Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon

Looking up at Zion National Park

SUNDAY APRIL 26, 2009 - Again this morning we were up bright and early and got ready for our adventures in Zion National Park in the morning and Bryce Canyon in the afternoon. These two mountainous areas are part of a long distance chain that are linked with Grand Canyon with Bryce to the North, Zion in the middle and The Grand Canyon to the South. We were too early for the motel breakfast so we ate what we had in our room and by 7:15 am we were on our way for our day’s adventure. About five minutes from our motel, we observed two deer that were alongside the road. One of the deer started to cross our path, I wasn’t driving too fast and managed to swerv the car to the left and just barely missed the animal. As I looked into the rear view mirror past the deer, it was redressing his head like it may have been brushed against the car but we didn’t hear anything nor was there any sign on the car that it touched the deer. This was a very very close call

After our arrival in the park, we boarded a bus which shuttles tourists on a seven mile adventure in the canyon. Unlike the Grand Canyon where visitors view everything from the rim looking down, Zion’s tour is at the bottom of the canyon and visitors view everything looking up and what a difference that is. The shuttle stops at seven viewing locations and there are many trail that can be explored. We stayed on the bus till the last stop and then took a trail that took us about another mile and a half up river in the canyon.

Before we started our tour I said to Rosella the this day would probably be a day of déjà-vu since we have been in mountainous terrain for the past two months and have been on many site seeing drives around the Southwest and she concurred. Boy, were we ever wrong, this was another incredible adventure. Picture looking up straight walls of mountains that shoot up in the sky for up to 5,000 feet.

Terrain on the other side of the Zion tunnel

We stopped at other locations along the shuttle route admiring the gorgeous surroundings and ended our journey walking along another 2 mile trail which too us back to the information centre. After that we departed driving through the rest of the park on our way for a 100 mile trek to Bryce Canyon. The winding road for the first 15 miles going up to the top of the canyon was awesome and we travelled through a 1.1 mile tunnel which was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1932. On the other side of the tunnel, the terrain changed drastically.

The INCREDIBLE Bryce Canyon

We arrived at Bryce Canyon shortly after 2:30 pm, just after stopping at a restaurant for something to eat. Unlike Zion or the Grand Canyon for that matter, cars are allowed to travel from one viewing site to another.

Dripping sandcastles at Bryce Canyon

We started our adventure at an area called the Sunset Viewpoint. We parked the car and made our way to the edge of the canyon and holly cow, what a surprise we had. Looking down into the canyon, the terrain is multi coloured but mostly an orange red much like the soil on PEI and cement grey. It is composed of countless peaks of weathered, worn out sandstone that look like they were formed by someone high up in the sky dripping wet sand in the mountain cavities forming dripping candcastles. This results in these incredible peaked rock formations that look like they could be made of cake icing and go on for miles and miles. We walked up and around about several lookout points located at 8,000 ft above sea level along the rim of the canyon and of course we took a ton of pictures.

This was ......... hold on now ......... you won’t believe this ........... are you ready .......... another unbelievable day of incredible adventures!

San Diego Part II

San Diego de Alca Mission

On our way home from visiting Coronado island and the Del Coronado Hotel as explained in my last blog , we decided to stop at the San Diego de Alca Mission, the first of the great California Missions which was founded in 1769. It is California's first church and marks the birthplace of Christianity in the far West. Today the Mission, serves as an active parish church and cultural center for people of all faiths. When we got there, there was a mass in progress so we participated in the balance of the celbration.

After mass, we exited the side door of the Basilica and proceeded to visit the rest of the grounds of the Mission. By the time we got back to the church, the door was secured and we were locked into courtyard of the Mission. All the gates leading to the parking lot were also locked so I climbed up the stairs that lead to the bell tower and peering through opening in the tower, I spotted a couple of guys who were still in front of the church so I asked them if they knew how to open the gates. As it turned out, the caretaker was within site and he came and unlocked the church doors to let us out. We came pretty close to spending the night outside in the Mission courtyard. However, if we hadn’t gotten out that way, I was prepared to ring the Mission bells until someone came to rescue us. That was kinda of a unique experience!

Ranunculus flower fields

Thursday April 23 was our day to go visit the famous Zoo located in downtown San Diego. When we got up, I had a developed cold over night but wasn’t feeling too bad. The sky was overcast but the outlook was for sun later in the morning. On our way to San Diego we stoped in Carlsbad where there are huge fields of Ranunculus flowers that they cultivate here for the reproduction of the bulbs. These flowers which grow in a variety of brilliant colours are about the size of tulips and look like a small peonies. The fields were radiant and in full bloom and we took a bunch of photos.

Chineese panda having banboo lunch at San Diego zoo

After visiting the Carlsbad floral gardens, we then proceeded to the city and spent the whole day visiting and taking pictures at the zoo. It features a wide variety of animals, many of which are in danger of extinction including four Chinese panda bears, one which is pictured above. Here they specialize in the study of many of these rare animal species and develop breeding programs for repopulating these scarce type of wild animals.

THE GIRAFFE FAMILY
Mama giraffe, papa giraffe and 6 day old baby giraffe

We started our visit here by taking a narrated bus tour which took us around the facility and gave a very good idea of the layout of the land. After that, we returned to the areas in the park that were of most interest to us. To return back to the entrance and exit of the site, we took an sky tram which lifted us way up in the air for an exciting aerial view of the zoo. All in all, it was an excellent day and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit at the zoo.

San Diego Part I

Life is tough at Oceanside Beach

On our first day in San Diego both Rosella and I exclaimed,"we are all wowed out"! They claim that San Diego in one of the prettiest cities in America and we both agree that whoever they are, they are right. The city is built around mountains peninsulas and bays. Everywhere you look, there is a scene worthy of taking a photo.

We had to book a motel in downtown San Diego for two days because we could only move into our condo at Oceanside on Saturday. It is located over 30 miles from downtown San Diego. On our first day at the motel, we took the Interstate highway to get there so the scenery was nice but that of a 12 lane highway. When we took the turnoff to get to our condo and found it sitting right on a beautiful stretch of sandy beach which goes on forever, just like it was shown on the internet. After that we took the ocean side roads to take us back to our motel and spent the remainder of the day exploring beach after beach after beach located between Oceanside and San Diego. The beach side houses and cottages are all spectacular, like one would vision in cottage magazines. We specially liked the rugged coastline in La Jolla. This town on the way back was as pretty as we have ever seen.

This was the view from our balcony

On our first day at the condo, by the time I got up at around 8:30, Rosella had already had her breakfast and started getting ready to go for a walk along the gorgeous beach which sits directly across our condo. While she was eating, she spotted a pod of porpoises playing around in the water directly across our balcony. She was so excited! The forecast called for a sunny 85 degree day.

By the time she was ready, I was just starting my breakfast so she left for her stroll all by herself. After I finished, I got ready to go explore the surrounding area and left the apartment A around 10:15, I headed for the pier which is about three quarters of a mile from where we live. The beach was already starting to fill up with families and surfers who were getting ready to enjoy the day of sunshine and relaxation. I took a whole bunch of pictures on my way and walked right to the end of the pier where there is an old style dinner restaurant called Ruby’s.

They have a huge project going on here at Oceanside Beach where they have set up a pipeline that is pumping dredged sand from the harbour onto the beach to refill and re-claiming more beach area. The pipeline runs directly in front of our complex where the re-claiming is already completed and runs about a mile and a half south of where we are situated. I decided to go have a look at what happens at the mouth of the pipeline. During the low tide cycle, a mixture of sand, rock and water gushes out of the end of the pipeline into a cavity that has been bulldozed on the beach and the sand accumulates in a stream that works itself back to the ocean. At high tide, they come with bulldozers and push the accumulated sand around and re-shape the cavity in the beach for the sand to accumulate during the next low tide, high tide cycle. I found that to be very interesting! We both spent the rest of the day on the beach, and spent the the next three days just relaxing and bumming around the beach.

Downtown San Diego's Gastown is an interesting place to visit

The weather on the fourth day was forecasted to be quite a lot cooler than the past few days. When we got up, it had rained and the sky was cloudy. The weather for later today called for sunny skies with cloudy periods so we decided to head for downtown San Diego and visit some of the highlights there. We started by exploring the Gaslamp district which is a well preserved district of the downtown area. Most of the buildings there date to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a nice tour.

The world renowned Victorian style Del Coronado Hotel

After our visit of the Gaslight district, we decided to take the ferry across the bay and visit Coronado Island. Right after disembarking the ferry on the Island, we had lunch at a very fancy seafood restaurant. The crab cakes and coconut butterfly shrimp were excellent. We then took the bus to take us to the other side of the Island to the famous Hotel del Coronado with its iconic red turrets and wood structure piercing the California skyline, displaying a gracious Victorian splendour that is advertised as being one of a kind.

Situated on 28 beautiful oceanfront acres , the Del, as the locals call it, is touted as San Diego’’s only true beachfront hotel. Built in 1888, this stately classic beachfront resort has long been heralded as one of America’’s most beautiful beach getaways which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1977. Today, it offers a unique combination of modern luxury with the charm and grace of a fairytale castle and combining that with its stunning beachfront location, it’’s easy to see why it has been called ""one of the top ten resorts in the world"" by USA Today. We explored the grounds and surroundings including the excellent boutiques located on the ground floor of the hotel complex.

Take me out to the ball game

Last night, I had bought tickets to go to the Arizona Diamondback National League baseball game at Chase Stadium which is within a five minute walk from out apartment. The evening turned out to be lots of fun.

The infield at Chase Field

These games are very much a family event with lots of kids in attendance with their parents and grand parents and tons of devoted fans of both the Diamondback and Dodger were wearing t-shirts, hats an other paraphernalia. We were both surprised at how many fans rooted for the Dodgers but it was explained to us that the Diamondbacks are a relatively new team and that many of the old Phoenix baseball fans have been Dodgers fans from way back. Also, Los Angeles is not that far away from Phoenix and this being the long Easter weekend, some die hard LA fans had probably travelled here for these weekend games.

Lots of people around us

During the game, the crowd around us was pleasing, everybody seemed to have had a great time. We spoke to some very nice people around us including a bunch of folks behind us with family roots in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Diamondback roster

There were in excess of 31,000 fans in this beautiful roof-retracting building which has a capacity of over 48,000 seats. Since it had been warm during the day, the roof remained closed during the game to maintain the cool air conditioned environment. It was supposed to be opened after the game to a display of fire works from the roof rim, but because of high winds in the area, the fire works show had to be postponed to another night.

Flag waiving fan shown on the giant screen

The Arizona Diamondbacks played against the Los Angeles Dodgers and won the game 9 to 4 and the evening turned out to be a very enjoyable and memorable experience for both of us.

THE GRAND CANYON - There just aren't enough superlatives!

But to sum it up in one word! The Grand Canyon is

absolutely A W S O M E

MONDAY APRIL 6, 2009 - Last night, we set the alarm early and this morning we were up and ready to go to The Grand Canyon by 6:45 am. We arrived there around 10:45 and tried to check into the Red Feather Motel where I had a reservation but the room wouldn’t be ready for an hour. It is situated about 12 kilometres from the South Rim and we wanted to register before going to the Canyon because we expected to be coming back later in the evening. So rather than wait around at the motel and to put us in the mood for visiting the Canyon, we decided to go see the IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon which was playing right next door to the Red Feather. The movie offers a different perspective of the Canyon because it is an exciting 35 minute exploration of the bottom of the Canyon and delivers a thrilling ride down the Colorado river. When visiting the canyon like we did, unless you go on a mule expedition for a few days, you get to see the Canyon from the top down, the movie presented the perspective from the bottom up. Because of the effect of being right in the picture that IMAX delivers, and with the scenes of white river rafting and the birds eye view of the camera thrusting in and out of the cliffs and valleys, Rosella spent some of the movie with her eyes shut. This movie in its IMAX format It is very well done and worthwhile seeing, specially if you are going in to explore the Canyon. After the movie, we checked into our room, had a bit of lunch and headed for an unbelievable life time experience.

Panoramic view of the breath taking

Grand Canyon!

The vastness of the Canyon which at the National Park, the point we were looking at it is anywhere from 11 to 13 miles wide and in total almost 300 miles long is really not describable and is absolutely beyond words. We spent the balance of the day travelling on the free bus shuttles which transport visitors from one vantage point to another. There are three routes, the Red, the Blue and the Green routes which cover approximately 20 miles of the Southern Rim and approximately 25 vantage points.

At one stop, we decided to walk a trail along the edge of the rim to the next vantage point, a distance of about two and one quarter miles. This trail at a few points was at the very edge of the rim with a distance of approximately 5,500 feet to the bottom. For me it was very exciting and exhilarating but Rosella found it very frightful. We could have gotten off the trail and on to the road but she was determined to walk the whole thing and she did.

Hang on tight Rosella!

It's a long way down!

We had timed our schedule so that we would view the sunset at Hopi Point which has the highest elevation and is the lookout that protruded the farthest into the Canyon. The sunset with its reflexions, and shadows in the Canyon along with the ever changing colours was, of course, beyond words. By the time we took the shuttle busses to get back to the parked car and returned to our room, it was past 9:00pm and had viewed about 70% of the sites along the Rim.

TUESDAY APRIL 7, 2009 _ We decided to get up at 4:15 am today to go view the sunrise which was scheduled for 6:05 am at Yaki Point, the most Eastern viewing area on the Rim. In order to get there, we either had to arrive at the Village early and take the shuttle to the point or drive to the gate to the road which entered the site which was only accessible by bus. We were on the road by 5 and decided to drive to the gate and walk about one and one half miles to Yaki Point.

When we arrived at the site, there were only three other persons there but by the time the sun started rising two or three dozen other people had shown up. The sunrise and the colour effect on the Canyon was even better that the sunset at Hopi Point. We stayed there for almost two hours taking dozens of spectacular photos and admiring the effect of the progressively rising sun on the Canyon landscape. We were both very happy that we decided to get up for this almost surreal experience which was also beyond words.

The Grand Canyon?

Truly an experience to remember!

We then walked back to the car and headed for the Western end of the Rim. We parked the car at the Backcountry Information Centre and walked to take the Red bus which took us all the way to Hermit’s Rest and points in between which we had not visited yesterday. What is very interesting about visiting the various areas of the Canyon is that due to the vastness of the precipice, essentially a person is viewing the same landscape but always from a different perspective and each view is new. We made our way back to the car and the motel by 11:00 am and we were both exhausted. I asked for a late check out which allowed us to both take a nap till noon. We had a bit of lunch and by 12:30 pm, we were heading home after a couple of days of extraordinary experiences. When we got back to Phoenix, the temperature was over 90 degrees F (remember that is dry heat) so we put our bathing suits on and went for a nice swim in the pool before supper.

A few more examples of Chihuly's work

Boatload along the dry river bed

Red flames in the desert

They are constantly cleaning the exhibits

Resting among the Chihuly's in the Garden

We have been taking it easy!

Since our last posting on the blog, we went to visit the Desert Botanical Gardens her in Phoenix and what an extraordinary day that was. They were featuring an exhibit by the glass artist Chihuly and the displays which were interspersed within the fauna and flora were nothing short of spectacular.

Sample of the Chihuly exhibit

Dale Chihuly's work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among the many museums in which his work has been exhibited are the Louvre's Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Some of the great botanical gardens have recently exhibited his work, such as the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and the New York Botanical garden. His corporate installations include the famous ceiling sculpture at the Bellagio in Las Vegas which we photographed when we were there.

As you can see in the photo up top as well as the following picture, his works are incorporated within in the floral and fauna displays and the results are absolutely stunning. There mus have been over 30 works of art scattered throughout the Gardens.

We spent the whole morning admiring the literally thousands of desert plants which are featured in the garden. We had a bit of lunch and continued our visit until we got to the Butterfly exhibit, a screened-in area where you can enter and mingle with the butterflies, The afternoon temperature was a nice dry and breezy 80 degrees F and the whole day was a real treat.

There were many more like this

The day after the Desert Gardens visit, Rosella caught a stomach flu which took a few days to get rid of so we took it easy for a little while. The temperature here is always in the high 70's to mid 80's and it is quite comfortable. Since our last post, I went to play cards at the Arizona Casino here in Phoenix. I entered three tournament and was "in the money" in two of them. I had a great time.

Friday of this week, Rosella was feeling much much better so we went exploring the Northern part of Arizona and WOW What a great day we had! We were up and going at 6:00 am getting ready to go on a mini road trip to Prescott, Jerome, past Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. After getting ready and packing a lunch, we were on the road and headed for Prescott by 7:30. The route as far as Wickenburg was rather dull but shortly after that it turning into an up and down, twisting turning desert scenic drive. About 10 miles from Prescott, we entered the Prescott Forest area which featured tall pine trees unlike anything we had seen in Arizona before. Part of this forest was burned out by a forest fire which occurred about 6 years ago.

We arrived in Prescott around 10:15 and visited the tourist office, where the lady told us there was a high wind warning for the entire Northern section of Arizona from 10:00 am till midnight and boy was she right. Also, because of the elevation, it had turned rather cool (in the mid 50's) compared to Phoenix. The lower temperature is typical of this area and we had come prepared with sweaters and wind breakers. We walked around the cold, wind swept main streets of this nice typical western town for about one hour and had our lunch in a nearby shopping centre parking lot.

We then headed back in the mountains and drove along a very picturesque, winding, up and down route for about an hour and a half till we got to Jerome. This town was a mining ghost town for about 20 years till the late 60's when a group of artists set up shop in the business area and this charming little town with its 400 habitants has now turned into a prominent art haven and tourist attraction. While still retaining their rustic characteristics, most of the old buildings in the business area have been restored and feature a great diversity of art. The wind here was even stronger than Prescott and the temperature was also in the mid 50's as we strolled up and down the streets of Jerome, enjoying visiting the many artists and their studios.

The twisting winding roads of the Prescott Forest

Our excursion then took us onto a nice 4 lane highway for about 30 minutes till we got to Sedona with its incredible, majestic, red rock mountains. They truly are unique and very impressive. We drove straight through Sedona on our way to Oak Creek Canyon. We will come and explore this fascinating place next week on our way back from the Grand Canyon which we plan to visit next Monday and Tuesday. The route to Oak Creek was also spectacular, winding roads, colourful rocky mountains interspersed with tall pine forest areas, what a nice drive! When we got there, we got out to take a few pictures and ran into a lady from the Okanagan Valley in BC. She is originally from Drummondville and has a sister who lived in Moncton. It’s a small world. The wind here was very cold and very strong and we felt a few drops of rain bot not even enough to make the wipers go. After our stop here we headed for Flagstaff and Interstate 17 for our return back to Phoenix. On the way back, the sky was very dark, the wind was causing dust storms in the desert which we could see in the distance. We got back to the condo around 7:00 pm after a full day of adventure.

The red rocky mountains of Sedona

After our stop here we headed for Flagstaff and Interstate 17 for our return back to Phoenix. On the way back, the sky was very dark, the wind was causing dust storms in the desert which we could see in the distance. We got back to the condo around 7:00 pm after a full day of adventure.