Over the edge

I had a pretty nice post composed when the pointing device on this notebook computer took over.  Just typing along and suddenly based on shadow movements over the point device pad the software highlighted the entire post and when I hit the next key it replaced everything  I had done with the letter "f".

I am going to repost the photos but text will be minimized.  I am too discouraged to try to re-create the whole thing.

EDIT:  OK, not the same as the first time around, but nothing ever is, is it?  Here is my second attempt to describe the day's activities.

We spent most of yesterday on the South Rim but we also spent a bit of time in reconnaissance, finding out where things are and planning for today. Today we did what ninety-nine percent of the millions of people who visit this park do not do. Today we went over the edge and down into the canyon.

That rock formation in the center of the photo appears in another photo in this series, keep watching.

We checked out the trail ratings posted at the visitor center. Most trails were rated as difficult. One and one only was rated as moderate. Of only moderate difficulty is the hike down Bright Angel trail to Mile and a Half Resthouse. The Resthouse is, indeed, 1.5 miles down the trail into the canyon.

Our plan was to walk slowly. I know how far I walk when I go out to walk for an hour on my winter time fitness regime, it is more than a mile. But here we wanted to walk for an hour or until we came to the Resthouse, whichever came first. Slow seemed good as energy saved on the descent seemed likely to be useful on the return.

Here we are about 20 minutes or so into the descent, nearly ready to make our first stop for water.

Water was said to be available at the Resthouse "seasonally". We each carried 24 ounces of water and a Clif bar. A worst case scenario seemed to me to be that we would drink all of the water we had at the turn around and even though thirsty be well enough hydrated to avoid headaches and the dizzies on the way back up.

The park estimated the hike should take 2 to 4 hours. We were, at our pace, aiming for 3, an hour down and 2 hours back up.

As we got even deeper I had to change the orientation of the camera to keep the sky in the frame.  The rim is higher and higher above us.

The route is characterized by numerous switchbacks and the occasional long traverse, always down, eventually around the corner and out of the side canyon towards the main canyon.

Still descending, here we come level with that same rock formation seen in the first photo.

And just under an hour into the descent we arrived at the Resthouse, visible because of its green roof. They did, in fact, have water, a faucet stuck into the ground dispensing Grand Canyon spring water.

They also had two volunteer rangers to provide some pleasant conversation and insights into the canyon and the trail. It was a good spot for a little sit down. However, mid way through our little sit down the rangers received word that there was a hiker in distress on the trail above. The wife of the husband wife volunteer team gathered her water and supplies and set off up the trail to find him.

We had actually walked a bit past the rest house (and a bit further down) to arrive at the toilets. This is another photo taken from the same spot, facing the canyon instead of the canyon wall. It is painfully clear that despite having descended a bit over 1,200 feet that there is still a long ways to go to the bottom.

The hike back up?

As advertised, clearly not in the easy range. But we had walked slowly on the way down and found that we were able to maintain pretty much that same slow pace most of the time on the ascent. There were some steep stretches and one in particular long steep stretch where our pace became even more deliberate. We paused in the places where there was shade. We passed the ranger lady and a guy quite a bit younger than us in one of the shady spots. She had used up all of her water and had the guy sitting in a shady spot. Apparently he was complaining of cramps and loss of strength in his legs.

It took us just slightly over an hour and a quarter to complete the ascent. With our 20 minute sit down at the Resthouse we completed the 2 to 4 hour hike in just under 3 hours, comfortably in the middle of the expected range.

We done good.

We had lunch on the rim at the same hotel as yesterday and then set out to explore the east rim area of the park. This left an area of the south rim which is available only by shuttle bus unexplored by us. We chose the east because the guide books promised that it was more of a contrast to the south rim than the remaining area we did not try to reach.

This is Grandview, which was the site of the first tourist hotel on the canyon's rim.

The vista is of a more wide open canyon, in some ways not as dramatic as the South Rim vistas, but in some ways even more dramatic.  If you examine this picture carefully you can find the Colorado River down there at the bottom.

This is a view from Moran Point.

And another, this time with a series of white water on the Colorado visible below.

There are never enough orange flower pictures.  These grow wild all along Highway 64 on the way from Williams to the park.  These are at Moran Point.

Here is a view from Navajo Point. I am not exactly sure but I believe that the nearer butte, the one with the shadow on its side, is Cardenas Butte, named for Lieutenant García López de Cárdenas. Cárdenas was a member of Coronado's conquistador expedition and is credited with being the first European to reach the Grand Canyon, arriving with the assistance of Hopi guides somewhere near this point in 1542.

There is another nice view, we think, of river rapids down there on the Colorado.

Here is Desert View, near the east entrance to the park and our final view of the Canyon.

The heat in Las Vegas was oppressive.  We have now spent three evenings in Williams and on two of those three evenings a jacket was necessary.  Tonight it was downright without a doubt chilly.

I forgot to bring the Beach Boys Greatest Hits CD along with me so we have been driving around without tunes.  Today just fiddling around I noticed that the rental Camry has a USB port inside that little portal on the dash.  The charging cable for my phone has a connector for the phone and a USB connector at the other end.  I plugged in and EUREKA.  The music that I have on my phone (including the Beach Boys Greatest Hits) became available for play through the car's entertainment system.  As a bonus, even while playing music the phone is recharged.

Let's go surfing now
Everyone is learning how
Come on on safari with me.

South rim

Those who also have a large percentage of the genetic material I am toting around will know that I am descended from a person who rationalized a life with no appearances at the Grand Canyon by stating that it was just a big hole in the ground and that he had seen  plenty of big holes in the ground, including the extremely big and impressive hole in the ground which was fairly near to our home known then as the Hull-Rust Mine (more commonly called the Hull-Rust-Mahoning in the modern era).

I too have seen the Hull-Rust Mahoning several dozen times in my life but I had never previously been to the Grand Canyon.  Now I have.

Sorry, Pops.  You were wrong.

We parked at the first place you come to inside the park which promises access to the rim, Mather Point.  We parked the car and walked out of the brush and up to the rim.

I dunno.  It almost renders photography irrelevant.  Somewhat like the Hoover Dam yesterday but even more so, the big canyon  is so, so much bigger than what can be captured even in 8 megapixels.

But I was there, I had a camera, I gave it a shot.

Our very first view, from Mather Point overlook.

The morning air was a bit hazy but you take the photos that are available on the day that you are there.

We walked along the rim for two and a half miles or so before lunch.  We had only just begun when I tried this one.  I was worried because it was facing back about quartering into the sun, usually not a good camera angle.

Eventually I got the model involved.  At first I had to hold her hand and walk her out to a spot where she could hold onto a bush.  I have a couple of amusing photos of that but this one is better as she musters all of her courage and just stands there only a couple of long steps away from a sheer cliff and a 2,000 foot drop.

I only got one wildlife shot.

Another fellow was standing there taking the same shot. He remarked that it wasn't very fierce wildlife. I suggested that it just depends upon how big the enlargement is.

Here's a look down into the canyon looking at a campground 4.5 miles from the trail head on the rim.  People hike down there, camp overnight and then complete the rest of a 6 mile hike to Plateau Point.  I have a better shot of the plateau here somewhere, I just thought the foliage frame and the campground made an interesting image.

Eventually we had lunch at the El Tovar Hotel near Hopi Point.  This is from a bit further along near the Kolb Lookout.

From the same area but facing more west.

And here's that look out towards Plateau Point with a good look at the trail.

The sub canyon running up towards the other rim there is the Bright Angel trail path as it leads away from the river towards the North Rim.  Bright Angel is the most popular cross canyon hiking trail.

We spent a lot of time getting oriented out there today and are probably headed back tomorrow to try to get a little bit further off the very well beaten paths.

It is a grand canyon.

Get your kicks

It winds from Chicago to LA . . . and one of the towns it passes through is Williams, Arizona, which is where we are now.

Today was a travel day but we ended up the way we finished yesterday with FT leaning against a lamp post, this time on the corner of a street in a classic Route 66 small town.

We traveled south and east from Las Vegas which pretty much instantly on the outskirts of town required a passage across the top of what is, according to the interpretive materials, one of the top 10 civil engineering achievements of the 20th century, big old,  gigantic old, off the scale of comprehension huge old Hoover Dam.

We have all seen it on TV and in film numerous times.  This picture shares the shortcomings of all of those other times I have seen images of the dam.  It does not even begin to do justice to how massive this thing is.  I hadn't ever seen it before, anyone else still in that category should come and see it.

Big, really big.

Even most of those who have seen the dam haven't seen this, the new highway bypass bridge over the gorge just below the dam.  It opened in 2011.

Visible in the upper right corner of the photo is the original construction crane used in construction of the dam from 1932 to 1935.  Apparently it was too big and too firmly anchored to ever bother to try to remove it.  And quite probably it is still occasionally useful.  It is after all a functioning crane capable of lifting massive loads, in case that should ever be necessary.

We passed over the highway on the top of the dam and then circled around and went back and also crossed over the new bridge.

Checking off all of the boxes.

Here's the FT standing on top of the dam with the Lake Meade reservoir in the background.  The top waterline is apparently an all time record flood stage.  Careful examination will reveal a bathtub ring lower down in the white layer which is more of the ordinary high water mark.

As pointed out to us by another citizen who was on top of the dam at the same time we were, several feet of water down on a reservoir of this size is a striking measure of the severity of drought conditions in the Southwest.

I got a book from Wireless for Christmas about under appreciated attractions in each of the states.  One of those attractions for Arizona was only a short detour off our travel route so we waited patiently for there at last to be a turn in that direction and headed off towards Dolan Springs.  The book said that there was a significant concentration of what is usually a fairly rare plant, Joshua trees.

They are not actually trees, actually a species of Yucca.  But they are to a midwestern flatlander a way exotic looking plant and when found in clusters as we saw along the road they provide an extravagant visual display.

By now it was about lunch time and we weren't sure about where to have lunch out there in the middle of nowhere until we saw this imperative statement in front of an establishment with additional puffery on the facade declaring that it has been voted the #1 restaurant in town.

And it WAS pretty good.  I can personally recommend the veggie wrap.

So we are hunkered down for the night in Williams, probably most of you can figure out what comes next.

One last Las Vegas bit, the FT and I left the room in the Paris again after I posted yesterday and headed down to the casino.  She was intrigued enough by my small  accomplishment at roulette from earlier in the day to want to investigate further for herself.  We found a small stakes table and the croupier and I walked her through the basics of betting on pure blind luck, which is after all what roulette is.

She had lots of fun and learned to play the game.  As for myself I bought myself back in with house money, the chips that I had won earlier in the day.  Once again I had a very nice run and ended up more than doubling my initial outlay.

After a few small successes FT busted  out and it occurred to both of us that I am unlikely to ever have possession of one of these again so I took another photo of my Paris casino chips.

That one on the far left has a nice look to it, don't you think?

Even with the nice run at roulette we can not and will not declare that we won money in Las Vegas.  That little success at the end means only that we ended up down less than we were earlier in the day and that we had fun.  We consider our losses to be well within the reasonable expense of entertainment for the entertainment the gambling provided.  That means we are satisfied that we got good value for what we paid for.  You can't really expect to do much better than that.

No lions either

Las Vegas truly is the city that never sleeps. I thought that if I headed out to the street before 7AM I could get a shot similar to the ones I have taken at heavily visited tourist attractions in Paris that have no people in the photo.

Nope.

Still, that is remarkably few people to appear in any photo taken on  the Strip.  By noon the street scene is a teeming mass.  By 10pm it is a mob scene.

I was up, the attendant wasn't. I ducked over to Bally's to play some poker. Since yesterday I had determined that the next door to each other Paris and Bally's are two arms of the same corporate entity. At the end of the hallway containing all of the restaurants inside the Paris is a seamless merger into the end of a hallway leading directly onto the floor of Bally's casino. Paris is not so much a separate hotel and casino as it is a second hotel tower at Bally's (with an auxiliary but slightly limited casino). While investigating this discovery I became aware that both hotels are subsidiaries of Caesars Palace. In fact there is a whole raft of hotels and casinos in the immediate area which are all part of the Caesar's Entertainment empire.

So anyway, the Bally's poker room promised a tobacco use forbidden atmosphere (something a bit hard to come by in this town) which was the deciding factor in making it my poker room of choice. I rather abruptly blew through my poker stake with a run of cards best described as toxic. I never had a pair. I had weak A a couple of times and K-J twice. Those are not good hands. I tried to limp in here and there but most hands were being raised. I saw probably half a dozen flops and never was in a hand to show down until the last one I played. Down to my last few chips I found A-J in the hole, called the bet and saw a flop.  It came 8-9-10 giving me a straight draw and top pair draw. I pushed the rest of my now meager pile into the pot.  I had so few chips by this point that I drew two calls.

One of them was pocket Jacks.  That gave him the same straight draw that I had and, fairly obviously, top pair.

I headed back to Paris and on a lark settled into a $5 minimum very small stakes roulette table.  I hit one of my numbers (24) on the first spin for $36.  I only played for about a half hour before the attendant called my phone with news that she was ready to face the day.  At that point the croupier was changing anyway so I gave him some of my chips and cashed the rest in.  I had slightly more than doubled my money at roulette.

Mostly correct but clearly not always Borch Map Company $9 map of Las Vegas for scale.

Further, our previously never in error guide had highly recommended the lion habitat show at the MGM Grand. From the Paris the MGM is a walk that while not longish also does not qualify as short. We wanted some exercise so we headed out.

Alas.

Not to blame the guide. Informed of this calamity by her moo the guide was herself quite appalled and in fact provided me via e-mail with the link to the Las Vegas Sun.

So we were a shortish/longish bit from home base and it was starting to warm up on its way to more than a hundred. We decided to cross the street from the side we had walked mostly out of doors to the MGM to the side where it looked like we could do quite a bit of the walking inside casinos.

Here's a pretty unusual shot. I walked halfway down the steps next to the escalator, lined up the shot and then signaled to the fellow traveler to come on down on the escalator, a place she is only very rarely found (you can't count the steps on the escalator).

As noted previously about la Tour Eiffel and le Arc d'Triomphe, even vaguely knowledgeable observers will know that it is not actually possible to get the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building easily into the same shot when you are in the actual New York, New York.

There was a tram that took us on the part of our return trip from the Monte Carlo to the Bellagio (I am strongly  suspicious of interlocking ownership over there too).  Fellow Traveler had been in the Conservatory at the Bellagio last evening and wanted to look in again.

It IS quite nice for a hotel but considerably less impressive than what we have available right there in Como Park.

This is one for the girls I guess.   Apparently when together they go on and on about leaning on the lamp post at the corner of the street in case a certain little lady comes by.  This reference will be completely Greek to anyone unfamiliar with the career and musical catalog of Herman's Hermits.

So completely unplanned by me, we discovered last evening watching the Las Vegas evening news about the upcoming annular solar eclipse.  All conditions are correct for a total eclipse on Sunday except that the moon is currently at an extreme distance from the earth meaning that even at full eclipse the entire sun will not be covered, there will be a rim of the sun visible around the edge of the moon.  Still, it should be pretty impressive and this is as close as we are likely to be, particularly by accident, to a total eclipse.  How's that for serendipity?

We were discussing total eclipse of the sun when the wise acre in my company remarked that at least it wasn't a total eclipse of the heart.  I know I have posted this before and it is linked over there on my sidebar but in view of her comment here it is again, Norway's most famous appliance band, Hurra Torpedo, doing Total Eclipse of the Heart.

That's all for this time.

Red Rock Canyon

Today we gambled all day.

Not really.

As usual I was up earlier than my attendant so I did do some exploring whilst she slumbered. Here in the Paris Hotel we are in France. Directly across the Strip is the Bellagio. I walked in there and discovered that I was in Italy. So that's kind of cool.

I also discovered that the Paris is a hotel (and a pretty nice one) but it really doesn't have a casino in the way that Las Vegas means casino. There IS a large room on the ground floor where you can gamble in lots of ways but most often in ways which did not appeal to my particular aesthetic. The Bellagio on the other hand, that place has a casino. I was there at, oh 7:30AM and there were three tables of no limit hold 'em in process in the poker room. True, two of them were small stakes (1/2) but the third table was 40/80 with 5 players. I don't yet know the exact guidelines but I believe most of the games require that you sit down with chips equal in value to 50 times the big blind.  That means that a 40/80 table ($40 small blind, $80 big blind) has a minimum buy in of at least $4,000.

At 7:30 in the morning.

To us gambling seems like an after dark activity and we have a rental car so we set off for the edge of town.

Just barely beyond the edge of settlement on the northwest side of the metro area is the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It isn't an actual national park but it certainly is managed like one and by the same people (Bureau of Land Management). I was pleased to discover that my national park access pass got us past the gate without having to pay the admission fee being charged to the other cars in line.

I apologize here and now but for the next several days there are going to be LOTS of pictures similar in theme to what follows. I do not apologize for the individual places, every place is unique. I got some nice photos today, I bet I get a few more before we are again in Roseville.

Here is the attendant at the Visitor Center. That formation is called the Calico Hills.

The Visitor Center also features a desert tortoise habitat.  Think zoo.  They have buried clay sewer pipes to provide shelter but they put out dishes of water.  The tortoises have to come out of the provided burrows (think cages) to get water.  An edge of one of the dishes is just visible on the edge of this photo.

Still, as with most zoos, it was interesting to see such a unique creature moving about in the relative open.  Probably the tortoises mind less than the lions at Como.

The conservation area has a 13 mile one way road loop with numerous parking areas and hiking trails leading out into the conservation area from each one.  Mostly, even at the hours we were there (10AM to about 12:30), it was too hot (already upper 80s) for venturing very far from the parking areas but there are lots and LOTS of interesting looking little walks into  the desert.  Some of them look not at all daunting and some of them look like treks better left to someone acclimated to the heat.

Plus there are snakes and scorpions out there.

Here's a closer look at the Calico Hills.

The attendant ventured a couple of hundred yards down the trail seen in the photo.  I waited near the car.  Close circuit to the child we once took to Mount Rainier:  I think that brings her even with me in the venturing from the parking lot criteria.

This looming other colored monster is Turtlehead Peak.

I am not a geologist but because of my past I know more geology than anyone else in my immediate family.  There are three distinct rock types visible in that photo.

And in fact a lot of the interpretive material keeps coming back to the geologic process which is still ongoing at this site, something called the Keystone Thrust.  Here is a photo of something called Ice Box Canyon which I think illustrates in a very, very obvious way that something significant is going on.  This one is for you Dennis and Heather.

This is all sedimentary rock, originally deposited in layers.  The force involved is gravity which means the layers must always be horizontal, that's the way gravity works.  The rock on the right displays clear layering in a still horizontal pattern.

The  rock on the left displays clear layering in a vertical pattern.  We know gravity formed those rocks which means that when the rock formed those layers were horizontal.  It took what can only be described as a force of nature to tip those rocks up on their edges, a force called the Keystone Thrust.

The attendant said this is the view she found most attractive, the "V" formed between the two sandstone formations with the greenish behind.  The green deal is La Madre Mountain.

And this one, I don't really know what it is called but you can see it from a long way off and it is one of my favorite views.

I bought the t-shirt.

After navigating back into town we searched out the Liberace Museum. I have an Eyewitness Travel guide listing this destination as one of the top attractions in Las Vegas. I also have a Borch Map Company $9 map of Las Vegas including the museum as one of the top attractions.

Alas!

Paris

OK, so everyone knew we were going to Paris some time this year, right? We have arrived in Paris.

OK, well actually we have arrived not so much IN Paris as AT Paris.

We are at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. Even the vaguely knowledgeable observers will know that it is impossible to get that angle on the Eiffel Tower and the Arc d'Triomphe when you are actually in France.

The fellow checking us in at security at the Minneapolis airport informed us that there is a new restriction in that you are allowed to bankrupt only ONE casino per trip to Las Vegas.

Probably not going to be a problem although the Guest Rider is up a couple of bucks. I haven't been able, as of yet, to actually get my hand into my pocket to pull out a dollar while in the presence of those willing to accept that dollar as a wager in a game of chance.

I will have a couple more days to see if I can overcome my reluctance.

Did anyone else happen to watch Man City v. Queen's Park Rangers this morning? It was epic.

Fishing opener

Today is the official fishing season opener so I rode out to the lake where I often see people fishing. It is just a tiny bit gross that people fish there, the lake is a holding reservoir for the drinking water in, among other places, Saint Paul and Roseville.

I was a little surprised, I expected a larger crowd.

In fact, I have seen larger crowds there in years past. I suspect this may be the last big one out there though as, as reported earlier, the roadway is being removed and by fishing opener next year the access to the lake will be pedestrian and bicycle only, no motor vehicles allowed.

I heard on cable TV that the average amount of exercise for Americans is 2 hours per week. The report went on to state that the recommended amount is 4 hours per week.

4 hours per week? Really? I am doing more than my share.

The people who are getting 2 hours per week will most likely not be walking in to Lake Vadnais while carrying their fishing gear. I confidently predict that next fishing opener will feature a much smaller crowd fishing in my drinking water.

On the way home I passed this milestone.

I get to make up the category (it is, after all, my blog) and that milestone pushes me into the family lead with most bicycles owned with at least 5,000 miles ridden.

I fully realize that I am trailing in the category of most bicycles owned with at least 10,000 miles ridden. Please note that I expect that later on this summer I will get back into that game although actually catching up is likely at least a couple of years away, probably more.

5,000 is a nice category though.

For anyone wondering, here's the totals after today's ride:

FirstLOOK: 20,000
Crown Jewel: 9,122 (see above note about bicycles owned with 10,000 miles ridden.
Bianchi: 6,444
NewLOOK: 5,008

And for general illustrative purposes:

Axis: 4,334
Michigan blue: 2,722

I am seeing over 47,500 miles just on bicycles that I still own.

French football is nearly over for the year. FC Nantes had a horrible start to the season and although they later rebounded to be a quite respectable mid-table side, the start kept them from ever seriously contending for promotion. Mid-table is better than they have been the last couple of years but one cannot celebrate. As the French language FC Nantes fan website notes, we are, after all, talking about LIGUE 2.