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Mars is right here on Earth...
You just have to know where to find it!
Call it Mars...Call it Mordor, but it’s closer than you think! In fact, it’s right here in the
southwest of the US in the vast desert and red rock country of California, Nevada and Utah. This was my second tour of this region, re-visiting Zion but adding in four new destinations I missed last time
when I toured Arizona to see Monument Valley, The Petrified Forest, Painted Desert and Sedona. This time the focus was on Utah. Either tour is an experience you will long remember, and dream of for many
days thereafter as your mind slowly processes the amazing landscapes and rock formations you will see there. It is an otherworldly place, to be sure, and the closest thing you will experience to a trip
to Mars on this earth.
Our journey began with a long drive from Monterey California to Ridgecrest in the high Mojave
Desert, catching our first glimpse of the red rock country when we passed through Red Rock Canyon. After a quick check-in at a Best Western, we got right back in the car as sunset approached, just in
time to reach one of the most remote and little seen destinations one can find. The Trona Pinnacles have been featured in many science fiction movies, including Star Wars and Star Trek, because
the amazing rock sculptures there really do look like you’re standing on Mars. The only clue you might have that this was still Earth would be the blue sky above, and that 5 mile gravel track
roadway which led you here stretching off into uttermost desolation. Here a series of formations known as “tufas” thrust up from the blanched, parched soil, some towering hundred and fifty
feet high. You can wander among them, taking shots from every angle, largely alone in this forbidding wilderness. We saw only two other people the entire time we were there. Located about twenty miles
east of Ridgecrest near the China Lake Naval weapons testing facility, you have to scout the turnoff to the gravel road very closely on Google map, using the Street view option, in order to find the way.
Do not listen to your GPS in this country when it blithely tells you “Turn right on unpaved road.” You could quickly find yourself alone and lost in a place no one will visit for days, or
even weeks or months.
A new set of Michelin tires gave me confidence on the long gravel road, studded with larger stones
and gullies at times. But once there you will be treated to an amazing array of otherworldly rock and stone formations, which will make you feel like you are indeed walking on the surface of Mars. This
little visit, right at sunset, was a perfect way to start our journey and it prepared us for some of the enormous empty space, and desolation that we would see on the trip. There were some very
interesting cloud formations in the sky, which made for great photos in tandem with the rock features.
The following morning we took a small two-lane highway north up through Panamint Junction,
and then turned east into some of the most desolate terrain I have ever seen in my life. I resisted coming to Death Valley for a very long time, saying “why would anybody want to visit the place
with a name like that?” But after seeing this enormous valley I had the distinct feeling that I had wandered into Mordor! Everything here is aptly named. You begin your tour by climbing enormous
white dunes of sand, then move on to places called the Devils Golf Course and Badwater, which are really the remnants of an ancient seabed. At one point you are standing on the lowest place in the North
American continent, 286 feet below sea level on a dry, desiccated salt flat. And dry is the word for it. By this time on your journey your nose, sinuses, face, and skin will all be parched, which
was a difficult experience for me as I live in a supremely moist and saline environment right on the coast of Monterey. Bring along liberal amounts of lotion and plenty of water. This was a December
tour, as Death Valley is considered to be a winter park. The weather was a comfortable 65 degrees that day, but average summer time temperatures easily double that mark.
The terrain in Death Valley clearly had a weathered, ancient, blasted look about it, and I could
not imagine myself ever coming anywhere near this place during the summer heat. As it was, we were able to see everything in one day without having to drink fifteen bottles of water! The sere-gray sands,
weathered rock, stark bleached hillsides, and parched dry salt flats will leave a profound impression on you. You can stand anywhere in this valley and see for hundreds of miles--complete emptiness in
a space twice the size of the state of Delaware! And aside from other tourists and an occasional raven or hawk, there is very little sign of life in this well named valley of death.
Because of “the park’s” enormous size, a full tank of gas when you enter
is a must. There are probably five or six key viewpoints you will want to visit, but the driving distances between them can be very long. Most are concentrated in the southern portion of the park, and we
wisely decided to forsake a two or three hour detour north to “Scotty’s Castle.” Entering from the west, our itinerary would take us to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells
as a first stop. I have always been one of those “desert loving Englishmen” as the line goes in Lawrence of Arabia. (Though I’m actually German!) So I have long had a fancy for scaling
and walking on the crests of large sand dunes that I have written about in a number of my novels. Mesquite Flats gives you that experience, with pristine white sand dunes gleaming in the morning sun.
From there it was a 28 mile drive to the Furnace Creek visitor center, stopping at the Borax mine briefly on the way. (The whole valley looks like sculpted piles of borax!) After this we took the
south fork in the road to the Devil’s Golf Course, a region of wrecked landscape where the ground is furrowed with desiccated earthen gullies to a depth of two or three feet in every direction. You
can walk on top of them, noting tiny salt crystals in every nook and cranny. I can’t imagine earlier travelers ever getting a horse or wagon across that landscape. It was perhaps the most
forbidding ground I have ever seen in my life. Badwater basin is just to the south, where you’ll walk a third of a mile or so out on to a completely flat sat basin, with pristine white salt in
every direction. The silence and emptiness is eerie at times.
From here you back-track north to take the one-way entrance road to the
“Artist’s Drive,” a nine mile tour through some of the more colorful rock formations in the valley. You then proceed north to the fork near the visitor center again, and then head
east, climbing up into the mountains that frame this amazing landscape. We ended our tour at the famous Zabriskie point, and Dante’s Overlook, some 5000 feet high where you can see the entire
stretch of the Valley. I can only imagine what it must’ve been like when the first settlers moving West encountered this forbidding landscape and had to cross it without the benefit of a nice
air-conditioned Toyota Camry! Having seen it, I still drive the desolate roads in my mind’s eye, dreaming about the place night after night, so profound is the impression the valley leaves on you.
And as I looked at it, I realize that places like this were the rule in the universe we knew, not the exception almost all of Mars would look this way, all of Venus or Mercury as well.
As I left the valley, I put on Mike Oldfield’s “Songs of Distant Earth,” as my
marine home in Monterey seemed so very far away. The music soothed me as the sun set behind me on the Valley of Death. Our next destination was Mars Central, a stark contrast to the vast emptiness we
have just experienced. Las Vegas was in full gear for the Christmas holiday, and we stayed at the fabulous Aria hotel right in city center on the strip. Having toured all the hotels in this area, I would pick the Aria as my top choice if I ever come back to Vegas. It is expansive, elegant, modern, with comfortable rooms, good food, a casino for the foolhardy, and artwork around every corner. The all you can eat buffet kept us satisfied for all of two hours as we sampled one delicacy after another, finally settling on “legs that won’t quit,” a plate of luscious crab legs. Vegas is lights, camera, action! Tourists throng through the streets snapping pictures at every angle and corner. They line up for sumptuous buffet dinners and press through the festively decorated lobbies of enormous hotels, each built around a special theme, each like a mini Disneyland. This place is America’s playground and, in some ways, a symbol of everything wrong with this country, but at Christmas time with all the decorations, the glitz, lights, and the festive nature of the place, it makes for a very interesting visit. Your camera will love it too!
We decided to schedule 2 days in Mars central to rest up after the long drive from Monterey, and
prepare for the heart of our tour, which would take us to the amazing red rock country of Utah and Nevada. Our first stop after leaving Las Vegas and heading North on I-15 was a small park called
The Valley of Fire.
We wanted to take our time here, as the park offers much to see in a very compact space, and some amazing red-rock photography as well. Here you will find sheer rock walls, sculpted arches, columns of stone, ancient Indian petroglyphs and some amazing textures on the canyons and cliff walls. It was a kind of microcosm of the tour as a whole, featuring every kind of landscape we encountered in the days ahead. We spent most of the day there, ending up in St. George, Utah for a comfortable stay in a Courtyard Marriott Inn. The next day would be a longer journey through Zion National Park, where we wisely purchased an annual pass for $80 that would give us entry into every Federal park in the system for one year. As it can cost $20 on average to enter each park, we had broken even on that purchase before this trip ended, with a full year of free touring as the bonus.
Zion
is an amazing place, sometimes called the Yosemite of the Red Rock Country. In my view it has even more appeal than the often crowded Yosemite. The Virgin River winds through the long valley, which you can tour by car only in the off season winter months. The sheer sandstone cliffs rise in majestic formations, like stone cathedrals, and the road east out of the park is equally photogenic, climbing up to take you through formations of painted stone in shades of rust, sand and mauve. This being our second visit here, we did not linger, but simply drove through the park that day, snapping photos again at pullouts here and there. But Zion is a “must see” if you have never been there, perhaps the most beautiful canyon in the world. We wanted to get to what we thought would be the highlight of the trip, Utah’s famous Bryce Canyon. To get there you drive east to eventually exit Zion and then take 89 north at Carmel junction, a very scenic drive that slowly climbs the western edge of “The Grand Staircase.”
We arrived at Bryce Canyon to stay at the well known “Ruby’s Inn” just a
mile from the park entrance, and with plenty of time to “shoot the hoodoos” near sunset. These are the amazing eroded columns that gather in congregations along the sculpted canyon walls, all
wearing shawls of pristine white snow to add an extra touch of magic. Even though the weather had been in a comfortable range of 55-65 prior to this, the elevation here saw temperatures fall, and
we had to bundle up against the cold. Bryce is a deceptive park, quite small, but offering much. When you enter, and begin the drive out to “Rainbow Point,” the road is bordered by
thick stands of pine trees. So you can see nothing but the road and trees in this park until you reach one of the designated viewpoints. Even in the off season, these were well attended, and when you
finally get out of the car, and walk the short trails leading you out to the canyon rim you are suddenly greeted with the incredible vistas, looking down from an elevation of 8300 to 9100 feet at the
eroded canyon walls glowing in the late afternoon sun.
Here you will find distinct features that look like castles and towers, precariously balanced
rocks on tall columns of stone, and throngs of hoodoos clustered like ranks of soldiers arrayed for battle. The indians actually believed that these were indeed the spirits of living beings, frozen into
the rock. If Tolkien had dreampt up a stone version of the his Ent tree people, the clusters of hoodoos here would fill the bill nicely. Zoom in with your camera and you will see faces in the rock, heads
and shoulders shrugging under the mantle of snow.
Bryce offered the most sweeping and interesting views of the trip, rivaling the Grand Canyon
itself with its majestic tiers of colorful, sculpted stone. Yet up at 9000 feet, a cold wind was blowing through the canyon and not having on my heavier parka, I needed to retreat to the car at times to
warm up. We found that you can tour this park in about three or four hours, chasing the light and shadow on the canyon walls, though we returned the following morning to “Sunrise Point” to
catch the light there from a different perspective. In the evening we dined in the restaurant at Ruby’s Inn, which served up massive meals of rib sticking American food. The pot roast I was served
could have fed three people, and the price was very reasonable.
All that said, we found our decision to schedule two days at Bryce was misplaced. The winter ice
there made hiking down into the canyon impossible, so the park was a road tour from viewpoint to viewpoint--lovely, but easily seen in half a day. We therefore decided to forfeit our second day there and
venture out to parts unknown. Arches National Park had long been on our radar screen, and so, with an extra day in hand, we modified our itinerary and hit the road early the following morning to travel
unseen lands along the scenic highway 12.
The low point of the trip was a small town called Escalante. You come round a bend,
cruising down hill at 55 or 60mph and quickly pass a sign that reads 30mph. Taking your foot off the accelerator to slow down as you enter this nothing of a town is not enough. You would have to brake
firmly at that sign to satisfy the town’s lone patrol officer, an enterprising man who saw fit to spring a well planned speed trap on us in a classic western ambush. We were literally the only car
on the road there, and by the time I pulled over I could see I was already exiting this little hamlet in nowhere, and had been driving safely, quite alone, the whole time. Yet the officer hit me up for
37mph in a 30mph zone...adding $90 to our trip cost for this silly speed enforcement action. Any reasonable person would have seen that the penalty by far outweighed the offense, but what is a solo
police officer to do? He was polite, but firm, and I got the first traffic ticket I have ever received in my life. A word to all who travel this road! Escalante is a speed trap, and I have little
doubt that a large portion of the town’s annual revenue is extracted from unwary tourists like this. Who is going to contest the charges and drive 1500 miles two weeks later to make the required
personal appearance to do so? This was literally “highway robbery,” and there is no other way to describe it. Steer clear of Escalante, or drive through the two or three hundred yard
town, (all of 8 blocks), at 20mph if you must, particularly if you have an out of state license plate on your car.
The road then took us quickly north up highway 12 where, quite surprisingly, we found gas at under
$3.00 per gallon for the first time in years at a junction called “Torrey.” We filled up at $2.99, a price I thought I would never see again on a gas pump, then took highway 24 east to enter
Capitol Reef National Park.
Less developed than the other parks we had seen, this area was nonetheless a wonderful ride down
the single scenic roadway in the park. We saw some of our most interesting land forms here--multicolored reefs of sandstone in striated layers, hoodos forming on the flanks of high cliffs, soaring towers
of stone and features that looked like solitary castles guarding the high mountain and entrances of canyons. We were still at high elevation here, but it was not windy or cold as at Bryce.
One viewpoint offered us a look at the largest and most amazing Indian petroglyphs I have ever
seen. (See photo), a group that looked like we had found the Martians on this tour at long last. The image has been presented by many Internet gurus as evidence that the earth was visited by
extraterrestrials, (aliens) in our distant past. It ranks right up there with the Nazca lines in the Andes. This particular rock art depicted a line of four beings, wide shouldered, with long spindly
arms and what looked like globe like space helmets on. But if you look closely, you will see the circle forming what appears to be the helmet is not complete on any image. At the very top it is broken,
and so the lines depict horns or antlers and the being’s head is actually the squarish box above the shoulders. Yet, seen from afar, these do look like a line of alien beings carved in the stone
above, the haunting remnant of a strange visitation. It is more likely ceremonial or mythic storytelling by the ancient Anasazi offshoot known as the “Fremont” Indians. But we had fun
thinking we had finally found evidence of ancient life on Mars.
Leaving Capitol Reef, we continued on to the long awaited end point of our trip: Arches
National Park,
just a few miles from Moab. The town is an interesting place in itself, and we found some great Chinese food there! A curious rock shop got my attention, until I discovered it was full of over-priced fossils and stones, unique but not worth the hefty price tags. One specimen was selling for $4,500,000. !!! The moon setting in a fading blue and vermillion sky through the trees of Moab was also a priceless shot I captured just as we arrived at the “Archway Inn” an excellent hotel just 2 miles from the park.
Arches was the absolute highlight of the whole trip. An enormous park, Arches is well developed
with easy roadways that will lead you to every view point and vista of interest. Famous for its stone arches, you drive for some time before you first encounter one, but they are enormous, and well worth
the journey to see them and stand beneath these incredible formations. Each has a name...The “Skyline Arch,” the long thin “Landscape Arch” where the tree sewn hillside flows down
beneath it like a waterfall of land, and of course the “Delicate Arch,” which is the most interesting of all, though it will require some effort to see it up close. There are also castles,
rock fins, and many other interesting formations, and lots of the ancient bristle cone pine trees about as well, the oldest living things on earth.
The park also offers clusters of stone beings, where solitary boulders form the heads as they
perch atop long columns of stone. The “Three Gossips” was a good example of this, and there were other balancing rocks that will eventually fall from their thin stone necks in time, as many
of the arches have collapsed. That said, there are supposed to be thousands of arches in the park, though a handful of five or six are the most popular. By far the most famous “Delicate Arch”
can be viewed from two places. The first is an easy walk to a viewpoint a mile below the arch. Here you will need a good zoom on your camera to get any shot worthy of remembering the place. But there is
another trail, more arduous, that will take you right up to the arch itself. After hiking all day to view other features, we made this our final stop of the day, thinking to reach the Delicate Arch by
sunset (The last photo thumbnail).
The trail begins easily enough, and is only a mile and a half, but a third of the way there you
encounter a massive rock formation, and you must walk up the solid stone face of the hill for quite a while at about a 15 degree grade. The path is marked by “inukok” groupings of stones
piled on on top of another as you scale the rock, and from the base of this hill on, about a mile, the way is all uphill. In the summer you must have at least two liters of water per person, though the
cool winter day allowed us to climb without needing this. Good shoes that will provide sure traction on the stone face are a must, however, and the last 200 foot segment of the climb is a four foot wide
shelf of stone, that was icy in places. One side (to your right) was a sheer red stone wall, and to your left the shelf falls off an equally steep cliff. I did not even dare to look over that edge,
simply keeping one hand on the stony wall to my right and thinking of the Hobbits trying to make their way over Caradras Mountain on that thin, snowy path. I was just grateful that I was fit enough to
climb a mile and a half, non-stop and then do the same trek down hill in return, a three mile journey to a sublime experience in seeing this arch.
Soon I heard voices ahead, and knew that my climb had finally ended. Winded and weary, you reach
the top to be greeted with a view of an enormous arch, a window on the snowy landscape beyond. There were perhaps fifty other people there, sitting in awe, taking photos, or just quietly waiting for the
sun to fall through a low bank of distant clouds, hoping for better light. As it was, the light was somewhat diffused while we were there. My partner was eager to get right up close and touch the arch,
stand under it, but I decided to simply sit on a stone gallery and admire it from a hundred feet off. I popped in my ear buds and began listening to music, and the tune “All Sweet Things” by
Tim Bowness and No Man played through my soul as I sat there... Indeed, I thought, “All sweet things will come again,” though I wondered if I would ever again take that hike and sit before
this fabulous arching stone in my life. The thought that much of this trip was a once in a life time experience made it all the more special.
The next song was Brian Eno’s “And Then So Clear,” and it made a fitting end
point to this incredible journey. Somehow listening to your favorite music adds a special quality to a hike. The songs played on all the way down the hill again, and I knew, with each step, that that
moment at the Arch had been the apex of the journey. Now each step was taking me slowly home again.
With only two days and over a thousand miles to go, we decided to stick to the big 75mph freeways,
taking I-70 from Moab to I-15 to stop again at St George after traversing all of Utah. The following morning we got an early start and I drove all the way from St. George to Monterey and home sweet home.
The smell of the ocean was sweet to our parched noses, and we made it back just before sunset on New Year’s eve. It was a trip we will long remember, and a great way to tour these parks in
temperatures that are bearable and without all the summer crowds!
The next time you get a hankering for something out of this world, try Utah--the whole state
should be declared one giant national park.
John Schettler
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