Zion to Vegas

We slept in and didn't make it out to Lake Powell. If waking up just before 10am didn't already kill our plans, the really expensive and complicated jet ski rentals and apparent outlawing of cliff jumping were good enough on their own to cancel the 3-hour drive to Lake Powell and back. Instead, we decided to go back to Zion NP and do another hike. This one was much less harrowing and kind of boring - it never really stood a chance after the Angel's Landing hike the day before. The trail sounded good - Emerald Pools hike (three pools .5 - 1 mile apart) - except a couple of them weren't so much pools as big puddles and the ones that were big weren't really emerald-colored. We decided that we were there in the wrong season - maybe during the spring with more rain and snow melt it would be much better. Regardless, it was good to get a little more hiking in before we headed to Vegas.

The drive to Vegas gave us a pretty clear impression of what we were in for over the next 4 days - it got up to 116 degrees, and that was at around 6:30 pm. Steph's grandma Darlene (her dad's mom) has been nice enough to put us up while we're in town. She's even insisted on paying for all our food and most of our entertainment - which has done wonders for the budget. Steph's uncle Ryan and his family also live in Vegas, so we borrowed their daughter Emily (flower girl in our wedding) to have some fun. We've played 2 rounds of putt-putt and lots of skeeball and other arcade games at Circus Circus and Chuck-e-cheese. Not exactly your typical Vegas vacation, but its been fun. After dinner tonight we're planning on going down to the strip to walk around a do a little gambling - the more money we lose the more working we'll have to do in New Zealand.

Tomorrow morning we're going to drive up (or I guess I should say down) to Death Valley. We have no intentions on spending much time there, since its probably going to be even hotter than it is here, but we'll check it out. We'll stay somewhere between there and Yosemite National Park for the night, then camp the next 2 nights in Yosemite. Internet has been pretty non-existent in the parks so look for our next post to be Tuesday or Wednesday.

Update: We've posted some videos on Youtube.

On hike to Sky Pond in Rocky Mountain NP:

Bison crossing Yellowstone River:

Bryce, Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks

That's right, we've been to three national parks since our last post. Get ready for another long post. Sunday morning we did the "best 3-mile hike in the world" at Bryce Canyon. While I can't support the claim that it is the best 3-miler, it was a good hike. We walked down into the canyon among the "hoodoos" and through tunnels and narrow canyons. After that we decided to head down to the Grand Canyon since we weren't sure where we'd camp that night and wanted to secure a spot. One good thing about visiting the north rim of the Grand Canyon, other than the fact that it is less crowded than the south rim, is that there is a large national forest right next door. National forests usually have free "dispersed" camping if you venture away from the road a bit, but of course we had to stay at the $17 a night campground since the scary animals won't get you there (according to Steph).

After setting up camp, we drove down to the canyon to walk around a bit and see the sunset. There is a great little trail that goes out about a quarter mile to a little point with some pretty scary cliffs but great views. It was a good spot to sit and read a bit and later to watch the sun set.

The next morning we attempted to hike the Kaibab trail, which is the only trail from the north rim that goes down into the canyon. It's something like 14 miles to the canyon floor, but it's apparently a pretty popular trail to go about 4 or 5 miles in and turn around. I have no idea why it is popular because the dang trail was shared with the mule riders and smelled absolutely horrible. We made it maybe 0.2 miles in and just couldn't stand it anymore. The thought of having to trek back up the hill with every breath full of manure was simply too much. We turned around and decided to head towards our hotel for the night in Kabab, Utah. The Grand Canyon was of course huge and really cool to see, but we decided that unless you are going to hike deep into the canyon, there's only so much looking at a big hole that one can do. Maybe that's just us.

Since we were ahead of schedule and had some time to kill, we decided to go ahead and check out Zion National Park. On the way we detoured to Coral Pink Dunes State Park but didn't go in because of the $6 entrance fee - you can still go up on the dunes from just outside the park. We walked around a bit until our shoes were filled with sand, then moved on. For some reason I was expecting Zion NP to be kinda lame. I had been there before and didn't remember much about it. I also knew there was a cool hike that Steph's dad had talked about. Apparently my memory is pretty bad. Zion is really impressive. It is a huge canyon with towering sandstone cliffs. There is something more formidable and dramatic about staring up and 1000-ft cliffs and mountains than there is looking down into a giant hole. We did the Angel's Landing hike, which is 2.5 miles each way and climbs almost 1500 feet to a peak with incredible 360 degree views. It's got to be the most dangerous hike I've ever done. You are literally 2 feet away from certain death, usually with a heavy chain to hang on to. The last half mile you practically climb up the rocky slope. Still, it is a really popular hike and totally worth the effort. Steph actually handled it pretty well, even though she was complaining about "dizziness" as we neared the peak. Probably not a good symptom to have when you're standing on the edge of the cliff.

Tomorrow we're hoping to head to Lake Powell, one of my favorite places from my family's trip out west when I was a kid. So far my memory hasn't served me too well, but I think this one will work out better. The lake is basically a dammed-up canyon, so it's got vertical, rocky walls and deep water - perfect for cliff jumping. Hopefully we'll find a good little hike where I can find a good swimming/jumping spot. Tomorrow night we head to Vegas for the next 3 days or so. We're looking forward to the down time.

Bryce Canyon

Pretty self-explanatory

Zion N.P.

Housekeeping

In this post I'm going to try to solve a few issues people are having and hopefully help people navigate the blog a little better.

• Subscribing to the blog. A number of people have asked about this - basically getting an email alert every time we make a new post. Unfortunately (and surprisingly), there is no easy way to do this. What I've done is set up a Google Group. Everyone that is in this group will get the email alert for each new post. If you are interested in this, there are two ways to join the group:

1. Go to this link: http://groups.google.com/group/adam-and-stephs-blog and click "Join this group" over on the right hand side. You must have a Google account to join the group this way - not necessarily use Gmail but have a Google account. It's easy to sign up if you don't already have one.
2. If you don't have a Google account and don't want to sign up for one, just send me an email or use the contact form at the bottom of the blog to let me know you want in.

• Posting a comment on the blog. First, I think there is a little confusion about the difference between posting a comment and using the contact form at the bottom of the blog. The contact form simply sends us an email with the message you type. Nobody else can see it. To post a comment that anyone reading the blog can see, you must first click on the title of the post or the "# comments" link at the bottom of the post. You'll then find a "Post a Comment" box below the blog entry. Simply type in your message, then select "Name/URL" where it says "Comment as:". You can enter your name but don't have to enter anything for URL. That's it. Click "Post comment" and you are done. Let it be known I can delete comments if I so please.
• Pictures on Picassa. It seems like a lot of people have been checking the pictures on Picassa. This is good. I am going to try to make it a little easier to find pictures you may be looking for using "tags." Basically I'll assign 1 or 2 tags to a photo - for instance, a photo from Yellowstone may be tagged "road trip" and "Yellowstone". That way, if you are looking only for pictures from the road trip, you can click on that tag (only after you're looking at a picture tagged "road trip" - not from the main picture screen). I thought Google was supposed to be easy - not so. I've been meaning to do this with the blog posts as well but keep forgetting.
• Videos on Youtube. I haven't put any on there yet, but I will. As soon as I figure out how to get my computer to read the memory card I'll do it. Disclaimer: I may turn off the audio - my commentating is generally horrible and embarrassing.

Comments or suggestions? I'd be good to fine-tune this thing now and make sure everything is easy to use and runs smoothly, so any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Sorry for another long post.

Salt Lake City

You can all let out a sigh of relief. The Jimmy's radiator seems to be patched and working fine. Now we just have to decide whether we want to pay to get a new radiator in Vegas or trust my patch job...we'll probably spring for the new radiator.

Despite working on the Jimmy and doing laundry, Steph's birthday in Salt Lake City turned out pretty good. We decided to drive about 45 minutes up into the mountains to Park City for some entertainment and dinner. They had tons of stuff going on at the resort - mountain biking, putt putt, zip line, trampoline jump, an alpine roller coaster - but we opted for the alpine slide, where you sit on a little cart and ride down a track similar to a water slide or bobsled course. Despite being a bit of a wimp Steph made it down injury free and happy. There were tons of places to eat and shop in the town, and we found a nice little restaurant named Purple Sage that was pretty good. Steph had the butternut squash ravioli which, despite sounding pretty gross, was apparently really good.

This morning we visited the city's farmer's market and arts & crafts market, mainly just to look. It was a nice morning and there were loads of people there. After that, we packed up and headed down to Bryce Canyon National Park. Right now we're at another KOA (had good luck with the first) and about ready for bed. We did a quick tour through the park already and have a hike planned for tomorrow morning. Supposedly it is the "best 3 mile hike in the world", which is a bold claim. We'll see about that.

After our hike tomorrow we'll head down to the Grand Canyon to camp for the night. May not have internet access so we probably wont post again for a couple days. No new pictures yet. Stay tuned for a "housekeeping" post where we'll help some of the old-timers navigate the blog.

Not so great timing after all

So the Jimmy has a crack in the radiator. It was spewing antifreeze when we stopped at an overlook yesterday. We took it easy the rest of the trip and it seems to not leak as long as the A/C isnt on (oh great, it was 108 here yesterday). A guy at a radiator shop we found showed me the crack but couldnt fix it that day. So we figured, "this is perfect timing, we'll ease it down to Salt Lake City where we are spending a couple days and get it fixed there." Wrong. Not only is today Steph's birthday, but it is also Pioneer Day - the day Brigham Young first arrived in what is now SLC. Little did we know this is a HUGE deal around here. There is a big parade through town and its all you hear about on the local news. Also, all auto shops seemed to have shut down for the weekend. Naturally, I'm going to try to fix it myself, at least temporarily. The hope is that it'll hold up until we get to Vegas in 5 or 6 days. Heading to Autozone in a little bit... wish us luck!

Yellowstone & Grand Teton

Right now Steph and I are sitting at a KOA "Kampground" just outside Montpelier, Idaho. We've camped the last 4 nights (and drove all night the one before that), so we're looking forward to a nice hotel bed for the next 2 nights in Salt Lake City.

Since our last update, we continued to have a great time in Yellowstone. The park truly is special. The abundance of wildlife is amazing and the scenery is good, but the geothermal features are really what set it apart. Going in, I knew about Old Faithful and all the geysers, but what I didn't realize is that the entire park is basically one big still active volcano. There are bubbling puddles of mud and gurgling hot springs everywhere. I went exploring around our campground to a beautiful little meadow in a valley with a small river snaking through, and almost walked into a big boiling pit of water that spilled into the river. Apparently it's all going to erupt again one day, so anyone who hasn't been there needs to plan a trip. The clock is ticking...

One thing about Yellowstone is that it is HUGE. We literally drove at least 300 miles in our 3 days in the park. From the east entrance, that we came in to, our campground was 55 miles away, and our campground is "centrally located". The main road is basically shaped like a big "8", so we spent one day exploring the north loop and the next circling the south. We saw Old Faithful erupt, of course, which was cool but not all that great since you know what is coming. Gotta see it though. I guess that's why there were about 1000 people watching it with us. I actually found the best parts of the park to be some of the least visited. The Lamar Valley in the northeast corner was probably my favorite, and not coincidentally its one of the best places to spot wildlife, especially bears and wolves (though we saw neither while we were there).

A running joke that we had was that when you see somebody pulled over taking hundreds of pictures of a lone bison or elk, "they must have just got here." There are something like 15-25 thousand elk in the park, and about 3-4 thousand bison. You're going to see them, and a lot of them. You'll probably get within 10 feet of the bison too, as they seem to like to stand in the road. At some point you almost stop caring and become obsessed with finding the bears, wolves, and other hard-to-spot animals. That being said, seeing the huge herds of bison was pretty neat and you couldn't help but think about the old days when there were millions of them roaming the plains.

Luckily we do have some more good wildlife spotting to report. On Monday we did a hike up Mount Washburn, where you can get great panoramic views of the park and beyond. We were told that this was a great place to see the Bighorn Sheep, but didn't spot any on the way up. There are actually 2 trails to get to the peak, and we talked to a couple who had just come up the other way and seen lots of sheep. So naturally we were pretty disappointed since we couldn't go back down the way they had hiked since it would put us too far from our car. Of course we still didn't see any on the way back down (I can't see sheep!). Then, as we round a corner of the path, about 40 yards in front of us was a big stinkin Grizzly standing in the path. Luckily we didn't startle him or anything, and he slowly moved off the path. Steph frantically looked for a stick, Taylor whipped out her camera and started walking towards the bear, and I tried to remember what the rangers told us to do. We waited a minute and made a lot of noise as we moved down the path (there was no way around), and the bear moved of the trail and disappeared in the trees. It was definitely the highlight of the trip, so far...

Aside from the grizzlies, elk, and bison, we saw pronghorn antelope, bald eagles, a coyote, a black bear, an otter, sandhill cranes, and an osprey. We woke up and broke camp early on Wednesday, our last day, since Taylor had a flight to catch at about 5 and we hadn't even seen Grand Teton Nat'l Park yet. As we drove out of the park, though, we saw a ray of hope. There is a group of people who watch the wolves of the park almost constantly. They study their habits, keep track of the family structures, and follow the dynamics between the different packs. We hadn't seen them yet in all our driving around the park, but there they were, in a part of the park we had been through tons of times. We got out and they informed us that the wolves should be there soon as this was their "rendezvous point." And by this I mean at least a half mile away down in a valley. So we waited. And waited. Finally one guy said he saw the alpha female come out of the trees, but she went back in before any of us could spot her. After about 15 more minutes of waiting and watching, I saw a little movement of gray from my $15 Target binoculars (everybody else had expensive spotting scopes). Sure enough, it was the alpha female with her little pup in tow. We couldn't see much from the binoculars, but one of the wolf guys was nice enough to let us look through his scope. The female was a light gray color and the little pup chasing behind her was jet black. Even though we only saw them for a few seconds each through the scope, it was really a cool moment and probably our favorite spotting we had.

After that we had to head down to Grand Teton so we could spend some time in the park, but construction and a good hour delay really set us back. Still, it was a beautiful day and the mountains are spectacular, and we found a great lunch spot right on the shore of Jenny Lake with Grand Teton right in front of us. Steph even exclaimed that it was one of her top 5 favorite spots in the world (so far..). After a very short time in the park, including a brief chilling swim in of the lakes by me, we drove down to Jackson and dropped Taylor off at the airport. The next time we see her will hopefully be in New Zealand...

I've been to Jackson Hole in the winter for skiing and thought it was fairly crowded, but during the summer it is absolutely packed. We lucked into a parking spot right in town and walked around a bit and checked out some of the shops. It didn't take long for me to be sick of the crowds, so we headed south along the Snake River towards our budget motel in Montpelier. As you may have figured out, we didn't quite make it. The office was closed by the time we got there (the place looked shady anyways), so we came back up the road a bit to this KOA. It turned out good since they have showers and free internet. Today we'll drive down to Salt Lake City for a couple nights, do a little sightseeing, but mostly rest, do some laundry, stuff like that. Oh ya, it's Steph's birthday tomorrow so we'll have to go do something fun.

UPDATE: Photos are posted on Picassa. We'll put more on the blog tonight.

Bear on trail

Quick Update

Sorry for not updating recently. We're made it to Yellowstone and have been spending all our time searching for wildlife. Here's a quick update about what's been happenning since our last post.

• Steph and I had a bit of altitute sickness after our big hike in Rocky Mtn NP, so we didnt do any more hikes. We drove up over the mountains and saw some big herds of elk including a couple big bucks. On the way out of the park we saw a moose and calf (pretty far away) and some bighorn sheep.
• We stayed with my cousin Josh and his wife Sylvia in Stapleton, CO - the most sustainable city in the country. Went out to eat with them and Taylor and had a good time exploring Denver.
• Steph killed a dog. I'm not kidding. We borrowed Josh and Sylvia's bikes on Saturday for some exploring. There was this little dog just running down the sidewalk, so Steph chases it (she claims she was trying to call it). Anyways the dog runs out in the street and just gets nailed. Poor little thing. The eye popped out and everything. Sick. We're pretty sure it was a stray.
• That night we drove all night up to Yellowstone. Really wasnt that bad. I was paranoid about a deer running out in the road, and we saw a lot of them right next to it, so that kept me pretty alert.
• We're staying at the Norris Campground in Yellowstone. Last night it poured down rain but we were able to stay dry.
• So far in Yellowstone we've had 3 grizzly sightings, TONS of bison (including a whole herd swim across the river which was really cool), elk, deer, pronghorn antelope, but NO wolves. We'll find some.
• Yellowstone is awesome.

We'll update and add pictures in a couple days when we get out of the park.

Rocky Mountian National Park

We have had a great time since our last post. We met up with Taylor last night to find a campsite in Rocky Mtn N.P. After picking up groceries in Estes Park, all campsites in RMNP were full. Oh ya, it was already about 8:30 by this point and starting to get a little dark. Maybe should have gotten started a little sooner. Taylor's friend had told her about some free campsites in the nearby National Forest. Taylor wasn't all that convincing that we'd find these campsites, but our only other option at this point was to sleep in the cars, so we decided to go for it. About 45 minutes and a half-dozen stops later (because we were convinced we were lost), we found the campsites - such a relief. I never would have heard an end to the whining if Steph had to sleep in the car. It was pitch black by the time we started setting up camp, but I happened to find a pile of firewood that some other campers had left behind. So stinkin lucky. So we had a nice fire, everyone slept pretty good, and Steph didnt see any bears. All good.

First thing this morning Steph and I secured a campsite in RMNP, and we set off on the 9 mile round-trip hike to Sky Pond. One of Taylor's buddies from camp assured us that this was a "flat" hike with "no hills." Well I dont know what he was smoking, because the entire 4.5 or so miles up to the Pond was ONE BIG HILL. Nevertheless, it was an incredible hike. We hiked through meadows and forests, along river gorges, through snow, even up a waterfall. There was great view after great view, plus the weather was perfect yet again. In all we saw three mountain lakes, all of them stunning. The water was crystal clear and full of cutthroat trout. Our lunch spot on the side of Sky Pond was very dramatic (see pics), with marmots and little chipmunks periodically checking us for leftovers. I will say, the one good thing about the hike up to the pond is that the entire way back was all downhill - we got back in about half the time it took us to get there.

Tonight we're eating dinner in Estes Park, taking a drive along what is apparently the highest elevation road in the US (or something like that) at sunset, and attending a seminar on wildflowers put on by the park service. We should sleep well tonight.

FYI I'm putting all the pictures we've taken so far on our Picasa account - so check the link on the right if you want to see those.

lunch spot - Sky Pond

We made it to Colorado!

Alas, we have finally made it to Colorado. In all honesty, two and a half straight days of driving wasn't all that bad. It did get pretty boring at times in Oklahoma, Kansas, and eastern Colorado. I think Oklahoma was the most boring of all - plus we had to pay tolls. Double whammy. We stayed last night in Garden City, Kansas. Sounds lovely, right? (Ok, maybe not) The town was fine at first...until the winds changed direction. Then the entire town smelled like manure. I'm not kidding. It was horrible. For some reason Steph decided this would be a good time to walk to the Target next door. Sometimes I wonder about that girl. Oh ya, did I mention it was 111 degrees in Kansas? Who knew? The car was overheating a little so we tried to go without the AC for a bit. You open the windows and it literally feels like a hair dryer is blowing on you. Miserable. The Jimmy would have to suck it up a little, which it did just fine (for all you naysayers).

Anyways, we finished the last 6 hours or so to Estes Park, Colorado this morning/afternoon. It was a beautiful drive from Denver up through the mountains to Estes Park. We stopped in Boulder for a late lunch, which seemed like a great town, except it was packed out with people. For good reason I guess. Estes Park turned out to be even more beautiful as it is surrounded by the Rockies. We're currently sitting at Starbucks next to a nice little river enjoying the views and breeze. We're about to meet up with Taylor (Adam's sister) to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park. We put her in charge of finding a place to camp, so hopefully she took care of that. We'll camp tonight and tomorrow night before heading down to Taylor's house in Denver on Friday. She's got a lot of hikes for us to do over the next couple days, which should be fun. At least it'll give us a good way to work off all these Jelly Bellys we've been consuming the past couple days...

Starbucks spot

First Day....More Up Than Down

Whew! The trip is FINALLY underway. We took off this morning on what will eventually be a 27-day road trip across the good ol' US of A. After a nice goodbye breakfast courtesy of Adam's mom, we set off from Lilburn about 9 am this morning. A couple quick errand stops and we were gone.

One decision we made for this road trip was to try to go without a GPS. Maps-only. Old school. All seemed well until we got lost just outside Birmingham. Apparently in Alabama you can just start highways in the middle of nowhere, without connecting them to any major interstates. Oh ya, and don't provide any signs as to how to get to it. Go figure. An hour and a half and a lot of frustration later, we were back on track.

The only other hiccup we had was the Jimmy (our car) smoking a little as we went up hills. Oh crap. We stopped at a gas station and realized it was running low on anti-freeze. We topped her off and that seems to have fixed the problem. We'll keep our fingers crossed on this one.

The rest of the trip went pretty well. We got a book on tape from Cracker Barrel. They have a great program for anyone doing a road trip of their own - only like $3.50 per week and you can return to any Cracker Barrel. We had a good Memphis barbeque dinner at Neely's - Steph had seen it on the Food Network on "Down Home with the Neely's." Also I believe her "Aunt" Paula Deen had recommended them in the past.

We eventually arrived at our hotel in Conway, Arkansas about 9pm local time. It's been all in all a good day. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow as we drive thru Oklahoma and deep into the Sunflower state (dont look it up, its Kansas).

We're live!

The blog is now officially active, but dont expect much activity here for the next couple weeks until we start our road trip. In the meantime, we will try to post answers to some of the most frequently asked questions we receive - why New Zealand? do you have jobs set up for when you arrive? how long are you going to be there? etc. If you have any questions, feel free to use the "Contact Us" form at the very bottom of the screen, or send me an email at adambrown5584@gmail.com.