One thing I learned while visiting Bryce Canyon National Park is that people have been describing it in print since 1916, when articles about the area appeared in magazines owned by the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads. That’s around the same time tourists started driving their automobiles up to the Colorado Plateau to gawk at the park’s gallery of sandstone hoodoos. (A side note: According to a roadside marker on Highway 89, those old cars had to climb the steep road to Bryce Canyon in reverse because their gravity-fed fuel systems couldn’t get gas to the engine the other way around.)
My point is this: Our national parks have been around nearly as long as the combustion engine, and rivers of ink have been devoted to their wonderfulness. Ken Burns alone spent six years filming his 12-hour PBS special about the park system, and a Google search for “national parks” on the Interweb turns up 188 million hits.
Jill and I were discussing this particular reality the other night at the Canyon Lodge, in Panguitch, Utah, as we sipped cheap bourbon from disposable motel cups. After several minutes of semi-serious deliberation, we decided we are not going to kill ourselves trying to out-Burns Ken Burns. Instead, we’re going to treat our visits to national parks like mini-vacations within our “working honeymoon” and document them in travelogue style: with snapshots and narration. (Only our travelogues will be two or three minutes — not two or three hours like the ones my parents attended in the ’70s.)
To be fair to Jill, I should point out that all of the photos contained in the slideshow below were shot in less-than-ideal light (read: not at dawn or dusk), and a few of them were snapped by me using the little Canon PowerShot D10 Jill gave me for Christmas. (It’s snowproof!)
It should also be noted that both of us hate the sound of our own voices. We can only hope that Bryce’s epic beauty outweighs our aural insufferability.
As newbie bloggers and fairly rudderless travelers, one of the greatest rewards we get is when a reader takes the time to tell us about a destination we should point our car toward. People we meet keep asking us what our plan is, and the honest truth is that we don’t have one. At least not much of one. Our unofficial rules of the road are, (1) if we like a place, we linger; (2) if we can avoid interstates and chain restaurants, we do; and (3) if someone tells us about a place we shouldn’t miss, we circle it on the map.
That’s why I loved reading the following comment from Greg Lewis, an old friend and former professor of mine at Fresno State:
“To do Utah right, you need to include a trip down to Moab. Just north of there, heading west off US 191, is state route 313 which, on the map, runs about 30 miles to a dead end and a spot labeled “view point.” Any place on a map so labeled and served by a 30-mile dead-end road is worth checking out. But when you do, you must plan to be there well before dawn. Park at the dead end and walk about 200 yards south to the edge of the cliff. There will be no machines there, no animals, no insects and no other people. Sit there, preferably alone, and wait while the sun comes up. Then you will understand part of why this land is sacred to it’s earliest inhabitants. If you don’t breathe too hard and your heart doesn’t pound, the only sound you’ll hear is the wind blowing past your ears.“
We’re headed away from Moab right now, but you better believe we’ll circle back. I’m pretty sure the only way to get Scott anywhere “well before dawn” is to sleep there, but if I have to head out alone with my camera, I will. After such a thoughtfully and thoroughly composed suggestion, how could I not?
Thanks, Professor Lewis, for pointing us in an enlightening direction.
That’s the Walt Whitman quote printed in the opening pages of The Monkey Wrench Gang, a copy of which I now own courtesy of my friend Dan Miller. Dan read my post “That Book is Not Approved” on the day Jill and I visited him and his wife, Diane, in Richmond, Utah.
It’s fitting that Dan should fulfill this particular reading request, because he is filled with the rebellious spirit of Ed Abbey — and, by extension, Abbey’s Monkey Wrench alter ego, Seldom Seen Smith. If I were a ranger at Glen Canyon Dam, I wouldn’t let Dan anywhere near the place.
Dan being Dan, he didn’t just give me any copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang, but the Tenth Anniversary Edition with illustrations by R. Crumb. The book’s dust jacket is creased and weathered, its edges ragged, but it still brims with pulp-fiction color — not unlike Dan himself, who has spent a lifetime wandering beneath the Utah sun in boots, ski bindings and rowboats but still has the wild eyes and devilish grin of a teenaged rabble-rouser.
I don’t think Dan would ever plot to blow up Glen Canyon Dam (would you, Dan?), but, as executive director of the Bear River Watershed Council, he’s not done rabble-rousing for worthy wilderness causes. He’s also the co-author of High in Utah, a hiking guidebook that details the ascents of the highest peaks in our 45th state.
High in Utah, too, contains a quote in its opening pages: “Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.”
The source of that one? Edward Abbey. So I guess we’ve come full circle.
Thanks, Dan. For sharing your well-loved copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang and your passion for Utah’s wild places. I’m already a few chapters into the former, and Jill and I can’t wait to explore the latter in all its un-ironed-out glory.
You can’t miss the LDS Temple in Logan, Utah — it’s nearly 120,000 square feet and sits on 9 acres. The Mormons don’t mess around when it comes to architecture. Volunteer laborers built the five-story temple during a seven-year period from 1877 to 1884. It’s an amazing sight, made even more dramatic by the surrounding mountains of Cache Valley. The flood lights, which were permanently installed on the temple’s 63rd anniversary, add a little extra drama at dusk.
Scott has four photo albums that predate me. In each of them are a few pictures of family, friends and plenty of ex-girlfriends. But page after page is dedicated to mountains, rivers, lakes and trails. These are the places that for seven years Scott has promised to bring me to. Bear Lake is one of those. It is located at the north end of Logan Canyon, after a 40-mile stretch of a snowy winter wonderland. It’s breathtaking for me, but for Scott it’s a deep sigh. There is more meaning for him in these miles of mountains than I could begin to understand. Thankfully, we have a long road trip ahead of us.
You can’t miss the 
Scott has four photo albums that predate me. In each of them are a few pictures of family, friends and plenty of ex-girlfriends. But page after page is dedicated to mountains, rivers, lakes and trails. These are the places that for seven years Scott has promised to bring me to.