Summer Road Trip - Zion National Park & Las Vegas

My plan had been to do the Angel's Landing hike in Zion National Park. Now, I had read up on this hike and the best time to do it is not in the heat of August. It also gets really, really crowded. It also has some really dangerous and narrow parts, made much worse by crowding. Also, my friend April, who I was to meet up with in Las Vegas, warned me that a friend of hers fell to her death on this hike. So, to prepare and plan for this hike, I had decided, before I even started on this trip, to get up super early and get to the park early, take the required shuttle to the trailhead and beat the crowds. I do not prefer hiking crowded, dangerous hikes in the hottest month of summer in dry climates. I had set the alarm on my cell phone. But, you see, I have a problem with alarms. I have slept through many, many alarms in my life. I have missed many classes and many exams from sleeping through alarms in college. I worked 35 hours a week in college and I would get home from work around 9:30 or 10:00 at night and start studying until the early morning hours. Then I would depend on my alarm to wake me for my 8:00 or 9:00 class or exam because I always scheduled my classes as early as I could so I could finish as early as possible to get to work as early as possible. It is a vicious cycle. But I often sleep very deeply, sleeping through parties, thunderstorms and alarm clocks. My roommates would think my alarm clock went off and I was not at home and eventually, after an hour, the alarm clock would just shut itself off. So, I got a second alarm clock, set five minutes later than the first. When this did not do it, I got a third alarm clock, but still, this did not work either. Finally, my mother discovered the perfect alarm clock with the most annoying sounding buzzer you have ever heard. I have never slept more than twenty minutes through this alarm. It has never failed to wake me, even if twenty minutes later. So, I just set it twenty minutes earlier than the absolute latest time I had to get up.  Sadly, this alarm clock died about six months ago and I have never had the confidence that I will wake up in time since, usually producing a very poor night's sleep over worry that I will sleep through the alarm. Anyway, my cell phone alarm clock fails me this morning and I sleep and sleep. When I do wake up I am excruciatingly disappointed. It is nine o'clock, way too late to get ready, drive over an hour to Zion, hopefully get a parking spot, take the shuttle and make it to the trailhead. So, I immediately discard the whole notion. Now what to do? 
I am seriously considering just driving home. It is morning and I am kind of lonely. I realize that last night was the first night of my entire trip that I spent alone, unless you consider the red-eye on the flight from Salt Lake City, but I don't think that counts. Now, I like to be alone, I really require enormous amounts of alone time, which you think would make me "low maintenance" but, really, I require so much alone time that I think it starts to swing back in the direction of "high maintenance". It can be hard to plan things with me because I already have all my seemingly "free" time spoken for, filled up with my "alone time" things. But despite voluntarily spending a lot of time alone, I do not like to be lonely. You would think that someone who needs so much alone time would not get lonely, but we do and it sucks. I think this is one of the reasons why Paul and I are such a good match, we both like a lot of alone time, which we can have, together. So here, I am a bit puzzled by why I am feeling lonely. But I am. I am pulled because I want to continue to explore but I want to be home, in my familiar surroundings. I guess I am missing having meaningful, human connection, which I can't really have with strangers, if I were even "connecting" with strangers, which I have not done on this trip. It is kind of hard to do when you sit in your car driving most of the time.

I decide that I will not decide. I will start out on the road, in the direction of Zion National Park an hour away and if I don't feel like it then I will just keep driving in the direction of home. I am not on the road more than a few miles when I am struck by the views of huge golden fields. Wow, I am a bit mesmerized by them and then the later fields of tall, yellow, daisy-like wildflowers. Hmm... I see a sign for Zion already, not the heart of the park, but the northwestern section of the park, the much less visited section of the park, the much less crowded section of the park. I fight with indecision for what seems like several minutes, almost in a panic, and at the last second I take the exit for this part of the park and the fate of my day has been decided.
I stop in the visitor's center and show my yearly park pass and get a map. Then I start up the scenic road.

I decide to stop, at random, at a trailhead parking lot and go on a hike that sounds interesting. Zion National Park always amazes me with its huge red mountains and today I am hiking right towards them, among them, following along a shallow creek. The creek is very clear and makes musical sounds in the quiet of this place. There are many lovely plants and wildflowers blooming along the way. I also spot a lizard in the red sand. The trail meanders in and out of pine woods and often requires me to tip toe across some rocks to cross the creek, adding some nice variety.

Plant Life

Lizard

The creek

Glow Sticks

Cabin in the Woods

River in the Woods

The trail is leading me directly into a narrow and deep valley, formed by the red mountains. There, is a rock "overhand" where water drips down, forming small glass-like pools. I am so taken by the pools that I don't explore the rest of this area right away. An older man is there with his older wife. He tells me, "There is an amazing view if you just step back here and look up."
"Okay, thanks. I will." I assure him. I am snapping away some photos of the pools for several minutes, maybe ten minutes or more. When the older man says, "Young lady, make sure you step back here and take a look up at the view." Geezus, I will already, can you cut me a freaking break? Does he want me to do it right then and there just to make him feel better? This man, whom I owe nothing, is not going to tell me what and when I should freaking do something. I want to tell him to go mind his own business, that pointing out something once is plenty enough times. But all I say is, "Okay" in a monotone voice and then, barely missing a beat, I go back to exactly what I was doing. He and his wife leave. I mean, the guy seemed really nice, but don't push your concern on me like that, there is nothing that turns me off faster.

Reflection in Pool

Okay, so when I was done and ready, I did walk back about fifteen feet to the place he mentioned and looked up. Yes, it was quite nice, but not so-freaking-nice-I-am-going-to-wet-my-pants. So, I hike back to my car and continue on this scenic drive through Zion. I saw some beautiful deep canyons and mountains and overlooks. Very amazing stuff and my day of travel was more inspired. Then, at the end of the road I made my way back down to the interstate and headed towards the heart of the park, except that I got sidetracked. I was so enamored by this lesser know part of the park that I wanted to see more "lesser known" parts of the park, so I decided to venture up this one long road through a remote area that passed in and out of the park like a sewing needle.

So, in a small town on a nearly unmarked road I made a left turn. It took me through some dusty, rural neighborhoods out into the dry countryside. I passed fields of dryness and some houses and pastures. People live out here, its amazing. Even the town didn't have much to offer. But they seemed to really love this place because it looked like they had put a lot into the comforts of their home. I drove toward multi-colored mountains and passed through acres and acres of dead trees, perhaps dead orchards that had withered to gray trunks and branches. The road climbed higher and higher and then, all of a sudden, where this red, paved road leveled out was an enormous golden field. I pulled my small purple car as far off the road as I could get it, but really, it was flat here so if a car did come they could easily and safely pass me. Besides, I hadn't even see one other car for many, many miles. Of course, as soon as I pull of, I get passed by six cars. I take a few photos and admire this cluster of the long stemmed daisies that is growing near the fence of the golden field.

Then I am off again, enjoying the amazing views. Eventually I read a crude sign that points me down a dirt road to the overlook that I have decided is my final destination. The dirt road takes me through a green mountain pasture with a few private homes. It is much cooler here, peaceful, remote but not lonely, clam and lovely. I envy the people that live here, even though it is so, so far away from everything. I pass a quiet campground and make a note to myself that I must come back here and camp. The overlook does have amazing views and I drink it in like I would water after a very long run on a very hot day.

I notice there is a group of about six couples, all kind of older, that are leaving. I overhear a bit of their conversation, but other than them there is no one else around. They are leaving and talking about what a great day they had. This reminds me of the time. Ok, actually, I have not forgotten about the time. In fact, I rarely forget about the time. But maybe it is more like it nags me about the time. I need to leave Zion National Park at a reasonable time to drive the two or three hours to Las Vegas so that I can get into town at a reasonable hour to visit with my friend April. So I finish my admiration of the overlook and decide that if I leave right now, I should get into Las Vegas by 5:30, plenty of time to visit with April, the mother of a young child, at a reasonable family hour.

So, I race down the road and back out to the highway. I race across the desert of Utah into the desert, almost wasteland of Nevada through nothing until I hit the lights of Las Vegas. I call April along the way and she does not answer, so I leave her a voice message informing her of my approximate arrival into town. Las Vegas is such a contrast to the last several days of my trip. Neon, traffic, highways and cement. I get off at my exit, near downtown Las Vegas and miss my motel. So I go to the next street and make a right to go around the block. There I encounter the homeless, drugged out population of Las Vegas. The street is full of shopping cart after shopping cart of the homeless. Ragged, tired looking people sit on the sidewalk looking like they had seen better days. I notice that my motel has tall bars around the whole complex. I pull into the motel and check in where an older gentleman kindly helps me from behind the counter. I go to my rather shabby room of the Comfort Inn surrounded by bars. At least there is a pool, also surrounded by bars in the middle of the large parking lot. I call April again and there is again no answer so I leave another message. Then I call her at home and there is no answer. I go to the pool for a short time to cool off and I keep my cell phone within earshot to wait for her call back. But it never comes. I go back inside and decide to get something to eat. I try to go to Capriotti's which is a small Hoagie chain from back home in Pennsylvania and they happen to have opened a small chain in Las Vegas, but I get there two minutes before they close. Disappointed, I was hoping to have a Bobbie for dinner (their special hoagie with turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing on a hoagie roll) I go back to my motel and look up something else online. I end up at Thai BBQ which had high ratings on Yelp but turned out to be a joke. It wasn't too terrible but it wasn't too good either. On my way back to the motel I drive through downtown Las Vegas, past the old casinos of another glory time in Las Vegas' history. I see a person decked out like Darth Vadar walking down Main St. Really, it looks exactly like Darth Vadar is walking the streets, ah, only in Las Vegas.
When I get back to my room, I am feeling disappointed, forgotten and lonely again. I feel foolish too, for racing back to Las Vegas, which I generally deplore, to see my friend who seems to have forgotten that we made a date only yesterday to get together today. You see, when I make a date with someone I keep it. When I make time in my schedule for someone, I keep it. My time is so precious to me that it actually feels like a huge investment for me to give it up to spend with someone else. If I make time for you than you are important to me, I don't make time for just anyone. But not everyone feels this way and over the years, they generally have ceased to be close friends with me (or I with them, for that matter). So instead, I digest my crappy Thai food in a dingy motel surrounded by bars in one of my least favorite cities, lovely Las Vegas.

Summer Road Trip - Driving to Cedar City

Breakfast view from the Lodge restaurant

On my last morning in Bullfrog, Becki and I go back to the Lodge restaurant for breakfast. After I am full of pancakes and coffee and gazing out at Lake Powell, I amuse myself with the thought that Becki is from Bear, Delaware and now lives in Bullfrog, Utah.  Also amusing, is that she has a dog named Pancake, named after a breakfast food and this reminds me of the time my sister wanted to name her dog Lollipop when she was eight and of the cat my grandmother had temporarily, who she named after a food as well, Mochi. I could go for some mochi right now, my favorite food, I am sure they don't have any within at least 300 miles of Bullfrog. But I like the name Pancake for Becki's dog. Pancake, the dog from Bullfrog owned by Becki from Bear. Where do these names come from anyway? I am from Landenberg, but what does this name mean? I am sure it means something, some word or words. I find it interesting that almost all words can be defined by other words, and those words can be defined by other words. So, does that mean that there is a word that in not definable by another word? Is this the first word of language? What, I wonder, was the first word? What was the first word that humans decided that they could agree upon the meaning where they needed no other words to define it. A meaning that is simply that, because it is that word. Maybe it was "I" or maybe it was "God". Is there any person on this world that does not understand the meaning of "I" or the meaning of "God"? Even if you do not believe in God, I think you have a very clear sense of what other people mean when they say "God", and also, you must know the meaning of "God" to know that you do not believe in God. Sure, we have words now, that we can use to describe "God" but maybe, if you could trace those words back to the words that describe them and so on, you would have, at the very beginning, just "God".

Lake Powell at Bullfrog

I find it interesting that "I" and "God" were the two words I thought of as the first words that were the basis for all other words. Maybe, when you strip away all the words used to describe "I" and "God", you will find that these two words actually mean the same thing.  This is not to say that I think I am God, or that God is me, but that God is in all of us individual "I"'s, and we are all in God. The fact that we have words and at some point there was a first word that we agreed we knew the meaning without another word to describe it, would seem to suggest that we can know something without words. Which also would say that we can think without words and perhaps feel without words. And even if it seems almost unfathomable now to know something or think or feel without words, we all started our time in this world exactly in this way, as babies. And maybe, as babies, we knew these meanings without knowing the words and now these words are really just pointers to the meaning, but they are not the meaning themselves. I wish I could "know" more often, without words. Ah, but perhaps I do! This is why I like photography and music. A picture and a sound can be meanings without words and maybe we crave them because they let our mind relax and take us back to that time as babies, when life was so simple and pure and full of meanings that we could know without labeling them. Oh words, how you complicate and simplify everything, at the same time.
Maybe the first word was actually "experience" and I should really get back to using words to describe my "experience" of driving to Cedar City. On this day, in Utah, I left Becki who went in late to work and I set out driving north out of Bullfrog.
START: 1762 miles.
So, I race back across the orange Utah desert lined with bright pastel green sagebrush and through the open range. The enormous rock formations take the shape of mountains. The mountains begin to be colored with green only to turn again into a white-gray-yellow color. I am on my way to Capitol Reef National Park. The road goes up and down and around sweeping curves and mountains. Today I feel a very familiar nervousness, that is some flavor of fear. What I am nervous or fearful about, I don't know, but I often feel it when I am off to somewhere new. It makes my chest burn and my stomach anxious to the point where I almost feel like I am going to throw up. But I know this feeling so well, that I know I can just charge through it without understanding it.

Capitol Reef is kind of a "drive-through" park. You could be on your way to somewhere else and find yourself just driving through, which is how it happened the last time I was here. This time, I will stop and do at least a short hike. After dry, dry landscape, I enter Capitol Reef, where the valley seems lush in comparison. The narrow valley is green with a river flowing through it and high multi-colored walls rising on the sides. I stop at a gravel parking lot and start my hike.

The road through Capitol Reef

Half-ling Tree

The hike takes me up red rock and turns into white rock. It is dry and hot and the sun feels especially drying today. I drink often from my camelback. There are dry bushes and dwarfed trees that are kind of depressing. I think I have been in the desert too long. There are desert clumps of wildflowers, but, even as a lover of wildflowers, these too seem sad. The vegetation here seems half dead but not struggling, like they have given up trying to flourish, they have decided they will just take what they can get. I wonder why they grow to such an unsustainable size and put up with their "half" life, so to speak. Why not be smaller and nicer looking? Some of the trees look completely dead, like they are just dried up sticks that have remained. I don't know what about this bothers me today. Why should vegetation bother me? I think, in all the beautiful places I've been, the harsh climate plants you see are usually miraculous. Sometimes it is a tree or a flower that somehow seems to thrive in a particularly extreme climate and this makes it miraculous and you get a sense of wonderment, how nature continues to surprise you. Not here so much. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and teenager and we would go to the beach for just the day and then drive home two and a half hours full of sand and salt water. For some reason the feeling of sand sticking to you in a hot, sweaty car interior where you can't really move around would really irritate me. This reminds me of this place. Irritating.

The Main Road through "white" rock valley

I don't want to turn back, I want to finish my hike and I don't even know why. There is supposed to be a beautiful lookout, so I guess this is motivating me. I am sweating a lot and wishing I had a hat. Even the sun is annoying me today. But I do reach the lookout. I go out to the edge where I enjoy views of the valley and the distant hills, mountains and roads. Its actually quite nice and I indulge in some homemade dried fruit and buffalo jerky. You can see the main road making its way through the green valley made of red and white rock. The green-ness seems unnatural here, but I guess the river that runs through here helps to hydrate the place to life.

View from the overlook

The green valley amongst dry land

I sit there for a while, dangling my feet over the edge until I get a strong urge to leave and get off this mountain and go away from here. Why am I so irritated? My hike down passes quickly and before I know it I am back at my car feeling unrefreshed and thirsty. Hiking usually makes me feel refreshed and excited, even when I am tired.

I get back in my car and get back out onto the main road. A few miles later there is a turn off for a scenic drive through national park land which I decide to take. Much of the road is paved, but soon turns into gravel. There is expansive desert sweeping down and up to one side and high butte walls on the other. The landscape here seems to bother me less. I even enjoy the wildflowers, yellow and red. Maybe I like it because I am amongst the green-ness, instead of looking down upon it. I think I really like green, it means life. I pass many gravel parking lots for hikes whose names seem familiar to me from my travel magazines. Someday I will have to come back to try these all-day hikes, perhaps they will be more inspiring than the one I chose.

At the end of the dirt road I don't stick around too long and turn around. The view going in the opposite direction are also amazing and different. This is what I like about traveling both directions on a scenic road, you get to seem something from a different perspective. Becki had told me about the orchards in Capitol Reef where you can pick your own fruit and pay per pound by stuffing your money in one of the little boxes posted around the orchard fences. I attempt to do the same but it seems that every orchard fence is locked and this discourages me easily. I could go for some fresh fruit right about now, but it is getting later in the afternoon and I know that the best part of the drive is ahead of me, so I continue on.

I make one last stop on my way out of Capitol Reef, to look at a tree. At this stop is a motorcycle group. The tree is half alive, half dead but its shape is beautiful and curving, reaching up vertically, much different than the beautiful, curving landscape reaching out horizontally.

Through red rock, crumbling, dry earth I continue. Then, the landscape starts to burst with bright green. The trees get taller and more abundant. I travel through small towns and see pastures where cows mingle amongst large, smooth rocks. The mountains lose all red color as then begin to be covered with more and more trees. Before I know it I am traveling through forests. The road continues up into the mountains blanketed with forests. The trees change into pines of some sort. I can still feel the dryness but there is something refreshing about it too, like stepping into a nice shady spot after being out in the bright sun. An occasional break in the trees reveals the desert landscape I have recently left, showing off the bright red and white colors.
The air becomes rapidly cooler and here the trees change again into white barked birch trees (I think). These forests are very dense with the long, white trunks reach high up toward the sky. While the green pines brought refreshment, these birch trees make me feel calm, like everything is alright in the world. It is amazing that on the top of these mountains you find birch trees, and reminds me that maybe everything has its own place. I think I've said this before. At the summit, the birch trees break up into clumps and allow for rolling mountain pastures. There are some purple and red wildflowers blooming along the side of the road. I can see the road I will travel ahead of me, swinging down the mountains and through forests and into more mountains and disappearing out of sight. The air is cool here, you might even call it cold. It is a nice change.

Farmland

After descending for a long time, I discover what is on the other side of these green, tree covered mountains, it is farmland and white mountains. These white mountains turn into canyons and the road continues up alongside them. At one point there is canyon dropping on the left side of the road and on the right side of the road. The narrow road winds precariously between the two canyons and then continues through canyon lands and uphill to a breathtaking overlook.

Overlook

Canyon views

The road up to the overlook

As I continue on, it is becoming very clear how late in the day it is. The shadows are long and the light, slanted. I pass through green fields, some dotted with yellow wildflowers, with tall, green walls or mountains in the distance. I pass through small towns where young kids are practicing football. The area is remote and open. I pass near the edge of Bryce Canyon National Park and see some outlying red spires, which I know exist in the heart of the park. The setting sun cast some amazingly, deep red colors on the already red rock. After that, I drive through wide open mountains pastures and forests of Dixie National Forest. Then it is dark and after a long time of barely seeing another car on the road I come to Cedar City. I pass my motel and continue on in search of some food. When I finally check in the lady there is "courteous" and not at all helpful. I am glad to be in a room with four walls around me. I am getting weary, I am ready to be home. Part of me wants to skip the rest of my trip and just go home.

Summer Road Trip - Bullfrog, Utah & Meteor Showers

On this day in Utah, I, hold your breath, slept in. It just seemed like a good idea, or, maybe I am lazy. I think, in my life, I have always felt the danger of laziness. My mother is the poster child of "Not Lazy". She and my father raised five kids in a rural area while both working full time and we were always doing stuff. This is not to say she pushed us into activities because she wanted us to be cultured and educated but because she wanted us to have fun and discover things we loved. Well, unless you consider raising dairy goats as an education in "culture". We also had a lot of chores and a lot of time to play. My mom is not what you would traditionally consider an overachiever either, but this is what she did, or more like, the expectations of normal achievement for her were cow-jumped-over-the-moon achievement. This is not also to say that she expected us to get amazing grades and be the star at everything we did, because she did not. But, how can you really believe that your science project is "good enough" when you saw her sweat and toil and stay up late making Halloween costumes fit for Broadway? She set the stage very early on, how going-the-extra-100-miles is not really "extra" at all, its normal.
So, I have the conflicted relationship with sleeping in. Part of me likes sleep and part of me likes to get up because there are things I need to and even want to do. But, unless I am sick, really sick, not just a cold, I always feel guilty about sleeping in. Today was not an exception. After I get up, I consider what I am going to do on this cloudless, sunny day in Utah. I could find a hike. I could go for a drive. I could go swimming in the lake. But really, I feel like reading. I picked up a fiction novel in the JFK airport during my layover and I started reading it on the plane. My mind keeps running through all the excuses to spend the day reading: the book is really good, it is fiction and I haven't read fiction in a while, people have been telling me my itinerary is jammed packed with activity already, I deserve a break? I deserve to relax? Do I even know the meaning of this word? Isn't "relax" just another way to say "lazy"? Have I ever actually relaxed and not felt guilty about it? Yes, I have, exactly one time in my life. I actually went somewhere to relax exactly once, my honeymoon. But that's a once in a lifetime thing.

The road "off property"

Honestly, I find road trip driving and hiking very relaxing. Or maybe the better word is soothing. But what is this relaxing all about anyway? Sitting around doing nothing? I have never found that fun or, desirable. Okay, so reading a book is not doing nothing, its just sitting around. And I could read outside because I really don't want to sit inside the house all day anyway. My mind conflicted, I head out to the back porch with my book and sit in a chair for as long as I can stand the strong sun, at which time, I spend the rest of the day following the shade spots around the yard with my chair and water bottle and my book. I did spend, perhaps an hour, inside reading during the hottest part of the day. But this is so uninteresting. And, by the way, the book was very interesting.

When Becki got home from work, we went on a short hike, the Pedestals hike. Becki drove us "off property" and on this side road, a shortcut to some areas east of here. The road turned into fine, dirt and there was a small, temporary creek running across it. I guess the proper term is a "wash". Becki gets out of the car and inspects the level of water. "Its too high, I don't think I can cross over. I wish we had brought the truck." I guess the thunderstorm yesterday made things a little wet in surprising places. Turns out, the trailhead was actually behind us already, we had passed it.

So we get out and hike across the red-orange, Utah desert toward the large outcropping of naturally poured rock formations. The little trail pamphlet promised us "pedestals" of smaller rock formations. We follow along the "trail" of park ranger made rock piles that supposedly mark the trail. We cross several washes that looked like they had been dried up for hundreds of years. Really, do they ever have water in them? We are loyally accompanied by Pancake who is quite happy to chase whatever desert creatures are scattering about. The dirt is more like sand in most places, making it a little slow going. Its really hot out. Its really dry. I am really hungry. My lunch had been really light since I was just sitting around lazily, all day. But it is really nice to get out and walk around.

This landscape troubles my photographer's eye. It is beautiful, but has not inspired me to photograph, so I kind of force it. Maybe it is the flatness, or the sorry looking desert plants, or the crumbling rock walls? Maybe its just that I am really, freaking hungry, so much that I am starting to feel light-headed. I begin to drag. I wish I could run around with energy and excitement like Pancake. I never thought, in my life, I would wish to run around like a pancake. We continue to follow the rock pile trail, but we don't really see anything that I would describe to someone as a "pedestal". There are some nice, sparse, clusters of wildflowers here and there. The sun is getting low in the sky and the shadows are getting long. We decide to head back.  I trudge, my feet feeling like heavy weights, my arms dangling. The car seems so far away. My blood sugar level must be low? But we make it eventually. Pancake is very thirsty and Becki gives whatever water she has left. I am famished as we head back. I am excited for some food.

Tonight we are eating out in the only restaurant in Bullfrog, an establishment which is not open in the winter. The three of us pile into Mike's truck with an additional guest, their neighbor, Chris. After the very, very short ride to the Lodge, we sit at a nice window seat for dinner, the huge Lake Powell, like an enormous trough, below us. Chris, with his baseball hat on, sits across from me in his rather worn and very casual clothes. Chris is from, well, I don't remember where he is from, maybe he didn't tell me, but he was born in Southern California and he decided that he is a Seattle Seahawks fan. He kind of has an accent and he likes living in this remoteness, away from all the traffic and people. I guess he doesn't get bored here. I am beginning to really appreciate the variety of the San Francisco Bay area. If you want ocean, or redwoods, or oak forests, or mountains, or bare hills, or city streets you got it. There is variety in landscape, people, events, entertainment, dining, jobs and culture. But it does have lots of traffic and a very high cost of living. The fact that people like Chris really desire this environment intrigues me, I can really respect their want and need for this place. It is not a place where you just "end up" in. You are not here because your family is here or you grew up here. You come to Bullfrog because this is where you want to be. Why you stay here may be a different reason.

Our table is crowded with appetizers and dinner plates and we all eat large amounts of food. Then we go back to Becki's and prepare to watch the meteor shower. Tonight is supposed to be the best night for the meteors, although the best time is supposed to be at 3am. It is a bit unreasonable for Becki and Mike to stay up this late, so we head out again, to a side road away from the lights of Bullfrog and park ourselves in our campfire chairs with our faces towards the sky. The air is warm and the breeze is gentle. We see satellites and airplanes. We see meteors of varying degrees of brightness and spectacular-ness. Some look like dimly glowing, distant baseballs that seem to appear out of nowhere and then disappear. Some look like huge, glittering streaks of white fire, larger than any star and streak across the whole sky.

A Meteor Over Bullfrog

I love stars, they are so magical for me. Stargazing leaves me in awe. The world seems so over-explained, labeled and categorized in so many ways, that we forget to regard its beauty and even though the stars can be approached from a very scientific perspective, but it doesn't matter to me, they never fail to leave me without words to describe them. On this night, the Milky Way stretches its arm across the moonless sky in a magnificent splendor, creating the most amazing cathedral ceiling for the world. Yet at the same time you wonder, if the night sky can be this spectacular, what other amazing things have we yet to discover or see or experience beyond this? Surely, It must exist. And not knowing what It is, that It is yet to be known, leaves me with excited hope and a sense of divinity so great, that I can not help feeling supremely joyful that there is so much more to this world, to my world, to my experience of the world, than they thoughts in my head.

The Night Sky at 3am

We watch the sky until Becki is falling asleep and our necks can't take anymore. Back at the house, I set the alarm on my cell phone for 3am. When that hour comes I go out the the front of Becki's house and gaze at the sky again. There is a meteor a minute, more like the baseball kind, originating from all different parts of the sky. It comes from so far away, traveling for thousands of years, then it appears in our sky for a brief second, and someone might witness it, or not, and then it is done, gone, extinguished forever.

Summer Road Trip - Lake Powell

This part of Utah is full of orange and blue. The dirt and rock here is a deep orange, painted on canyon walls and large, rounded, rock formations. The blue comes from the amazing water of Lake Powell below and from the far stretching sky above. This is the Land of Orange and Blue.
After relaxing the morning away, Becki had arranged for me to go kayaking on Lake Powell, so after lunch I went down to the marina.

A young man helped me with my kayak and I set off into the orange walled lake. The sun was hot but the splashing of the water kept me cool. The sky was alive, brilliant blue dotted with white puffy clouds. Becki had warned me about unusual thunderstorms and said if I saw a dark cloud appear at the end of the canyon I should head back toward the marina immediately. I passed a few gatherings of rocky beaches, but mostly I was enclosed in the canyon walls and rounded rock formations. I was in search of some smaller canyons that were fabled to snake inland, creating narrow hallways of water and rock, places to be explored only by small boats or kayaks. I rounded the bend, around the beehive rock formation and in the distance I saw a large mass of cloud spilling over the west side of the canyon wall. My sunglasses are tinted yellow, so I took them off to scrutinize the color of this cloud. It was light gray, not the shade of darkness that I would expect of a storm and it really was quite far off, so I kept going. I thought, even if it did storm it was so far off in the distance it could not possibly affect me. Then I saw, like a long finger, a stream of distant rain, reaching down toward the land. Eventually, it would reach down over the water and whoever, or whatever, was underneath it would be rained on. But it was so far away.

As I watched this cloud sneak its way east over the water. It was so far away, it was raining somewhere. Then, in a suddenness I was not expect an incredibly long zig zagged flash of lightning bolted down, wherever it hit, I don't know, it was out of sight. I filled with fear and distress. What if it hit the water? How far does the electricity from lightning travel in the water? I went through my brain searching for the school lesson about lightning and water. I knew if you were swimming you should get out. But wasn't that because you were probably touching the bottom? What about boats? They aren't touching the bottom, are they okay if electricity passes through the water? Plus they sit on top of the water, they are only partly in it. Is it only swimmers who need to worry? Here I am sitting on top of the water in a plastic kayak. Is this safe? Could I be in danger? How far does electricity travel. All of these thoughts passed through my mind in a matter of seconds. At the end of those seconds, or second, I made a right turn and headed, with a vengeance, to the closest rocky shore. I certainly wasn't going to test the physics of electricity today.

I paddled as hard as I could to the shore. There were a couple of houseboats docked along the side and next to them, a few tents. I pulled my boat completely out of the water and stood on this isolated bit of rocky beach, dotted with tall growing green weeds and I watched the storm in the distance. The storm seemed to gather darkness at its bottom, its top was still innocently fluffy and white. I watched as the finger of rain grew and thickened into a larger mass. I looked behind me, to the other end of the canyon where it was bright and cheerful and storm-free.

When I felt like the storm was safely over land, I got back in my kayak. I surveyed the sky in all directions. Hmm... there was a mass of clouds gathering, which seemed like the might peek over the canyon wall and display themselves directly over the marina, directly over Bullfrog. Was it really something to worry about? Those clouds looks so innocent. But I had no idea what was in store as they traveled closer since I could not see over the high, distant, canyon wall. Maybe I should head back, play it safe? Maybe I am being too cautious, I tend to do this. Maybe I am making something out of nothing. I keep my eye on it as I paddle out into the lake. The clouds were moving quickly. Actually, this is starting to look like that other cloud, the storm cloud. I would hate to kayak for such a short time. Maybe I could paddle away from it and I could miss this storm? Could I paddle fast enough, away from the marina and avoid this storm too? I looked in that direction, but it looked like maybe more clouds were coming from over there too, well... maybe. Logic spoke to me, "Kathleen," it said, "this looks like a storm could be approaching. You don't know. You don't know if you can outrun it. You don't know, if you do outrun it, if another storm wouldn't follow that one. Then you will be very far away and you will be stuck there. That could be dangerous. That would be dangerous. It is not worth the risk."
So, I turned back towards the marina, angry with myself. Why was I angry with myself? Because I felt like I was not a risk taker, I was submissive, I was a slave to my common sense and logic. But I went back anyway, my paddling conflicted as I did not want to admit that I was returning out of logic, or that I might still have a chance to go further away and explore when the storm did not appear. But then, over the horizon, I saw, not a finger of a rain cloud reaching toward the horizon, but a whole hand, two hands worth of rain fingers. Holy Crap, I thought, that looks bad.

Before I knew it, the storm was rushing in on me, closing in fast. I paddled with intensity, focusing only on my mechanics to make myself move stronger, faster, more efficient. Occasionally I broke my concentration to observe the progress of the storm. This propelled me faster and harder. I was out of breath, my muscles were pulling as hard as I could. I leaned into it, I pulled I used my arms, my back, everything I could. As I approached the marina dock I saw the young guy who had helped me put my kayak into the water. He appeared there like he had been searching the water for my bright yellow kayak and now I was here and he was glad to get me out. When I pulled up and got out, we lifted the boat out of the water and he took my lifejacket and paddle. "You came back just in time. Do you want to call Becki to come get you?" he said.

Normally I would have walked to two miles back to her house. "Yes," I said, "I better not take my chances in a thunderstorm." It had started to gently rain. I went into the marina office and someone was calling Becki at work. I had not been inside the building for a full minute before the storm unleashed itself. Rain came down so hard and loud I thought it couldn't possible just be rain. Sure enough, it wasn't, it was hail. It hailed for several minutes while the thunder and lightning continued to do its thing. Eventually the hail stopped and the rain continued and even then, that started to relax a little. The thunder seemed less frequent when I saw Becki pull up across the marina in her car. I would have to run across the thin, wet walkway across the water to get to her. I made a run for it.
"You made me drive in hail!" Becki exclaimed, jokingly. When I got back to the house and Becki took off for work, I surveyed the sky. It looked like another storm was right behind. But this time I got my little video camera, my voice recorder and my camera out to capture the sights and sounds of the thunderstorm.

After Becki got home from work, she made dinner and we hung out. We went down to the ferry dock and swam in the water and talked. We threw the ball out into the lake to Pancake who swam out there in a hysteric fit of joy and swam back, too excited and too out of breath. The sun was going down quickly and it started to get cool.

Then we went up to the one and only restaurant and had some dessert while the sun went down over the lake. I had Snickers pie, yum. In the evening we sat out in her backyard and watched the sky, looking for meteors. The grand finale of this meteor shower was supposed to appear the next night. Mike came home and a neighbor came over. Here in Bullfrog, you not only work with your co-workers, but you live amongst them too. There is no escaping. Becki went to bed and Mike and I talked and listened, in silence, to the sound of the crickets.