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A great time was had by all of TPX! Keep the good times rolling!

continued…

After grabbing lunch at Subway, we hurried off towards Arches National Park, without stopping to replenish our water supply, which proves to be a problem later on. During our 4 hour drive, we entertained ourselves with puzzles and “what happened?” scenario games – basically someone proposes a scenario like “A naked man is found dead in the middle of a field holding onto a straw, what happened?” and the players can ask Yes or No questions to find out what happened. (This becomes important later on) The drive was quite scenic and we arrived at Arches National Park at around 5:45pm.

After visiting the visitor’s center and talking to the park ranger, we followed his recommendation and went to visit some easy spots first.
This is “Balanced Rock” – a ball of rock resting on a stone structure. Wonder how many years it’ll take before the ball collapses.

Side view of Balanced Rock – you can see how thin the supporting point is.

We then went to “The Windows”, which is a series of arches. This one even has a hole in the wall.

Double Arches at South Window:

The Big Arch at South Window:

Reminded me of the arch we saw at St. Louis during Urbana ’06.

At around 6:45pm, we arrived at the trail head towards Delicate Arch, which is a free-standing arch that got us on this entire trip in the first place. (One of the organizers saw the arch in a photo, started planning the trip but decided to drop Arches National Park altogether because it was slightly out of the way and arches didn’t seem THAT impressive… yet here we are in the end). It was another long hike with a lot of elevation gain :S, but what made this hike more fun was the 2nd half of the trail wasn’t paved and only had sparse trail markers.

The sun was low in the sky by the time we started, creating some pretty lights against the clouds in the sky.

Sunset was due to occur at 8:10pm that day, and the ranger estimated 1.5 hours to get up to the top, so we hurried up the trail, hoping to arrive in time to capture sunset at the Delicate Arch. We wandered through some beautiful landscape (and it felt all the more adventurous without a clearly defined trail) and got to the Delicate Arch at 7:45pm or so – just before sunset.

We wandered through some pot like rock formation:

and the 2nd half of the trail was not paved and is only marked by trail markers like these:

After some elevation gain we got to a very “wilderness” section of the trail – it definitely felt different from hiking on a paved trail.

And we found an oasis in the middle of the wilderness.

And finally, Delicate Arch – a free standing arch, quite different from the ones at South Window.
From a different angle, Delicate Arch is at the edge of a bowl shaped structure with a steep drop on both sides.

We found plenty of other photographers camping out around Delicate Arch for a good sunset shot when the sun would cast its golden rays on the Delicate Arch stone structure – but unfortunately the clouds were in the way and the direction of the sun’s rays weren’t right, so we never saw the fading sun over the Delicate Arch. We did, however, see a beautiful sunset in general.

The sunset light can be seen on the mountains in the backdrop, but missed the arch itself.

Sunset lighting the clouds up as if they are on fire.

We left Delicate Arch just before sundown so we can avoid hiking back down the mountain in darkness. We got back to the car at around 9:00pm and we still have a 4 hour drive to our next stop for the night at Page, AZ. We continued to pass time and combat sleepiness with our “What happened?” scenario games, involving a wide variety of strange scenes with people dying from falling, suffocating, amputation etc., when the scariest event of the day happened.

Since Garmin said our ETA was close to 2AM, we decided to grab a quick bite at Wendy’s and keep pressing towards our hotel for the night. We switched drivers at Wendy’s and that’s when the chain of events began to unfold. Our new driver was complaining throughout the day how there wasn’t enough wildlife throughout Utah, and he wanted to see like flocks of bison in the wild or something. Well, his wish was granted as he made a turn onto a rural road and he screamed “Oh my god, what the f***” and slammed on the brakes. After all the screaming in the car subsided, we saw 3 donkeys taking their sweet time crossing the road ahead of us. After our close call with the donkey, we were more alert for wild animals, until we started playing more “what happened” games where we were investigating how a human arm ended up in a mailbox, and suddenly the driver screamed and braked again as deers crossed right in front of us. After these two close calls, more eyes were on the road ahead of us… only to observe more strange things.

With murder by suffocation and amputation on our minds, we came across an old car abandoned at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, which we thought was rather strange and bizarre. We continued down “Main Street” (which really is a rural road with a speed limit of 65mph (110km/h or so)) and after following a gentle curve, our headlights shone on a man in a checkered hoddie with his thumb held up. We were quite shocked at the sight of a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road as questions raced through our minds – what was he doing there at close to 1AM in the morning? Someone suggested it was a setup where if we stopped, the hitchhiker’s crew hiding in the fields would come out and jump us; someone even suggested he was a ghost hitchhiker :|. In any case, our car was full so we couldn’t have stopped, but we thought the most plausible scenario was the guy’s car broke down and he was walking towards the next town when we drove by. We decided to find the nearest mile marker and use our cell phones to call 911 in case the hitchhiker really needed assistance (or if it really was a crime setup). Unfortunately, our cell phones did not have reception since we are in the middle of nowhere – so we went on with our imaginations running wild as to ‘what happened?’.

We are approximately 20 minutes away from Page when we crossed the train tracks and again, braked abruptly to avoid hitting a wild dark horse crossing the road :|. None of the passengers saw what we were stopping for, but good thing our driver was alert and apparently saw the reflection of the horse’s eyes. Having quite enough wild animals for the day, we arrived at the Super 8 Motel and checked in around 2AM.

When we passed the state line from Utah to Arizona, I pointed out that there’s a possibility of timezone difference between UT and AZ. Strictly speaking, UT and AZ are on the same time zone (MST), but from my studies at ASU, I found out AZ does not observe daylight savings, but unfortunately I do not know if this is the time of the year where UT and AZ are in sync or out of sync. When we got to our hotel rooms, we found out that AZ is actually out of sync with UT right now and to our pleasant surprise, it is actually 1 hour behind, meaning it is only 1AM-ish and we get an extra hour of sleep :).

At this point we are completely out of water and Gatorade and I ended up drinking Arizona tap water from a small town 😐 and vowing to stop by Walmart first thing in the morning.

P. S. Day 3 may take a while because the best photos of the trip are from Day 3 – and I have double the amount of shots to process through 😛

We had an eventful Day 2 so I’m splitting it up into 2 parts.

We woke up at around 9am (which is late) and to our dismay, everything was snow covered outside and it felt like Canadian weather again. Many of us were definitely unprepared for the cold weather, including myself (I didn’t have room to pack a winter jacket, and for some strange reason I brought a scarf but not a hat or gloves :S). We stopped by a nearby Subway for breakfast, and conveniently they also have free wi-fi. After grabbing a bite, we went to the Bryce Canyon National Park Visitor Center. The ranger told us the snowstorm didn’t hit very hard last night so the roads are pretty clear, and as the sun goes up most of the snow on the roads should melt.

Bryce Canyon is famous for its hoodoos (the spire shaped rock formations) – hoodoos are most abundant in the world in Bryce Canyon National Park. We followed the ranger’s recommendations and visited Bryce Point first while we still have morning light. The view was, once again, amazing – I had time to stitch some panos 🙂 Unfortunately the downside is it was freezing cold, with wind chill at around 15 mph I think (here I go with Imperial again). The good part is most of the viewpoints at Bryce Canyon were “drive by” viewpoints – you basically drive up to the spot and there’s almost no hiking necessary to get to the lookout points. We visited a handful of viewpoints including:

Here’s what hoodoos look like:

Another shot of hoodoos. Note the snow – it was quite cold!

Shots like these show why Bryce Canyon National Park has the most hoodoos in the world.

Hoodoos against a mountain. Me looking.

An interesting natural “castle” like structure. Notice the cave.

Full shot of this natural castle.

Another side of the castle with funny walls sticking out.

Natural hole in the wall. (think they called it Natural Bridge – no it is not accessible)

And some pano shots! From Bryce Point:

Pano from inspiration point:

And as an interesting exercise, here are 2 pano shots from nearly the same place, one at 20mm FF and one at 24mm x1.6 crop.

So by noon or so, we’re done with all the drive-by viewpoints. At this point we could opt to take a hike in Bryce Canyon, or the more crazy idea floated around is to take a detour to visit Arches National Park, which is a detour of 4 hours one way – and we opted for this detour. So we quickly went back to the Subway to grab a foot long sub to go for lunch, and then hopped into the car for a 4 hour drive North-East into Utah for Arches National Park (which was close to Colorado, almost making this a 4 state trip)…

(to be continued!)

We left the Venetian around 9am and set off on our first day! Our first stop is… Walmart! to get water and Gatorade supplies, as well as breakfast. Walmarts are apparently more abundant down south. We drove 3-4 hours into Utah (with a pit stop to get Burger King lunch – fast food will be a recurring theme for this trip) and arrived at Zion National Park around 1pm. During our drive we inevitably were stuck behind slow cars at times, but one incident that was noteworthy was we were stuck behind this chain of slow cars, and then suddenly there was an ostrich farm (yes, those birds that stick their heads into the ground) and everyone in front of us pulled over to see the ostriches, while we sped past them. So it became a running joke that we need an “ostrich projector” to get past slow cars :).

Zion National Park is a canyon that is “upstream” from the more famous Grand Canyon. It does, however, contain a very famous hiking trail called “Angel’s Landing” that we were going to attempt. This hike proves to be one of the most strenuous hike I’ve taken in my life, and probably will be for a long time. The hike isn’t very long, but the challenge is the elevation gain. This time I have some photos to help illustrate the trip – just a disclaimer that these photos are generally not processed (maybe a few WB and contrast tweaks) – some of them definitely should be cropped at least.
We parked at the visitor’s center and took a shuttle to “The Grotto”, where the trail for Angel’s Landing starts. This is what we are about to conquer, from the start of the trail.

After a good hike through a long windy path, we took a break (I think this would be 30 minutes or so?) and this is what the viewpoint looks like. You can see the windy trail from the base (the trail starts near the murky grey river).

To get to this first stop isn’t really easy – here’s a more detailed view of the windy path that we had to take to get up to where I was when I took the photo above.

After that fair amount of hiking I figured we must be pretty high up and close to the top – but we aren’t even half way there yet! We took a turn and went to the back of the mountain, upon which we found MORE windy paths.

(Don’t ask me why I shot this photo in f/4… think I forgot to change the settings back).
Here’s what those windy path look like from the top.

After that we are finally at Scout’s Lookout! Here’s a group photo of the 5 of us that went on this trip. Behind us you see a mountain – that’s to be the second half of this hike…. but only 2 of us in this photo are going to make it…

Scout’s Lookout is often the stopping point for most hikers as the last leg of the hike to Angel’s Landing is extremely challenging, and people do die from falling off the trail every year. We went up and down a small hill and this is what is in front of us. (The guy in blue is me)

Some sections of this hike is very steep and narrow (the hike if I remember correctly is like 0.5 miles with 700ft elevation gain – sorry I talk in imperial for these things :P). In the past decade or so the National Park system installed chains to help people along – I don’t know how I would have got up there without the chains. Here are two photos of how narrow the sections are, and me hanging on to the chains for dear life. Note the chains are only sparsely placed – it isn’t one continuous chain to the top.

Seeing how difficult this last section is, 3 people amongst the 5 of us decided to call it quits and stay at Scout’s Lookout. (You really can’t be afraid of heights to get up top) So only one guy went up with me to the top to land as “angels” rather than “scouts” (har har). (Coincidentally, this guy is the person I went skydiving with…) The view at the top is quite breathtaking. Didn’t have time to stitch a pano, but here’s one shot towards the valley where we first started out from:

It was really high up and it was also quite windy at the top. Which makes it rather scary to pose for photos and not fear falling. I guess lesson learned from skydiving is just to forget the situation you’re in and absorb the sight you’re seeing – but the mind does kick in at times and frankly, it is quite scary.

After eating a sandwich at the top, we have to take the same way back down – going back down those chains is not an easy job either. Here’s the view of the other side of the canyon. Behind me is the steep climb back down, and then up that thin mountain structure again before snaking back down the back of the mountain to the canyon floor.

After quite the strenuous hike, we took it easy and took the shuttle to 2 other viewpoints before heading back to the Visitor’s Center. The Angel’s Landing hike took around 4 hours, and we initially wanted to capture sunset over the canyon, except the sky was rather cloudy, so we gave up and started driving to our pit stop for the night, which is another 2-3 hours away.
We left Zion National Park and stopped at a small town called “Junction” (I think) where we ate at a diner that served the worst steak I could ever have had in my life. The steak was well-done when we asked for medium; and what’s worse is the crust of the steak was bitter for some strange reason. Not to mention it was super dry with no steak sauce. Urgh. The saving grace is one guy was smart enough to propose we share the 5 dishes we ordered, so no one person has to bear the risk of having a horribly cooked dinner, not to mention it was somewhat pricey (granted it was the only diner in town, it seems).
Our last stop for the day is Bryce Canyon Resort, (don’t get fooled by the “resort” name, it is more like a motel) where we have 2 rooms booked for the night. As we were heading there, there was again some significant elevation gains (though this time in the car), to a point we started seeing snow and we also ran into a snowstorm while driving. Thanks to our Canadian drivers (3 of us were Canadians and 2 of us were from Houston) we got to the resort safely, but late enough that the front desk was already closed and they just left our keys taped to the front door. The rest of the night was quite uneventful (aside from watching the story of the smoking SUV at Times Square unfold on CNN) as we really needed to rest up for Day 2.

As some of you may know, last weekend I went with 4 other friends to a mid-US trip traveling across 3 states – Nevada, Utah and Arizona. It was mainly a sightseeing and photography trip, so I ended up with lots and lots of photos which I will slowly process. But meanwhile I figured I’ll write up on my experiences and post a few photos here and there.

The trip starts on Day 0 because nothing much happened for me on Friday (no photos either). The 4 of them went on to Vegas earlier in the day to enjoy some buffets and “working” at the poolside, while I labored here in Seattle until it was 4:30pm and I left for the airport. I arrived to LAS 40 minutes earlier than expected because of strong tailwinds (which made for a bumpy flight), and found out my friends just got into the buffet at Rio and couldn’t pick me up, so I ended up finding my way to the strip to join them.

Being a cheapskate :P, I asked the info desk at the airport for the cheapest way to get to the strip – turns out a cab will run me close to $17, while a shuttle bus will only cost $7. So I hopped onto the first shuttle bus I can find to Rio. Big mistake! Lesson learned here: there are multiple shuttle bus companies, so go find the bus that is nearly full before hopping on! When I got onto the bus there was only 1 other person, and it turns out the bus doesn’t leave until it is full (or has a substantial amount of people). So I ended up waiting on the bus for almost 30 minutes before it finally started heading towards the strip. By the time I got to Rio, my friends were done dinner and we ended up meeting at the garage where I loaded my luggage into the rental car.

The rental car was a Jeep Patriot; the “trunk” space was smaller than I expected, (later found out it is significantly smaller than a Rav4) and with my luggage, the entire back is stacked to the top and you can’t look out through the back anymore. Anyhow, we went to Bellagio to watch the 10pm showing of “O” – my 3rd Cirque du Soleil show, and the one that has been most raved about. My short review is it is quite artistic and pretty, but thin on “plot” compared to the other cirque shows, which I prefer more.

After “O” we went back to our hotel suite – we had a suite at The Venetian 🙂 I was super hungry so I went with 3 other people to the casino where I got food and they played some Pai Gow poker and Roulette (the 5th guy was too sleepy so he went to bed). On our way back to the suite we came across this ‘Star Trek’ penny slot machine which appealed to the geeky side of all of us and we ended up spending over an hour on that machine – it played like a video game where you can login, gather medals (achievements) and even had bonus minigames! It was actually the bonus minigame that we initially saw that got us attracted to the machine. Basically to get to play the minigame, 3 “bonus” icons has to show up on the screen (doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t even have to lineup), so the 4 of us gathered in front of the slot machine and tried to use our fingers to manipulate the outcome to get 3 bonuses (the slot machine had a touch sensitive screen and touching it will “stop” the spin for that column – it is a legit feature, we aren’t breaking the machine :P). The bonuses had really good payout (one bonus we did paid out $35.00+ on a 35c bet).

Anyhow, after spending some money there, we went back to our suite and slept for the real start of our adventure tomorrow!