Canyonlands

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Leaving the wide open plains of Texas and New Mexico behind us, we started on the part of our US roadtrip which I’d been most excited about – a tour through the Canyonlands scenery of Arizona and Utah. Some of you may have heard of the Grand Canyon – well, this is just one part of a wider tract of land which was subject to a rather large seismic shift a few million years ago. The shift, acting as it did on an area of sedimentary rock, shifted whole tranches of the land up and down and side to side, creating canyons, mountains, and weirdy beardy poky bits along the way. Or that’s my interpretation anyway… those of you with a basic geology knowledge are likely reeling with horror…

Alternatively, if you’d prefer, the great flood came along, Noah filled his boat with provisions (including plenty meat for the carnivores), and as the flood subsided, the sheer power unleashed created the Grand Canyon. Plus assorted other weirdy beardy poky bits as above. Never let it be said that I’m narrow minded.

Anyway, the upshot of all this geological / biblical activity is some truly spectacular rock. I promise that’s more exciting than it sounds……

Our Canyonlands debut was in Monument Valley, traditional home of the Navajos (and, given it’s in scrub desert and has no natural resources and precious little in the way of life-supporting environment, it’s an area of land that has been generously ceded by the US to the Navajo nation). We were staying at the View hotel, and yes it was very aptly named, no ability to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority there. We has the most amazing stay – great scenic drive through the monuments, watching the light change from our balcony as the sun set and the stars rose, and then getting up at dawn to wrap ourselves in Navajo blankets and watch the sun rise over the red stone towers. Probably my happiest time yet on the trip.

So encouraged were we by this whole room with a view lark that we attempted to repeat the experience at the Grand Canyon, choosing to stay at the North Rim (rather than the more usual South Rim) due both to my total hatred of other people getting in the way of MY views (James assured me this might be a problem at the South Rim…one of the most visited sites in the States) and the promise of a Rim view lodge. Unfortunately, the room dematerialized on (five hour long) route, leaving us to the tragic fate of having to stay on the hotel verandah drinking cocktails to get our fill of canyon-ey goodness instead. Life’s tough. We did also get up at sunrise here, but what with it being a canyon and all (and it being FREEZING cold), the views were actually more spectacular during the middle of the day. Which was fine as the North Rim is so high that midday temperatures are pleasantly mild.

Same cannot be said for Bryce or Zion National Parks, our two next destinations. Here the thermometer clears 100 fahrenheit in the heat of the day making hiking at best a sticky and miserable experience and at worst fatal. Our solution was to hike in the early morning, starting at say seven to complete a half decent hike by eleven or twelve before the heat really kicked in, before driving on to wherever we needed to be in the afternoon heat. Worked a treat and left us feeling very virtuous after a week of six a.m. rises and lots of hearty hiking. The views in both these parks are amazing. Bryce is like a sci fi set designer’s fantasy of another planet, with great pink and yellow sandstone “hoodoos” (long vertical how-on-earth-did-they-develop? spires), the most remarkable scenery I have even seen. Zion is sort of like a classical (and amazing) mountain-based park only all of the mountains are bright red, contrasting with the lush river valley below. Here we hiked Angel’s Landing, a steep and almost entirely undeveloped path over sheer rock with steep drop offs at either side. Terrified as I was (and believe me, I was!), the views were amazing and totally worth it.

An incredible week in some amazing locations and, after the food and drink excesses of the South, great to get back to a simpler existence.

Next up: Vegas and then California!

Adobe, Art and Aliens….

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…Traveling through New Mexico

The road from Dallas took us west over some of the most deserted land I’ve seen for a while.  The distances are so huge that you have to be reasonably careful about planning your route – a “short” detour here to see something half cool can add several hundred miles to the journey.

Coincidentally (honest guv’nor), our route took us through Roswell, home of the first of the mainstream UFO / government cover up incidents back in the 1940s.  I kind of wanted to see this anyway, expecting a town full of slightly bad taste alien paraphernalia.  Alas, it was all actually pretty restrained, with only the occasional alien lamp-post and Coke machine (sorry Tekla) to remind us what we were here for.  There’s an enthusiastic museum which certainly leaves the impression that something was covered up, though who knows what.  The truth is out there….

Next stop Santa Fe, a very beautiful town consisting almost entirely of unpainted, earth toned adobe houses that reminded me a little of….well, Mexico.  Funny that.  It’s also home to the Georgia O’Keefe museum (she painted almost entirely in New Mexico in her later life), which gave us a much needed burst of culture before we headed off for some New Mexican cuisine – gotta love staying in a town where tacos are actually an authentic part of the cuisine and culture!

101 Uses for a Subaru Impreza

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So we went online and hired a compact car to take us across the States.

For those of you who are European, a short teach-in: rental car companies over here have historically bought cars very cheaply by locking themselves into long term bulk purchase contracts – good for Chevy, good for Hertz, until there is a massive economic downturn and smaller, more environmentally friendly cars become fashionable. At that point Hertz etc. have huge inventories of huger cars that nobody wants and that they can’t stop buying. Whenever you hire a car, therefore, they either beg or force you to take a free “upgrade” to some monster truck that does about eight miles to the gallon and steers like an ocean liner.

Anyway, rant over. Hertz gave us a “compact” Toyota Rav4, which full of fuel, people and luggage weighs a little shy of two tons(!). We stamped our little New York feet, and after much aggro and driving around town we ended up with a brand new shiny black Subaru Impreza with about 750 miles on the clock. Result!

She’s beautiful. She doesn’t have a name (unless someone wants to suggest one), but she sits happily on the motorway at 80mph for hours at a time, she handles beautifully, has just enough room for our luggage, comfy seats and a good stereo. Road trip car heaven, unless … you happen to take a black car from its native habitat of New York City and take it into the 100 degree heat of the sunniest places in the United States. Leave her in the sun for anything more than a few minutes and you come back to a shiny Japanese steam oven on wheels.

But we are resourceful, practically minded people. So far our little car has been:

A clothes drier


A pizza oven


An emergency James warmer


Any more suggestions on a postcard please!

Going Solo

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[In a driving kind of way, you understand. Don’t panic, haven’t got rid of James… yet…]

I’m getting pretty cotton pickin’ good at this here driving lark.

I’ve driven a couple thousand miles, including (between the two of us) two or three 6-8 hour driving days [gasp of horror from UK audience / so what? from the US readers]. OK, most of it on incredibly long, straight, long, straight, long, straight roads where a mild bend in the road is a cause for some excitement and the appearance of another car leads to giddy euphoria, whilst in between times, audio books keep us just the right side of sane.

But still. I’ve crossed 15 states (and one District). I’ve experienced all the climactic challenges the southern United States in summertime can throw at me. Sun so bright it blinds. Nights so dark other cars’ headlights blind. Thunderstorms, lightning and flash flood warnings.

One final frontier remained however. I’d never driven alone.  Where best to break this taboo? Well, I read about a certain road…:

“Although the surface is unpaved, only large RVs and unusually low clearance cars should not make the journey. Heavy rain may temporarily make the road impassable for all but 4WD vehicles, however. The drive is 17 miles long of which 13 miles is a one-way loop, and typical times for the full trip are 2 to 4 hours. 15 mph is the nominal speed limit, and some places are too rocky and bumpy to go any faster, though other sections are quite smooth (with a surface of hard pressed sand), and up to 40 mph is possible.”

How could I say no?!

The road in question is actually the self guided scenic tour of Monument Valley; James unfortunately couldn’t join me on this so the logic for the virgin solo drive became compelling. The conditions are every bit as bad as described and then some, but with the phenomenal views on all sides, who cares? (Well, James, but I got the car back safe and unharmed so he can’t really complain). Driving on my own over rocky twisty turny dirt roads ended up being a blast and an experience I wouldn’t have missed. We’ll post full piccies of Monument later – most were taken on this drive so you’ll see just how amazing it really is.

There are horses, and there are horses. These are the latter.

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Dallas and Fort Worth – Texas

People have asked us if we are spending much time visiting friends on our way around the world, and we have had to say no. It’s not that we are friendless, it’s just that not many of them live in North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Antarctica or any other of the slightly out-of-the-way places that we have chosen to spend our time. It was therefore a special treat for us to be able to pass through Dallas, where our good friend Julia lives with her family. We actually spent two days in the Dallas / Forth Worth area, and ended up experiencing both ends of the Texan horse, so to speak.

Let me explain: Julie breeds, trains and rides beautiful, elegant (and champion) Arabian dressage horses, like this:

Julie and Lee

Julie and Lee

And Dallas is in striking distance of the world famous FORT WORTH RODEO!

Lasso cowboy

Apparently, tripping over your own lasso is considered something of a faux pas in Texas

The two experiences couldn’t have been further apart:

  • At Julie’s we drank chilled white wine in her beautiful garden at sunset; at RODEO! we drank Miller Lite from an aluminium bottle
  • At Julie’s we had a high tea of pistachio ice cream and fruit scones; at RODEO! we had a cookie-flavoured milk shake that I made myself out of a vanilla milkshake and a cookie
  • We visited Julie’s horses on the outskirts of Dallas and saw her future world champion filly; while at RODEO! we saw a sheep being chased around the arena by a crowd of four year olds (and were laughing so hard we couldn’t take any pictures)
Future champion

Future champion. Pretty cute for a four month old.

Ah, RODEO! It was fantastically cheesy. It was absolutely awesome. They had thirteen year old proto-country singers twanging the Star Spangled banner. They had real life cowboys trussing steers against the clock. They had real life cowgirls racing around the arena with diamante bridles on their horses. They had displays of the kind of secret love that a Texan can only have for his tractor.

Tractor love

As a Zamboni is to ice skating, the beloved tractor is to rodeo

And, of course, they actually rode bulls. Very big, very angry bulls.

 

Bull riding

More camera love - high speed, telephoto, in the dark

We promised Julie that we wouldn’t think that Texas is full of cowboys riding horses (and we don’t, in no small part because of her wonderful hospitality and all round gracious awesomeness). But hey, go see the cowboys if you are in town.

Backgrounds – Monument Valley

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We have been heading West, with some Very Long Drives soaking up our precious blogging time. Here is a taster of the view from our hotel room in Monument Valley to bide us all over while we catch up a little.

Monument background

No, I haven't photoshopped the colour of this!

Short Runs in Strange Places – New Orleans

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Well, the food was out of this world, and we didn’t hold back. No problem, thinks James. All I need to do is put on my running shoes, leave the air conditioned frigidity of our hotel and do a standard six-miler. In the evening sun. In 90 degree heat. And 90 degree humidity. Ouch.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not proud, but this run almost finished me off. Anyone tech-savvy enough to download the .kml file behind this google map and interrogate the time signatures (geeeek!) will be able to work out that I ended up dragging my sorry ass round this embarrassingly short course in the world’s slowest time. I had visions of staggering into the hotel bar at run’s end like something out of Ice Cold in Alex and asking for a whisky sour and a litre of house saline (“warm water, one teaspoon salt, five of sugar and three straws please barman!”). I won’t say I burned off all the Jambalaya, but hell, I gave it my best shot.

I must admit that the heat wasn’t my biggest concern when I set out. New Orleans has had a relatively troubled past and as a result has some similarly troubled parts of town. The logical solution to a starting point in the French Quarter and a nice six mile loop takes an out-of-towner along the river, through the up-and-coming Marigny and into the Lower Ninth Ward.

For those of you who don’t know the city, Old New Orleans – the French Quarter, Bourbon Street etc. – was built on a natural levee on the curve of the Mississippi. More modern parts of town, for example the Lower Ninth, were built behind artificial levees about 10 feet below sea level, and as a result were … about 10 feet below sea level after Hurricane Katrina paid her visit in 2005.

Lucy and I both spent the majority of our waking hours over the past decade on the fringes of the (re)insurance industry, for which Hurricane Katrina was a Major Loss Event. Having seen the effects at a narrow industry-wide level, we thought it would be worth paying a visit to the Hurricane Katrina Museum, situated one floor below the Mardi Gras Museum – turn left at the artfully stranded boat by the cathedral.

Having always considered Katrina a natural disaster (hurricane – go figure) it was a surprise to me to hear it classified as man-made: to see exhibits detailing the mammoth but all too often counterproductive efforts undertaken by the federal flood protection programs over the years; to see clearly-explained design flaws in the levees themselves; and to see minute by minute dioramas of how and why they failed. After a room of hurricane tracks and a room of soil science, the rest of the museum focuses on the human cost and suffering of those in New Orleans at the time – those trapped in their homes and the tens of thousands suffering in the temporary shelter in the (Mercedes Benz sponsored) Superdome while the federal government struggled to help. It is pretty harrowing stuff.

A point that was made so carefully by the museum as to seem almost accidental was that 100,000 people remained in New Orleans … while 1.1 million reacted to the truly apocalyptic hurricane warnings and left town in a carefully orchestrated, pre-planned evacuation. That’s your eleven closest neighbors fleeing town, and you deciding to stay behind. And expecting the Federal Government (and there is a huge essay brewing somewhere in me about an Englishman’s take on the touchy relationship between the federal and state governments) to step in and helicopter you out.

I am not able to put myself in the minds of the people who stayed behind. Many may have lived through worse-sounding hurricanes. Many may not have been fortunate enough to have had places to go, or cars to take them there, or even money for petrol. Or may have been afraid of leaving their homes unprotected. In any event, those who stayed had their already tough lives made much, much tougher. All while the richer, older parts of the Big Easy remained relatively untouched above water level.

Returning to the possible route of my run, some said that the Lower Ninth Ward should never be rebuilt – that constructing a neighborhood well below sea level in a notorious hurricane zone may have been unfortunate once, but that doing it twice would count as carelessness. The people of New Orleans are made of tougher and brighter stuff, however, and the buildings have been reconstructed. That said, razing one of the city’s poorest areas to the ground and rebuilding it in a hurry has done nothing for the crime rate – I decided it wasn’t a place for an out of breath Englishman to be caught after dark, and kept my run shamefully short.

Clouds over New Orleans

Worrying looking clouds at half time

Through the Keyhole

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[A Glimpse into the Lives of the American Rich and Famous]

Whilst James’ and my trip across the States has devoted much time to achieving (and even more time to relaying) a sense of what the kind might call the intrepid (the less kind the down’n’dirty), we have also tried to make room in our travels to witness that fulcrum of the American dream: the super super rich. This is a nation that has established its own definition of wealth (Beckingham Palace won’t cut it here) – what’s needed is something sufficiently vast, sufficently magical in scale and potency, to drive the engine of American morality. Any man [woman or child] can make it good here. Any inequalities in access to….well, basic healthcare or access to any type of schooling not primarily based on gun control, just serve to winnow out the weak. After all, weren’t we all immigrants once?

Thus far we’ve borne witness to two epic bastions of the American dream: the Vanderbilt family with their legendary legacy of shipping and railroad wealth. And Elvis. Uh huh huh.

Both disappointed just a little. We were hoping for sensational tackiness. Gold bidets. Diamond encrusted serving staff. Hot and cold running Cristal.

We got luxury for sure. Biltmore, the Vanderbilt’s “little summer place” could sleep about 50 guests, with entertainments ranging from the usual country pursuits to an indoor swimming pool (including underwater electric lighting at a time that most people in the US had not yet witnessed the miracle of electricity) and bowling alley (pins set up by the servants between each round). I’m presuming the women were slightly less enthusiastic participants in these pursuits given each one required its own costume, with associated 30-60 minutes changing time. And Vanderbilt certainly pushed the envelope in a few places (takes a brave man to combine gold leaf AND embossed leather on the wall of his own bedroom … ROOOAAAARRRR … I sense had he seen the robes from our DC hotel he’d have been right on ’em). All in though, the place was rather (depressingly) lovely and, given that these guys were the Michael Jackson cum Madonna cum Posh Spice of their age, sufficiently remote to categorically ensure the privacy of the family (even the most determined paparazzi would find it tricky to sneak past the estate’s 1,800 employees).

Not quite next stop (but hey who’s going to grudge me that?) was Graceland, famed home of Elvis Presley. Now I’d love to say that this too, was absolutely comme il faut, but the poor guy had a certain handicap here (beyond the obvious addiction to prescription drugs and squirrel meat, that is). He last redecorated the place at the height of the decade that fashion forgot. Yep, the seventies. Now, even my beloved ma and pa, creatures of style and taste that they otherwise are, installed acreages of purple shagpile in that decade. So I think we all need to put on our retro disco glasses and look with a little love on the green shagpile coverings (floor, wall AND ceiling) of the Jungle Room and the exuberant African wrappings (floor, wall and ceiling all kind of combine here) of their basement pool room. After all, a King lived here and who would deny him a little nylon-based splendour?

So y’all, I guess the moral of the story is that with true American wealth comes taste, brilliance and the true friends with whom to enjoy your richly earned rewards.

The true American dream.

Uh huh huh.

Critter Watch!

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After the urban jungle that is N’Awlins, we wanted to check out the famous Louisiana bayou – a piece of wetland that is as deeply ingrained a part of the Southern myth as paddleboats, Mark Twain and slavery and yet faces extinction within the next 50 years as our ability to control our environment ever grows. That part of the landscape that has formed the backbone of protection for Louisiana against hurricane damage for the last millenium before falling (no really) to the onslaught of the state and federal flood protection programmes. Roll up folks, see it before it’s too late.

We felt a fortifying lunch was in order – three courses of fried food with fantastic swamp views coming up. Our feeling on the importance of this preparatory measure was confirmed when the resident (wild) gator popped up half way through lunch to say hello – unfortunately no photos, but take my word for it, he was a handsome, if weed bedecked, beastie.

Thus set up for our ordeal, we set off for swamp heartland over the treacherous [wheelchair accessible] raised wooden boardwalks. Photos are below (courtesy of James).

Zen and the Art of the Peanut Butter Bacon Double Cheeseburger

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Lonely Planet says it best: “Sorry; scrape the brains back into your ear, because we just blew your mind. That’s right: looks like a cheeseburger, but that ain’t melted cheddar on top. Honestly, it’s great: somehow the stickiness of the peanut butter complements the char grilled edge of the meat. There’s lots of other awesome burgers on the menu, but it’s incumbent on you, dear traveler, to eat the native cuisine of a city. In Hanoi, there’s Pho, in Marrakech, Tagine; and in New Orleans: peanut butter and bacon burger.”

Lucy and I have eaten in some pretty fancy restaurants over our years of living in London and New York, and we have always tried to keep the concept of value separate from the hard fact of price. We will happily spend a little more on a really excellent meal for a special occasion than on a merely average one. But how much more? And given exponential prices at the top end, how far does the relationship stretch? Is an oversized steak in NYC at $33 really ten times as tasty as a Big Mac at $3.29? (let’s just say we don’t eat much steak). We once ate a meal at the Fat Duck in the UK which marred fine dining for us ever since, by establishing a reference price point at which everything you are served has to make you laugh. Décor is a different matter again. Let’s just say that we once had a good but (predictably) expensive and (predictably) not great meal in a restaurant in Las Vegas with $100m of Picassos on the walls.

So this brings us to New Orleans. Ah, New Orleans – home of Crawfish, Gumbo, Jambalaya and the Deep Fried Oyster Sandwich. We had been happily scoffing smoked ribs for a few days in Nashville and Memphis and thought that our diet was perhaps missing a little … class (that well known food group). There are a number of fine restaurants in the Big Easy that reinterpret Cajun cooking for the squeamish, and we had two wonderful nights out at Bayonna and K Paul’s: frog leg buffalo wings, jerk duck, rabbit jambalaya and snickers tarts were washed down with a (half) bottle of Chateau Musar and the occasional mint julep refugee from Kentucky. It was very, very good.

But it wasn’t great. For that, you have to accompany us to a couple of deep, dark dives which shall remain nameless for fear of too many tourists like us. Huge expanses of deep fried chicken livers in grape jelly, a deep fried oyster sandwich as big as my arm, and crawfish jambalaya which may or may not have contained relatives of the large dark rat we saw in the small dark corner. Perhaps it was the shock of eating an only-one-a-day-sized meal for less than $15 a head. Perhaps it was the old adage that the very best food is eaten when you are truly hungry. Whatever. In New Orleans, cheap and dirty is definitely the way to go.