Grand indeed!

Aloha all,

this post about our one week rafting trip through the Grand Canyon might turn out surprisingly short, because I have a hard time putting in words how truly “grand” it was. But of course I’ll try anyway. I will not attempt to give a turn by turn commentary, but here are some random thoughts on what I believe was an epic adventure for all of us:

• My biggest surprise was that every single one of the 188 miles on the river was spectacular. I had been to the Grand Canyon at least six times before. I knew it was awesome, but I did not expect it to be this awesome all the time. Every turn offered more majestic grandeur and overwhelming beauty. Every side canyon would be a mayor attraction by itself if it were located anywhere else. The shear scale of it is hard to comprehend. The cave below is so big that we could have played a regulation size ultimate game in it. John Wesley Powell, the one-armed civil war veteran who made the first passage through the entire Grand Canyon in 1869 estimated that 50,000 people could fit in that cave. Yet from a distance it’s just a small opening on the very bottom of the lowest level of the canyon, with the rim being way above the top of this picture:

• The two most spectacular side canyons were the Little Colorado and the Havasu Canyon. Both of them have so much silt that the water turns into an unreal turquoise color. Everybody seemed to be just as blown away as I was by this otherworldly sight. At one place the Little Colorado River is also just perfect to slide down small rapids, wearing the life vests upside down (or “diaper style”). That was probably Sandra and my favorite spot of the whole trip.

• We celebrated Bern’s 56th birthday with 56 frisbee continuous throws in the big cave and 5-6 rides down the Little Colorado. At night we had a Hawaiian night with aloha shirts, mai tais, leis and an improvised pineapple upside down cake. If you know Bern, you know what he thought about life that day…and any other day.

• On my earlier visits to the Grand Canyon, I never hiked all the way down to the river. Ironically, the place you end up if you hike down from the rim in the National Park is not the most spectacular part of the canyon. Still very pretty, but those brave hikers would deserve to see some of the other places that are even more special.

• The colorful side canyons make for good pictures, but some of my favorite things can not even be captured in photos, like the sight of the moonlit canyon walls and the milky way and stars of the clear night sky every time you wake up. And just when we were wondering what’s out there, Ray, one of our fellow rafters, gave us a presentation of his professional grade astronomical photographs.

• We knew it was going to be cold water and hot air temperatures. But I am still puzzled that sometimes I was both, hot and cold at the very same time. How is that even possible? The Grand Canyon in summer is one of the few places on earth where you have an equal chance to  die of hypothermia or heat stroke. 

• I will be honest, sometimes it was uncomfortably hot. But most of the time, it was very easy to change that: To paraphrase our guide’s words: If you are hot at the campsite or if you drink warm beer, you are dumb. There is a 188 mile long refrigerator next to us the whole week.

• Time doesn’t seem to matter much on the river. You wake up with sunrise and get tired soon after sunset. We also did not spend much time thinking about work or what else might be happening in the world. I never even really checked whether there was a cell phone signal. Often, we had no idea even what day it was. The only time we thought about what might be happening outside of the canyon was when a lot of us agreed how awesome it would be to come out of the canyon and find out that we had a new president.

• How convenient is it that the Colorado river deposits sand banks every few miles to provide us with lunch spot and campsites. Every one of them was spectacular. However, they differed in how much shade they provided, how much of the night sky we could watch and whether there was enough space to throw a frisbee (with this crew, there usually was).

• Our three guides were all very different, but all awesome in their own way: Tanner was in charge since he has decades of experience on the Grand Canyon, a seasoned river guide who seem to know every rapid, every other guide on the river, every story, every rock and every joke ever told. He also had the most unique T-Shirts, like the one below. Kate was pretty new to the river life, just having quit her job as a math teacher. She was almost as enthusiastic about rafting the Grand Canyon as we were. Josh drove our boat and was so easy going, calm and relaxed, I don’t know what it would take to rattle him. Definitely not the class 10 rapids, even though they are some of the largest navigable rapids in the world. And definitely not our questions, even though I suspect they are as repetitive as the questions I got at the hotel front desk every day. Here, we were the clueless ones.

• The three guides worked great as a team and spoiled us with ridiculous good food every night. I am not kidding when I say that the only serious complaint I heard from our group about the trip was that there was too much and too good food. Despite our best efforts, we could sometimes not even finish half of it.

• Even though we were reminded that it’s a Hatch River Expedition, not a Hatch Vacation, it’s pretty amazing how comfortable Hatch made it for us to enjoy this adventure in the wilderness. Besides feeding us three times a day and providing snacks anytime we waned, they also provided us with comfy cots to sleep on and even pillows and sleeping bags. And they set up toilets in the most beautiful locations you can imagine. It inspired Steve to take pictures of them every night: 

• Janet deserves credit not only for organizing the trip, (and for several of the photos in this blog!) but also for reminding us of the perils before we could get in trouble. Her hat blew into the river about 100 yards into this 188 mile journey and she fell off the boat on one of the first mayor rapids, hanging on by just a few fingers until we were able to pull her back in. We all held on a little tighter after that. 

• One advantage of the larger, motorized rafts is that you can choose your own level of excitement for every rapid by where you sit on the raft: The “bathtub” upfront is the wettest spot, best if you enjoy being hit by a wall of cold water. “Butts to the Board” on the side is the safer, but equally wet choice. Riding the “Side Tubes” is the most thrilling, while “The Tea Room” is the relatively driest and most comfortable ride, if you are into that kind of thing.

This is the first video in this blog, 

make sure you have your sound on,

 if you want to hear our excitement

going through Serpentine rapid.

• The coolest ride for some of us was the last rapid, where Josh gave us the choice to swim through it. After all the warnings about dangerous currents and hypothermia, I thought he was kidding. By the time I realized he was serious, I had missed my chance. Maybe this could be my excuse that I have to do this trip again?
• What a fun group of people we had: We knew we were off to a good start when our group met the first fellow rafters the night before the trip at the Cliff Dwellers Lodge at Marble Canyon: They not only played our silly games, but also taught us a new one. Besides our group of ten frisbee friends from Hawaii, there were 15 more guests on the two rafts. It was a pleasure to see how well everybody got along and helped each other out, especially the seven teenagers. They were all very inclusive and were having a blast. One of the few complaints I heard was Sundi asking her mom to “stop taking pictures of everything I do”; followed not even 10 minutes later by “Mommy, we are going to jump off the raft, can you take like a billion pictures of me please?”. Luckily, Janet saved one picture for the bigger kids jumping off the boat:

• By the end of the trip, it really felt like one big happy family. On the last night, the kids put on a talent show for the adults. The only boy among the teenagers, who was sometimes off by himself, was the main star. Turns out he was off by himself writing a rap song about the trip that was absolutely fabulous and hilarious, summing up every day in verse. He got a huge and well deserved standing ovation from everyone. He also won every stone skipping competition, the juggling competition and the impromptu long jump event.

• Obviously, I expected to enjoy this trip (otherwise I would not have spent the over $3000 for it) but I also thought I’d be happy to come back to civilization after one week. However, given the option on the last day, I would have loved to keep going for another week. But on Sunday early morning, we were picked up by a helicopter, flown to a wilderness camp with an airstrip from where we flew back to Las Vegas. The craziness of Vegas was quite the shock to our systems after a week on the river. All the noise, all the people, all the lights, it was quite the circus. Actually a Circus Circus for us, since that is where we stayed.
• Under normal circumstances, the days in Las Vegas we spent with Bern, Jill, Tommy, Greg and the Kings before and after the trip would have been something really special and worthy of a post by itself, we even got to see two great Cirque de Soleil shows (‘Love’ and ‘Ka’), but it all seems to pale in comparison to the Grandeur and Awesomeness of the Grand Canyon. Plus, I promised you a short update and we have to get ready for our next leg of the trip: Joy is stored and we are excited to see our family in Germany and Sweden tomorrow.

Aloha from Las Vegas,

Chris & Sandra

Rockets, Concerts, Friends, Beer, Pueblos, Donkeys, Snakes and Fireworks

Aloha all,

it’s been two weeks since the last update! This road trip has gone so smoothly, that this qualifies as one of the biggest challenges: How am I going to write about everything we have done in the last two weeks without losing even my most loyal readers and without missing our Grand Canyon rafting trip that starts on Sunday?

I’ll have to be real brief about the rocket launches (we saw about 20!), the number one attraction of Santa Fe (which we hated!), our favorite concert of this trip (which was as diverse as Willie K!), the detour we took to see our sister (and to attend a community meeting about environmental clean up), the National Park Service sites we visited (we’ve now been to over 100 all together!), the best innovation in camping (and cross-culture friendships) and the asses we met on Route 66 today. 

Let’s start where I left off: After leaving our happy place at the Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences, we drove to the remote “Spaceport America”. That’s the first facility specifically built for commercial space travel. After many delays, it sounds like Virgin Galactic is finally moving their operations here, but the New Mexico tax payers we talked to seemed somewhat suspicious. We were there for the annual “Spaceport America Cup”, which is an international competition for over 100 of the leading universities in rocket science around the world. 

One of the Spacesport America Cup Teams
- it IS rocket science!

We saw about 20 launches, most of them successful in getting their rockets between 20,000 and 100,000 feet up into the air. Since this actually IS rocket science, we would have liked to get a little more info on what was going on. But with hundreds of competitors and only a few dozen spectators, who all seem smarted than us, maybe we were the only ones who needed more explanations. But still pretty cool to see the rocket launches.

Petroglyph National Monument”

In Albuquerque, we saw a few hundred Petroglyphs at the appropriately named “Petroglyph National Monument” and we saw a fun musical (“I do, I do, I do”) in a community theater that made the Iao Theater feel like a big broadway production in comparison. At the Alburquerque Museum, for reasons I still don’t understand, they gave us free tickets for an almost sold out concert, even though they did not know it was my birthday. Denise Donatelli was singing with the  Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra and Bobby Shew was playing the “Instrument of Hope”, a trumpet made from bullet casings from the Parkland shooting. The trumpet is on a tour to promote awareness of gun violence. 

Pecos National Monument

Our next stop was Pecos National Monument, not to be confused with the town of Pecos in Texas, which we found so depressing. This is a very scenic spot in the mountains east of Santa Fe. The national monument preserves mostly the impressive pueblo ruins. But the ranger program we attended was surprisingly about the civil war. That’s about a thousand miles further east than the other civil war sites we have seen. The battles in New Mexico were not the biggest, but it can be argued that if the confederates had not lost their supplies here and had been successful in expanding their territory to the west coast, the war could have ended differently. Some local historians call the battle at Glorieta Pass the “Gettysburg of the West”. Let’s just say: If they tried to attract hordes of tourists with that description, they have failed. 

For years, we have been warned about rattlesnakes. Wherever we went in desert climates, we were told “This is rattlesnake country, be careful”, but had never seen one. I had started to suspect that they were an invention by park rangers to keep people from going off the trails or maybe they were just mystical creatures. Despite all the warnings, up until Pecos, I had seen as many actual rattlesnakes as unicorns. But at Pecos NM, we get to see two, both from a safe enough distance, but close enough that I now believe in their existence. Still not sure about the unicorns.

Finally saw a rattlesnake, so they actually do exist!

Santa Fe is a really fun town with lots of things to do. But we did not know that when we got there. So we consulted Trip Advisor for things to do. And the number one attraction was “Meow Wolf”, which was described as a mix of art installation, haunted house and interactive experience. That’s all we needed to know, so we went there. Our anticipation grew even more when we got there on a Monday morning right when they opened and saw a huge long line. The lady in front of us was raving how much she liked it and that she couldn’t wait to come back. By the time we finally got in, our expectation were so high that we had to be disappointed. And we were. The rooms were colorful (expect the one below) and weird, but that was about it. Every time we went into a new room, I was wondering what was going to happen…and then nothing ever did. There is some hidden story, but it seemed way too convoluted. This might seem weird, coming from two people who can easily spend half a day in a state capitol building and rave about it, but we got bored at Meow Wolf pretty quickly….so we left and went to the state capitol, which (of course!) we loved! It’s very modern and very different from all other state capitols we have seen, but it fits perfectly into Santa Fe. And since Santa Fe is an art town, they have more art in the capitol than many art museums do.

New Mexico State Capitol in Santa Fe

On a great walking history tour, on the free shuttle busses and exploring on our own, we got to see some of Santa Fe’s #2 to #10 attractions, which we all liked better than the #1. When my brother and I were kids, my parents (who were both art history majors) had a very child friendly rule: On family trips, we would only visit one church per day. Now that we are older and wiser and a little more curious about history, we don’t have to follow that rule anymore. That’s good, because they have three interesting churches in Santa Fe. First, there is a Basilica that seemed way to French to be standing in the Southwest. I had a very weird experience here: As a kid, I always enjoyed lighting a candle in a church. Not because I was very devout, but I always enjoyed playing with fire and had not yet developed the intellect to appreciate my mom’s musings about christian art. I don’t think I had lit a candle in a church in decades, but for some reason, I lit one in the Basilica in Santa Fe…maybe because it was only one dollar, maybe because my mom wasn’t there, so we had nobody to explain the art to us. About one or two seconds (!) after I lit the candle, I received a text from a friend: “I hope you are really close to heaven right now so you can throw some prayers up…” - a common friend was in the hospital. Luckily, he seems to be fine now. Since I am agnostic, I don’t take any credit for his recovery, but the timing really made me think. 

Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

The second church has what they call the “Magic Staircase”. This is how this story goes: The balcony for the choir was built without stairs. Apparently that was not unusual, since most monks would be ok climbing up a ladder. However, this church was built for nuns and they could or would not climb up a ladder. So they started praying for a solution and since they were not agnostic, it worked: On the seventh day, a mysterious man showed up with some lumber and he started building a spiral staircase that seemed to defy gravity. Then he disappeared without leaving his name and without getting paid. If nothing else, it was a miracle that nobody fell down, since this is what the staircase looked like for the first few years (in the photo they have removed the handrail, which was added later):

The "Magic Staircase" as it was built

The third church claims to be “The Oldest Church in the United States”. Of course there are several churches with that claim. But the San Miguel Chapel truly seems to be one of the contenders for oldest church, I just forgot in which particular category this church wins. It was built in 1610, which makes it 166 years older than the country itself - and that’s pretty impressive which ever way you look at it. Right next to it is the “Oldest House in the United States”…or so they claim. This one did not even make the Top Ten Oldest Houses in the US on Wikipedia. 

The highlight for us in Santa Fe was an evening at a piano bar. We went there somewhat reluctantly on a recommendation by someone at the visitor information. Turns out that “Doug Montgomery” is a local institution, not unlike our own Willie K on Maui. He has been playing at the same piano bar for over 35 years!!!

It was seven o'clock on a Monday. The regular crowd was already there. There was an old man sitting next to me. Makin' small talk to Sandra and me. He said, Doug, can you play me a memory. I’m really sure you know how it goes.. It's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete

When I wore a younger man's clothes.

Doug sang us many songs, he’s the piano man. We really got lucky tonight, Well, we were all in the mood for a melody. And he had us feelin' alright…

Besides the song that you should have recognized by now, he also played other music of a variety that rivals Willie K. And just like with Willie, every night is a particularly good night to be there. We were lucky that night because he performed with a spectacular violinist and she just happened to ask her newly wed husband on stage, who just happened to be a professional opera singer. And as if they wanted to compete with Willie and as if they knew that my favorite song by Willie K is his “Puccini Rock”, they sang the very same song. He really had us feeling alright!

After a fun experience like that, I always wonder how that can be topped. It’s usually best to do something completely different. And that’s where our hanai sister Kelly came to the rescue. Thanks to Facebook, she knew we were in New Mexico when she was heading there. We slightly adjusted our route to see Kelly and Paul in their old stomping grounds in Los Alamos. They were there for a work meeting, but that meeting just happened to be a public hearing, so we were able to attend, too. 

Well worth a little detour!

And if you are looking for something completely different from a fun, careless night at a piano bar, this was just about perfect: The meeting was about “Legacy” clean up efforts, which is how they describe environmental issues back from the 40’s and 50’s, starting from when the Manhattan Project was secretly working on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. We learned that back then, even most of the workers did not know on what or even where they were working. They had to check in at an office in Santa Fe and apparently were brought to the facilities in vans with no windows. Today, the National Laboratory is less secretive. They actually have a free museum explaining what they did then and what they are doing now in Los Alamos. Maybe with a slight spin on both.

The next day we toured the very impressive Pueblo ruins at the Puye Cliff dwellings. A guide from the pueblo gave us a tour of the dwellings on the top of the mesa, where they lived in the summer and the cliffside dwellings where they spent the winter. They left this site about 500 years ago, probably due to water shortage. It’s always a relief to hear that a native American tribe left on their own terms, not forced by white people. Of course, there was still plenty of damage done to them, but at least the Santa Clara tribe lives where they live today because they chose to live there, which is more than most native tribes can say. Then we got to have another dinner with Kelly, Paul and their friends before heading in opposite directions.

Slot Canyon at the Tent Rocks NM

The main attraction of the Tent Rocks National Monument is a slot canyon. Those, by definition, are very narrow, so they keep the number of visitors in this park restricted. But we were lucky to be there early on a slow day, so we got through the slot canyon with no problem. Spectacular formations and views made this litte park a real treat. 

What a combo!

If there has ever been a trend that I hope catches on: It’s this one: Our campground in Grants, NM had its own little brewery. Not only is that a great combination because I enjoy Drinking and Not Driving, it’s also a great place to learn about native American cultures. You know we enjoy visiting museums, historical sights and national parks, but nothing beats actually talking to people. The only other two guests at the brewery were from local tribes and we quickly engaged in a stimulating conversation about…everything. I truly hope that we can return and visit our new friends and learn more about the Laguna tribe…and maybe have another beer together.

El Malpais National Monument is pretty big and spread out, but it offers some really nice sights, like a huge natural arch and some really pretty sandstone bluffs. Another part of El Malpais reminded us a little bit of home, with cinder cone volcanoes and lava tubes. Except that they also have an ice cave here. Considering that daytime temperatures have been in the 90’s, it’s pretty amazing that there is a cave just a few steps from the surface that naturally stays cold enough to keep a thick layer of ice year round!

Ice Cave close to El Mapais NM

Our favorite national monument in this area was El Morro. It’s the second oldest National Monument, established in 1906 (right after Devils Tower) and offers a lot in a tiny park. The iconic cliff has been a landmark for hundreds of years. “Inscription Rock” has native American petroglyphs, Spanish inscriptions from the 1600’s and 1700’s and American inscriptions from the 1800’s. We joined a ranger guided tour, it’s pretty amazing how much detail is known about so many people who carved their names here centuries ago. We also attended ranger talks about geology, desert adaptations and the meanings of place names, one better than the other. I just love the National Park Service. If we could remember half of what we learn, we’d be real smart by now.

Just one of the three ranger talks at El Morro NM

We thought we had been to Petrified Forest National Park many years ago, but because we weren’t sure and because it’s right along I40, we went there again…and we are so glad we did. It’d be so easy to say “No need, I’ve seen petrified trees before”, but this place is special. It has the “Painted Desert”, which looks much like a regular desert, except that somebody with way too much paint and way too much time decided to work on it. We particularly liked the purple parts, which for some weird reason are called the Blue Mesa. Then there is petrified wood like nowhere else in the world. Some of the trees look so real, that you have to touch it to make sure it’s not actually wood. 

Petrified Forest National Park

Some logs looks so colorful that I suspect the guy with the paint had some leftover after painting the desert. They had so much petrified wood that they have a reconstructed pueblo house built out of petrified wood!

Pueblo built out of petrified wood

I have to admit, before we got to the Meteor Crater in Arizona, I wished that place was run by my beloved National Park Service. Judging by the billboards and brochures, I was afraid this special place was run as a cheesy roadside attraction. But we were most impressed by the informative and comprehensive way the meteor crater is presented. The admission includes a movie, a guided walk along the rim, a museum and several viewing platforms. Let me quickly give you the fun facts, before I forget them: A meteor crashed here, going about 40,000 km/h about 50,000 years ago. It was only about 50 meter wide, but left a crater large enough to fit 20 football fields with room for 2 million spectators! This is the best preserved meteor crater in the world and the first one where scientists were able to prove definitively that it was caused by an object from outer space. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen until the 1960’s. Before that, some people still thought, this might be a volcanic crater. I have to admit, I don’t think the National Park Service could run this place much better. 

The best preserved Meteor Crater in the world

Flagstaff seems like a fun town. But that rosy view might be influenced by our unique “campground” for the night. We had joined “Harvest Host” last year. That’s a club for RVers that gives you access to stay overnight at breweries, wineries, farms and museums for free. That is perfect…until the trend to combine campgrounds and breweries catches on. We have stayed at many fun places with Harvest Host, but surprisingly, for a variety of reasons, we had never stayed at a brewery. The “Mother Road Brewery” on Route 66 in Flagstaff put an end to this nonsense. So as requested by the rules, we forced ourselves to sample some of their beers and got to stay for free in their parking lot. 

The Mother Road Brewery
(we loved the slogan on the wall...and the beer!)

Yesterday, we took a chairlift at the Snow Bowl Ski area to 11,500 feet above Flagstaff. Great views while riding up and down for an hour and of course at the top, we could see all the way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Being on a ski lift made me want to go skiing, just not here, those slopes seemed silly steep. 

We got some more kicks on Route 66 in Seligman and Oatman. Both places I had been with my nieces, but are fun enough that I had to share them with Sandra. Specially Oatman is such a funky little town. After the gold mine was abandoned here, they let the donkeys loose that had worked in the mines. Now the donkeys roam the mountains around Oatman and seem to be attracted to the food they get from tourist just as much as tourists like us are attracted to the donkeys for the pictures. It’s one of the liveliest ghost towns I know. 

(Semi) Wild Donkey in Oatman on Route 66

Now we are in Las Vegas and saw some 4th of July fireworks. Happy Birthday, USA! But it’s not just America getting older; we realized how old we are when we didn’t feel like partying on Fremont Street, the music seemed way too loud and the party atmosphere very forced. Maybe coming from the serenity of the national parks made Las Vegas feel just silly, not that there is anything wrong with that.

We are getting super excited about our upcoming rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. Just seeing our Maui friends and Bern and Jill would be exciting already. But after seeing the Grand Canyon from the rim half a dozen times, I can’t wait to see it from the bottom up. For the next week, that means no cell phone, no wifi, no work and no facebook or blog posts for a week. I hope by then, you had time to finish this post, which like all of them, of course has gotten longer than average. But rest assured, the next post will be really short. All we are going to do is float down a river, what could possibly happen that would take me many words to describe?

Thanks for reading!

Chris & Sandra