Summer Vacation I-II

Wearily, I rang the bell for the eleventh time. The hotel manager was not responding. It was actually 1am Thursday morning (I had forgotten about the time change; damn Daylight Savings) and the tiny town of Hurricane, UT was as deep in sleep as I wanted to be at that moment.

But it didn't seem like that would be happening anytime soon. I considered the options (call another hotel? continue on to another city?) and didn't like any of them. It had been a late start: working late on Tuesday had led to most of the packing being done on Wednesday, hitting the highway around 2pm. The drive from Tucson had been almost uneventful: just outside of Flagstaff, some idiot almost ran us into the median. You're never too old to check your blind spots! And on the state line, a police roadblock had us stopped for five minutes; a bad wreck was being cleaned up.

Luckily for us, the long day was soon to be over. Another guest at the hotel arrived at the lobby and, recognizing our plight, mumbled something and got all aggro with the bell, banging out a rapid series of chimes. Suddenly, the door behind the desk popped open and the hotel manager, a sullen looking East Indian fellow, appeared! We were quickly checked in.

Unfortunately, in a pattern that was to repeat in three out of the four hotels, the room was not handicap accessible as we had reserved. So I had to go back, ring the bell again, probably just as the guy was getting back to sleep. But, not noticeably more sullen, he got us into a new room, and the day was finally done.

What kind of crazy address is 2250 South 1200 West? Is that a coordinate, an address or both? Frustrated, tired, and hungry, I tried to figure out which part of that was a street name, and how we would get to it. The first hotel in Ogden had not worked out and we were on the way to another. I had not counted on the stupidity of hotel managers who, once again, were not clear on the concept of accessibility. The hotel manager said--and he wouldn't be the first nor the last--"it's on the ground floor, so it is handicap accessible." No idiot, if my wife can't step over the tub to take a shower, or would break her butt without bars around the toilet, it's not fucking accessible. And they had already booked all the rooms that were actually accessible.

So Mary did what I should have done in the first place, call around and talked to the actual people at the front desk to see if they had rooms with walk-in showers, etc. It took a couple of calls to find one, and another call on the road to actually find the hotel itself.

It had been a fun but long day. Leaving sleepy Hurricane early, we had toured Zion National Park and Cedar Breaks. In the afternoon, rain had seemed to follow us northward through Utah, finally ending in Salt Lake City with a bright opening in the clouds above Ogden.

Zion was absolutely spectacular. I vowed to get back there soon to do some of the hikes. It is Amazing, towering red rock and white limestone rock formations. Layers of stratigraphy exposed in curving sections worn nearly smooth. At one point, Indian Paintbrush appeared to be growing straight out of a wall of sandstone by the side of the road. We hadn't even taken the tram to see the main part of Zion Valley.

Cedar Breaks was also definitely worth seeing, with cool weather (around 60F) at over 10,000 feet and alpine meadows full of wildflowers. Bluebells, columbine and a lighter pinkish version of Indian paintbrush appeared in droves. It turns out we were there a day before their annual wildflower festival. Clouds moved fast overhead, creating ever-shifting shadows moving across the pink-and-white rock.