Park Mania: The Beginning. After the relatively rapid climb up to 11,990 feet, a slower and more episodic drop down the Western Slope. More old, familiar places: A-Base completely devoid of snow – global warming! – Dillon and Silverthorne looking about the same as ever, Copper Mountain's beckoning runs covered in summer grass. (Back in the day, Copper was our favoritest place to ski.) Then over Vail Pass and down past that skiing mega-machine, Vail – whoa! that's one steep grade. I'm doing most of the mountain driving, but that's fine by me – with a manual transmission, it's like a full-immersion video game, keeping the combinations of vehicle speed, engine rpm, and brake use in proper relation to each other. How long can I go before having to touch the brake pedal? Most people are driving sanely enough, but a few are doing the accelerate-downhill-as-fast-as-possible-at-all-times-until-I-must-jam-on-the-brakes maneuver. I guess cars don't have to worry much about brake burnout these days.

Drive, drive, drive. We enter Utah and are buffeted by a howling duststorm. We reach our destination, and rest up in preparation for:

Side trip #1: Southwestern Utah

The Plan: drive up into the southwestern plateaus, see Bryce, spend the night somewhere, see Zion, return. The first part of the plan works pretty well. We drive south, down route 89 through beautiful high green valleys like islands, bounded to the east, south, and west by harsh desert. We drive into Bryce, and the thought comes to us; we're equipped for camping, why not just spend the night here? So we pay our ten dollars, break out the tent and sleeping bags, and set up camp. The severity of our camping ordeal is eased considerably by the existence of the Bryce Canyon Lodge, which has a good, reasonably-priced dining room within easy walking distance.
As our waitress served our herbed rainbow trout, I noticed that her nametag said "SLOVAKIA" below her name. The company that runs the lodge apparently hires lots of foreign students during the summer months; in fact, I think most of the waitstaff were non-U.S. college students.

We watched the full moon rise over the canyon, but couldn't get a decent picture. Later, we tried to drive out to an open area to look at the stars, but the full moon's light pretty much killed that plan off. (This would become a recurring theme.)

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Posted by David Fleck at 09 September 2006 05:51 PM