July 26, 2011: Hello, fellow travelers, and welcome to the latest installment of the now world-famous Gownezio blog. We've slowed down the ol' blog a little bit for a couple of reasons… first, it's getting harder and harder to get a decent internet connection for more than a couple of minutes at a stretch. Second, I realized I was spending more time talking about having fun than actually having fun. So, there it is. As soon as this becomes a paid subscription service, we'll be back every single day! But, right now, we're on our way north and Liz is driving so I can type. We had planned 3 or 4 days in the world-famous Bryce Canyon National Park in Southwestern France, er, Utah, but we've bailed - done a bunk - and are on our way to Yellowstone . It's a funny thing (and by funny, I mean quite sad, really) that the southwestern national parks frequently have as many Europeans as Americans. It seems that we (the Americans, that is) don't appreciate the beauty of our own country as much as the Europeans do. But Bryce is another thing entirely. We went to the rodeo our first night (more on that later), and the rodeo clown on the microphone said, "Hey all you Americans who have come to the rodeo this evening, I've got a stunning surprise for you. Let's see a show of hands if you are a real-live American." Only about 10% of the hands went up. Then… "Raise your hands if you are from France." More than half. Italy and Germany, another quarter.
So we have come, this past week, to two parks in southern Utah that we have never seen before: Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon. And I can think of no two parks with more different personalities. Capitol Reef is a vast expanse (most people stick within 10 miles of the visitor center, but it is almost 100 miles long) that has virtually no visitors. It is a remarkable wilderness where you can really experience with wonder and awe the majesty of nature and the variety of landscapes that are possible within a small area. It may have catapulted way up on my list, debuting in the top 10 (or maybe even 5) of my favorite parks. It is so empty, so full of remarkable beauty, that you really shouldn't come here. I mean, at least while I'm here. I've seen articles with people saying that it's underappreciated, and that's the understatement of the year. But we shouldn't change that. I mean, you probably wouldn't like it anyway.
Bryce Canyon is an entirely different kind of place. It's filled with probably tens of thousands of people in an incredibly small area. We went on a hike on Sunday that was the easiest of the hard hikes or the hardest of the easy hikes, depending on your point of view. At any rate, on a three-mile loop that descends into a burning hot canyon and then climbs steep switchbacks 600 vertical feet out, even Yellowstone or Yosemite would have only had a moderate amount of people. This trail was so full that you would have said it was crowded if it was in Eastview Mall on Christmas Eve. And a funny thing about the 90% European population on the hike... the vast majority of them apparently believe that nature should be screamed, not heard. It might be my all-time least favorite hike. But for me, the best part was at the end of the hike, when we had spread out a little bit so that the kids could move at their own pace. I looked back from the second-to-last switchback, and saw my betrothed, the object of my affection, looking absolutely like an angry Martian, with blood-red skin. As I said, "maybe you should take a break", she said, "I don't feel very good." Turns out that "I've almost drunk the (3 liter) CamelBak dry" translates to "I've had 8 ounces of water in the burning hot desert in the last 3 hours." But she's fine now, and is mad at me for telling you.
Speaking of people being mad at me for telling you dark and dirty secrets, tomorrow is Kathy's birthday.
We right now are driving through a 55-degree downpouring rainstorm that seems to have consumed all of the southwestern desert as far as we can see. Fortunately, we aren't stuck in 102-degree temperate western New York. Lucky for us, this climate-change thing is just a hoax perpetrated by the socialists so they can enslave us.
Yesterday I went on a fun bike ride around Dave's Hollow, a 12-mile loop. The first 2 miles were all in sand (ugh), and I wasn't really paying attention to anything but my front tire… noticed some deer tracks in the sand, realized they looked a little funny, looked up, and I was 20 feet from a family of pronghorns (often incorrectly identified as antelope, as in "Where the deer and the antelope play"). I think I kind of surprised them, and they surprised me, and they were just within zoom range by the time I got the camera out. Pronghorn are the fastest land animal in the western hemisphere, and are second only to the cheetah worldwide. There were possibly 40 million of them at the start of the 19th century, less than 10,000 one hundred years later (ahh, progess). But now - with wolves and mountain lions missing from most of their habitat and hunting discouraged/prohibited in much of their range, they are making a comeback.
Sudden Interruption: 2% left on the battery. Talk to you soon.
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