat on the Colorado River.  You take a sightseeing boat up-river about
four miles listening to the guide talk about the geology, the history,
and anything else of interest.  That is really the prologue.  After that
(for us) there was about a half-hour wait in the dark due to technical
problems.  The sound and light show itself was not such a great affair.
Generally these shows will have colored spotlights on a small set of
attractions, like say the pyramids at Giza or the Red Fort at Delhi.
Here there was no single set of attractions that are of that much
interest.  Instead there are canyon walls, themselves not the most
interesting features of the area.  To make them interesting a truck
comes along with bright white spotlights on the back and just plays them
on the canyon walls and lets moving shadows do the rest.  While you see
the canyon walls by night lighted by the truck, you hear a recording
telling you about the history of the area and presumably the shadows are
supposed to suggest appropriate images for that part of the story with
sufficient imagination.  Apparently I am not terrifically imaginative
and it worked at all maybe a third of the time.  Besides that we were
just seeing the walls lit in an unusual way.  Playful campers on the
shore did their best to disrupt the show by doing things like making
loud burping noises that could be heard over the water.  It must have
taken 30 to 40 minutes in the dark for the show to start as they worked
the kinks out of the performance and I was telling my own story of the
Canyonlands that ended "and on dark nights you can still hear that
boatful of people on the Colorado, mournfully waiting for their sound
and light show to begin."
     Well, that was it for the day.  I did have one question on the
ride.  There was a mention that the river had fish.  My question is, how
do river fish do it?  Do they spend their whole lives fighting the
current?  Do they just get washed down the river and see new scenery
every day?  It must be a tough life either way.
     May 15, 1995: Our bedroom is in a small separate building from the
main house.  The previous night we shared this building with another
couple.  This makes the shared bathroom a little tight, particularly
since the other couple had most of the flat area of the sink covered
with their things.  They also left beer cans in the wastebasket.  I am
always concerned people will think I left something like that.  Actually
I fit in well with the Mormons since I don't like the taste of coffeeor
tea and have a real aversion to the taste of alcohol.  That makes me
halfway to being a Mormon without even trying.
     We dropped in for breakfast at 7:30 AM, but apparently we had not
specified so we waited inside reading and writing.  It was about 50
minutes, but it was a pretty good breakfast burrito made by Joel,
Sabrina's husband.
     Canyonlands is really a set of National Parks.  We were going to
see two of them today, Island in the Sky in the morning and Needles in
the afternoon.  We took Route 191 which goes through rocky cliffs toward
the park.
     There is a turn-off, Route 313, to get to the park.  We stopped to
see Monitor and Merrimac Buttes.  These are two perfect buttes that are
side by side reminiscent of illustrations of the Battle of Hampton Roads
(which oddly enough was fought on the water).
     Schaefer Canyon, offers a view of huge canyon walls, 1500 or 1600
feet high, I would guess, or perhaps more like 2000 feet.  The wall go
up at a 70-degree angle.  A mini-van on the road looked like an
insignificant fleck.
     Mesa Arch Trail is a short half-mile walk with cryptogamic soil on
the sides of the path.  The arch itself looks out onto a huge canyon
floor.  It is hard to describe the immensity.  Mesa Arch offers an arch
looking out onto a stunning view of the canyon (which is just about the
only kind of view they stock in this part of the country).
     This is a dry, parched place.  A man goes through his water and
film real quickly.  And it's a dangerous wild place.  At one point I
thought we'd had it.  We were alone on the trail and we almost ran into
ran smack-dab into a bunch of scruffy desperados with dangerous looking
cameras.  We hid in the brush until they passed.
     One guy (not a desperado) saw me making notes in Thing and stared.
I guess you don't see a lot of palmtops on the trail.
     On the radio they are talking a bit about the Ebola outbreak in
Zaire, but not enough to suit me.  My strong suspicions are that thisis
a much more important news story than its coverage would indicate.
Ebola is scary stuff.  I am afraid there is a decent probability that
this is the most important news story of the year.  Or several years.
It would be very easy to mishandle the disease as it has been in all the
previous outbreaks.  That could mean that it would be a continent jumper
and that it could get loose in metropolitan settings.  If that is the
case could well become a world-wide epidemic.  This is an admittedly not
very well-informed viewpoint, but there may even be a ten-per-cent
chance that this is going to be the beginning of a very bad
intercontinental outbreak.  I suppose by the time this is published it
will be likely that the ninety percent probability will have come
through.  I hope so.
     The Grandview Overlook looks down over 1500 feet.  It is a 35-mile
wide basin carved by the Green and Colorado rivers with a tiny assist
from wind and rain.  We climbed Whale Rock, a large smooth and rounded
piece of stone about a hundred feet high.  At the top there was a light
wind that picked up until it was very windy.  For at least a few moments
I elected to sit down.  It did give a terrific view on the valley below.
     We were going to fill our canteens on our way out of the park, but
they ask you not to do that because all their water is trucked in.  So
we got a cool drink.  The water was nice and cold following the Japanese
philosophy that if you don't have much to serve, serve it right.
     We continued on to Dead Horse Point State Park.  This is not a
National Park, but one owned by the state so having a separate
admission.  However, it is one terrific view of the canyon, better than
any in Island in the Sky, the local part of Canyonlands.  This is a view
that I would claim is more impressive than any I had seen at the Grand
Canyon last time.  There are about seven layers of canyons within
canyons.  At the bottom is the Colorado River that has done a real
number on all the sandstone that has collected for longer than there has
been life on earth.  Also, there are lakes that seem unnaturally blue
until you look straight up and realize they are mirroring the very
bluest hue at the top of the sky.  [I found out later that the blue I
was seeing was only partly from the sky and that calcium carbonate in
the water makes it appear unnaturally blue.]  This is the most
impressive sight so far this trip.  If I were to try to take it all in
with a panoramic shot it would take at least seven shots.  Words are
hard to convey what it means to see this sight.  According to the book
that is 2000 feet down to the river and you are seeing 5000 square miles
of canyon country.  How much is that?  It is the area of a circle 80
miles in diameter.  Suppose you had a coin standing on edge that was one
inch in diameter.  But for some reason you couldn't see it.  Actually
you couldn't see it because it was lost somewhere on the face of a coin
that if stood on edge would be 18 stories high.  But now you misplaced
that 18-story coin because it was lost someplace on the surface of a
coin 80 miles in diameter.  The ratios are the same.  A one inch coin
could get lost in an 18-story coin the way the 18-story coin could be
lost in the area visible from Dead Horse Point.
     From there we drove to the Needles section of Canyonlands, abouta
150-minute drive.  Our first stop at this end was Newspaper Rock, a
stone that was used to observe and photograph petroglyphs--pictures in
stone--from 700 B.C.~to 1300 A.D.  It is basically graffiti.  Wheels.
Horned men.  A bear laid open.  Footprints.  Men on horses.  All that
sort of thing.  Next Disney movie that tries to tell you that the
Indians lived in harmony with nature, you should think of Newspaper
Rock.  While I do not deny that the land was seized immorally from the
Indians, I would say that the bit about living in harmony with natureis
revisionist myth.  They simply had a low-technology lifestyle that
usually was not taxing on the environment and that wasn't by choice.
(Actually in South America it was sort of by choice by the Vera Cruz
Indians.  It was considered a sacrilege to use the wheel on anything but
toys because the circle was the symbol of the sun.  When the Europeans
came, they used the wheel to move cannons, among other things.  It must
have given rise to some real crises of faith.)
     A little closer to the park there are structures that on first
glance look like columned Grecian building like the Parthenon.  They are
actually huge buttes the size of whole towns.  It is nearly impossible
to gauge the size of these behemoths.  We were really driving though the
bottom of a canyon and the scale of what we are seeing is genuinely
awesome.  (Just as an idea imagine a classical Greek building on a hill,
but the hill is maybe 400 feet high and the building itself maybe 600
feet.  Actually the stone monument is 1000 feet tall and wind has blown
dirt around the base.)  Some stick up like needles, some like huge
cliffs that go on for miles.  Next time a kid says "totally awesome" I
will know what it means even if he doesn't.
     We stopped at the Visitors Center to buy guides of the trails we
intended to take.  Here we were at an institution intended to be
educational and the price for the trail brochures was .25c.  I told the
woman behind the desk that the signs should be corrected to say $.25 or
25c.  She didn't know what I was talking about.  I took her to see the
label.  "Oh, I could fix that with just a little white-out, couldn't I?"
I told her she could.  "What do you call that, a grammatical error but
with numbers?"  I suggested "A numerical error?"  Then going out the
door I suggested "Or a mathematical error."
     Actually there are more impressive stone structures outside the
part as you are approaching it than when you are actually inside.  And
the ones inside are no slouches.  What makes Needles unique is you are
driving the floor of the canyon, not the rim.  We drove the length of
the road then took two of the easier hikes.
     This area had at one time been part of a huge cattle ranch and the
cowboys tending cattle in this part of the ranch had used the caves as
shelter from the elements.  The tour went to two systems of caves and
over the roofs of the caves via two ladders.  This Cave Spring Walk had
been a little hard to find but once we did, it was a pleasant walk.  In
the caves--or more accurately shelves--there were still some cowboy
cooking items still there.  There were a few small items the cowboys
used to make life a little better.  The walk took about 28 minutes, not
the 45 the park claimed it would.
     The other walk we tried was the Roadside Ruin.  In spite of the
name of the walk, it seems mostly to see plants of the desert.  You do
see one small piece of a granary of the Fremont Indians.
     From there we drove into Monticello for the night.  The motel we
wanted from AAA was booked.  Instead we got a room at the Canyonlands
Motel which claims to be AAA-Approved, but the AAA book does not list
it.  It is easy to see what happened, or at least what might have
happened.  The place was AAA-Approved once and probably changed owners.
The owner still claims that it is approved.  But the room had an empty
Coke can and was in general run-down.  This is the third motel we have
tried in the Southwest run by (Asian) Indians.  None of the three have
been well-maintained.  In fact, they have been the three worst motelswe
have had in the Southwest.  Supposedly motels run by Indians have a bad
reputation and the statistical sample I have made, while not
significant, tends to bear it out.  When we were in India even local
people pointed out to us a difference in philosophy between the United
States and India.  There really is a lot less focus on customer
satisfaction and it may well be that in India that has proven to be the
most profitable course for businesses.  In any case, in India and often
in this country Indians have a different philosophy.  The world is a
marketplace for philosophies and I think we should look at all
philosophies and choose the best.  Unfortunately, that style of thinking
has gone out of favor.  You are not supposed to make value judgements
about others' philosophies unless to say yours is better than Naziism.
Bigots have given this sort of value judgement a bad name.  But in fact
there are philosophies to admire and emulate in Indian culture and
others that you can honestly feel are not as good as your own.  The
point is not to avoid rejecting philosophies but to know the philosophy
you are rejecting and have good rational and informed reasons for the
rejection.  In any case I would not reject a motel that was Asian-
Indian-owned, but if it had different standards I might have some idea
where those standards come from.
     Dinner was going to be at a restaurant recommended in a couple of
books.  It seemed to have closed permanently.  Instead we ate at a
Mexican Restaurant, La Casita.  It was tasty enough, but not nearly as
good as the Mexican food we'd had in Arizona and New Mexico.
     Back at the room we wrote.
     May 16, 1995: In Monticello it is pretty easy to choose the best
restaurant in town and you don't do it by going by what is recommended
in the tour books.  We tried to go by the tour book yesterday for dinner
and again for breakfast this morning and both had dried up and blown
away before we got here.  Now we know to go to whatever is open,
EXCLUSIVELY.
     The place we chose (from a set of one) was called Hogies.  The eggs
and hash browns were fried to be tasty rather than healthy.  There was a
fairly good hot sauce, imported from Mexico, that I doused my hash
browns in.  It has been discovered in recent years that hot peppers have
some health benefit against heart disease, cancer, and ulcers.  It
sounds too good to be true, but if they have even moderate health
benefits I may live forever.  I always thought of them as a vice thatI
over-indulge in.  It may well be that they have been healthy all along.
Wouldn't that be an irony?
     On the way to Cortez we found a radio station with popular music
with an Indian sound to it.  Now what do I mean by an Indian sound?  The
voices sound Indian, the beat is kept with rattles, and occasionally the
lyrics mention things like the spirit world.  On hitting Cortez we
secured a room for the night and then continued on to the first sightin
the area without unpacking car.  The room wasn't ready yet anyway.  This
motel seemed to be run by a man with a thick Eastern European accent,
perhaps Ukrainian.
     The topography is very different near Cortez than it had been un
Utah.  This is almost like California with more vegetation and hills off
in the distance.  This is much more a farming region.
     The Anasazi Heritage Center is a museum of cultural artifacts from
the old Indian tribe.  I say old because a group of tribes that were
around in the years long before the Europeans came became the tribes we
now know, but there is not enough history and archeological record to
determine which of the old tribes became which of the current tribes.
     Right in front of the Museum is the Dominguez Ruin from the early
1100s which includes a burial chamber with bone scrapers and ceramics.
A woman greeted us at the door and I asked about what current tribes are
thought to be the descendents of the Anasazi.  Hopi is a very, very
likely possibility and all the new evidence seems to point in that
direction.  It is clear it is not Navajo and probably not Zun~i.  It was
definitely not the Navajos, who called these people the Anasazi, meaning
variously the ancient ones, the ancient others, or the ancient enemy.
It was not an entirely favorable name, in any case.
     We started with a photo exhibit of ranches and the different forms
they took.  Then there was a temporary display,"Seeds of Change," about
foods what each of the worlds contributed to the other.  Onions were
never cultivated in the New World; strawberries were, but the
strawberries we have today are really a cross-breed of New World
species.  Of course there is potato, tomato, tobacco, and hot peppers,
all strictly New World and all come from the nightshade family.
     The exhibit also had descriptions of Indian reactions to the
introduction of horses.  The horse was called "big dog" because it was a
slave of man like the dog.
     There seem to be a lot of Germans visiting the United States this
year.  You tend to hear a lot of German spoken at the sites and againin
the museum.  It must be a function of the soft dollar, though of
Europeans, Germans have always seemed to have the greatest interest in
Native American Culture.  More than Americans in some cases, as we
learned on the Mexico trip.
     We went to see a film in theater on the Anasazi and the mystery of
why they left this area.  It is a history from the early Anasazi were
who are called "basket makers."  There was a discussion of the Pueblo
period culture and eventually, in a quick jump, in fact, they bring us
to the modern period and the dam project for irrigating fields that this
museum is a part of.  In fact, since the dam was going to wash over
archeological sites, this museum was funded by the Bureau of Land
Management as part of the bargain struck.  The result is a small well-
funded museum with some very cleverly designed exhibits.
     Also on one of the short videos in one of the rooms there was a
discussion of food products and their importance, and about maintaining
genetic diversity.  One fact I culled was that chilis apparently cause
endorphin rushes like morphine.  This may be used for its medicinal
value.
     The main exhibit is small, but well planned to show a lot in a
small area with hands-on exhibits.  There are microscopes to look at
pottery, computers with (rather elementary) educational programs, and
specimen drawers of labeled artifacts that people are asked to handle.
One particularly clever exhibit is a hologram that superimposes a 3-D
photo of a skull and the reconstructed head so you saw how the
reconstruction was done.  It is a maintenance-free exhibit that cannot
break.  Of course there are the usual exhibits of pottery, weapons, etc.
     Out behind the museum there is a switchback concrete path up to the
Escalante Ruin.  This ruin was built early in the 12th century by the
Chaco Anasazi culture.  The people who built it were far from their home
in Chaco Canyon.  What is left is a small surrounding wall and a few
room walls from a building maybe 30 feet by 40 feet with a kiva in the
center.  A kiva is roughly like a chapel.  They are circular and often
have a hole at the center, reminiscent of stories of how life first came
into out universe though a hole in the center called a sipapu.  All that
is left are walls about 18 inches high, the rest buried underground or
removed.  You can see the size of the rooms and where the walls were.
Last trip we were told that all kivas had sipapus and that the kiva was
for the men only.  Apparently neither is true.  Contemporary Indians say
they have never heard of a men-only kiva and some kivas have no sipapu.
     The road to Hovenweep was rugged; luckily we had a rented car.  It
got grayer and rainier.  There was one patch ahead of us that seemed to
have rain.  In the crowded city you never see a big expanse of sky to
compare raining clouds with simply gray ones.  Generally clouds look
like they go horizontally; all the lines in the clouds go roughly
horizontally.  Then a gray cloud will have a sort of jagged bottom and
the texture lines will be more vertical.  It is as if there were a layer
of cotton and someone grabbed the underside and pulled the fibers
downward.
     Sometimes the rain area was ahead and to the left of where we were
heading, sometimes ahead and to the right.  But in general it looked
like we were heading right into it.  In fact, just as soon as we started
looking at the ruins the rain hit us.  Not hard, but we went back to the
car to wait it out.
     The Hovenweep were Pueblo Indians who lived in the Four Corners
area.  They had lived in scattered villages and in the early 12th
century they started moving into more urban communities.  This is oneof
the communities.  In the late 1200s they were forced out by drought,
leaving these ruins.  Had they waited for the Leepers, they might have
had all the water they needed.  There are two loops, a 45-minute loop
and a two-hour loop.  Three times we set out on the short loop when it
was dry and three times it started raining on us.  Three times we
returned to the car only to have it stop raining.  Eventually we gave
up.  As we left it seemed dry and we were driving right into the rain
cloud.  Perhaps I have offended the rain god.  Or perhaps he has a sense
of humor.
     Well, it was a long road back for not very much we saw at
Hovenweep.  The monotony was broken by stopping because there is a large
bull blocking the road.  The bull saw we wanted to pass and simply
stepped out of the way as a gesture of courtesy and perhaps self-
preservation.  But I think it was less the latter since the bull could
see we had stopped the car and were waiting for him.  I guess it is just
that courtesy extends beyond humans.  Dogs certainly have it.  Elephants
go out of their way to rescue smaller animals in trouble.  I heard an
amazing story of a woman who was walking on a beach and saw a dark shape
in the water keeping pace with her.  She went to the edge of the water
and saw a large and a small dolphin.  The larger dolphin was nudging the
baby toward the woman.  The baby dolphin had a piece of wire wrapped
around his tail and it was cutting into the flesh.  The woman would have
rather had a vet there but she managed to remove the wire.  The mother
dolphin then nudged her baby and the two swam away.  Dolphins have also
been known to offer assistance to humans.
     I see along the way a sign for a tractor crossing and another for a
deer crossing.  Both are very badly shot up.  Much worse than most of
the deer on the deer crossing sign.  I guess it feels really good, what
with Man being the most dangerous game.  I guess there is a natural male
instinct to shoot guns.  Kids play with guns, and men do.  Women have
their own instinctual behavior.  They have breast feeding.  There are
women fanatics about breast-feeding just like there are men who are
fanatics about guns.  The difference is when a breast-feeding fanatic
finds someone opposed to her custom her first instinct is not to
breast-feed him.
     On the way back we found ourselves four miles from the Lowry Ruin,
a National Landmark.  We decided to take a look at it and found it a
real surprise.  This is an Anasazi cultural center abandoned after fifty
years of use, and well before the big Anasazi abandonments which were
the next century.  Lowry turned out to be a better choice than fighting
the elements at Hovenweep.
     This is a ruin you do not have to observe from a safe distance.
You can walk through it and climb on top of it to get a better feel for
what it was like.  Again, most of it is broken down.  It was a sort of
cultural center with some rooms three stories high.  There is one large
building with an underground kiva and nearby there is another large kiva
you can climb down into.
     We returned and moved our stuff into the Arrow Motor Inn.  It seems
like a much nicer motel than the Canyonlands in Monticello.  The roomis
clean and of a reasonable size.  The TV seems to get something like 40
channels.  On the way out we extended for two more nights.  We got some
restaurant recommendations.  They recommended a Mexican place called
Francisca's that was also recommended in HIDDEN SOUTHWEST.  It turned
out to be very good Mexican food.  Certainly it was a lot better than
what I can find in New Jersey as Mexican food.  The meal was very good.
Of course I have claimed you can't expect good Mexican food in a state
that does not have a Hispanic name.  Utah, no.  New Jersey, definitely
not.  Colorado, you have a fighting chance.  That was all we needed.
     We went back to the room and AMC was showing ONCE UPON A TIME IN
THE WEST.  After visiting Utah's canyonlands, this is just about the
perfect film to see.  The whole Arizona-New Mexico trip we could not get
a good western on TV.  This is filmed in topography very much like Utah
if not in Utah itself.  Unfortunately we could not stay for the whole
film as we were going to take time out from the tour to see CRIMSON
TIDE.  I am not sure if I will review it or just consider it vacation
entertainment.  [It should start any minute now.  I have just this
moment gotten fully caught up in my log.]
     Well, now I am behind again.  Yeah.  It could have been a better
film, but it was pretty good.  Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington
fighting over control of a nuclear submarine for the fate of the world.
I found it strangely reminiscent of THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT which may
well have been the inspiration.  Much of the film takes place in real
time or even less than real time.  There is a lot of action in 40
minutes or so on this submarine.  I won't tell you which of the two
plays the good guy and which plays the bad guy, but if you can't figure
it out for yourself, you really are not trying.  Hans Zimmer give it a
nice and a tense score, but one very derivative of his own score for
BACKDRAFT.  There is a curiously anti-intellectual tone to the film.
The good guy knows "Silver Surfer" comics and "Star Trek."  The villain
listens to Beethoven and Catalani's "La Wally."  (I think the exact aria
is "Ebben? ne andro lontana," and I don't think a whole lot of film
reviewers could have told you that on the road on vacation!)  Still it
is a fairly exciting submarine adventure.  I wish my friend Rob Mitchell
was here to tell me if the submarine material is accurate.  He is in the
Navy Reserve and is in the submarine corps.  I almost called him a
"submariner," but that is supposedly a derogatory term.  One thing that
struck me as unrealistic is that there were at least two very overweight
men on this submarine.
     May 17, 1995: I woke up early and proofread my log in the bathroom.
Evelyn was up early also and by about 6:15 AM we were out on the road.
It is my birthday so we go out for breakfast.  We had a big breakfastat
a truck stop.  I had chili omelet, refried beans, and biscuits and
gravy.  I am avoiding a breakfast I could get at home.
     Back on the road we were listening for a weather forecast.  We were
scanning the dial and hear a station in Navaho language.  Evelyn said
she knew that station, it must be KTNN, 660 AM.  Actually it was 960 AM.
It was obviously a knock-off station.  The announcer talked a lot in a
language we didn't understand and threw in the phrase "Pay-per-View."
There must not be a Navaho terminology for Pay-per-View.  They don't
seem to have their own way to say "Pot-Scrubber" either.
     It was rainy as we left and as we got into the hills it turned into
foggy snow.  We intended to go to Mesa Verde, but we found ourselves on
Mesa Blanco instead, and it wasn't even in the tour books.  When we
passed lookout points we saw only fog.  On the upside, most of what you
do here is from your car, not out walking.  On the downside, you cannot
see much from your car.
     We went to the Visitor's Center and got tickets to the Cliff
Palace.  Tickets cost US$1 a piece and supposedly that is what is paying
the rangers.  There was a tape playing telling a little about the
Anasazi people.  What started as an expository ended up a lecture.  It
seems the Anasazi left Mesa Verde because they were "out of balance with
nature" just as we are becoming out of balance with nature.  They cut
down trees, killed animals, and made all the same mistakes we are making
today.  I don't deny that we are making the same mistakes, I just wonder
if telling me that one more time is a reasonable substitute for the
historical detail that should have been on the tape.  Conservation and
"protecting the planet" is an important lesson, but it isn't the only
lesson.  (Even now we have Congressmen legislating based on bad
misunderstandings of science.)  If we raise a generation of children who
know that conservation is important but don't know how to reason, we
will be in bad shape and the planet will be in worse.
     The Visitor Centers has a small collection of Indian artifacts.
Evelyn pointed out pots with six-pointed stars, and a modern looking
candelabra, undoubtedly artifacts of the Ashkenazi Indians.
     From there we went to the Spruce Tree House Museum, a small museum
of Anasazi culture near the Spruce Tree cliff-dwelling (more on that in
a moment).  The Anasazi reign in the Four Corners area went through five
periods as archeologoists divide them.  The following are periods and
representative years in the period:
   - Archaic--10,000 B.C.: In this period they were a hunting people who
     used spears with arm extenders called atlatls.  Living conditions
     get zero stars.
   - Basketmaker--400 A.D.: The beginnings of crop-growing and basket-
     making.  Basically living in stone alcoves and caves.  Living
     conditions still get zero stars.
   - Modified Basketmaker--600 A.D.: Advanced cultivation techniques.
     Basic housing structures like pit houses.  Bows and arrows.  Living
     conditions get one star.
   - Developmental Pueblo--900 A.D.: Basic house structures, advanced
     cultivation.  Living conditions get one and a half stars.
   - Pueblo--1300 A.D.: Complex, multi-storied Pueblo structures with
     masonry.  Living conditions get three stars.
     (Readers interested in learning more about the Anasazi are advised
to read someone who knows this stuff a little better and to take whatI
say with a healthy skepticism.  Serious students of Anasazi culture are
advised to throw out everything I said and start over.  One problem is
that prehistoric Anasazi culture has changed a lot since our last trip.)
     The museum has small displays illustrating the five stages of
above.  Displays include corn, weapons, and pottery.  Corn was kept in
underground pots to keep it cool.  Only the lid would protrude.  Popular
foods include squash, beans, corn, cornbread, salt, and chewed bread.
The latter is made from cornmeal chewed until saliva turns the starchto
sugar, then is baked.  It is hard to find at your A&P.
     There was one section that showed a set of photos taken in 1891 by
Gustaf Nordensko"ld and park people reproduced them in 1991.  Placed
side-by-side they show how the Park has changed.  Portions of cliff have
fallen away.  Some show little change, some show much more.
     One of the guides of Indian descent was saying it had better clear
up for his tour.  I am surprised.  I had assumed he would have learned
to live in harmony with nature.
     From there it was just a short hike to the Spruce Tree House.  It
is not a tree house at all but a cliff dwelling named for a tree thatat
one time stood at the front.  In fact, it housed some 100 to 150 people.
It was built through most of the 13th Century.  It is built into a cave
216 feet wide and 89 feet deep.  The cave was fairly full of buildings,
surprisingly so, by the time the Anasazi were done.  In Indian terms
this was a fairly urban area.
     The cave had chambers for fire so that there was a sort of
artificial heating.  There were multiple kivas including one covered
over that you could climb in with a ladder.  We talked with the ranger
about the site and our impressions, some of which he corrected.  We
talked about how ideas change from year to year.  Least time we visited
we were told that kivas were men-only.  Indians say they don't know how
that rumor got started.  They had never heard of a men-only kiva.  Men
did the weaving, unlike some illustrations we have seen.  We all seemed
to like the book MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES which pokes fun at how
archeologists draw conclusions about the past.  Anything not understood
is considered to be religious.  He told about the man who discovered
atlatls in ancient sites.  He decided the strange shaped instrument had
fetish significance and was writing a paper.  He took a break to watch
his ten-year-old son playing with the artifacts.  His son took an atlatl
and put a spear on it, just playing around.  He used the atlatl and
threw the spear 180 yards.  The archeologist was really impressed and
started back to the paper claiming atlatls were fetishes and stopped
midstep and realized he had to throw out his whole paper.  We now know
an atlatl did for a spear-thrower what the longbow did for an archer.
     Evelyn told the ranger that she read mostly old books on
exploration and archeology.  We can get the classics cheap in Dover
Books.  We discovered that the ranger and we all love the publisher
Dover Books.  I have to say that if there was one publisher whose going
out of business would leave me feeling impoverished, it is Dover Books.
Other trip logs I have waxed enthusiastic about Dover so I won't here,
but I will say many of the great classic books in many different field
of endeavor are unobtainable, very expensive from another publisher, or
they are out in a high quality, well-bound, acid-free paper edition
relatively cheaply from Dover Books.  I don't know any real bibliophile
who doesn't have a special affection for Dover Books.  Anyway, I didn't
even get this ranger's name, but he seemed like a kindred spirit.
     We had to pick up some photos in Cortez so went down the mountain,
still foggy, and headed back toward Cortez.  Evelyn saw a hitchhiker
inside the park and decided it was safe to pick him up.  He turned out
to be a German student who was studying mechanical engineering in North
Carolina.  His Volkswagen had car trouble.  We took him to a parts shop
in Cortez.
     We got some warm clothing at our motel and headed back to Mesa
Verde.  We stopped at a grocery to get some snack food.  As you may have
noticed I am not describing lunches.  That is because we are not eating
any.  We eat breakfast and dinner and have a snack in the car about
lunchtime.  We have bottled water so that we always have some if we run
into a problem like at Island in the Sky, where they won't let us fill
our canteens and we need the water.  We may well not use it at all or
perhaps wait till the final night and have a big water party.  We will
each belt back a half gallon.  Driving back up the mountain to Mesa
Verde we saw just what we saw before, still fog and rain.
     There was a prepackaged self-guided tour called Mesa Top Ruins.
This tour covers ruins mostly discovered in late 1888 when Richard
Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charles Mason, two local ranchers, were
rounding up cattle in the snow and saw what looked like a small city
covered in snow inset into a cliff.  What they discovered was Cliff
Palace, a cliff-dwelling that once housed 150 Anasazi.  They went on to
discover Spruce Tree House and many other ruins on the Mesa including
some of the sites in the Mesa Top Ruins tour.
     This tour is a visit to the various Anasazi ruins on the mesa top.
They range from pit houses to cliff dwellings, though the latter you see
only from a distance.  Of the pit houses, all that is left is really the
pit.  This is a one-story structure, half above ground, half beneath.
It is a pit with a lid made of branches and hides.  What is left are the
indentations in the ground that show the size and organization of the
house.  There is a standard layout, of a large living area and a storage
area so the shape looks like a lightbulb with a swollen base.  There is
a fire pit toward the center.  Kivas also have a fire pit with venting
to take the smoke out and a flat stone in front of the fireplace to act
as a wind stop.  Square Tower House is a full cliff dwelling with much
more complex structures, including the block-like stone buildings going
up multiple stories and with windows.  The archeologists map specific
types of dwellings to specific periods.  I am not sure if they would
consider us the Ranch House Period or the period of the Cape Cod
Colonial.
     We broke this tour because we had tickets to the Cliff Palace tour.
Our guide said that this current weather was the coldest it has been
since Christmas.  From the viewing platform you walk down the stairs and
rock path--a walk that tests for acrophobia like a dentist's pick tests
for cavities.  The cliff dwelling is in an alcove 324 feet wide and
about 90 feet top to bottom.  The buildings in the small city were made
of stone sheathed in plaster.  The water source is a spring of water
coming out of the back of the cave.  In fact, to preserve the structures
the Park people had to pipe the water out of the cave and over the side
of the cliff.  Much of the masonry you see is a little sloppy.  That is
all reconstructed masonry.  There are two reasons it was not done as
well as it might be done.  First, there was not enough budget to do it
right.  But also, when you see bad masonry you know it is part of the
reconstruction.  There are also some problems with rodents living inside
the buildings and special devices are in place to frighten them off.
One reason is that this is Hanta virus country.  When the tour was over
we talked to the guide a while longer.  At first she seemed like she was
quiet and introverted, as almost no Park rangers we met are.  They all
seem to have gone to friendliness school.  What I brought to her was a
minor complaint about the brochures they sell as guides.  You guessed
it: they are part of the Park Service's campaign to mis-educate the
public.  I wrote on a piece of paper "$.25 .25c 25c" and asked which one
represented a different amount of money.  After a second she picked out
the ".25c", saying it was a quarter of a cent.  I told her to look at
the boxes where the guide booklets were sold and that they all said
".25c".  She thought it was very funny and asked to keep the piece of
paper so she could show others.  She talked to us for ten minutes or so
about conditions in the parks and how they were not well enough
maintained.  I told her that the biggest problem I was seeing in the
parks were that they seemed to attract visitors who were jerks.  She
agreed that there are days she feels that way.
     For about an hour after we return to the tour we played the gameof
"Can You Spot the Cliff Dwelling."  You look across the canyon and try
to find cliff dwellings.  That is half of the game.  The other half is
finding a good way of describing to the other person exactly where the
object you found is.  It is tough to make your explanations unambiguous
and get the description right.  The cliff face may be 900 or 1000 feet
high and finding unambiguously describable landmarks is quite a
challenge.
     Other people came along and tried the same game, but for some any
hole in the wall appears as a cliff dwelling.  Only Evelyn and I are
totally reliable.
     Our last visit was the Sun Temple in which you can climb the walls
and see the inside.  Concrete caps have been put over the tops of the
walls and there are ladders up to allow you to get up there.  That gives
you a better feel for the size.  A British family came along while we
were there.  The older son immediately climbed the wall.  Over at one
end he said if someone fell in they might never be able to get out--a
huge exaggeration.  His mother responded, "Robert, fall in quick."  Ah,
a mother's love.
     I was listening to Indian ritual chants on the radio, trying to
understand the aesthetic.  I don't, but would like to cultivate it orat
least understand it.  It certainly has a rhythm, but I cannot get a
whole lot more out of it.
     We went for dinner at the Old Germany Restaurant in Dolores.  I had
Hungarian Chicken and Spaetzel.  It turned out not to be Chicken
Paprikash, to my disappointment.  It was okay, but Evelyn and I
discovered we went because we each thought the other would like it.  I
never met a cuisine I didn't like, but German is not high on the listof
cuisines I like.
     On the way home I saw what was for me a remarkable event.  We were
following a flatbed truck.  On the left side of the road there were
three or four deer.  To our horror one of the deer bounded across the
road right in front of the flatbed.  From where we were it looked like a
collision course.  As the truck passed we saw the deer on the right side
of the road rolling over in what we first judged to be agony or momentum
from the hit.  After two rolls the deer jumped to his feet and bounded
to the fence to the right of us, leaped the fence, and kept going.  The
truck stopped, perhaps to check for damage, and we passed.  I would like
to believe that what happened is the deer saw the truck and gave a great
leap and did the deer equivalent of landing in a tuck.  He may have been
trying to impress some doe, but it sure impressed the heck out of me.
On TV we put on a documentary about The Great Indian Railway.  Having
been there and seeing a lot of familiar places, it was of some interest.
But not enough to keep me from falling asleep on it.
     May 18, 1995: Breakfast was again at the M&M Truck stop where I had
a short stack of pancakes.  Our destination for the day was Canyon de
Chelly (pronounced "d'shay").
     Driving out we passed through Sweetwater, Arizona.  It looked like
a little housing development in the middle of no place.  The only
business nearby seemed to be a gas station with a convenience store.I
told Evelyn it had everything you need in one small area.  It had
gasoline, a store, prairie grass, yucca, the works.  Five miles down the
road you have a small business, I didn't notice what.  There are some
homes right next to it.  These people obviously live right there for the
convenience of the short commute.  Sweetwater, down the road, is for
people who want to get away from it all at the end of the day.
     Canyon de Chelly is on the Navajo Reservation.  Indian reservations
are sovereign nations.  The Indians are allowed to hold and keep what
little land they held at the end of the United States Government's
clueless period--assuming that period really has ended.  (Actually they
have been "given," if that is the right word, some additional lands.
The Reservation is actually being expanded somewhat.)  There has been
discussion of giving back former Indian lands to the Indians and of
there being a strange creature in Loch Ness.  But personally I expectto
see the monster first.
     Things look a lot like Arizona.  We pass Chinle High School which
looks like any other high school.  They have a nice building and a
track.  The same goes for other schools we pass.
     The video in the Visitors Center shows local life.  Sheep farming
scenes are shown with people living in the National Park.  Also thereis
some discussion of rug-making.  And they tell the story of a brave who
had a dream of blue-faced people dancing and chanting.  Disturbed by the
dream, he could not hunt.  The other braves made fun of him, but he had
to find the blue-faced people.  He went on a quest, eventually finding
the people in a canyon.  He memorized their ceremonies and brought them
back to his people.  It is those ceremonies that they still perform.
     Each Navajo is part of a clan, and his clan is important in how he
defines himself.  The film showed scenes of life in and around the
canyon.
     From there we started on the Canyon de Chelly South Rim Drive.
There are two self-guided tours.  One includes an optional walk to see a
ruin close up.  Most other tours require that you have a Navajo guide.
There is, however, a North and a South Rim drive.  The stops on each
give you views of the ever-deepening canyon, going from 250 feet at the
first stop to 1000 at end.  As one of the Navajos points out in the film
the canyon is cut out of the ground.  That means that until you get near
to the canyon you don't even see it.  It looks like flat ground.
Suddenly as you get close you see these marvelous cliffs and odd rock
formations.  It is breathtaking.  (Am I saying that a lot this trip?)
What makes the arches and bridges and canyons and a whole lot more is
the simple fact that sandstone is a soft stone.  With the right
treatment you can see many of the same structures occurring in bars of
soap, but on a much smaller scale, of course, and much faster.  The
analogy used in geology talks and books here is that of the cake, but
soap might be a useful one also.  I have seen arches, fins, and canyons
form in soap properly or improperly treated.  But as for sandstone, you
can cut it with most other stones, rain breaks it down, rivers wash it
away, it almost isn't a stone at all, it is just caked sand from a very
old beach in a hard form.  If a river runs through it you get a canyon.
That is what happened here.
     The sand formed layers of sandstone, from top to bottom Chinle
sandstone, Shinarump conglomerate, de Chelly sandstone (about 900 feet
of the 1000- foot height), and Supai.
     Toward the middle of the South Rim Drive is the White House Ruins
Trail.  This is a walk of about 2.5 miles.  The trail starts with an
overlook of the canyon.  It appears to be a long way down, though it is
hard to judge how strenuous.  The walk down takes you down a trail that
is wide, but has no protective rails.  Off in the distance you hear
sheep baa-ing from down in the valley.  Going down isn't too bad really,
but it will be a positive joy to climb up, I was guessing.  Somebody
passes by and says that the fall where we are is not too bad.  Just
about 20 feet.  Well I don't mind falling the first 950 feet of a 1000-
foot drop.  It's that last few feet that are the real pain.  It takes
about a half hour to get to the bottom of the canyon by the trail.  [I
am writing this as I am walking if it sounds disjoint.]  I am now at the
bottom of the Canyon.  Someone has left a used Pampers on the ground. I
do think a lot of the visitors don't deserve this park.  We cross a
rudimentary bridge, not as bad as the one in Thailand, though.  That was
a few strands of bamboo and a wire.  Lots of fun.
     We are at the ruins, but a truck has arrived filled with tourists.
Clearly there is another way down.  Cowards!  Actually these are the
people who are actually paying Navajo guides.  That is a fairly
important business on the Reservation.  That is probably why this is one
of the few National Parkes that does not have an admission fee.  They
don't want to discourage people from coming and bringing work to the
Navajo.
     The White House ruin is a two-story building on the ground and
another separate one-story structure in an alcove in the cliffside.  It
is not as impressive as the Cliff Palace, but little would be.  I would
guess the cliff here to be about 180 or 200 feet high here.  There were
60 rooms and four kivas in the community.
     Heading back up the path by the side of the cliff we find ourselves
in your basic march-or-die situation.  Recognizing you are in such a
circumstance can be inspirational.  In truth, neither the walk down nor
up is a bad one.  I took just a little literary license.  Actually the
trip down is about 600 feet as the stone falls.  It is much further on
the trail.
     As we sat in the parking lot after the hike, snacking a bit, I saw
storm clouds off in one direction.  Evelyn asked what are the chanceswe
would get hit with it.  It is just a small cloud, but knowing my luckI
told her it was almost definite.  We were a bit further on at Sliding
Rock Overlook when my minor prophecy came true.  At the overlook we were
looking for the ruins, but they were nowhere to be seen.  After about
five minutes I spotted them.  There are just a couple walls left at two
places at the base of the cliff.  (If you are using these notes as a
guide then 1) God help you, and 2) look for the forked varnish at the
far wall.  The ruin is right under the fork.)  There is a big parking
lot at Spider Rock Overlook.  Spider Rock is the home of Spider Woman.
She is the person who taught the Navajos to weave.  But she isn't all
good.  She listens to Speaking Rock to find out what children misbehave
and she steals them and takes them up to Spider Rock.  And the white you
see around the top of Spider rock--no, it's too horrible.  I can't go
on.
     Anyway, Spider Rock is 800 feet of stone spike at the confluenceof
two rivers.  There are also some ruins to be seen, but you need
binoculars, they are so distant.
     That completed the South Rim tour.
     The Ledge Ruin has little left but a kiva on a cliff ledge, though
clearly there must have been more to the site at one time.
     On the way to the Antelope House Ruin we passed a Navajo trying to
sell tomahawks to a family coming to see the ruins.  A little later as I
passed by I saw he made no sale.  The problem may be that children don't
know what tomahawks are any more.  Even if they can see Indians in the
media, they are portrayed as 1960s flower-children before their time,in
love with nature and pacifistic.  Kids cannot even relate to Indians any
more.  It is a pity that the Navajos never used numchucks.  Now that is
a weapon that modern children relate to.
     At the Antelope House we stopped to watch what we assumed was a
lizard mating ritual.  One lizard chasing another alternately puffs
himself up and does what look like push-ups.  Earlier I mentioned how
archeologists ascribe anything they don't understand to having religious
significance.  Well it is assumed that lizards don't have religion so
instead I ascribe behaviors I don't understand to sexual drive.
However, a group of sightseers came along and interrupted.  I guess
religion and sex are the two big areas of irrationality in life.
Animals have sex for us to blame for weird behavior.  Humans have
religion and sex, but when an archeologist finds an object he doesn't
understand it is less embarrassing to call it a religious aid object
than to say it is some sort of sexual aid.  In fact, it is probably
something like a bowstring puller or a piece of a game.
     The site itself is an overlook looking down at what was a four
story building.  The Mummy Cave is a set of buildings built in a cliff
alcove.  It is so named for two mummified people found near the site.
     Massacre Cave should be another set of buildings in a cliff alcove
but there is nothing left but rubble.  This was the site of the first
contact between Canyon de Chelly Navajos and the Europeans.  Had it been
French traders, they would have tried to trade with the Navajos; had it
been Spanish monks they would have tried to convert the Navajos.  It was
a military expedition; their specialty was killing people so they killed
the Navajos.  Hey, we all reach out to others in whatever way we can.
     It was 1805 and the expedition was led by Antonio de Narbona.
Actually he had good reason to kill the Navajos.  Some Indians had had
the audacity to defend their lands earlier and you can't let a thing
like that happen without a response.  Not if your military is stronger
than the defenders', you can't.
     Narbona reported he killed 115 and took 33 captive.  There are
conflicting stories of how Narbona and his Merry Men found the Navajos.
One says there was a traitor who had been denied the second wife he
wanted.  (Didn't I say the sexual drive is irrational?)  One says it was
an old woman who yelled taunts to the Spanish in the valley not
realizing there were Spanish also on the rim.  This may not have been
the wisest strategy either.  The truth is probably a good deal more
prosaic.  The Spanish probably just blundered into the Navajos and
things took their natural if somewhat vicious course.  There is a point
on the ledge that is known as "Two Who Fell Point."  The two were a
Navajo woman and a Spanish soldier who moments before had never met but
each of whom would be best remembered for their momentary and stormy
relationship.  The course of that relationship was probably more the
woman's idea than the man's.
     This somber site was the final stop on the North Rim tour.
     We drove back to Cortez listening to cassette of Western film
themes just to set the mood.  We had dinner at Francisca's again like
two nights before and I ordered the same sampler dish as last time.
Hey, why fool with success?
     Back at room we wrote in our logs.
     May 19, 1995: For breakfast we went to the same truck stop; M&M
truck stop did come recommended.  I had the Western omelet.  Of course I
had the sides that I cannot get at home, refried beans and biscuits and
gravy.  That is a lot of good food for US$2.99 (usually US$3.99, but
they had a daily special).  They were starting to recognize us here and
remember Evelyn gets coffee and I don't.  I guess I have never been
really keen on coffee.  It tastes bitter.  It is too hot or too cold.
Hot beverages are an acquired taste.  Cold beverages are an instinct.
Our pre-human ancestors learned to like beverages cold, I figure.  Those
who by chance liked their water cold drank from ice run-offs and water
that was flowing.  Those for whom it didn't matter drank from water that
had been sitting.  Then they got sick and perhaps died while the cold-
drink lovers were passing their genes on to the next generations.  The
result is that over the millennia we learned to like our beverages cold.
Similarly we learned instinctively to detest snakes and spiders.  Those
who didn't got bitten and didn't pass their genes and behavior on.  My
genes learned that one for spiders but not snakes.  I seem not to have
an instinctive fear of snakes some people do, but deep down the animal
brain does not like the look of spiders.  Somewhere I compensate for
that and I try very hard not to harm spiders I find.  Intellectually,I
am somewhat in awe of the beauties of spiders and their geometric webs.
But I still find a little quaver of fear of having them crawl on me
where I have no problem whatsoever touching snakes.
     I am putting this into my log under protest.  Evelyn liked the
comment, so it went in.  Last night after dinner I took a shower and
washed my hair preparing for an early departure in the morning.  WhenI
came out of the bathroom I told Evelyn I was giving her a BHDEW.  That,
as I explained, was a Bad Hair Day Early Warning.  Surely enough, the
bad hair day came on schedule.  In the car Evelyn looked at me and said
if I was having a bad hair day it was not obvious.  I told her I had
looked around the truck stop and bad hair days seem to be an epidemic
around here.  They also wear tacky shoes.  Actually, people at the truck
stop are just about all truck stop sorts of people.  They call it a
"family restaurant" but it looks like a hard-working, hard-driving
crowd.  Talk is small and rarely gets around to Kant's Categorical
Imperative.  I wonder if we are thought weird at our local diner.  Wedo
discuss things like Kant.  These days we tend to open up our computers
and work on them while we are waiting.
     This area has a lot of nice scenery and a lot of roads to
Hovenweep.  We just found another road that is supposedly the way to
Hovenweep.  We found yet another road to Hovenweep later in the day.
For a place out in the middle of nowhere like Hovenweep, there are a lot
of ways to get there.
     Our destination was back in Utah at the Natural Bridges National
Monument.
     260,000,000 years ago this area was a seashore so dull that one day
the tide went out and never came back.  Actually it happened repeatedly
and a bit at a time.  The tide just kept going out and never coming back
as far.  What was left was a thousand-feet-deep seashore without a sea.
The sand formed sandstone.  Now you have a thousand-foot thick layer of
soft sandstone.  By processes I have already discussed, fissures openup
in it.  Now you have long and narrow pieces and flash floods carrying
silt and rocks.  These occasional battering break holes in the rock
structure, sometimes Knocking then down entirely, sometimes just boring
holes.  What is left in the latter case is a natural bridge.  The
largest in the world is in Glen Canyon.  We aren't going there.  Second
and third largest are in Natural Bridges National Monument and we are
going there next.  Presidents make National Monuments and this one was
made by Teddy Roosevelt after seeing an article with pictures in the
National Geographic in 1904.
     All electrical power in the park comes from solar cells, fifty
kilowatts from one acre.  Well, it is probably a good idea, but it is
clear looking at the park that they are trying to conserve electricity.
Also, they say the storage is sufficient for two cloudy days.
Admittedly right in this part of the world three cloudy days in
succession would be a rarity.  But the fact solar cells work here is not
really going to be a convincing argument that it would work in places
that do not have such a benign climate.
     The largest of the bridges in the park is Sipapu, with a hole that
is 220 feet high and 268 feet wide.  We stopped to admire it from a
distance.  In the lot I saw Idaho's license plate for the first time.
It says "Famous Potatoes."  Kind of sad, isn't it?
     We climbed down to the base of Sipapu. I don't know if we each were
hoping the other would chicken out, but we didn't.  And we got some nice
shots from under the arch.  The walk down is like opera.  You look
forward to it, when it starts you begin to have second thoughts and
wonder how you got yourself into this, you look forward to it being
over, and when it is finally over you are glad you have done it and
completely forget what a pain it was to do it. Yeah, I guess it is like
sex in that way also.
     There is one portion where you climb down a ladder onto a smooth
rock that is trying with its steep incline to pitch you down into the
valley below.  Somehow the word "fun" did not come to me in spite of the
fact that it would scare my mother-in-law to know I was letting Evelyn
do this.  At heart I really am an acrophobe, so why do I do this to
myself?  I guess I don't know but then spicy food hurts my tongue andI
like that also.  This was food a little too spicy for me.
     At the bottom we can sit in the shade and take pictures.  They are
bad pictures because my camera will take pictures only so wide.  This
close to the arch, even the widest angle shot I have will only get a
short segment of the arch.
     Walking up was a lot more strenuous but a lot easier for footing.
In general, it is a lot easier to climb something than to go down it.
That is a real problem in a park like this.  People climb rocks and then
are unable to get back down.  Somehow when you climb you look up, and
when you climb down you spend a lot more time looking down.  I told
Evelyn it was Friday and we should try to be done by noon.  I finished
the trail with but 40 seconds to spare and Evelyn with about twelve.I
told her that it was good that we finished the climbing early.  Then I
added that now we could sit back and enjoy the rest of the trip.
     Horsecollar Ruin is another hike for an overview of a ruin.  This
is a site associated with the Kayenta Anasazi of northern Arizona, in
spite of the that we are (back) in Utah.  The Kayenta use square kivas.
Think of it as a form of rebellion.
     We hiked to Owachomo Bridge.  This is a much easier trek than the
other bridges.  It is about half a mile each way.  The stream bed under
it is nearly dry.  We sat for a while under it and listened to the small
dribble that was the stream.  We climbed up the hill again and lookedat
the bridge from the overlook, but you really do not see it very well
from there.
     After the monument we head towards Kanab for the night.  We go down
the Mokee Dugway, an ancient Indian pathway through the mountains.  We
drop 1100 feet in three miles down a spectacular and somewhat chilling
road.  You come out between Monument Valley to the south and the Valley
of the Gods to the northeast.  Our last trip we visited Monument Valley
and found it extremely impressive.  Having seen a lot of the same sort
of stone monuments in Utah, our impressions of Monument Valley are that
it is sort of impressive.  Part of it is that it was what we saw first
and so it made an initial impression.  I am not sure if we had first
seen Monument Valley after having seen Needles if we would have had the
same impression or not.  This time we didn't go in, but we did stop to
buy a hematite necklace for a friend.
     We had dinner at Pancho's Family Restaurant in Tuba City.  I hada
Navajo taco; Evelyn had a soft taco.  A Navajo taco is much like a
regular taco served on fried bread.  I asked for the extra hot sauce and
the waitress felt impelled to bring me a dish of green chili salsa.  Now
this puts me in a funny position.  If I leave most of it behind, it will
look like it is too spicy for me.  Now there are a lot of Americans who
are complaining in restaurants that the food is too spicy, some making
big scenes.  What has resulted is restaurants are just not serving hot
food.  I am told that a mild jalapen~o has been developed for United
States restaurants that need to use jalapen~os for recipes.  The time
will come when no restaurant will sell you anything more piquant than
oatmeal.  (Hey, spicy oatmeal.  Now there's a concept!  No, wait, I've
done that one.  I tried to make huevos rancheros healthy by substituting
an oatmeal patty for the eggs.  It wasn't too bad until I realized I was
eating ketchup and Tabasco on oatmeal.  True story.  Been there.  Done
that.)  Anyway, the people who don't want spicy food are winning the
fight out of sheer rudeness.  We people who like our food zesty have got
to vote with our tongues.  Make it clear that there are a lot of us who
can take it spicy and not bland.  We are in the majority but are losing
the fight because we are silent.
     On the way to Kanab we drove through Marble Canyon.  More rows of
mountainous cliffs, 800 or 1000 feet high.  What a country!  Your sense
of wonder goes all numb as if it fell asleep.  I look up and say, "Yeah,
nice."  A week ago my jaw would have dropped and my eyes would have gone
into the fixed glaze of a classic boggle.  It is a long drive to Kanab.
We get in about 9 PM.  We have a reservation for three nights at Aiken's
Lodge, another motel in the same National 9 chain as the motel in
Cortez, but it is clear this one is not as well run.  A lot of little
minor things are wrong.  The TV is one of those that has most of its
functions on the remote control.  Except either somebody walked off with
the remote or they simply do not provide one.  It is a minor
inconvenience, particularly changing channels.  Perhaps more important
the plumbing fails.  The toilet takes multiple flushes.  There are small
places where the room is dirty.  It is a palace compared to some of the
places we have stayed in other countries, and is even better than where
we stayed earlier in the trip, but not as good as the motel from the
same chain in Cortez.  In the room I worked on my log and in the
background watched THE CLASH OF THE TITANS for Ray Harryhausen's
Marvelous special effects.  This was obviously a big-budget production
that had a lot of money thrown at it, but there were a lot of silly
decisions made in the course of it, apparently and it has nowhere near
the power of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.  Though I have never heard the
story, I assume that MGM insisted on a lot of control and a lot of
touches that must have in somebody's mind made the film a more salable
commodity but which don't do much for me.  It was kind of a sad final
film for the great Harryhausen to make.
     May 20, 1995: We were not up early for once.  I slept till 6 AM--
late for me.  Breakfast was at the Four Seasons 1950s Cafe.  The
restaurant situation in Kanab could be considered, with one or two more
good restaurants, merely bleak.  Actually there appear to be only two
restaurants in town where you can get dinner.  Evelyn looked at the
dinner menu and commented that the dinner food is mostly red meat, not a
good sign.  She was not hopeful this would be a good place to have
dinner.  But of course if it is a 1950s style restaurant, the 1950s were
before health consciousness.  People didn't know any better and ate just
what they liked.  They must have died young with smiles on their faces.
I ordered pancakes.  They were good pancakes, I must admit.
     On the way out there was an older farmer type in coveralls aheadof
me in line to pay (well actually behind but he got taken first).  The
waitress looked at his bill and said she had to go have it added up.
While she was gone the farmer asked, "Can't she add it up herself?"
When she came back he asked her, "How do you know it's added up right?"
She obliged him by appearing to study the check.  I don't think any of
us had much faith she was really adding it.  "Twenty- three cents
change," the farmer said, either bemused or disgusted.  I am not sure
which.
     Actually I am a mathematician and still I wonder myself how
important it is to be able to do arithmetic.  Sure, I know how to do it,
but I can envision a time not too far in the future when it will be less
important.  Perhaps that time is here already.  At one time most people
knew how to care for a horse.  And the discipline of having a horse
dependent on you was good for building character.  People don't learn
that discipline because it is just not as important.  Technology has
changed the need for that skill.  The same is rapidly becoming true of
arithmetic skills, for better or worse.  I still think that mathematical
reasoning is fundamental and it too rarely is taught.  But arithmeticis
really a mechanical skill and it may not be the most important skill to
teach students.  Leave that skill to silicon chips, BUT ONLY IF YOU
REPLACE IT WITH A MORE IMPORTANT SKILL.
     Be glad you are not a diplomat.  It doesn't take very much to screw
up big time when you are a diplomat.  There is a current Hopi-Navajo
conflict in which the United States government, and the two Indian
nations are each two-thirds right, and it all over about three words in
a treaty.  It seems that in 1882 President Arthur gave the Hopi Nation
2.4 million acres of land as a grant.  But to hold their options open,
the government said it was also for "such other Indians that the
government might see fit to settle there."  Oops.  The Hopi were slowto
move into the land and the Navajo moved in based on that clause.  The
Hopi realized what had happened and felt their lands were given to the
Navajo.  Seeing their error the government in 1943 granted the Hopi
640,000 acres all their own.  Predictably the Hopi claimed they HAD been
given 2.4 million acres and now it was only 640,000.  The government
declared that the previous granted lands should be for joint use.  It
was sort of like saying the West Bank would be for joint use of the
Palestinians and the Israelis.  The lands started going to perdition
with the Hopi and Navajo unwilling to cooperate on how to run the land.
The United States government, not having learned from the British errors
all over the world, decided the answer was partition.  The original land
grant was split down the middle.  And lots of people from each side
found themselves on the wrong side of the partition.  People lost homes
and/or herds as they were resettled on the right side of the partition;
many have still not been relocated.  So far the price tag for the
relocation has swollen to US$300,000,000 and there are still a lot of
Indians living on the wrong side.  Of course, US$300,000,000 sounds like
a lot, but JURASSIC PARK took in three times that in box office
receipts.  There may be a lesson from that observation but it is too
early in the morning for me to figure it out.  It is a lot of money in
this part of the world.  You have Navajos and Hopis angry at each other
and at the United States government.  You know this concept of Indian
Solidarity?  It's the bunk.
     Today we are going to Bryce Canyon.  It is a drive of a little more
than an hour away.  A billboard on the way in says "Really see Bryce
Canyon."  It is selling plane and helicopter rides and suggests you fly
over rather than walk through the canyon.  Silly me.  I always thought
you didn't see as much from a plane as you could see from the ground. I
think I will see it much better on foot.
     Compared to other parks we have visited, this one seems to be a
flurry of activity.  The Visitors Center is filled with people getting
information about walks, camping, and tours.  This must be a very
popular National Park.  Of some interest: there are signs up that there
is a plague alert that chipmunks and prairie dogs may have fleas that
carry bubonic plague.  I would be curious to know if it has actually
been detected.
     The area around Bryce reminds me a lot of films like THE NAKED
SPUR.  It is a cool piney-looking area until you get to the canyon
itself.  That looks a lot like a sand dune after a heavy rain.  The
water has cut pathways and gorges through the sand.  It leaves towersof
sand.  Of course, this isn't just sand but sandstone, and towers can be
hundreds of feet high.  One feels like an ant or perhaps a chipmunk
running in among sand castles that tower overhead.
     We decide to take the Navajo-Queens Garden trail, a trail down in
among the towers of hardened sand painted colors like red, yellow,
white, and purple.  The path down is steep, but the scenery is like
nothing else we have ever seen.  The sandstone has formed into towers
called "hoodoos."  They are spikes that look like turrets of sand
castles.  In fact, all the walls look like walls of sand castles, or
like giant walls of crumbled halvah.
     We see lots of Germans on the path.  In fact, there are probably
more Germans than Americans.  Foreign tourism seems really big this
year, though more for Germans than for other nationalities.  In Germany,
places like Bryce Canyon are promoted as a big natural attraction by
tour companies.  Many of the Navajo stands fly the American and German
flag.  I was talking to an English visitor who was less than happy to
see all the Germans.  He complained that they cut into line and were
rude.  Actually you do see a lot of Americans being more polite than
other nationalities, and I don't think that used to be the case.  I
noticed on our Africa trip that it was the Americans who followed the
rules of etiquette.  Our group was cut in front of in line by English,
Italians (particularly egregiously), French, Swiss, and several other
nationalities of tourists.  The whole trip I don't think I saw one
American cut in front of a European.  Maybe we just had a very polite
group of Americans.  A very common trick is to treat an orderly queueas
if it is an unruly mob and push to the front of it.
     As I said this is the only place where we have seen hoodoos like
this.  Each park seems to specialize in something and offer it something
better than any other park.  Probably this is because the best site of
each formation becomes a National Park.  This place probably has the
best hoodoos in Utah.
     We went down the Navajo-Queen's Garden trail.  The walk has you go
in among the hoodoos, "up close and personal," as a friend would say.
The trip is a quick walk down at Sunset Point and a slow meander backto
the rim and to Sunrise Point.  The meander has to be a slow one, we are
at 8100 feet above sea level and one finds oneself gasping for breath
easily.  I probably should have taken a nap at the bottom.  Now I have
the feeling I went from sunset to sunrise without getting a blink of
sleep.  We keep running into the same people on the path.  People will
go off to take pictures or to rest and then start back on the path just
when someone else they have run into on the path are coming by.  Finally
we finish and enjoy the lookout, then go back to the car for the
afternoon snack of dried fruit and a Fruit Newton or two.  I kind of
like the Cranberry Newtons.  For years people had made Fig Newtons when
someone realized that people like some other fruits much more than figs.
     Fairview Viewpoint has a little less to see than Sunrise Point.
You are looking from a sandstone cliff down into a pine forest
stretching below.  These are Ponderosa pines which grow particularly
tall and nearly as straight as a pencil and nearly as narrow for their
height, with a taper so the whole trunk is a narrow cone.  They seem
like impressive, upright trees.  The mountains in a distance are 80
miles away and you can see them clearly.  And Paria View is another view
in another direction, but it is much the same view of sandstone cliffs
of weird shapes, hoodoos, the pine forest, and the mountains in the
distance.
     At 3 PM there was to be a rim walk and a lecture by a ranger.
Usually these are about either the Indians of the area or nature.  This
one was about "People of the Area."  Not a very explicit name.
     There was some nominal discussion of the Indians who inhabited the
plateau but the ranger quickly jumped to Euros and the history of Bryce
Canyon as a tourist attraction for rich Euros in the 1930s.  It seemed
like a somewhat frivolous topic.  She gave it from note cards and it
took barely 45 minutes instead of the scheduled hour.
     After that somewhat disappointing talk, we went to Bryce Canyon's
most spectacular overlook, Inspiration Point.  It must have been
inspirational because it inspired us to climb 150 feet, or maybe more,
at an altitude of 8100 feet already, just to get to an overlook.  Well,
it was a very scenic overlook onto a field of hoodoos.  There were two
visitors who were (quite against the rules) leaving the path and taking
pictures of each other standing on the edge of a high cliff, probablyon
the order of 1000 feet.  Apparently they were rock climbers and used to
the heights.  I didn't want to get too close to them because they were
obviously not mentally competent.
     We left and on the way out visited the museum at the Visitors
Center.  They seemed to have been a little overly lucky in the set of
animals they got to taxidermize.  They had a black bear cub that was hit
by a car.  Some of the others included a long-eared jackrabbit, a gray
fox, and a porcupine.  It is hard to believe they all were hit by cars.
     On the way out we saw one more overlook of the canyon.  Fairyland
Canyon overlook is much like Paria and Fairview overlooks I described
earlier.  This one had a larger concentration of hoodoos and less pine
forest.
     There is one nice feature of Bryce Canyon is that it is one natural
wonder that is NOT endangered.  In fact, the canyon gets larger every
time it rains.  Supposedly every time it rains you can hear pieces of
the walls of the canyon falling to the floor below.  Each time the
canyon gets bigger.
     From there we headed back to Kanab.  Re-entering we saw the Kanab
town motto, "The Greatest Earth on Show"
     After we were expecting the worst for dinner, we decided to takea
chance on a Chinese restaurant with the unpromising cutesy name The Wok
Inn.  We had Kung Pao Chicken and Garlic Shrimp.  It turned out to be
quite decent.
     At the room we worked on our logs and watched NO HIGHWAY IN THE
SKY.
     May 21, 1995: Today is the halfway point in the trip.  In fact, as
my computer figures it, the halfway point is at 8:45 this morning.
Precision come easy to people with computers and mathematicians seem to
like precision.  I will set my watch at least once a week to be sure it
is never more than three seconds from the exact time.
     For breakfast we went to a place called Chef's Palace.  The prices
seem a bit higher than we are used to paying and the food was not as
good.  I had fried eggs and they were oily.  Or perhaps they were
buttery, which unfortunately amounts to the same thing.  The menu
doesn't have anything particularly regional.  At the table they have a
little booklet of "A Feedbag of Cowboy Poetry."  It has three poems of
cowboy poetry.  They seem inauthentic in that they are more jokes, not
like the real cowboy poetry.  And for each poem they withhold the last
verse with the punchline.  You have to buy the book to get the last
verse.  Their sampling is three different poems and each is from a
different book.  I wonder if this is how Shakespeare made his money.In
a Shakespearean sonnet the last couplet draws the whole poem together.
We think that was done for artistic reasons, but it may be that they
sold his poetry at Elizabethan truck stops, giving the sonnets away free
and selling the last couplet.  That would explain a lot.
     A sign by the cash register says "No out-of-town or out-of-state
checks accepted."  I wonder how many in-town but out-of-state checks
they get.
     Well, last trip to this area we saw the South Rim of the Grand
Canyon but not the North Rim.  This time we are on the other side.
Today we will see the North Rim.  People find endless fascination with
this one canyon just because it is too big to take in and there are no
overlooks like Dead Horse Point that allow you to see all or even most
of it from above.
     The road to the canyon is through Kaibab National Forest, a forest
of white birch and Ponderosa pine.  There are still patches of snow in
the forest.  As we drove we listened to Western stories on cassette.
Once we leave the National Forest we are only a mile or so from the
National Park.  It looks more like late winter than late spring.  As we
enter the park there is a good foot of snow on the ground.
     They checked our Golden Eagle card and specifically asked if it was
ours.  I guess they figure this is one of the most popular National
Parks.  I set my watch back since we are in Arizona.  Near the Visitors
Center (here it is called "The Lodge") there is no snow on the ground
and it is actually warm in the sun.
     We walked out to Bright Angel Point, a lookout at the end of a
narrow natural walkway with a very steep drop-off about 3500 feet on
either side.  We talk to visitors along the way.  One Australian woman
is very afraid of heights is having problems.  We try to reassure her
that the path is wide and flat and that a similar path on flat ground
would be very easy to follow.  This is picturesque territory but hardto
photograph since there are few individual features worth photographing.
The actual rock structures are not all that interesting for what is
available in this area.  What is impressive is the size and that is hard
to convey in a 3x5 photo and an only moderately wide-angle lens.  A
little further back where the cliff falls off at a 45-degree angle,
three deer climbed the cliff and two of them wandered across the path.
     At 10:30 AM there was going to be a geology talk at the lodge.  On
the way we passed an older, grizzled sort who is talking to a family
with an Eastern European accent.  The old man was saying that in a few
years they were going to have to get a baseball bat to keep the boys off
of her.  Just what they came to Grand Canyon to hear, I am sure.
     The Geology Talk was given by Ranger Marcia Martin.  Apparently she
is just a beginner at giving ranger talks.  Still, she is a lot better
than the ranger we had at Bryce Canyon.  First she asked if there were
any questions.  Someone asked about the plume of smoke we have been
seeing across on the far rim of the canyon.  It is a controlled burn to
avoid larger forest fires.  I asked what do they do about the wildlife
in that area.  She said that they were smart enough to get out.  I asked
if that was true of all the wildlife.  Well, no, but it is avoiding a
forest fire that would be worse for the wildlife.  It was clearly an
embarrassing question.
     The geology of the Grand Canyon can be broken into three stages:
deposition, uplift, and slicing by river.  (Martin likened the process
to baking a cake.)  Two billion years ago the oldest part of the visible
rock was forming.  The area was under ocean.  Silt and sand fell to the
bottom and petrified forming the Supai Layer.  330 million years ago red
limestone was created from sea life.  The oceans started to evaporate
and there was a marshy period creating a layer of Kermit Shale.  As the
oceans further dried up, the area became beach and sands collected on
it.  These sands became layers of sandstone forming on top.  The land
further dried, becoming desert, when the sands formed into huge sand
dunes.  Cochino sandstone was formed from desert sands of 290 million
years ago.  Meanwhile 0.5 billion years ago uplift started.  This was
mostly from plate tectonics.  The plate of the Pacific Continent crashed
into that of the North American continent, pushing up on levels of rock.
Like a platform on an elevator the layers were lifted virtually without
disturbing them.  The layers that at one time were at sea-level at Grand
Canyon are 8000 feet above sea-level.  And the layers seen at Grand
Canyon were not even the highest layers.  At one point they were a mile
and a half below the surface, but time and erosion took away the higher
layers.  Further, the Colorado river, once small, joined with other
rivers that had outlets to the sea.  The other rivers captured the
Colorado River and redirected it.  The Colorado River started cutting
the rock 30 million years ago.  It cut deep into the sandstone as well
as taking away the higher layers.  This allowed us to see into the lower
layers.  Among what is found in the layers are fossils in the layers,
including a dragonfly fossil with a huge wingspan of two feet.  Lizard
tracks have been found.  Martin claimed that all lizard tracks found go
uphill.  Lizards, she suggested, may not have been able to walk downhill
and may have slid downhill.  A fossil slide may have actually been
found.  Seaworms have also been found in rock.  She also mentioned that
the Colorado plateau slopes to the south so it is higher at the north
rim and there is more erosion on the north side.
     After that we went for more sightseeing.  The Road to Point
Imperial and Cape Royal, where we intended our next walks, was closed
due to a mud slide overnight.  It was thought earlier it would be open
at 10 AM, but when we got to the road there was a closed gate and a line
of cars.  The person in the car in front of us got out of her car and
commented to Evelyn that it looked like the line for car inspection.
Not that many states have car inspection so Evelyn asked what state they
were from.  There were two women in the car and they had come here from
New Jersey.  Evelyn told them we also were from New Jersey.  We asked
where in New Jersey.  They were from Manalapan and Atlantic Highlands.
That is not too far from our location in Old Bridge.
     With the road to our nature walks closed we went back to the lodge
and took a walk they listed as the Transept Trail.  I assume that the
name "transept" is a skill level.  Of the walkers there are the inept
and the ept.  This trail is for everyone in between, hence it is the
Transept Trail.  Actually, it is just a walk through the woods to the
campground.  It does not even have a good look at the canyon.  It does
have some reasonable views of nature if you are looking.  We ran into
more mule deer on the trail.  That was really all that was of strong
interest.  At the end someone else who had been on the trail suggested
we take the road back.  We walked to the road only to be told it was
actually faster to go back through the woods.  We went back the way we
came.  I assume it was the same deer we saw again on the way back.
     We were running out of snacking goodies in the car so decided to
have lunch at the snack bar.  We each had a turkey sub.  The food was
expensive, but it was tasty enough.
     The Cape Royal Trail is an easy walk to several impressive look-
outs.  They have some signs up to tell visitors about plant life, but
everybody knows that it is the magnificent geology that attracts people.
Going to the Grand Canyon to study the plant life is like going to Radio
City Music Hall to by Juicy Fruits.  The first look-out you come to is a
cliff with an arch called Angel's Window.  There are at least three
other overlooks worth seeing.
     As I said before, each Park has its own claim to fame.  The Grand
Canyon has far less interesting Canyon geology than does Bryce Canyon.
But the Grand Canyon is BIG!  That is the thing that sets it apart and
makes it a World Heritage site.
     We were late getting to second talk since it is a long way from
Cape Royal and we were behind a slow car on roads that had no passing.
The roads were not impassable, the car was.
     The talk was given by the same ranger who gave the talk in the
morning.  This was a talk about the history of the region so she had
started with Indians including the Hopis who were early on, and also the
Havasupi.  (Incidentally, there have been a lot of different ideas asto
what to call Indians.  Many suggestions have been made.  They don't like
"Native Americans" because anyone born here is a native American.
"Aboriginal Americans" is not popular, nor is "Amerinds."  What do they
like?  What would they really like to be called?  "Indians" and/or
"American Indians" suits them just fine.  That has been what we have
called them for centuries and it is how they think of themselves.  If
you want to do something positive for them, it isn't to find a new
improved name for them and to get everyone to use it.  Sure, some people
used the term Indian in a derogatory manner, but the word itself was not
the insult.  I find that an intelligent, no-nonsense approach.  There
are other groups who feel that changing the language will do them a lot
of good.  I don't happen to agree.  You can respect or disrespect in any
language.  Changing language to get respect is a meal that leaves you
hungry.)
     The first non-Indians in the area were the Spanish.  A lieutenant
of Coronado exploring the territory came to the edge but could not tell
width.  He assumed what he was seeing at the bottom was a small stream.
The Indians told the Spanish that there was a route to the bottom, but
didn't tell what the route was.  The Spanish tried for three days and
could not find way down to the bottom.  Eventually they gave up and
decided the land wasn't good for anything.
     Two hundred years later, in 1776, missionaries came to the area.
They too saw nothing to like in the Canyon.
     In 1857 the Army thought it could use it as a corridor for
shipping.  They failed.  Joseph Ives tried to float a paddleboat steamer
up the river.  It struck big rocks and sunk.  He said the Canyon looked
like "the Gates of Hell."  He said his party was the first whites to get
into the Canyon and so worthless was the place they would probably be
the last whites to get there.
     In 1869 John Wesley Powell made his famous expedition of the
Colorado River and wrote his detailed diary.  Not that he was more
favorable on the river than were the Spanish.  Parts of the Colorado
River he declared were "too thick to drink and too thin to plow."  He
named one tributary the "Dirty Devil."  Then feeling contrite he named
another the "Bright Angel."
     Settlers did come to the area and miners.  However both were beaten
by the difficulty in getting out what few mineral veins were found.
Many of the miners became tour guides.  To this point no Euro had found
anything in the Canyon of any real value.  It as just an incredibly huge
trench.  It was then that it was discovered that the very size made it a
curiosity and a tourist attraction.  Captain John Hands was hired to
tell stories of the Canyon's past to visitors.  In 1906 the first car
drove from Kanab to the canyon rim.  It had nine flat tires on the way,
but still Goodyear featured it in an ad.  There was a movement to make
the Canyon a National Park, but the miners, who still owned pieces, put
up a legal fight.  Teddy Roosevelt, in 1903, made the Canyon a national
monument.  The miners sued and the case had to be decided by the Supreme
Court.  In 1919 the Grand Canyon became a National Park.
     Our last stop of the day was Point Imperial, an overlook high
enough to look down on the Painted Desert and the Kaibab Plateau.  In
the foreground was Zoroaster's Temple, a stone monument.  It would have
looked majestic in Monument Valley.  Here it looked less so, but of
course it was still pretty impressive.  I use that phrase a lot around
here ...~pretty impressive.  In fact there may be a bit much in the way
of geological wonders.  A tourist becomes jaded.  Superlatives become
blunted from overuse.  In fact, it is true that there is no place else
in the world that has geology as impressive as this.  Beside it the
karsts of China, the karsts of Yugoslavia, the Andes, Carlsbad Caverns,
the fjords of Norway, all pale by comparison.  No prophet is respected
in his own land, they say, and the same might be true of these
geological sites.  That is one reason you see so many Germans here.  At
the Canyon you also heard French and other European languages.  In
Europe these places are considered wonders and respected far more than
in the United States.  I come home and cannot describe to people whatI
have seen so they sound worth the effort to come see.  The original
Spanish explorers looked into the Canyon and saw small trickling streams
that were really raging rivers that were just a long way away and a long
way down.  If you cannot even believe your eyes looking down when you
actually are at the rim, what good does it do to show pictures?
     We have had to stop four times driving home through Kaibab National
Forest.  Three times it has been for deer crossing the road, once it was
for two bulls.  And this is in the forty-five minutes since we left the
Canyon.  This is getting near sundown and it is the rush hour.  The
local animals are headed home for the night.
     We had dinner at a Mexican place in Fredonia called Nedra's.  I
just had a tamale with rice and beans.  The service was slow, but they
had a good piquant salsa.  Back at the room I worked on my log.
     May 22, 1995: Well, today our goal is Zion National Park.  I
pronounce it ZY-in but I find a lot of people say it zy-ON.  Evelyn and
I were discussing which was more impressive looking, Dead Horse Pointor
Bryce Canyon.  To Evelyn, Bryce was the best we have seen.  I still
think Dead Horse Point takes the honors.  As I told Evelyn, if you saw
the two side-by-side ...~you would have to be too high up to see either.
But I think that Dead Horse Point with its one view of an entire canyon
is still the greatest spectacle I have seen this trip.
     Of course people whom we saw at Bryce and others we saw at Grand
Canyon told us that Zion National Park was more beautiful than Bryce
National Park.
     Breakfast was French Toast at the Four Seasons 1950s Cafe where we
ate Saturday morning.  There was a rowdy tour group of retirees who had
been brought on a bus.
     Zion National Park is only about a half-hour drive from Kanab.  But
then when you get into the park you still have a long way to drive over
heavily switch-backed roads.  It also includes a stretch through a
tunnel more than a mile long.
     Luck of Leeper was its usual bad for our visit to Zion.  (Have I
ever told you about Luck of Leeper?)  One month before we left home
there was a landslide.  The dirt and rocks that fell dammed the Virgin
River.  The river was diverted so that it washed out 200 yards of the
park's scenic drive.  The road is under repair.  What remains is plenty
scenic, but it would have been nice to see what is officially considered
scenic.
     We stopped at the Visitors Center and for once it is Evelyn who is
correcting the rangers.  They are selling VHS cassettes and they havea
list of the countries that use VHS format.  Among the countries are
Alaska and Hawaii.  Naturally Evelyn takes the naturalists to task.  It
is, after all her nature.  Actually, she takes her complaint to the
woman behind the cash register.  The woman seems sufficiently contrite
saying that she agrees it is a bad error and that the statement was
printed by the cassette distributor.  She herself had never read the
sheet.  Personally I think our name is going to go into the computer and
they will NEVER sell anyone named "Leeper" another Golden Eagle Pass.
And can you blame them?
     Our first activity in the park is to climb the Watchman Trail.
This is a climb of the base of the 2600-foot stone monolith that
overlooks the whole park.  You get a view of Zion Creek Canyon and the
nearby town of Springdale.  Our part of the climb is only 368 feet upas
the geyser squirts.  It is thirty-two feet short of Godzilla's height.
That would be high enough to look into his left nostril, assuming he
happened to walk up and was in a good mood.  Actually, I prefer the
earlier films in which he never was in a good mood.  Goodness, how did I
digress to this subject?
     The morning weather is cool and pleasant.  An ideal time for
hiking.  There are cards to fill in if you see wildlife.  They request
that you do not report mule deer.  They know there are mule deer running
around and frankly, they couldn't care less.  Actually what you do see a
lot of is little green lizards.  They didn't say not to report them, but
I bet they don't care about them either.  It takes about two hours to
get up the steep grade to the base of a butte.  I discover that doing
math in my head makes it go much faster.  Or, if Evelyn is amenable,
playing "Identify This Film" in which one player tries to guess the
other person's film with yes-or-no questions.  She guesses my TIME
MACHINE very quickly.  I take a little longer with her STAR TREK: THE
MOTION PICTURE.  My FLASH GORDON has her completely stumped and she
finally just gives up.  I hate to stump her.  If I do that she won't
play anymore.  I have to go back to math.
     We see cacti with blooming flowers, watch lizards, and discuss
which Italian strong-man films are only mediocre instead of actively
bad.  And we socialize with other climbers, especially one older couple
from another part of New Jersey.
     Well, after the trail we head back to the car to drive around the
park a little.  There are some big pieces of stone to look at.  Suddenly
I get hit with the shock of the size of the pieces of stone I am looking
at.  West Temple is near the entrance and is large even for this park.
It is 4100 feet from base to top.  That is between 3/4 and 4/5 of a
mile.  That is the height of a 400-story building.  Do you know any
400-story buildings?  And that isn't a narrow building.  It may be as
wide as it is high.  That is one heck of a lot of stone!  Little doesn't
figure into a description of this piece of stone.  I will just suddenly
think to myself, "Look at the size of that thing!"
     How big are these rocks?  One way to say it would be that trees are
like whiskers, bushes are like mold.  Let me try another way.  Suppose
you are in Manhattan and you are looking up at the Empire State
Building.  Even that makes it look smaller than it is.  From the Jersey
side, the Empire State Building towers over that part of Manhattan, but
suppose you are closer to the base looking up.  This is a building that
goes up a good long way.  It is huge.  Now imagine you have a boulder
that is just as high, but the Empire State Building is a narrow spike.
I am talking about a boulder as wide and deep as it is high and each
dimension is the Empire State Building.  Pretty impressive, huh?  Well,
how did this absolutely immense boulder get here?  About 100,000 years
ago it broke off of that rock butte behind it.  That butte a piece of
rock is three times as high, three times as wide, three times as deep.
Losing this boulder it lost 1/27th of itself.  That is like a man of 160
pounds losing 6 pounds.  A man can do that in a good week of diet.  So
the butte is large enough that it could lose so easily a boulder large
enough to hide the Empire State Building.  The butte is 4100 feet high.
It is well over three-quarters of a mile high.  There is a rock that big
at Zion.  Watchman isn't that big, of course.  It is only about half a
mile high, 2600 feet.  It is maybe two Empire State Buildings high.
     We drive around what is open in the park.  One of the best-known
sites is the Checkerboard Mesa.  We drive there.  In the parking lot
there is a raven at least fifteen inches from beak to tail which steps
out of way of campers rather than flying away.  He eats food dropped by
tourists.  I tell him that he should not eat food that tourists drop and
that he should eat only the natural things he finds.  He looks at me
sideways in the way birds do and says "Nevermore."
     The Checkerboard Mesa I would call the Pachyderm Pyramid.  It is
named for the cross-hatching on the surface and it really looks more
like elephant skin than like a checkerboard.  As we drive we listen to
our cassette of Western film themes.
     We take Canyon Overlook walk, about an hour round-trip.  We pass
rock walls, go through a cave, and end on a high overlook.  It is
generally an easy walk but for the fact it is some climbing and
occasionally the fine sand makes the ground slick.  You get a nice view
of the steep canyon walls.  But this would probably not be a popular
walk if most of the good walks were not on the closed road.
     After the trail we drive through Springdale headed for Cedar City.
We stop at Kolob Canyons, sort of an annex to Zion.  I think the ranger
was from Akron, Ohio.  He was talking to a woman from Akron.  She had
not heard of my family, but it was possible.  A woman who had been
reading my film reviews for nine years wrote to me just to find out more
about me.  It turns out we went to the same grammar school, Cornel
Heights, Dayton, Ohio.  When I was starting first grade she was in the
same building starting fifth grade.  She was friends with the older
sister of a friend of mine.
     We listened to Jerome Moross's score for THE BIG COUNTRY while we
drove up Kolob.  There wasn't much to the park, but there were some nice
peaks and giant stone cliffs.  This park is just plain spectacular, so I
am not sure why this was made a National Park.  Just plain spectacular
does not usually make it.  Generally an area needs something unique.
But the cliffs are huge.  Aw, you are probably sick of me saying things
are big.  Utah and Four Corners is big country with big scenery.
     As we left the park we saw some happy raven carrying the carcassof
a prairie dog.  They are scavengers, not predators.  I don't know what
the poor prairie dog died of, but the raven was glad to find it.  We
were going to stay the night in Cedar City.  It is only a short drive
from Kolob.  We stayed at the Super 7.
     We stopped at the grocery for snacks for the car.  We would also
have gotten money but the cash machine wouldn't let us get more than
$100 and wanted to charge us a dollar.  Hey, forget it.  We were
thinking we might go to a movie.  There were three theaters in town, two
each with two screens and one with three screens.  The three-screen had
nothing that isn't playing at one of the two-screens.  That meant there
were four films playing in town.  All were blockbuster sorts of films.
Two or three we had seen already.  Well, maybe the room has AMC.  Next
order of business was looking for dinner.
     The Market Grill was recommended in two of the travel books and it
was the best meal I have had this trip or expect to have.  I broke my
no-red-meat rule, but I do that occasionally when I travel.  The
restaurant is part of a livestock market and probably was initially set
up there just for the people who had business at the market.  However,
with good food sold at a very good price, people started coming out of
town to the livestock market just for the restaurant and it is now one
of the most popular restaurant's in town.
     For US$5.50 I got a good salad, warm dinner rolls, three meaty
barbecued ribs, and a dish of baked beans.  The woman waiting the table-
--I assume it was Bonnie Beacham, co-owner, even brought each of us
finger-bowls and napkins and three times filled the water glass.  For
US$1.25 more there was a very good chocolate cream pie for dessert.  The
address is 2290 West 400 North in Cedar City, Utah.  If you are in the
area, this is a recommendation.
     On the way back to the motel we stopped at Mountain West Books.It
had some non-religious books but it was predominantly a Mormon religious
book store.  That is not uncommon in this area, of course.  Even a
Barnes and Noble has a lot of Mormon books and independent bookstores
are mostly Morman.  (For those who follow such things from our other
logs, this trip's tchatchka was purchased here.  It is the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir singing songs of the Civil War.  It is inexpensive,
something a local person might buy, and representative of the region.)
     Back at the room we worked on our logs and watched the Claudette
Colbert CLEOPATRA.  When that film is over we watch THE SIGN OF THE
CROSS.  The story is corny, but it is surprising what Cecil B.~DeMille
was able to get away with on the screen because it was a religious film.
He started by making sexy films and when the Hayes Office threatened to
clean up his act he switched to Biblicals because the Hayes office could
not complain about the sex.  The scenes of carnage at the end are not
very convincing.  But then that was not where his heart was.
     I went to sleep about 11 PM.
     May 23, 1995: I woke up in the dark, but saw the light was on in
the bathroom so I figured for once I had overslept Evelyn.  I turned on
the light and found out it was 4 AM.  I lay there trying to fall back
asleep.  Eventually the light went out in the bathroom.  I breathed
deeply without making another sound.  When Evelyn got nearby, I shouted
"Surprise!"  I think I caught her off guard.
     I did get back asleep eventually and woke up at 7 AM.  I put on the
"Today Show" and saw in depth coverage of the demolition of the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City.  They were interviewing the engineer who was
in charge of demolishing the building and discussing what could possibly
go wrong during the demolition and what was the reaction of the
spectators.  I somehow am wondering if it is possible that so little
happened in the world yesterday.  What are the chances, I wondered, that
the world could have been so uniformly uneventful that this was the
biggest and most important news story in the world.  I like living in
America, but the news coverage is pitiful.
     Breakfast was at the Sugar Loaf.  I ordered eggs and pancakes.  On
a lark I ordered the breakfast roll.  The subtitle is "You will never
eat it all."  Yup.  It is actually about six times the size of a regular
sweet roll for $1.75.  We got most of it wrapped and took it with us.
     We had stayed at a Super 7 in Cedar City.  It seemed to be Asian
Indian owned and reasonably well-run.  No complaints.  That is more than
I can say about this Pontiac Grand Am we rented.  It is low-slung and
often when we are leaving driveways, the front rubs on the ground.  The
lock system is really weird and the driver seat is too low and not
adjustable.  The parking brake is hard to put on and Evelyn has real
problems with it.  The shell of the car is what I would call mock-
streamlined.  When I was three years old I had a kiddie-car that looked
like an airplane.  Except for the spinning propeller it looked a lot
like my Pontiac Grand Am.
     We are driving through the mountains.  We pass a sign saying
"Avalanche area, no stopping or standing."  I added "Don't stop.  Don't
stand.  And don't look back.  Don't honk your horn.  Turn off car radio.
Was your engine always this loud?"
     As we drive we see lots of marmots standing by the side of the road
just watching cars.  It is surprising that they do not seem interested
in crossing roads, just in seeing cars.  I think they are watching with
the same fascination with which we look at the geology.  These are very
big animals that run very fast.
     The drive takes us through Bryce Canyon again.  We are on our way
to Kodachrome Basin State Park.  The chief attraction are limestone
chimneys.  They were probably geyser vents that filled with limestone
deposits.  They hardened and when the sandstone eroded away all that was
left were the limestone chimneys.  The name of the Park came from some
over-enthusiastic National Geographic explorers for some product they
had started using in their magazine just recently.  The brochures for
the park are apparently paid for by a major corporation.  Can you guess
which one?
     We tried to take the Grand Parade Trail.  It was supposed to be a
half a mile.  Either it was a lot longer and very poorly marked or we
got off on the wrong trail and it was very poorly marked.  It was not
easy to follow and it was not easy to stay precisely on.  Apparently
someone rode a horse through this area recently.  Miraculously the trail
and the natural wonder seems to have cured the horse of a month-long
bout with constipation.  A little at a time.  This made the trial easy
to watch but hard to stay on.  The trail seemed to take us to and inside
a wash.  Eventually we had to decide that the expedition was a wash.We
retraced our steps until we came to a corral that someone had
constructed since our first time through.  As we walked by a horse came
over to see us and to show us what he was a magnificent horse with an
enormous bladder.  He impressed us demonstrating a force and power that
would have made my garden hose at home green with envy.  Ah, the great
outdoors.  I hope this isn't flash flood territory.
     Driving out on an unpaved road we got to Utah's newest arch.  It
took a ranger a month of his spare time with a rock hammer to create it.
I wonder if a new arch is discovered if they will change the name.  Go
in another direction and you see Chimney Rock.  At least that is whatis
on the map.  Actually that is less interesting than a local rock
formation that looks like Captain Midnight's secret laboratory.  Boy,I
bet that dates me.
     While we were following the trail it started raining on us and has
been doing it off and on.  After we left, we pulled to enjoy the
leftover sweet roll from breakfast.  On the road we pass (twice) a
school bus pulling a horse trailer.
     As we approached Escalante Petrified Forest State Reserve the
clouds started darkening overhead.  The sky started grumbling.  We got
out anyway to see a little of the park.  There obviously was a major
problem here with theft of petrified wood.  Where they had boxes of
trail guides to borrow they had posed a letter signed by Roger.  Roger
was sending back two pieces of petrified wood he had picked up.  He had
lost two jobs since he stole the petrified wood, his camper had been
broken into twice, and he had been unlucky romanticly.  Now, being a
superstitious sort, he was returning the petrified wood.  Well, Roger,
if you exist, you have just told the world you are neither honest nor
very bright.
     We really didn't stay long enough to see very much.  There was an
area with some collected pieces.  I reached down to pick up a piece for
a closer look just as a cloud overhead thundered.  I explained to the
cloud that I was only taking a closer look and I put the piece back.I
wouldn't take a piece in any case.  There was a funny sound and out of
the brush came something that looked like a quail.  There actually were
two of them and they were very curious about humans as long as it was
them sidling up to the humans.  If you came near them with a camera,
they ran off.  They walked head down staring at the ground but when they
stopped they picked their head up and looked around.
     This really is like going to another country.  You hear ads on the
radio for Mormon bookstores.  The one we saw yesterday had baby T-shirts
saying "Future Missionary."  One advertises on the radio they have a
whole wall of LDS novels.  I saw an ad for some sort of an LDS time
travel novel where the main character has to get back to the present
before the next coming of Christ.  Pretty weird.
     We passed an overlook to a legendary canyon, known as the Phipps
Death Canyon.  Washington Phipps and John F.~Boynton were partners ina
horse business and both were in love with the same woman.  Boynton
argued with Phipps and shot him to death in this canyon.  Boynton was
overcome with guilt and remorse and turned himself in to the sheriff.
The sheriff said he did not have time to take Boynton to trial at the
county seat, but Boynton was obviously an honest and honorable man.  He
gave Boynton $10 traveling expenses and told him to ride to the county
seat and turn himself in there.  Boynton was good as his word, but he
apparently decided there wasn't a lot of profit in either him or his
word being THAT good.  He was no fool and knew a good thing when he saw
it.  Nobody ever heard from John F.~Boynton again.
     That is just one of the stories you read on the road to Boulder
Creek, Utah, the last country in the United States to have its mail
brought in by mule because the road was impassable.
     We stopped at the Anasazi Indian State Park.  It was more museum
then park but today it wasn't either since it is closed for renovation.
We did get to see a Pueblo foundation and a reconstruction of a pit
house.  This pueblo had a population of about 200 people, but it was
abandoned around 1150, less than a year after it was built.  The reason
was a fire, either from natural causes or warfare.
     We continued on our way to Capitol Reef National Park.  While we
rode we listened to Western stories on cassette.  The anthology was
called THE BEST OF THE WEST.  As we were driving, there was yet another
deer by the side of the road, waiting for car.  It is my belief that
deer intentionally run in front of cars to demonstrate their prowess.
It is much like antelope in Africa whom I have observed intentionally
running in front of the only speeding Land Rover for miles around.
Well, just to be on the safe side we noted there were no other cars
around so we stopped to let the deer cross the road ahead of us, if he
wanted.  He stood there looking at us, then turned around 180 degrees
and ran back into the woods behind him.  It reminded me of children who
ring doorbells and then run away.
     As we were approaching the Capitol Reef area we started to get that
"Oh yeah!" feeling again.  What we were seeing is the same sort of
immense stone monuments we saw outside Needles.  Once again, we have
what looks at first glance to be buildings on hills, but the buildings
are taller than the hills and together they are about the height of the
Empire State Building.  All of them are not that tall, but there are
plenty that are.  I suppose that a volcano or a meteor crash is more
stunning, but this is the most awesome natural site I can imagine that
is standing still.  We entered Capitol Reef and went to the Visitor
Center.  There we got information about what trails there are to take.
     Apparently the strange geology was caused by what is called a
Waterpocket Fold.  Sixty-five million years ago tectonic forces pushed
up on the sedimentary base of the once-ocean.  The base was made of
shale, siltstone, mudstone and volcanic ash.  It buckled into folds and
the folded base was pushed up where it was eroded over time.  The result
was the spectacular formation we see today.  The name Waterpocket Fold
adds confusion to the name Capitol Reef.  People think that this had
some sort of a reef in the water when there was an ocean here.  Nope.
The name was actually given by settlers trying to get through this area.
To them a reef was any barrier to travel, in water or land.  The name
Capitol Reef just indicates that it is hard to travel through and that
one of the peaks looks like the Capitol Building.  They didn't know
anything about water having any connection to this place.
     On the way out of the park we stopped at an overlook to take some
pictures and then went to find a motel for the night in Torrey, about
ten miles out of the park.  After two failures we got a very nice room
at the Chuckwagon Motor Inn, a fairly nice and new motel.  It is a
little more expensive than where we had been staying, about US$54, but
the room is well designed and comfortable.  I guess finding a good motel
room for US$54 a night is not such a find, but it is nice and
comfortable.  I have paraphrased a friend's philosophy into the
terminology of Marshall Zhukov. "Tour hard, rest easy."
     We had dinner at the Capitol Reef Inn and Cafe.  Their motel hadno
room for us, but there was plenty of room in their restaurant.  Like the
room, the dinner was a little more expensive than we were expecting to
pay, but it was good.  Evelyn and I each had half of a Lemon Herb
Chicken and Smoked Trout.  The trout tasted a lot like any smoked fish
and I suggested to Evelyn that there are better fish for smoking for
that reason.  She thinks that trout is better because it is fresh, but
the point of smoking, at least originally, is that freshness doesn't
matter.  You have already preserved it.  For dessert I had a chocolate
malt.
     In the room I worked on my log, of course, and watched a
documentary on the history of cinema.  Evelyn went to sleep early.  The
nice thing about keeping a log is that I always have a captive audience
to talk to when Evelyn is asleep: you.
     May 24, 1995: There are only seventeen restaurants in the county.
It isn't easy to find a place for a simple, cheap breakfast.  Our motel
is called the Chuckwagon and it doesn't even have a restaurant.  Perhaps
that is because it is so new a motel that it does not yet have a
restaurant, but will some day.  What it does have is sort of a grocery
and general store.  That is fun to browse.  We go to the restaurant of
an up-scale motel called the Wonderland Inn.  They have a breakfast
buffet, and last trip I would have gone for it and stuffed myself, but
with all the hiking we are doing, I much prefer to eat lightly.  Thisis
the time of morning I start asking myself, did I get the flashlight from
the night stand?  Did I get my stuff out of the bathroom?  Self-torture
seems to be one of my favorite hobbies.
     We are now about at the two-thirds point in the trip.
     Breakfast was eggs (VERY runny) and pancakes (huge, fluffy, and
undistinguished).  There were some German tourists and I was thinkingit
is probably a little hard touring to do your transactions in a foreign
language.  For the time being touring is a lot easier for English
speakers than for most other people.
     Driving to the park, the huge cliffs of stone are again newly
impressive.  We drive over the scenic drive to the Grand Wash where
there will be a ranger talk.  We are here among tall cliffs of sandstone
waiting for the ranger.
     Well, it would have been a long wait.  We went to the wrong parking
lot at the wrong end of the Grand Wash.  We decide to walk the wash on
our own.  This is a long but very flat and easy walk, basically made
that way by flood waters that come tearing through the wash.  I would
hate to be here when they do.  You have about a twenty-foot walkway and
cliff walls on both sides.  And the way is twisty.
     About the halfway point we met the group we had missed.  The ranger
guiding the group was Cindy Doktorski, who it turned out was from New
Brunswick, New Jersey and has a brother in our home town of Old Bridge.
I got to ask some of the questions I had about the wash we were walking
down.  If a flash flood came it would come in the same direction we were
walking in.  The water comes to about 20 feet high when it floods, soit
might be possible to scramble to high ground if we saw the waters in
time.  (No, I didn't expect a flood, it was just a force of nature I
didn't know a lot about.) Curiously the ranger didn't know how often a
flash flood occurred.  The two she knew the dates of were about four
years apart.  The rangers were curious to see the effects and looked
expectantly when there were forecasts of rain.
     Doktorski was asked about what made something a National Landmark.
She actually never answered the question.  She did say the locals wanted
this park to be a National Park rather than a National Monument and
lobbied Congress for Capitol Reef to be made a National Park.  This is
not always the case.  Often the locals do not want to lose the right to
hunt in lands and in general lose control over an area.  As Evelyn
points out, they do get increased tourism to console them.
     She also says that she does not like the way Congress handles
admission fees.  She says the fees collected do not go to parks; they
are just deducted from what the parks would be allotted.  I am not sure
how I feel about that.  I suppose the people who use the parks should
have some chunk of the paying for them.  There is a component of the
parks that is for a common good that should be served even if nobody
goes to the parks.  And there is a component that is for the visitors.
That one the visitors should share the expense for.  Just what
proportion of the park's expenses is each component is what is in
question.  Doktorski said that the park people are grateful for the
support they get from groups like the Sierra Club.
     As we walked it rained a little, but stopped as we walked to the
far end of the wash with the Ranger's group.  We thanked her and started
back the 2.25 miles to the far side of the wash.  The wash is a very
easy hike.  The occasional flash floods wash away anything that would
make the walk difficult.  What they leave is a flat gravel bed.  You
could push a wheelchair over the path we went without too much
difficulty.
     As we walked back the sky started gray, went to sunny, back to
gray, then to dark gray.  It was clear there was a storm coming.  The
way back was longer than I had expected or remembered.  I kept thinking
the end of the trail was around the next turn, but it seemed there was
turn after turn getting back.  We were able to get to the car before the
real rain started.  When it did, it started to really come down.  After
a short, heavy rain the sky cleared again.
     We finished the scenic tour and went over the roads of the park
just looking at the geology.  We saw Golden Throne, Egyptian Temple, and
a lot that was spectacular without a name.  We took another easy trail,
Goosenecks, which took us over a fin to an overlook into the canyon.
     We hit the Visitor Center and museum for Evelyn to get postcards,
and to see the museum, of course.  We did not have time for much more
hiking, but we did stop to see petroglyphs and then left the Park,
viewing on the way Capitol Dome, a hill with a sandstone dome that named
the park.
     After leaving the park we drove through the Henry Mountain Resource
Area.  This is no slouch for scenery either.  I have never seen hills
with layers that were green (stone), brown, white, and red.  Pretty
amazing.  Evelyn said the stretch of road that followed was the most
beautiful we had seen outside of a park this trip.  If you took every
piece of pretty scenery in this state and made it a park, there wouldbe
little left.
     Evelyn was looking for the Luna Mesa Cafe, a cafe named for the
other-worldly mesa that was nearby.  It supposedly had someone's ideaof
a flying saucer on thee roof, except it had apparently had blown down.
Evelyn got a cup of coffee.  I contented myself with scratching the
Irish setter who came out to greet the car as we arrived.  She was a
real sweetie and didn't seem to want me to go when the time came.  If
only I had that kind of appeal to people.
     Our next stop was Goblin Valley State Park.  It was a most
enjoyable visit if we dry out okay, if the car isn't seriously damaged,
and there isn't a warrant for our arrest waiting for us someplace.  On
the plus side, it probably wasn't actually a tornado I saw coming at the
car.  (Uh, have I ever told you about Luck of Leeper?)
     It was sunny when we left the main road to the park and had been
clear for a while.  Having no idea which direction we were going in I
pointed out to Evelyn that there was one rain cloud in the sky.  I told
Evelyn that if we went to the park, that rain would rain on us.  I
believe in Luck of Leeper, even if we were not headed in that direction.
We took a left turn following the signs how to get to the park.  Now we
really were headed more or less toward the rain cloud.   Of course it
could have been on the near or far side or the road might still turn one
way or the other.  I had complete faith in my prediction, however.  The
road was washboardy and bumpy.  Ahead was a mesa and over it was a rain
cloud with occasional burst of lightning.  As we approached the park the
rain started.  The entrance fee was US$3 on the honor system.  You took
an envelope and wrote in your name, then dropped the envelope into a
box.  You tear off a tag and put it on your windshield.  Evelyn put on
the tag, but said she would hold onto the envelope until we left, just
in case the rain doesn't stop.
     And stop it didn't.  As we got to the scenic part it was coming
down in torrents.  By a picnic area we stopped and decided to wait it
out.  Eventually it did and Evelyn popped out of the car to get a
picture.  I waited a few minutes, but at least temporarily the rain had
stopped.  As we started out to walk I pointed out lightning again.
Evelyn pointed out that the cloud was off to the side and that it was
clear above us.  That was when it started raining on us again.  The gods
are not mocked.
     Back in the car for more waiting.  Can you name a car if you have
only rented it?  I would like to name this car the "Maid of the Mists."
Anyway, it did stop and it looked like we were going to get to see
something.  There is a basin you walk through with short, weirdly-shaped
hoodoos, maybe eight or ten feet tall.  The weird shapes really do
suggest goblins if you have some imagination.  We started down the
basin.  A state pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot and the man
stepped out and checked we had the tag in our windshield.  Yup.  It was
there.  We felt safe...
      ...for about 24 seconds.  Then it occurred to me he probably
checked the number against the envelopes in the box.  Then he would know
we were criminally defrauding the State of Utah.  They had us dead to
rights.  (I wonder where that expression came from?)  It was not our
intention, but that was what we were doing.  Evelyn asked if we should
go drop off the envelope.  Yeah, if it is not too late.  We drove to the
entrance, past the state pick-up truck.  The man inside watched us.  We
left the park and immediately hung a U-turn came back to the entrance
and dropped our envelope in the box.  We drove back to the parking lot,
again passing the pick-up truck, and the driver watched us go by again.
I think he knew he had caught us.  He may not have known we intended to
do the right thing eventually.  I am hoping there is no warrant for our
arrest waiting for us someplace.
     Goblin Valley State Park turned out to be something of a geological
delight.  It is a field of short hoodoos in weird and distorted shapes.
We got down into the basin and the rain started again.  Evelyn decided
to go back under shelter, but I had risked the hoosgow for these hoodoos
and, dammit, I was going to see them.  The rain did stop and I wandered
around looking at the odd shapes in an amazing array.  I tried calling
Evelyn on my walkie-talkie to tell her to come back down, but she didn't
have hers on or even with her and besides the battery in mine was dead.
Other than that it was a great idea.  Eventually she saw me well enough
for me to signal her to join me.  She did and we walked around for a
while before heading back.
     On the way out we took the same washboard road out and the rain
started up only to be replaced by hail.  That was when I saw a peculiar
cone-shaped cloud coming down from the rain cloud up above.  It sure
looked like a tornado and hail weather can easily become tornado
weather.  As I looked the edges became less distinct and it might have
just been rain coming out of the cloud.  Still, it was nice to get back
to Utah Route 24.
     From there it was not a long drive to Green River.  We got a room
at the Motel 6 (passing by the National 9 and the Super 7--why do all
the chains have numbers?).  We had dinner at the Bookcliff Restaurant,
recommended in HIDDEN SOUTHWEST, one of the few bum steers we got from
that book.  The food was not terrible, but it just was not very good
either.  The salad dressing was flavorless; the barbecued ribs were a
pile of meat chunks in sauce.  The service was at times slow.
     May 25, 1995: Well, we both were up at 4:30 in the morning.  Evelyn
fell back asleep, I think, but I was up thinking about the diverse sort
of things one thinks about at that time of the morning.
     Of course, the nice thing about staying at a Motel 6 is that even
in the dark one can find the bathroom.  Motel 6 is established on the
McDonalds principle.  You get an almost identical mediocre room no
matter what Motel 6 you choose.  The layout is almost identical.  It
isn't a good layout.  It isn't a bad layout.  But it is predictable.
And it is fine for what you pay.  There are few surprises at a Motel 6.
     An odd thing that I find useful on a trip is a lot of zip-top
plastic bags.  It is one of those things you never thing too much about,
but it gathers objects together nicely.  I will have one bag with
brochures, another with three tour books, When I take the things out of
my pockets at night, they go in a bag.  I have a bag within a bag.  I
put my unexposed film in a double bag.  When I am done with an exposed
roll, I put it in the outer bag, but not the inner one.  I have one bag
for not-everyday toiletries like Tums, Pepto-Bismol, Bacitracin
ointment, aspirin, etc.  Another has a multiple plug, an extension cord,
rechargeable batteries, camera batteries, Walkman speakers, etc.  Andin
a pinch, you can inflate and seal a zip-top bag and use it as a pillow.
For their price, zip-top bags are a real bargain in travel equipment.
     Breakfast is at the up-scale restaurant of Green River, the
Tamarisk.  It is about as fancy as a Denny's with a nice view of the
Green River.  A nice touch that seems to be standard in this part of the
world is putting a carafe of ice water on the table with glasses.  The
omelet is heavy and covered with melted cheese.  Ouch, my diet.  Theydo
have a good hot sauce they serve with the omelet.
     Our first stop of the day after breakfast is the John Wesley Powell
River History Museum.  It is a museum not so much about Powell but about
a history of exploring and running the Green and Colorado rivers.  I was
anxious to learn more about Powell and see his actual artifacts.  To
some extent I could do the former and to no extent could I do the
latter.  I have seen some museums in this part of the country that put
our East Coast museums to shame, but this wasn't one of them.  There is
a certain lack of artifacts on display including absolutely nothing that
John Wesley Powell ever touched.  There is a full-sized model of his
boat that may or may not be accurate.  Since he gave a description of
the boat but left no sketches or photographs nobody knows exactly what
it looked like.  There are some navigational instruments that may have
been like ones he used.  Who knows?  The majority of the museum is
stand-up panels with text and pictures giving the feeling you are
walking through not so much a museum as a short booklet, and a not very
informative one at that.  There was something about previous explorers.
After Powell's time the museum is more about people trying to run the
Colorado River.  There is a downstairs room (to little purpose, by the
way, since the room was two floors high and the contents of the room did
not require the extra height of the room) to display three boats that
had run the river and tell of more recent people who had run the river.
Like everything else the film that went with the museum was
disappointing.  The idea was to give you a document of the Powell
Expedition.  But to illustrate the log a modern tour company took a
river trip following the same route.  You do see the scenery that Powell
saw, but in front of it you see modern people on rafts in life vests
having the times of their lives rafting down the Colorado.  When Powell
is describing the scarcity of his rations they show you griddles of
frying eggs, and a sumptuous meal being laid out and more scenes of
people having the times of their lives.  I felt like I was seeing an ad
for the travel company, which is just what it was really.  Books thatI
was expecting to see like the journal of the second Powell Expedition
were NOT for sale in the gift shop.  We had seen that book at one of the
National Park shops and I was thinking of getting it for Evelyn here.
They did sell the Dover journal of the first expedition, but that seems
to be for sale everywhere around the Four Corners area.  I bought my
copy last trip at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
     They did have on one of the panels the quote from Ives who found
the land around the Grand Canyon valueless.  He thought he was the last
white man who would ever come to see the canyon.  Well, the Indians used
the whole buffalo, the Chinese use the whole duck, and Euros use the
whole land.  If you can't mine it or grow on it, you make it a park and
people come to see it.
     Speaking of sightseeing, we are taking Route 6 West to Provo.  I
think Evelyn is right: this has got to be one of the best states for
highway sightseeing.  I never was all that interested in geology, but
this state has some spectacular rock formations, even just along the
highway.
     In Provo we went into the Earth Sciences Museum of Brigham Young
University.  It is a small one-room museum of fossils.  Silly me, I
thought there was a lot more to earth science than fossil hunting, but
since this is probably the most interesting part for most people,
including myself, hey, who am I to complain?  This museum does raise a
question in my mind.  Since this is part of Brigham Young University and
since the age of dinosaurs is religiously controversial to some, whatis
the Mormon stand on evolution and the age of the earth?  There certainly
are religious elements who believe the Earth is only a few thousand
years old.  This is based on the sound religious principle the Bible,
which everybody agrees was physically written by the hand of a human,
must be more accurate than the than the fossil record, which everybody
agrees could not have been put in place by a human.  A popular beliefis
that it was put in place by a Trickster God who wanted to test our
faith.  It is a cosmic practical joke.  My religious training did not
paint a God that would stoop so low, but other people do not have a
problem with it.
     Along these lines there was a religious bru-ha-ha in the 19th
century over calling any animal "prehistoric."  That word was considered
a contradiction in terms since the Bible gave a history going back
before the earth was created.
     As you enter, you are facing a Dunkleosteus skull four feet long
and three feet wide.  The skull is about all there was to this beastie
to be fossilized, apparently.  The rest of it was not bone, if I
understand correctly.
     There is also a large display of a skeleton of allosaurus and one
of a camptosaurus in action positions, the camptosaurus jumping on the
tail of the allosaurus who is rearing around.  I wonder when future
civilizations find our bones, what action positions they will put us in?
As advertised, they had a biceratops skull.  I correctly had predicted
which of the three spikes would be missing.  The had a tyrannosaurus
skull.  That one I was pretty sure was a casting.  Well, it was a human
casting.  I think all dinosaur bones we find are castings.  There is a
nice mural of representatives of late Jurassic animal life having some
sort of a convention on a small plot of ground.  Just what they were all
doing in such close proximity to each other is a question probably lost
to time.  There were none of the dinosaurs from the film JURASSIC PARK
since most of the dinosaurs portrayed in that film were from the
Cretaceous Era, much later.  Of course calling a park Cretaceous Park
sounds like an insult.
     Evelyn was feeling a little hungry, so we stopped at a restaurant
called The Malt Shoppe.  It was trying for 1950s decor, a jukebox,
over-size records with 1950s song titles on the wall, the whole bit.
The first non-authentic touch I saw was the flavors.  They had lots of
flavors, many non-traditional.  Okay, fine.  I ordered a peanut butter
malted and Evelyn ordered a raspberry milk shake.  The order came to
five dollars and change.  First I had to point out that in my change I
was given two dollars too much.  What I got when it was ready was
vanilla soft ice cream with peanut butter whipped into it.  Evelyn got
raspberry syrup whipped into vanilla soft ice cream.  In both cases the
ice cream was piled a couple of inches over the rim of the cup.
     "This isn't a malted," I complained to Evelyn.
     "Maybe she didn't hear you."
     "This is soft ice cream."
     "Maybe she didn't hear you say 'malted.'"
     "Well, maybe, but what did you get?"
     "I got a raspberry milk shake."
     "They gave us both soft ice cream.  This is the kind of thing you
get at McDonalds."
     "Well, they must have given me a milk shake; they don't have soft
ice cream on the menu.  That must be what they call a malted."
     "Let's go back to basics.  How many legs would a horse have if you
called his tail a leg?"  I knew Evelyn knew the answer to this question
was that a horse would have four legs no matter what you called the
tail.
     "Okay, so here they call this a malted."
     "Look, suppose you ordered a lamb chop and they served you a hot
dog.  Would you say you got the terminology wrong?  There is something
called a malted and this isn't it."  I think it takes a lot of nerve to
call this place The Malt Shoppe and serve soft ice cream junk as whata
malted is.  I remember what a real malted is, but there are probably a
lot of college kids in Provo who will eat this junk and think this is
what people had in the 1950s when they had a malted.
     We drove for a little way and got to the outskirts of Salt Lake
City.  From the AAA book we chose a La Qinta.  Those are generally
well-run motels (and this one was no exception).
     The rain has been oppressive so we decided it might be reasonable
to see a movie.  We had been anxious to see THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A
HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN and Evelyn had passed a theater showing
it, so we decided to go.  We could not find the theater in the phone
book (looking in the wrong town) so we decided to just go and wait for
the film to start.  We got to the theater at 2:44 PM; the film was
scheduled to start at 2:50 PM.  You can't complain about timing like
that.  There were about four coming attractions, two of which were for
films with Hugh Grant: RESTORATION and NINE MONTHS.  This was the first
I had heard of NINE MONTHS, and I may have the title wrong.  Grant seems
to be in a lot of films these days.  He is also the star of the film we
came to see.  It just goes for to show you how far you can go in the
film business if you make a film in which you beat a giant snake.  Hugh
Grant in LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, Arnold Swarzenegger in CONAN, THE
BARBARIAN, Kevin Bacon in TREMORS, and both Hoffman and Redford in ALL
THE PRESIDENT'S MEN all are popular actors.
     THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN is kin
of an old-fashioned sort of movie like England used to make in the
1950s.  It is reminiscent of PASSPORT TO PIMLICO or WHISKEY A GO-GO.
For that matter is reminds me a bit of LOCAL HERO.  Basically, it is
about a small Welsh town whose history and sense of itself is all bound
up in its mountain.  Two Englishmen (one played by Hugh Grant) come
along from the Army to measure the height of the mountain only to find
out that it was sixteen feet short of the thousand feet necessary to
qualify it as a mountain.  The local townspeople decide to frustrate the
two Englishmen's attempts to leave the village while they furtively
build a mound at the peak of their hill to make it officially a
mountain.  There is also ill will between the town's excessively dour
minister and the free-living pub owner Martin (nicknamed Martin the Goat
and played by Colm Meany).  The film starts at a lively pace with a good
sense of humor, but it bogs down toward the middle and makes itself just
a little too serious.  In addition, the film begins with a prologue that
telegraphs nearly everything that is going to happen in the film.  The
result is a film painfully short on dramatic tension just where it needs
it the most.  While none of the major characters seem well developed,on
the positive side the film has several humorous minor characters that
add color to the film.  My rating would be a low +1 on the -4 to +4
scale.
     By the time the movie was over the sun had made one of its frequent
but all-too-short appearances and we decided to see Salt Lake City.  The
first stop was at the city's Visitors Center.  We got some ideas for
what there was to do, but not a lot we didn't already know.  After that,
Evelyn wanted to see Deseret Bookstore.  This is a large local bookstore
that carries a full line of books, but their specialty is Mormon books.
We bought two pieces of what might be called Mormon science fiction.
One is an alternate history novel, and one is apparently a juvenile time
travel story.  We could not spend as much time in the store as we would
have likes since we had only a half hour on the parking meter.  The
Mormons apparently believe in tithing and getting the rest of the money
they need in parking fees.  We went to the car and the next order of
business was dinner.  We drove past a food court and Evelyn suggestedit
as a possibility for dinner.  I had to remind her that generally a food
court is where the food is tried and found wanting.
     We decided that the best choice would be Vietnamese sine it is
unavailable near where we live in New Jersey.  We went to Cafe Trang and
had pot stickers, sate chicken, and squid with flat noodle.  They
claimed it was very spicy.  No problem.  Actually it was all very good.
     Next we intended to go to Salt Lake City to see Temple Square.
Thursday night is a rehearsal for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir open to
the public and we decided to go to that.  Temple Square is an education
in itself.  I have been all over the world but have never seen a
religion run in just this way.  I am reminded of the Church of Oriental
Harmony in the film SERIAL.  The religion is bent on presenting an image
of love, acceptance, and harmony for anyone who passes their portals.
They have a small army of missionaries patroling the grounds, each
called Sister something, each in her early 20s, each dressed differently
but to the same standards.  Evelyn pointed out each has opaque
stockings, each wears a sort of business suit out of DRESS FOR SUCCESS,
each wears flats, and each seems to be really, really enthusiastic about
her job  and seems to have gone to Smile School.  They are just happy
and friendly and just tickled pink to see you here.  They must have a
name for themselves more specific than just "Missionaries," but I don't
know it, so I will refer to them as "Mormettes."
     You cannot go anywhere in Temple Square without running into a
Mormette.  They seem to be an unofficial security force in where they
are placed though there is no opportunity to find out what they do if
there is a problem.  As soon as you walk in the gate there are two of
them there to smile at you and say, "Hi."
     It occurs to me to wonder why we paid money and came all this way
to see missionaries who would be a pest if they turned up on our
doorstep at home.  But then we paid even more to go to Africa to see
elephants in their natural habitat.
     The Visitor Center is built on a motif of circles and spirals.  On
the main and second floor are a series of paintings of scenes from the
Bible, in Biblical order.  Each of the Biblical paintings is done in a
very graphic and cinematic style by Harry Anderson, or by Grant Romney
Clawson, or is an enlargement by Clawson of an original by Anderson.I
guess by a cinematic style I mean that there is a lot of almost
photographic characterization and a lot of motion in everybody in the
picture.  Noah will be forecasting the flood as the subject, but one
person listening is making comments, shielding his mouth with his hand,
another will be doing something else, but everyone in the picture will
be in motion.
     I notice one of the paintings is of an Old Testament prophecy that
the Messiah's name will be Immanuel.  I am sure somebody someplace
explains why this prophecy does not appear to have come true, or they
would not be using the illustration.  As further proof that this
building is intended mostly for non-Mormons, I notice that the paintings
seem to stop with the New Testament.  I see no paintings from unfamiliar
stories as I would if they had included stories from The Book of Mormon.
Evelyn points out that in the paintings of the Cross, the wording of the
message tacked to the top is left indistinct.  This strikes me as outof
keeping with the almost photographic style of the painting.  Apparently
Anderson and Clawson did not want to get involved in the controversy of
what was said in the message.  Each of the Gospels disagrees with the
other three, even in the original language of the Bible--apparently this
has in the past been a serious embarrassment to those who want to claim
that every word of the Bible is literally true.
     And speaking of things that cannot be literally true, there are no
stairs between the levels but a large spiral walkway decorated with a
huge, royal blue mural of clouds and large, nearby celestial bodies as
seen from a planet soon to be ripped apart by tidal forces, or perhaps
from Heaven.  The spiral continues on the second floor to a seating area
around a friendly statue of Christ considerably larger than life.  There
there is a recorded message from Christ as read by someone else.  The
whole image seems to be the sort of thing you would see on the cover of
a Watchtower pamphlet calculated for maximum feeling of harmony.
     Well, we head out for the rehearsal.  It might be interesting to
take on of the tours that the Mormettes offer, but we really want to go
to the rehearsal.  Evelyn heard one of the Mormettes say that if you
take the tour with her you will miss the beginning of the rehearsal, but
that they have reserved seating in the front for people taking the tour
now.  That seemeds a reasonable offer so we take the tour.  This one was
given by a young German woman known as Sister Damaske.  On this tour was
a German Jew who lives in Tarrytown and has a fascination with secret
societies.  He has a particular interest in the Knights Templar.
Apparently he had a cousin who worked in the Reichstag in World War II
and was able to hide his Jewish background.  That's living on the edge.
I asked him if he has an interest in secret societies, can he recommend
a source about the Thugee?  He said he is not as knowledgeable about
Asian secret societies, but recommendeds that I try the British Museum.
Well, not the most useful suggestion.
     The tour went until twenty minutes into the rehearsal.  We were
brought into the oval-shaped auditorium and indeed three rows of seats
were reserved for us with the use of a Velcro strip to mark off the
rows.  We took the last of the three rows.  It filled up.  But then the
others were too timid to move the other two Velcro ribbons aside and
found seats much further back.  People seem to be really afraid to
challenge authority, even if it is only a ribbon.
     The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has 325 singers singing to a very large
electric-powered organ with 11,000 pipes.  The pipes are painted gold
and encased in brown carved wood.  At the top of two cases of pipes are
capitols with carved faces looking down.
     The columns that run the length of the hall are wood hand-painted
to look like marble.  The benches are pine treated to look like oak.It
seems like for such a holy building there is an awful lot of deception
going on.  Embedded in the wood are neon signs that say "BROADCASTING"
or "QUIET PLEASE."  I did not recognize some of the pieces practiced but
"Shall We Gather by the River" and "Swanee River" were among them.  Some
of these are songs that just do not sound quite right sung by 325
voices.  It just seems the wrong instrument for playing this music.
     The whole of the Temple Square complex is calculated to give a
feeling of serenity much like some of the Buddhist Temples we saw in
Thailand do.  I wonder if their serenity was equally synthetic.
Actually the argument against being drawn in comes from--and here I will
probably enrage both Mormons ands science fiction fans--STAR TREK V.I
may be the only one in the world who saw anything much good in this
movie and I think it had some of the most intelligent moments of any
"Star Trek" story to date (in among bits that were embarrassingly bad).
In this story a Vulcan prophet brings a new religion that eases pain and
gives people important insights into their lives.  It gives people solid
positive feelings.  The adherents are convinced they have found the one
true religion because it feels so right.  But just doing all this does
not make a religion true.  The religion does not hold together.  It does
not make sense and proves to be a false religion.  The nice warm feeling
that the Mormons give you is irrelevant.  If it makes sense on digging
deeper, then that is the reason to believe in it, not the nice warm
feeling.  If it does not make sense on digging deeper, then the nice
warm feeling was purely misleading.  The soft-sell pitch you get, and
that really what it is regardless of how artfully it is done, appealsto
the emotions and not really the intellect.  I am not saying the Mormons
are wrong, but I have seen nothing in Salt Lake City to convince me to
change my religious convictions.  (And what are those?  To be fair I
should probably state them.  I am a Jew ethically and ethnically and a
fervent agnostic.  I don't ask anyone else to believe what I believe;I
do not proselytize.  But I will argue fervently against anyone who tells
me that there is sufficient data to decide on whether God exists.  Itis
my personal point of view that both believers and atheists are jumping
to unfounded conclusions based on too little and/or the wrong kind of
evidence.)
     May 26, 1995: One of the advantages of La Quinta Inn is they
provide a Continental Breakfast.  This means we really have only one
restaurant meal a day.  The breakfast is what they call bagels, what
they call Danish, juice and fruit.  The bagels are really just bagel-
shaped rolls, pre-wrapped in cellophane.  The shape is not really what
makes a bagel a bagel, it is the boiling of the dough before baking that
gives it a tough, chewy bagel-texture.  People like bagels because they
defend themselves.  A good bagel is built like a tiger tank.  But as the
mainstream discovers bagels, I suppose we can expect that people who
just want to use their popularity will make a shoddy product and the
quality will be degraded.  It is a very old principle of baking
economics that bad bagels drive out the good.  It is like science
fiction films: once they got really popular, it got harder and harderto
find a good one.  Another detestable custom is to boil the dough, butto
make a bagel that is six inches across.  ICBM (the International
Committee on Bagel Metrics) says no real bagel is more than four-and-a-
half inches in diameter.
     The Utah State Historical Museum is decent for a one-room museum
featuring a diverse set of artifacts from the history of Utah.  The
building is an old train station.  (The exhibits were not in order of
historic chronology and will not be presented that way here.  So sue
me.)  They had a doctor's office from the 1930s complete with odd and
mysterious electrical equipment.  A little explanation of the equipment
might have been nice.  They had an artificial heart on loan from its
owner--gee, I hope he could spare it.  There were old auto and motoring
artifacts.  They had a centennial Golden Spike, made for the 100th
anniversary of driving of the spike at Promontory Point, Utah, that
completed the transcontinental railroad.  (I will have more to say about
the railroad later in this log.)  Around another corner was an ore car
from mining in a mining exhibit.  Elsewhere was a collection of pioneer
kitchen goods,  Finally there was a Conestoga wagon and something I had
not seen before, an odometer to measure distance.  A worm-gear drivenby
a wagon wheel turned a tenths-of-a-mile gear which in turn drove a mile
gear.  It was all made of wood and I feel a little sorry for the horses
who had the additional resistance added to their burden.
     Next it was the Utah Museum of Natural History on the campus of the
University of Utah.  This was apparently a better funded museum with a
relatively hefty three-dollar admission charge.  And frankly, it was a
less agreeable experience.  This was in large part because schools were
using the end of the school year to bring classes to the museum.  While
the teachers could feign great interest in the exhibits, the children
did not play along and treated the museum as an indoor playground with
decorated walls.  Any serious interest in the exhibits was the exception
rather than the rule.  Admittedly, the exhibits could have been a little
better designed for a young audience.
     In one room they had a collection of Anasazi sandals.  The whole
room was just devoted to showing the evolution of Anasazi footwear.
This is hardly the stuff of fascinating natural history.  But I bet
these are the only real experts on Anasazi sandals in the whole
Southwest.  A kid was telling his classmates that it was his theory that
the monkey descended from humans.  Likely he was trying to reconcile his
science and religious teaching.  I was thinking of challenging him a
little asking him how he might find evidence for that theory.  That
would have been educational for him, but I don't think he would have
taken it seriously.  Passing one case that had a modern running shoe
next to a sandal he said to us "what the smart Indian wore."
     Another room had exhibits of the chronology of Indian culture in
the new world.  (What is the word you would use?  You can't say "the
history" for things that are prehistoric.)  It went from pre-human times
to the height of Indian culture.  It included subjects like pictographs,
stone tools, and migration patterns.  Each exhibit had a recorded
message you hear on a telephone and start with a button.  Something that
got a little tiresome is each ended with a question for further thought.
It was a little hard to hear one from the beginning, however, because
the kids like to press the button to start message, listen for ten
seconds, and then when they realize it for some reason isn't rock music
go to the next one to see if it is.  They don't publish their resultsso
the next kid has to make the same discovery.  Having all the school kids
here does give one the feel for what it must have been like to have
herds of millions of stampeding buffalo loose on the plains and why we
no longer have them.
     Upstairs we saw exhibits on the Mineral Kingdom--who exactly is the
king of this kingdom?  There were also the usual nature dioramas of
animals in their natural habitats.  Throughout the museum there were
many requests for money.  In one you would put a contribution in a
parking meter.  In another you drop money in a dinosaur's mouth and he
makes somebody's idea of dinosaur sounds.  They did have a decent
exhibit of skeletons of extinct mammals and dinosaurs.  They had four
dinosaur skeletons of which two were allosauri, one was a camptosaurus,
and one was a stegosaurus.  They have an allosaurus and camptosaurus
fighting like the ones in the museum yesterday, but posed differently.
Maybe there is a package rate on getting castings of those two.
     (Editorial Warning: This is an editorial coming up.)  I took a look
at the U of U newspaper and there is a bru-ha-ha over censorship.
Apparently the student government is withdrawing funding to a campus
newspaper called "Snowdrift."  This is being called "censorship."  I
think we all know that censorship, like racism, is a bad thing, so this
sounds really bad.  The problem as far as I can see it is that this is
not censorship and this claim degrades the power of the word.
Censorship is telling someone they are not allowed to express
themselves.  It is not telling someone, "I refuse to fund you to express
yourself."  The Constitution guarantees only the right to express
yourself, not the funding to do so.  You can express any idea you want
on your own dime.  If you can get someone else to fund you, that is very
nice for you, particularly if it is a reliable source of funding.  If
the funding turns out not to be reliable, well, life is tough, but it
isn't a First Amendment issue.  That goes for "Snowdrift" and for Robert
Mapplethorpe.  Now maybe exhibition of Mapplethorpe's art should be
funded and maybe it shouldn't.  But the incident has absolutely nothing
to do with censorship, in spite of claims that censorship was the issue.
     In a similar vein, I once heard the producers of ROBOCOP
complaining that they had to tone down the violence to get an R-rating
and that this was censorship.  Sorry, I am not a fan of the MPAA, but
they are simply rendering an opinion on the film.  If the producers
think they should not be having that opinion, who is stifling free
speech?  For the time being, censorship is a serious accusation and if
it is to remain that way it should be applied accurately.
     The University of Utah Fine Arts Museum is the small but diminutive
art museum that is the biggest and most comprehensive in Utah.  They do
seem to have a reasonable collection of representative art.  We saw
their room of Asian art with the usual collection of screens, the
familiar T'ang camel, a brass Bodhisatva, etc.
     Their room of traditional art had a rather interesting Mexican
stone rendering of a bat head.  It had masks, carvings, and an urn with
faces in abstract representation.  Elsewhere there are paintings and
tapestries.  We saw a Chinese cloth painting of a Paradise scene.  It
showed people in paradise listening to the teachings of a master.  Of
what use is being virtuous and listening to the wisdom of masters if
your reward is a heaven that is an eternity of doing more of the same?
No wonder artistic depictions of hell are so much more popular than
those of heaven.  Another room had early 19th century medallions.  They
have to be lit behind to see the artwork.
     At one end is a museum of modern art.  There are really two kinds
of modern art.  There are the ones you can figure out what the artist
was representing and the ones with which you need some sort of clue.
Those in the latter category all have the same name, by some
coincidence.  They are called "Untitled."
     There is another section of modern art that the visitor can go
through in record speed.  How long does it take to look at a bowl with
three spheres?  Well, we finished both floors of the art museum (there
is only a very little on the lower floor).  Then we headed out for the
local Air Force base.
     Hill Aerospace Museum does not fool around.  There is very little
in the museum that isn't a plane.  But they do have a lot of planes.
Outdoors there is a field of planes and missiles; inside they have a
hangar full of them.  Probably their centerpiece is an SR-71 Blackbird.
This is the Mach-3 spy plane developed by the Lockheed Skunkworks.  It
is called the Blackbird for its titanium hull.  It is a lot of plane.
They have a bunch more planes outsided from WWII and since.  They have a
B-52, a Flying Boxcar, two Bomarcks and a Snark.  Inside thy run a video
of a documentary about the Jimmy Doolittle bombing run on Tokyo.
     One of the things that the sheet said they had was the first stage
of the first stage of a Poacokoopor.  I had never heard of that.  I
didn't know if it was some sort of Indian name.  It turned out that it
was a problem with their typewriter.  It was actually the first stageof
a Peacekeeper.
     It was not yet 4 PM but we hadn't had a real meal so we found a
restaurant called The Cajun Skillet.  I asked the waiter if the voiceI
heard singing was Michael Doucet.  He said he didn't know.  I said it
sounded like Beausoleil.  That name he recognized and he said he thought
it was.  I am wondering what kind of Cajun restaurant this could be if
the waiter doesn't know Michael Doucet.  I ordered Jambalaya, and Evelyn
ordered Sauted Alligator.
     Well, I asked for mine very spicy and I will give them credit, that
is how I got it.  This was at my upper limit.  When dinner was over it
had started to rain very hard.  We got to talking to our waiter who
turned out to be a science fiction fan.  He also was into rock climbing
and had been many of the same places we had been.  We talked to him for
about 45 minutes since there was nobody else in the restaurant.  We all
three are heavy readers.
     When we were done we headed back to the room stopping at the local
Barnes and Noble Superstore.  For once we didn't buy any books.
     We stopped at the motel to drop things off and then went into Salt
Lake City.  The Utah Film and Video Center was having a film and video
animation festival.  It was about two hours of animation including
"Crac" and "The Janitor," the film that won the Oscar this year and
another that was nominated.  The best was a well-animated Russian piece
called "Hedgehog in the Mist."
     Afterward we returned to the room and I watched the final segment
of FDR on "The American Experience."
     May 27, 1995: This being the 27th of the month, Evelyn gets
breakfast in bed to celebrate our monoversary.  I had not the materials
to make her breakfast so I gave her a cookie.  Not much of a breakfast,
but there is a tradition to serve.
     There are two man-made objects visible from space.  There is the
Great Wall of China and the Kennecott Mine outside of Salt Lake City.
The Kennecott Mine is the largest person-made hole ever made.  It is two
and a half miles wide and half a mile deep.  15% of the world's copper
production is pulled out of this big hole.  This bowl at the site of
what was a mountain has had 5,000,000,000 tons removed.  That is ten
trillion pounds.  The process is to dig 55-foot holes, drop in
explosives, get the heck out of there, detonate the explosives, pick up
the rocks with a steam shovel, and make little ones out of big ones.
The rocks contain 0.6% copper.  A chemical process known as floatation
removes the impurities--which is nearly everything--and you are left
with a glop that is 28% copper.  Heat this stuff to a molten state, add
eleven secret herbs and spices, and more garbage is removed and you get
98% copper sheets that are used as anodes.  Put this into an electrolyte
like what you get in Gatorade and the copper will all run to the cathode
at 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon.  The result is copper that is 99.98%
pure, which is close enough for government work.
     Well, we drove up in rain that was also driving (and a bit of snow)
and got pictures of the big pit.  After reasonably good weather our
first week, it seems to rain at least a little each day our second week.
Much more than we notice in New Jersey the rain is dependent on where
you are.  We drive in and out of the rain.  We can drive out of the rain
and see dry ground.  At the Visitors Center we saw a short film about
the refining process.  It also has a message about how environmentally
sound this method of mining copper is.  It shows picture of a mule deer
watching the men work.  Hey, a mule deer will run in front of a racing
flatbed.  Anyone who trusts a mule deer's opinion of what is safe knows
less than the mule deer does.  I think I know a little more and I
suspect that there are environmental problems associated with blowingin
the ground holes big enough to be seen from space.  Of course, by now
there is probably nothing alive in that hole that isn't wearing a hard
hat.
     Supposedly by today the rain was supposed to be over.  At least
that was the forecast earlier in the week.  But as we drove to the
center of Salt Lake City the rain started fairly heavily.  Well, if we
were having a great time we would be sorry the vacation was coming toan
end.  Everybody says this much rain is very unusual.  Have I ever told
you about Luck of Leeper?
     We went to see the Utah State Capitol Building which also is a
minor museum.  Among the exhibits is the racing car The Mormon Meteor
III, In 1940 it went 3868.14 miles in 24 hours.  That is an average
speed of 161.17 miles per hour.  It could only happen someplace as big
and empty as Utah.  If you fall asleep at 161.17 miles per hour there
isn't much you are going to hit until you wake up.
     You see a lot of bees, beehives, and the name Deseret.  Deseret
means "honeybee" in some language they call "reformed Egyptian."  It is
not clear to me what the name "reformed Egyptian" refers to.  I would
think it would be someone like Omar Sharif, but what do I know?  Deseret
was, however, Brigham Young's chosen name for the new land.  Much of the
state behaves as if he was successful, too.  Schools are named Deseret,
businesses are named Deseret, lots of things have the name.  For anyone
who is Mormon, the names Deseret and Utah seem to be almost
interchangeable.  Utah/Deseret comes as close as we come to a theocracy
as this country has.  The Utah War--one I had never hear of but it was
documented in the historical museum--occurred when the United States
government got nervous about the power that the LDS Church had in this
state and sent in the Army.  If I understand what happened, the Army got
sent here in 1857 and again in 1861 but found nobody to fight.  It
wasn't a military sort of conflict.  The Church has avowed loyalty to
the Government and gave up polygamy and Utah was made a state in 1896,
but it is still clear that there is a lot of loyalty in this state to
the Mormon Church.  They also seem to have incorporated a love of the
United States Constitution.  The alternate history that Evelyn boughtis
about how things would be worse if we didn't have the Constitution.
Loyalty to the country is very big with the LDS Church.  Still it sounds
like a divided loyalty, but there is nothing unconstitutional about
that.  As long as you follow the laws you can be loyal to whatever else
you want.  Still sometimes it seems like the state is ready to switch
over to being Deseret and seceding at any time, should the call come.
They certainly keep the Mormon religious symbolism in front of them.
Incidentally, the floor of the Capitol Building is hexagonal tile.  Like
the comb of the bee.  You see hexagonal tilings frequently on the
street.
     Maybe this name of Deseret was used by the Nephites who are some
group of ancient inhabitants of the Americas I can find no record of in
archeology books.  They disappeared without leaving artifacts, the
Mormons apparently think.  What at first brush seems like just a
different religion is a whole different belief system.
     We walk through the State Capitol building, but as far as
entertainment, this is a very weak activity.  I think a big reason we
are here is to get out of the rain which we have been getting off and
on.
     Our next stop was to the Family History Library.  Family historyis
very important to the Mormons because they believe that you can after-
the-fact make deceased forebears Mormon.  Even if those forebears never
even heard of the Mormons.
     They have a whole orientation presentation about this genealogical
library.  It was started 101 years ago (1894) and the present building
was dedicated in 1985.  They have record going from 1550 to 1920.  Why
1920?  They have the 1920 Federal Census but can have not more recent
censuses because of the Federal Privacy Act.  A census remains private
for seventy years.  They have an on-line database with 240 million
names.  I asked at their computer center if this database was on the
Internet.  No.  Were there any plans to put it on the Internet?  Oh,
very definitely.  Well, I guess that is a service of some use even to
non-Mormons.  The first & second floors are United States and Canadian
records.  The First Basement is foreign-language records.  The Second
Basement is English-speaking countries outside North America.  The
library has 750,000 books.  They have some nice worksheets for filling
out information about your family.
     I decided to look in the 1920 census information to see if I could
find my family.  Now, I am not a big fan tracing back my lineage, butas
long as I was here, I thought it might be interesting.  Both my sets of
grandparents lived in Akron, Ohio in 1920, so I tried to find them.  No
luck on my father's side.  On my mother's side my grandparents were
somewhat easier to find.  I found a microfilm record that said:
   Pollak, Ben
   Age:25,  Birthplace: unknown, Citizenship : AL
   County: Summit
   Akron, Blanche Court 481
   Other members:
   Pollak, Sophie
   Relation: W
   Age:23
   Birth: Budapest
   Citizenship: NR
     I take it that "AL" stands for "alien."  I always thought that Ben
Pollak was born in Baja, Hungary.  I don't know why the census doesn't
reflect it.
     The Museum of Church History and Art is another building just off
Temple Square next to the Family History Library.  Unless we missed one,
this is the largest history museum in Utah, without any strong
competition.  We are greeted at the door not by a Mormette but by
someone who could have been one a few years ago.  She is no less happy
to see us.  She tells us where everything is in the museum, not leaving
out the restrooms and the water fountains.  She also tells us about LDS
history films in this museum and in other parts of Temple Square.  You
can't fault these people for not trying to be friendly.  I just know
that it is at heart an ad for their beliefs.
     The reader should note that when I poke fun at the missionaries,I
am not poking fun at the basic beliefs of the religion, only to the
people who try to export the religion to others.  Any Mormon who wants
to laugh at the expense of someone trying convert them to Judaism maydo
so with my blessing.  In fact, I may join them.  A religion is a non-
verifiable philosophical world view.  Anyone who thinks their opinionis
religious truth deserves any derision they get.  Anyone who really
believes they know some religious truth any more than anyone else ought
to be laughed at.  Probably the same goes for anyone gullible enough to
believe that someone else has a monopoly on religious truth.  I would
contend that I know as much as anyone alive about whether God exists and
I have no idea.
     Still it is hard not to be charmed by the Mormon's friendliness
even if I would chose a different belief system for myself.
     We started with the upper floor where the museum has artifacts of
Church presidents and elders.  It has Indian artifacts (and what museum
in Utah would be complete without Indian artifacts?).  Also there is art
by Mormon artists.
     The ground floor was a history of the Mormon Church, particularly
in Utah.  There are artifacts of the western expansion including wagon
recreations, models of ships, electrified maps, and a scale model mapof
Salt Lake City.  There is a historic pulpit and a baptismal font mounted
on golden steers--one might almost find the symbolism is just too close
to the Golden Calf.
     Following that we had a snack of Thai food at the food court Evelyn
had seen on Thursday.  It was not good Thai, but any Thai is better than
none.
     After that quick snack we went back to Temple Square (which was
just across the street) and took pictures.  We went back to the Visitors
Center to get some pictures there.  We went down to the lower level to
see the presentations.  These were touch-screen computer dialogues to
tell you more about the Mormons.  Okay, I have some interest in
religion.  I'll try it.  They had a place to touch to get an answer to
"Does God exist?"  I wanted to see what their argument was.  They didn't
have one.  The answer was basically "Yes, and...."  Hey, guys.  On yes-
or-no questions you are supposed to show how you got your answer.  You
think I am going to take your "yes" just because a computer says it.
     Well, when we finished at the Visitors Center we went back to the
room for a bit of a rest and some writing.  Actually I saw a bit of
ROMEO IS BLEEDING which I never saw in the theaters.  I am glad didn't
pay to see it.  The first half hour did absolutely nothing for me.  Like
THE BAD LIEUTENANT it is a study in the depravity of a crooked cop and
even Gary Oldman could not make it watchable.  Perhaps if I had seen
more, it would have gotten better.
     For dinner we went to the Thai House Restaurant (for better Thai
food than we could get at a food court) and paid a very reasonable price
for a spicy Thai soup and a fried bean curd dish.  Good Thai is probably
my favorite cuisine, though I never met a cuisine I didn't like.
     After dinner we drove around a little to see the neighborhood our
motel was in.  Returning to the room we worked on logs and watched the
American Film Institute's tribute to Steven Spielberg, and then the last
part of a production of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE staring Laurence Olivier,
Joan Plowright, and Jeremy Brett.
     May 28, 1995: This morning CNN was talking about how computers were
used to increase car speeds at the Indianapolis 500.  They seemed to
think this was somehow surprising.  Not for me.  I have used my palmtop
to increase my record highest speed on my exercycle by about 10%.  There
are probably a tremendous number of sports applications for computers.
     Well, this is the last full day of our trip and we are going to
Promontory Point to see where the Golden Spike was driven that completed
the transcontinental railroad.
     Along the roads we see a lot of horses laying on their sides.  At
first I assumed that it was always a horse in distress in some way.  But
we see it frequently enough that I wonder.
     Along the way we started seeing signs for the Thiokol Rocket
Garden.  This is rarely listed in the books as a tourist attraction and
in truth it is not all that attractive.  It is in the front yard of the
Thiokol Corporation who make giant rocket engines for the government and
any household needs.  The display is mostly just engines though they do
have a few whole rockets.  It is livened up by exciting prose
descriptions like "this motor has a mass fraction of 0.92."  I am not
sure how authentic everything we are seeing is, but we do see a lot of
wood.  Mostly we have seen housings and engines.  The most rocket-like
things we see are a Minuteman and a shuttle booster.
     Very nearby is a stop to see the sight of the historic Big Fill
railroad trestle.  As Evelyn looked from the trestle to the rocket
garden she said it was like looking forward over a hundred years.
     Then we got to Golden Spike National Historic Site, Promontory
Point.  The date was Monday, May 10, 1869, at 12:47 in the afternoon
that the final spike was driven in the final tie of the final rail to
complete the transcontinental track that connected the east coast and
the west coast.  Almost immediately the Jupiter from the west and the
No.~119 from the east came together and nearly touched, each refusingto
give up the right of way.  People sitting on the cow catcher of the
No.~119 actually touched hands with people on the cow catcher of the
Jupiter and tried to explain to them that the computer age was coming
and they should be naming their engine for a number and not some god.
There was speech-making, celebrating, and picnicking among the workers
and people clean forgot that none of the Chinese who did much of the
building (and a good chunk of the dying) were invited.  Suddenly at
about 3:13 the crowd fell silent as like a single person they were
struck by the real implications of what had happened that day.  In a
rush they all got up, ran home, and started polishing up their resumes
and reading the want ads.
     But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.  This place is a National
Historic Landmark commemorating the completion of the transcontinental
railroad.  It has to be one of the first great engineering tasks to be
tracked by the public electronically.  When the spike was to be pounded
in by Leland Stanford, it was attached to a telegraph wire.  In this way
people across the country could actually hear the spike being poundedin
as it happened, at least in a manner of speaking.  That was not what
actually happened, however.  Stanford missed the spike altogether with
his hammer and an alert telegraph operator faked the signal to save him
embarrassment.  But at least people thought they could hear him pounding
in the spike.  This was a long time before the 1950s quiz show scandals.
     At the close of the Civil War going west was expensive and time-
consuming proposition.  If you decided to go west by wagon there was a
90% chance you would be giving the journey six to seven months of your
life.  That's if you were lucky.  And there was a 10% chance you would
be giving it the rest of your life.  That's if you weren't lucky.  Death
could come from Indians, disease, overwork, thirst, bad company, natural
causes, freezing, hunger, or any of a bunch of other ways.
     Theodore Judah in California had the idea that the two railroad
systems in the country could be joined to the general betterment of the
country and of his investors.  He convinced four men, including Leland
Stanford, to make a major investment, and they formed the Central
Pacific Railroad.  With their backing he went to the government,
specifically President Lincoln, to get generous subsidies for the
building project.  The railroads would get from $16,000 to $64,000,
depending on terrain, per mile for track they built, plus they would be
given 20 square miles of land on one side of the track for 20 miles,
then on the other side of the track for the next 20 miles.  This they
resold to get even more funding.  The complementary squares would belong
to the government.  The financial enticements were good enough to bring
together a consortium of eastern railroads to form the Union Pacific.
One railroad started from Sacramento, the other from Omaha.  The deal
finally came together in 1865 and they had to finish by 1875.  That was
the deal.  Of course that was just fine with the investors who wantedto
get that land and the track subsidies ASAP.  22,000 men were mobilized
for the task.
     First, surveyors would come into a stretch of land and find where
the track should be laid, mapping a route.  Next, graders would create a
roadbed fourteen feet wide.  Where it was needed, bridge builders would
come in and fill in the gaps.  The next step was to have section crew
and gandy dancers placing ties and rails at a rate of four rails per
minute.  Finally gaugers, spikers, bolters did the final work.  It was
not easy.
     Chinese did most of the building.  In cold weather tunnels under
the snow went from the shacks to the track.  The term "Hell on Wheels"
was created at this time.  This was a mobile community of saloons and
bordellos that could be disassembled and moved to follow the track crews
west from Omaha to Utah.  One of the dangers was Indians who saw the
railroad as a decidedly losing proposition for them.  And in this they
were not mistaken.  It frightened away game, it brought hunters like
Buffalo Bill Cody who slaughtered large numbers of buffalo to feed
railroad crews, and it brought Euros west to take the land.  If there
was an up-side to this for Indians, I am missing it.  At Plum Creek,
Nebraska, some Indians decided to express some displeasure by ripping
down telegraph wires, ripping up railroad ties, and then waiting.  Six
railroad workers came to see what had happened and five were shot and
the other one scalped and left for dead.  The latter was Bill Thompson,
who survived and brought his scalp to a doctor in a bucket of water.
The doctor could do nothing to salvage the scalp and it ended as a
display in the Omaha Public Library.
     The deadline was to complete the railroad line in ten years and if
it was one railroad building it, it might have taken the full decade.
Instead it was two railroads competing in the land giveaway.  Whichever
built more rail got more land and more power.  They could have agreedto
take their time, but I suppose neither trusted the other so they
completed the job in under four years.
     I could make a joke and say the two railroads made this silly
mistake and passed each other laying 150 miles of track they didn't
need.  I would hope by now you would know not to believe me when I told
you something as absurd as that.  The truth is that it was 250 miles and
was done intentionally to defraud the American taxpayer.  The railroads
just liked the deal they got from the United States government so much
they didn't want it to come to an end just because the job was done.In
fact, the two tracks were often in sight of each other so the fraud was
pretty brazen.  They got caught and the government told them the game
was up.  The two railroads split the difference and that was how
Promontory Point was chosen.
     It was a more expensive investment for the government and it paid
handsomely.  It was an expensive investment for the two railroads, but
it paid off even more handsomely.  Crossing the country went from taking
six months to six days and everybody benefited.  The railroads
advertised that land was available cheap in the West from them and
farmers could take the land and ship produce by rail to market.  People
disillusioned with the East found it was all true.  The land was cheap.
They could ship by rail.  And when they were done paying off the
railroad, the railroad could make a fortune and the farmers almost had
enough to eat.  Do you remember the bank in Vernal that was built of
bricks sent by mail to avoid rail charges?  The railroad was supremely
hated in the old west and it was because a few men got very rich and a
lot of people lived in misery.
     Incidentally, the locomotives 119 and Jupiter each continued work
into the 20th century before being scrapped.  The park has full-sized
recreations that are supposed to be very accurate.  It also has exhibits
like go pieces from the Chinese workers.  (Go is an Asian board game of
conquest and holding territory.  It has simpler and much less arbitrary
rules than chess, but is a more complex and cerebral game.  It is
getting to be well-known in this country.)  There is also an example of
a song that the Irish workers sang to the effect that someone blown up
in an explosion would be docked pay for the time he spent blown into the
sky.
     Before we left, we walked the Big Fill Trail, which follows the
course of the track for a mile and a half.  There is no track left at
Promontory Point except what was relaid for the demonstration trains.
The depot was moved to Ogden and in World War II the rails were picked
up as scrap metal.  But you do see a cave that the workers might have
slept in and a place where the workers started to blast a path in the
wrong direction.  There are two parallel trails maybe thirty feet apart.
One is the Central Pacific track, one the Union Pacific.  As I said,
they laid parallel track.
     Driving back to Salt Lake City, we listened to the radio.  An ad
said that with photo processing you get a 24-picture roll of film for99
cents.  "That less than two-and-a-half cents per picture," they claim.
I guess what is happening is basic math skills are not being taught in
the schools any more.
     One of the odd phenomena of the Southwest is what I call the
"Pickup Dog."  You see a lot of pickup trucks with dogs riding in the
back, enjoying the wind going by their ears.  (A dog's sense of speedis
in their ears, I am told.  A dog thinks he is going as fast as the wind
is going past his ears.  I don't know how anyone knows that, but it is
certainly what is claimed.)  In any case you see a lot of dogs in the
back of pickup trucks.  Sometimes it is even dogs as small as
dachshunds, though they are usually big dogs.
     Dinner was at Red Iguana, which is supposedly one of the best
Mexican restaurants in Utah.  It certainly was good and a very different
style than the popular conception of Mexican cuisine.  The place looks
like a dive except for the fact that the parking lot was full.  So was
the restaurant.  And the food was great.  We shared Chiles Encurtidos(a
sort of Chile Relleno) as an appetizer and then I had Mole Amarillos
(chicken in a hot mole sauce) as the main course.  Very filling, but
unlike Mexican food I remember ever having.
     After that we went to Tower Theater and Video, a combination
theater and video store.  We bought a copy of a rare silent film
particularly popular in this part of the world, TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS.
But our real reason for going was to see A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE starring
Albert Finney.
     This turns out to be a very dark film, literally and figuratively,
about a bus conductor in 1963 Dublin who lives for literature and
poetry.  There is a major plot element I am leaving out that comes tobe
what the film is really about, but I will not give away what it is.
Perhaps the theater is using too dim a bulb in the projector (which
happens) or perhaps the film was just photographed to be dark.
     May 29, 1995: Of course, the first thing I do this morning is set
my watch and computer ahead by two hours.  If I start thinking in
destination time, it makes it easier to adapt.  We go to the breakfast
in the motel.  There are three little tables there and one family of
four has taken two of them.  Another man gives up his table for us.  He
is wearing a black t-shirt with the slogan "Truth Comes from Knowledge"
and in the syntax of road signs it has a red circle with a red bar
through saying "No."  The symbol in the circle is a cross.  I think the
symbol is a little unfair to Christians, but I agree with the sentiment
that truth comes from knowledge rather than faith.  It takes some
courage to make that statement so openly in Salt Lake City.  I am a
little sorry I didn't find out a little more about the man and if the
t-shirt comes from an organization.
     How should we spend the last morning?  We really have nothing
planned.  We attempt the Bountiful/Farmington Loop which is only
marginally suggested for two-wheel drive vehicles.  We drive up a way
and get some nice pictures, but decide it probably is not a good idea.
     We drove around a nice neighborhood, taking a look at the local LDS
temple, then decided our time could better be spent in the city.  We
drove to the same parking lot we had used two days ago and went back to
the Family History Library to see if we could look up information about
friends and family.  Evelyn still cannot find any information about her
name in Puerto Rico.  Her name is thought to have come from Greek, but
there is no record of the family name in Greece.  I might suggest she
write to the AKC to see if they have any records.
     It is interesting to see some of the Jewish books they have on the
shelves like Bader's THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TALMUDIC SAGES or Emmanuel's
HISTORY OF THE JEWS OF THE NETHERLANDS ANTILLES.  We have some time
after this visit so we walk around the downtown of Salt Lake City.  I
notice that the big department store in this area is ZCMI.  I have been
seeing this for a while.  It doesn't exactly roll off your tongue, does
it.  Evelyn tells me that it is an acronym for "Zion Commercial
Mercantile Institution," a good Mormon name for a department store.  It
really is amazing how often you run into references that this is a
heavily Mormon state.  The center of the city is the Mormon Temple; the
state capitol has a statue of Brigham Young.  The police cars have
beehives to remind us of the Mormon symbolism.  From my point of view,
something has gone really wrong with the separation of Church and State.
     After we were done walking around the city, we had three hours
before our flight. We could have sat around the airport or driven out
I-80 and seen the Great Salt Lake.  We did the latter.  We passed by
this large, weird building on the edge of the lake.  I pointed it outto
Evelyn and said that is where the dead dance after dark.  Evelyn
chuckled.  Then it struck me that CARNIVAL OF SOULS was filmed on the
Great Salt Lake.  "That's the place!" I told Evelyn.
     Okay, let me tell you what this is all about.  December 31, 1966, I
was alone.  My parents were probably out at a party.  At something like
1 AM there was a film coming on called CARNIVAL OF SOULS.  Never heard
of it.  But, what the heck, it was an intriguing title.  What I saw was
just about the best horror film I ever have seen.  It was made on what
had to be a super-low budget, black-and-white, no gore, no special
effects beyond stage makeup, but what a creepy film!  It owes a lot to
"Twilight Zone" and to the traditions of the silent horror film.  So for
years I would ask other film fans what they thought of it.  The response
was uniform~...~"never heard of it."  Eventually I started running into
people who had heard of it and most who like horror films think this one
is pretty good.  Much of it was filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, but part was
filmed in this baroque, crumbling dance hall on the Great Salt Lake.
     We went inside, 90% sure that this was the place in the film.  Now
it is called Saltair.  What we found out is that there have been three
baroque buildings on this site.  The building in the film burned downin
1970 and was rebuilt not quite so ornately in 1983.
     Well, we got some very good ice cream and some postcards and one
more entry on our list of films to be seen when we get home.  We drove
to the airport and dropped off the car uneventfully.  They asked how the
car was and Evelyn said that we didn't like the design of the car, but
otherwise it was fine.
     At this point we are boarded and ready to go home.  Next to me is
Keith, who is the head of a CAD/CAM group in a company from Houston.He
start up the conversation seeing me typing into my palmtop.  He asks
what are the advantages of this over other palmtops.  I tell him, "I'll
show you."  I close up Thing and put it in my pocket.  "That's the
advantage."  Thing fits in my pocket.  I also tell him about some of the
programs I have written for Thing and why I like it.  We talk a little
about the Internet, and my hobbies and his hobbies.  He paints and
hikes.  Most of what he paints is landscapes.
     Snack is pretzels and ballpark style peanuts.  I spent what timeI
was not talking typing in my trip log.  The experiment of typing in the
log seems to be going well.  I can type into Thing at about the same
speed I write in the paper logbook.  The difference is that the result
is more legible and that the first typed draft of my log will be doneby
the time I get home.  Also when I write the log I can jump all over the
place, describing events pretty much at the time they happen or just
afterward.  I can work on three days logs at the same time, writing the
current material or just taking notes on current events and at the same
time expanding notes I took previous days.  Also, if I want to expandor
correct comments I made a week ago, I can find them quickly and make the
change in under a minute.  For example I suspect that at some point I
typed the words "The Book of the Mormon" which early in the trip I
thought was the correct title, it is actually "The Book of Mormon."  It
took about a minute to find the one time in the log I made that mistake
and it is corrected already.  I keep each day's log in a different file
and I can see which days I had the most to talk about and which the
least.  This is a terrific way to do my log.
     Our flight got in late.  We rushed off and on to the next plane
which had already boarded.  Since I have a suitcase with knapsack straps
and a briefcase with a strap, both of which hang on to me without me
using my hands and since I can write in Thing no matter how I am
jouncing up and down, I was rushing to my plane across the terminal in
Houston and using the time to write about Promontory Point.  Talk about
your multi-processing.  I might have looked like a freak, but I could
write my memories of the trip and walk (quickly) carrying all my luggage
at the same time.  I think I wrote about a paragraph while rushing to
get to the plane.  And writing my log is probably more entertaining than
reading a book.
     As the luck of the draw, on the second leg my seat is in front of a
father holding a baby of just the wrong age.  The baby must be about two
years old.  That is a rambunctious age.  The baby is alternately
screaming, crying, and kicking my seat.  I think he chose dinner timeto
choke and to spit up.  At work I have a reputation for liking children.
I guess that is because I fold them origami and talk to them like
adults.  Well, I guess I do like children, but only within the narrow
range of good behavior.  I am not sure how I define this range, but I
know it when I see it.  And it may sound terrible to say, but dogs are
more often in this range than children.
     There are two women in my row (other than Evelyn).  One is reading
a popular book saying women's problems are the fault of men and their
insensitivity; the other one is reading a romance novel.  I wonder if
they want to trade off?  The one reading the romance novel has the front
cover folded back over the back cover to hide the fact it is a romance
novel.  Can men be so bad if romance novels sell so well?  (I have tobe
honest: this question was not originally asked by me.  There is a book
called THE MYTH OF MALE POWER that points out this irony.)
     Dinner was a brand-name tuna fish sub, brand-name cheese crackers,
a brand-name cookie, packets of brand-name mayonnaise and brand-name
mustard.  Also a small apple without a brand name.  I remember when
there wasn't so much advertising with an airplane meal.
     There is a competition going between someone in this cabin and the
stewardess.  The passenger is trying to see how often he can hit the
call button.  The stewardess is trying to see how long she can ignore
it.  The noise it makes is piercing.  The captain earlier announced that
we would be five minutes ahead of schedule.  "Let's see if we really
are," I think.  A little later we are told that because of bad weather
we would be forty minutes late.  That put us in about midnight.  The
good news is that we have plenty of fuel to stay up in the air.  Not so
good.  I have a 9 Am meeting tomorrow with my department head.  The
plane has started bucking.  It wakes up the baby behind me who is very
unhappy and wants his father to do something about the bucking of the
plane.  Well, I would like him to do something about it also, but I am
not crying and kicking the seat in front of me.  Do you think it would
help?  Well, flights to Newark ALWAYS seem to get in late.  Maybe I
should look at it as an extension of my vacation.  Maybe I should take a
nap.
     Well, apparently New York area is socked in by clouds.  We don't
have enough fuel to wait in the air the two hours that will be necessary
to wait for an opening.  Instead we will divert to Norfolk, Virginia,to
get more fuel.  This was going to be the easy leg of the trip.  Uh-uh.
Now it looks like we won't be in until 2 AM.  Every time the captain
makes an announcement there is a sound coming over the speakers that
sounds like a toilet flushing.  I wonder what that is.
     We came in over what looks like piers in Norfolk.  It would have
been impressive had it been during the day.  Even at night it didn't
seem like a slouch experience.  There is another plane landing at about
the same time.  It sounds like there is a heavy wind outside the plane.
The captain has just announced all three airports in the New York area
are closed down.  The captain is going to get more fuel and to find an
alternate plan.  Evelyn asks me if this is the fun part.  Perhaps it is.
Things are starting to get interesting.  I suggest that it might be a
hurricane but Evelyn says it really is too early in the season.  I have
seen planes land in thunderstorms, however and it sounds like it is a
little more than that.  Well, I will cover the excitement as long as my
batteries last.
     Well, we are going to pull up to the gate.  New York area airports
are still socked in.  They cannot get into a New York airport.
Meanwhile we have discovered that the woman who was reading the romance
is actually an editor for Ballantine Books.  Evelyn has found a kindred
spirit.  The two are having a lovely conversation.
     We are now in the airport in Norfolk. People calling New York are
being told we missed a terrific thunderstorm with tornados in some
places.  It sounds like we missed a really great thunderstorm.  If we
were home we probably would have turned out the lights, opened the back
door and put on Franz Waxman's music from THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
Now, however, the storm has ended and planes are starting to take off
for the New York area.  Supposedly we missed a really good storm.
Evelyn is calling the limo company and they have changed their phone
number.  Trying to call the new phone number, she is told that they
cannot complete the call as dialed.  She calls the operator for help,
but it does not good.  Apparently they have changed their number to one
that doesn't exist.  If they are not at the airport to pick us up we
will have to find another way home.  It could be fun.
     Well, we are reboarding at 12:25 AM.  Why does everyone in first
class look the same.  They are all white men with paunches.
     Well, it is 12:40 AM and the plane is once more on its way.
According to the captain there will be no food service on this flight
due to its short duration.  Big surprise.
     Well, we landed about 1:35 AM--about 140 minutes late--and we could
not find the limo driver.  We called the limo company and they said he
should be there shortly and said he was a thin black man about 30.  I
went off looking for him and found him at the luggage area.  Now we had
to get out of an airport at which everybody landed within a few minutes
of each other.  The driver seems to know only a few phrases of English.
     Well, not much to add.  Our driver slapped a $50 fine on a $47 fare
us for being late.  I would think I should question it, but Evelyn said
to let it go.  It does seem a bit stiff.
     More or less as I expected after I got home I found it very hardto
explain to people why this was such an extraordinary trip.  "Okay, so
you saw some big rocks."  "No, but these things really are impressive."
"Oh, sure.  I believe you."  "No, they are really, really big.  Rocks
three-quarters of a mile high.  Weird shapes."  "Well, it's been nice
talking to you.  Glad you had a good time."  Oh well.
                    Copyright 1995 by Mark Leeper