Recap

5,042 - number of miles driven

770 - the value of the prize YD won on TPIR

486 - number of photos taken

44 - number of states whose license plates we saw while on the road (47 if we include
the ones we saw in parking lots)

37 - number of blog posts

27 - number of days we were away

17 - number of hotels we stayed in

10 - number of states we visited

6 - number of relatives we saw

4 - number of National Parks we visited

3 - number of friends we saw
- number of reservation screw-ups I made (none serious or not easily remedied)
- number of time zones we were in

1 - number of car problems we had
- number of items (and it was unimportant) left behind in any of the 17 hotels we
stayed in
- number of tolls we paid on our 5,000+ mile journey

0 - the number of significant disagreements between OM & YD

Trip cross-country with a mother and daughter - PRICELESS!!!

The last stop

Sadly, we have come to the end of our journey, here in Denver, Colorado. It was yet another spectacular ride from Bryce to Denver. We stopped in Grand Junction, Colorado overnight and enjoyed visiting a few of the wineries and took in a movie (Extract), and arrived in Denver on Thurs. and had dinner in LoDo. Fri was busy, first a well-deserved mani/pedi for the extremely hiking-callused and sore feet, then a lovely lunch with the Denver branch of the Plotkin family (see photo), followed by a stroll down the 16th St. mall. We finished the day with a trip to Colorado Springs for dinner with a dear camp friend of YD's who we discovered was at Colorado College.

Then back to the hotel to pack up and try to figure out how to get the 5 foot walking stick we bought in the Grand Canyon into a 4 ft long duffle bag. We said goodbye to some objects that we had become close to over the past month, like the $6 styrofoam cooler we bought at the Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, which allowed us to keep food in the car and picnic, etc., and only eat one meal/day, at most, out. Then we ended our trip by celebrating the new year with an apple and some vanilla bean honey (amazingly delicious!) we bought at on the wineries in Grand Junction and a Coors Light (my apologies to Andy, but we are, after all, in the Rockies!). All and all a happy and nostalgic end to a fabulous journey!

Hoo-Doo you do?

After having sore legs from our tour of Zion, we now have sore butts from our tour of Bryce. During our 1/2 day mule tour we were able to see the entire canyon from a really unique perspective from the bottom on the canyon floor, not to mention the rides down and back up. In the able hands of our guide Dave, and our mules, Croppy and Sidestep, who behaved quite well and lived up to their reputation of sure-footedness, we had quite an amazing tour. YD only cried in fright a couple of times on the quite steep switchbacks during the climbs down and back up. The Hoo-Doo is definitely my favorite rock formation.

Tomorrow we head back toward our final destination, Denver, from where we will head back home on Sat. Neither YD nor I can believe that our adventure is quickly drawing to close. As much as we miss our husband/dad and son/brother, not to mention our friends and other family members, we are SO not ready to go home. We thought we'd be tired of sightseeing, checking in and out of hotels, not to mention each other, possibly way before our trip was over, but we are none of the above. We are already planning our next road trip to the places we were unable to fit in to this one!

The answer to the question

This is the sign that greeted us at our hotel in Zion. Ho-made pies! Like I said, who knew there were ho's in Utah!

Are there really Ho's in Utah?

The answer to the title question will have to come at a later date when I get the photo posted.

In the meantime, here's some photos from today's hiking in Zion. We did the Canyon Overlook trail, followed by the lower, middle, and upper Emerald Pond trails (with a break for lunch in between). We had planned to do the Riverwalk or the Pa'nus to finish out the day, but discovered that was overambitious, after we both fell asleep on the shuttle bus back from the Emerald Pond trails, and had pinky toes that were threatening to defect from our feet if we didn't release them from those hiking boots ASAP.

We did see deer, lizards, a snake in the middle of lunch (we couldn't tell for sure if the tail still sticking out of it's mouth was that of a lizard or a rodent), and the ever present squirrels and chipmunks.

I think it's a good thing that we have pre-scheduled our tour of Bryce on horseback rather than foot tomorrow.

What do they do in Utah on Sunday?

While planning this journey, I had promised today, Sunday, 9/13, the first professional football Sunday, to YD. It was a travel day, Grand Canyon to Zion, a 5+ hr trip. Amazingly, the hotel we were staying at in GC had a sports bar, but we weren't sure exactly what satellite feed they had and/or which games they would be able to get, and neither did anyone working Sat night. Our options were to hang out in GC until 1:15 when the Giants game would be starting in our time zone and hope for the best, and then either have to start the long drive after the game, or worse yet, discover the game wouldn't be shown, and have wasted much of the day waiting, and then she would miss the game for sure.

We decided to try to catch the game on the road. If you check the route from the GC to Zion, you notice that it is so unpopulated that there is not a single town listed on the map for the first 80% of the drive. Which meant that in order to be in someplace that might possibly have the game, we would have to leave by about 8AM. YD is not fond of getting up early, to say the least, but for football, she said absolutely, we would hit the road by 8. We spend Sat night googling sports bars in the few towns that we would pass through right outside of Zion. Our best bet seemed to be St. George, Utah, which was somewhat out of the way, but I had promised her this day, and we did not have to be in Zion at any set time. We had found a couple of other options on the way that we would check out as well.

We got on our way right on time, and the long drive went by in a flash. The scenery on the drive is spectacular. From crossing the Colorado river in Glen Canyon by Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam, to the painted desert and Vermillion cliffs of Arizona, we were mesmerized. True to form, we did not see a single town with more than a handful of shacks/trailers/houses along the route until we came to Hurricane, Utah, where we had found a sports bar listed on Google. It was just about game time and YD was getting itchy. We find the bar. It is closed. A sports bar that is closed on Sundays? What is the point of that? YD is panicking. We are only about 15 min out of St. George, we follow Lucille's (the GPS) directions, but she didn't like the address we had, and she hasn't been updated in 3 yrs, and the roads were new, and we can't find it. Then, like a beacon across the highway, I see a sign for the bar we are looking for. We follow it, and blessedly, not only is it open, but there is a big sign outside saying that all NFL games can be seen there. YD is ecstatic. As we run inside we see the Giants game on the first 2 big screens, and get a booth so each of us can see our own screen. Oh joy. This is a serious sports bar, there are a million TV's, both NFL games are on, as well as the US Open, and other stuff. A total of 2 booths are taken, plus some scattered people at the bar. On opening football Sunday, this place is nearly deserted. And it's a nice place. Not just a bar, a full restaurant, too. What do the people of Utah do on Fall/Winter Sunday afternoons? Whatever, since it was so empty they did not mind in the least that we sat at a booth for 3+ watching the entire game and only ordered a salad a small pizza between the 2 of us.

From there it was a relatively short ride to (and through, since we came in the west entrance and our hotel was on the eastern side, oops!) Zion, where we arrived at our hotel in time for the night game on ABC. Tomorrow, thank goodness, we get to get off our behinds and do some hiking in the park, which looked as spectacular as expected on our drive through.

Long live the Marines!

I have to say, that given the bright lights of Vegas vs the grandeur of the National Parks, and the great outdoors, I'd have to pick the latter. Although YD wouldn't say that she agreed with me totally, she did admit that they were at the very least equal.

After perusing the trail maps, we decided to attempt a relatively short, although exceedingly steep decent into the canyon along a trail called the "Oooh Ahhh trail" (seriously, how could we pass that up?). Everything we read and every sign we saw were designed to caution, OK, panic, hikers, from attempting hikes they were unprepared for. NEVER attempt to hike all the way down to the river and back in a single day, was the biggest warning we saw. Also lots of signs about how when the temperature is 80 degrees at the rim, it quickly rises to 105+ as you descend. Carry plenty of water, food, and other supplies.

We decided not to even attempt the trail until about 4PM, when the strength of sun decreases dramatically. We packed pb&j sandwiches and water, lots of drugs (epipen, benadryl, ibuprofen, bronchodilator), bug spray, sunscreen, and hit the park. We decided to hike along the canyon rim trail in the morning, have some lunch, and then tackle the oooh ahhh. We probably hiked about 3 miles along the rim trail. Flat, and a mix of paved and gravel paths. It was easy walking, but it was HOT. Instead of lunch, we stopped for ice-cream, and then set out for the main event.

As we boarded the shuttle bus for the trailhead, we noticed the large, black clouds blowing in, but we decided to give it shot. The trail descended at even a steeper grade than I had anticipated (see photos. One is view of trail going down, see people at the bottom on the trail. Other is view of the trail going back up. The dots on the side of the cliff are people going back up). Despite her fear of heights, YD was a trooper, and just as anxious as I to have a go at it. Of course, down is easy, as expected, but the trail is loaded with the warning messages of how hard it is to get back up. Looking back up at the trail, I did have a few moments of doubt. But the ooohs and ahhs just keep you going. The views are indescribable, and we were actually hiking down into the grand canyon, which is what I came to do.

The wind picked up and some drops of rain began to fall. Then we came across 2 young men resting on their way up. Let's just say that resting is a kind word. Recovering? Preventing total collapse, might be better ways to describe it. How much further to the top they asked us? Not far we told them, we just started out. They then told us that they had started at 6AM and hiked all the way down to the river and were having trouble with the trip back up. They were young and fit, and half-dead. I am old, but fit, YD is young, but not so fit, and I began to get a bit more worried, but we continued on. Then the clouds thickened a bit more, and we had to shield our eyes against the dust blowing up from the trail, and about 30 min after we set out, we decided we'd best turn around, so we did.

The hike back up that steep zig-zagging trail was much less strenuous than expected, and we were both a bit sorry we hadn't gone further, but the warnings had put the fear of god in us. Since we had gone to the trouble of making our sandwiches, we did stop and eat them, in the drizzle on the trail. We passed our struggling friends as we reached the top, and one was barely standing. The 4 of us hopped on the shuttle bus and it was clear that the older of the 2 men was suffering from heat stroke. They told us they couldn't believe the difficulty of their hike. The one with heat stroke had hiked up Mt Fuji with no problem. They were both Marines stationed in San Diego. They insisted they hadn't seen any of the warnings not to attempt the hike all the way to the bottom and back in a single day. When we got off the shuttle we discovered they had no way back to their campground, so we squeezed them in the back of Bobby, among the cooler, shoes, travel books, maps, and other detrius we'd collected along the way, and took them back to their tent. I hope they're OK!!!

But, we had the time of our lives, hiked into the Canyon (although not as far as we would have like to, given the weather conditions), and can't wait to get to our next 2 canyons, Zion & Bryce.