Light Years Ahead

Posted on July 17, 2022 by admin

Fifty-three years ago, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on their way to the Moon, an occasion to recall each July, not only for those who remember, but also those who do not. Not long ago, I happened across this remarkable video about a very specific, and well known interval of only a few minutes in that mission: the Eagle’s final approach to the lunar surface.

More specifically, the video is a lecture about what the guidance computer was doing and why during those fraught minutes, including a lot of detail that isn’t that well known. Posted by the National Museum of Computing, I was skeptical I would make it all the way through. I was wrong.

One Robert Wills, a software engineer with a clear enthusiasm for the computing that made the Apollo missions possible, tells the tale in simple enough terms — but not too simple — that a non-specialist like me can understand much of it, if not everything. No mean feat, as attested by the non-trivial number of teachers and professors who cannot do so.

I knew a fair amount of the story, but hardly all of it, and the video filled in a lot that I didn’t know. That should be the goal of any video with any claims to being educational, I believe.

The Dixie

Posted on July 14, 2022 by admin

We arrived in North Webster, Indiana, not long after 11 a.m. on July 3. We stopped there because the night before, I read the Atlas Obscura item about the Dixie.

“Steamboats first began sailing on the Webster Lake as early as 1902,” the item explains. “In 1914, Captain Joseph Breeck began operating a 65-foot, wooden-hulled sternwheeler named the Dixie, which today is the oldest of its kind still in operation.

“The original Dixie was later replaced by Captain Breeck with the current 76-foot steel-hulled Dixie in 1929, and he continued to operate the ship until his retirement in 1939.”

Eventually, in the early 21st century, a nonprofit acquired the vessel, renovating and updating it, paid for in large part through local donations. Now it makes tourist runs on Webster Lake in the summer months. We caught the 1 p.m. sailing.

The day was clear and very warm, perfect for a lake outing. Dixie wasn’t packed, but a fair number of people rode on both lower and upper decks. Tickets were a bargain: $7 for adults. Good for the nonprofit — it isn’t out to gouge tourists.

Dixie is a sternwheeler, and here’s the wheel. At the stern.

A moment before I took that picture, a boy of about six was standing at the rail, looking down at the wheel. His mother encouraged him to leave, though I hadn’t said anything to her. I was ready to wait my turn.

“He’s fascinated by the wheel,” she said.

“I bet he is,” I said approvingly, but I don’t think she heard me. Managing a small child can be distracting. But if that was his first ride on a sternwheeler, I hope she made note of it on his ticket, and that the family is packratish enough so that he finds it sometime in the 2070s.

As tour boat patter went, Dixie’s taped program was well crafted — a voice talking about the ship, the lake and the surrounding land, with some interludes of peppy but not overwhelming banjo and guitar instrumentals. More actual history than you get on some tours, but not an overload. No intentionally bad jokes, either, but some good detail, especially describing the earlier days of the Dixie.

Capt. Breeck wasn’t a tour operator. He was master of a small working ship, crossing the lake in clement weather to deliver cargo and packages, as well as passengers, such as womenfolk visiting the stores in the town of North Webster. Dixie also carried groceries that it sold, and for a while the captain — clearly a jack of some trades, anyway — operated a small smithy at the back of the vessel.

His successors eventually evolved into tour operators as the surrounding farms gave way to postwar pockets of resort-like development. By now at least three generations have taken rides, including first dates of later married couples, and people taken by their grandparents who are now taking their grandchilden.

Got some views from both decks.

The presentation’s detail about the shoreline is a bit of a blur — the boat docked here or there sometimes, the captain had his house at this other place, that island in the middle of the lake is owned by some notable Indiana family. The names came and went: Fisherman Cove, Miller’s Landing, Stumpy Flats, Weimer’s Landing.

But my ears perked up during the talk about the two sizable hotels that used to be on the lake. One was the Yellow Banks Hotel.

“A very grand hotel, built in 1902,” says the Dixie web site. “The original hotel and its wooden rowboats were painted yellow… This was a scheduled stop for the Dixie until the early 1960s. In the late 1960s the hotel changed owners and fell into disrepair. It briefly became an Italian restaurant (Novelli’s) in the late 1970s, but was dismantled in 1980. Dillinger and his gang stayed at the Yellow Banks Hotel, probably in October 1933 or April 1934.”

The Epworth Forest Hotel (from the web site).

The Epworth had an outdoor amphitheater. “The Dixie would pickup passengers in this protected cove on windy days,” the web site continues. “In 1955 the Dixie began hosting Epworth Forest’s production of Showboat. Once per year the Dixie became the stage for this off-Broadway play.

“By 1964 the cast and production became too large for the boat. From 1964 through 1980, the Dixie would simply deliver the cast of Showboat to this amphitheater for their annual performance. By 1981 the new owners of the Dixie had cancelled this tradition.”

Both of these hotels were cancelled, too, in the way things are usually canceled, not as the result of some moral outrage, but rather by the course of business. By the late 20th century, the economics of even a small resort area like Webster Lake meant that single-family homes, short-term rentals and condos became the norm along the shore.

Plenty of other watercraft were in the lake on that second day of the Independence Day long weekend. We got a lot of waves from passersby, and most everyone on the Dixie waved back. Us too.

I was out and about throughout the hour and a half or so the tour lasted, though I spent most of my time on the lower deck. My deck companions across the way didn’t, as far as I noticed, get up and move about.

They did shift a few times, though.

Lindenwood Cemetery & Johnny Appleseed Park

Posted on July 12, 2022 by admin

I didn’t see the grave of Art Smith in Fort Wayne early this month. I wasn’t looking for it, because I’d never heard of Art Smith. Only after reading about Lindenwood Cemetery a few days ago, and some time after I visited there, did I find out about him.

Along with a fun pic.

Art Smith, early aviator, Bird Boy of Fort Wayne. In 1915, he took Lincoln Beachey’s job as a exhibition pilot at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, after Beachey carked it in San Francisco Bay. Smith himself had a date with aerial death, but that was later, while flying the mail in 1926. He’s been at Lindenwood ever since.

An aside to that aside. According to Wiki at least, Smith was one of only two men trained to fly the de Bothezat helicopter, also known as the Jerome-de Bothezat Flying Octopus, which was an experimental quadrotor helicopter.

That tells me that among those magnificent young men and their flying machines — you know, early aviators — Smith must have been especially crazy even in that fearless bunch, whatever his other skills as a pilot or virtues as a human being.

Lindenwood Cemetery dates from 1859, and is the Fort Wayne’s Victorian cemetery. It looks the part. All together about 69,000 people rest there, and at 175 acres, it’s one of the larger cemeteries in Indiana. As usual, I arrived in the mid-morning, by myself.

I did see one noteworthy burial soon after arrival. That is, the memorial itself seemed to make that claim. He founded two churches, so the claim seems to have some merit.

It’s a forested area, as I’m sure was intended.

With open spots.

A scattering of funerary art.

A chapel.

An occasional mausoleum. I’ve never seen one quite like this one.

An apartment block necropolis? I hadn’t seen one quite like that, either. A more modestly priced option, probably, at least at one time.

Calvin Smith (1934-88) is remembered by someone. Someone who brings treats, including the North Carolina soda Cheerwine.

Which brings me to Johnny Appleseed, promoter of cheer cider. Hard cider, that is, something elided over in school stories about the career of John Chapman, or at least the ones I heard.

A contemporary image.

He too is buried in Fort Wayne but not, befitting his reclusive reputation, among the crowds at Lindenwood. This is Johnny Appleseed we’re talking about. He has his own park.

When I realized I was driving near his grave on Saturday evening before sunset, I took a detour to Johnny Appleseed Park, most of which features standard-issue municipal facilities, such as ballfields and picnic tables and sheltered event spaces. But one section includes Johnny’s grave.

That’s not actually the gravesite, but rather a sign about Johnny Appleseed. The nurseryman reposes on top of the hill behind the sign.

I read the sign and learned a thing or two. I didn’t know, for instance, that Chapman was also a missionary for the Swedenborgians.

“Johnny

Appleseed”

John Chapman

He lived for others

Holy Bible

1774-1845

It took me a moment to notice the apples scattered around the stone. Then I noticed the apple trees planted around it. Nice touch.

Art Show at Naper Settlement

Posted on June 29, 2022 by admin

Parking in downtown Naperville on a sunny summer Sunday takes a little time, featuring as it does slow drives through a few full parking lots and passing by other lots that look full, while navigating the crooked grid of streets and keeping an eye out for a free flow of pedestrians.

I’ve been on worse parking treks. Before too long, we found a spot at Naperville Central High School, whose lot was open and no charge. To reach the riverwalk from there, you have to go around Naper Settlement, an open-air museum covering 12 acres and featuring historic buildings from the vicinity.

Unless you go into the museum, which we didn’t particularly want to, since we’d been there before. September of ’09, when we attended a pow-wow.

Then we found out that an art show was going on, with no admission to the grounds. So we popped in for a look-see.

“Since 1959, the Naperville Woman’s Club has presented a free art fair in the summer,” the Naper Settlement web site says. “The longest continuously running art fair in Illinois, this event brings a weekend of art and artistry to Naper Settlement in a free, fun, and family-friendly environment.” My italics.

Some nice work was for sale. We managed not to buy anything, remarkably enough.

In that first pic, he’s selling ceramic graters. Not something I would have thought of.

I was more interested in taking a look at the buildings, even though most of them were closed. The crown jewel of the museum, of course, is the handsome Martin Mitchell Mansion, which we toured those years ago. I didn’t remember much about Mitchell — just that he made money in bricks, many of which are evident in the house, and that his daughter was a dwarf who willed the property to the city.

The Daniels House.

Hamilton C. Daniels (1820-97) doctored in 19th-century Naperville. Wonder whether, toward the end, old doc Daniels was still a miasma man or he came around to germ theory.

The Century Memorial Chapel.

Formerly St. John’s Episcopal in Naperville, dating from 1864.

The museum also has some nice gardens.

Speaking of gardens, there was a special display of Victory Gardens. Boxes honoring the originals, anyway, and individual service members.

Something I learned from the signage: In 1943, seven million acres of Victory Gardens were planted, producing 40% of the nation’s fresh produce that year.

One more structure, though there are 30 all together on the grounds: the Murray Outhouse.

How many outhouses in the world are named? There have to be others, but there couldn’t be that many.

Down in Galveston, Up in Yellowstone

Posted on June 16, 2022 by admin

Back to posting on Tuesday, since of course Juneteenth is a holiday. I just found out that since last year, there’s been a mural in Galveston commemorating the issuance of General Order No. 3 by (Brevet) Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, who would be wholly obscure otherwise. The artist, Reginald C. Adams, is from Houston.

Something to see if I ever make it back to Galveston, which is more likely than, say, Timbuktu. But I don’t believe I’ll go to Galveston in the summer again.

I downloaded a National Park Service image (and thus public domain) today of the road near the north entrance of Yellowstone NP, showing the damage from the recent flooding. Damn.

Many more pictures of the flooding in the park and in Montana are here, along with a story about the curious absence of the governor of Montana.

“Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance,” the NPS says. “Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.”

No doubt. We entered the park at the north entrance back in ’05 and spent some time in that part of Yellowstone. The Gardiner River was much more peaceful then.

“Just south of the park’s north entrance, there’s a parking lot next to the Gardiner River. Just beyond the edge of the lot is a path that follows the edge of the river, under some shade trees,” I wrote at the time.

“The river is very shallow at that point, with a cold current pushing over piles of very smooth stones… piles of rock moderated the current a little, so that you could sit in the river and let it wash over you. It wasn’t exactly swimming, but it was refreshing.

“Along the road, just at the entrance to the parking lot, there were two signs: ENTERING WYOMING and 45TH PARALLEL of LATITUDE HALFWAY BETWEEN EQUATOR and NORTH POLE.”

Wonder if that sign is still standing.

Colorado Plateau ’22 Leftovers

Posted on June 9, 2022 by admin

I’ve changed the name of this trip. What, doesn’t everyone name their trips? No? Anyway, Colorado Plateau ’22 is better than the ridiculous NV-AZ-UT 22, which looks like a part number in a tool-and-die factory.

But not quite all on the Colorado Plateau. Just outside Las Vegas, maybe five or so miles from where that city finally peters out on I-15 toward Los Angeles, is Seven Magic Mountains.

Magic, maybe, mountains no, at least not in any literal sense. An art installation by Ugo Rondinone, a Swiss artist.

We only passed through Zion NP, stopping only for a few minutes on the side of the road.

Near the entrance.

At the entrance.

A different entrance: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. A small bit of the vastness of the place, more than 1.8 million acres.

I knew that was a road I wanted to drive a little ways at least, to check out the views. My instincts were right.

When we were nearly in Page, Arizona, we stopped for a few minutes at a viewpoint over Lake Powell. I was flabbergasted by how low the lake looks.

And so it is. The lowest level since the lake was built. Lake Mead is low as well, so much so that (possible) mob hit victims have been discovered. Apparently the idea of draining Lake Powell to fill Lake Mead is being entertained by officialdom, I read, though it’s hard to know how seriously.

The cookers at Big John’s Texas Barbecue in Page.

Man, Big John made some mean ‘cue in those cookers.

The Lake Powell Motel, also in Page, where we stayed. For the second time. We were there in 1997. A one-minute walk to Big John’s.

When we stayed there 25 years ago, the property was called Bashful Bob’s Motel. Sometime in the 2010s, new ownership changed the name and spent a fair amount renovating the interiors so that they are pretty nice two-bedroom apartments. Back in the late ’90s, the rooms were old, but pleasant. I wonder if I have the ’97 bill somewhere to compare rates. Maybe.

Also, it’s clear that the owners had to renovate to compete with the numerous chain hotels in the town. Bashful Bob didn’t a lot of that kind of competition in the old days, just smaller properties, a few of which linger still in Page.

The Red Rock started as housing for workers building Glen Canyon Dam, built in 1958 by the Bureau of Reclamation. Actually, I suspect Bashful Bob’s started out that way as well.

In Moab, Utah, we stayed at the Apache Motel. We found it a most pleasant place to stay, and with a touch of movie history to it.

Clean, comfortable, not particularly cheap or expensive, feeling very much like a ’50s motel, though with a few modifications. The motel doesn’t let you forget that the Duke stayed there when filming movies nearby. Other stars did too.

One more feature at Temple Square in Salt Lake City: the Handcart Pioneer Monument.

More Mormons in metal: The centerpiece of the This is the Place Heritage Park, which is on a hill at the edge of the city, where B. Young reportedly told his followers This is the Place, as in, to settle. We dropped by for a short look.

At the base of the memorial are six figures depicting important in the history of this part of Utah who weren’t Mormons, such as a couple of fur trappers, a chief of the Shoshone, plus adventurers and explorers.

Including this fellow, John C. Fremont.

That’s my presidential site for the trip. Ran for president in ’56, after all.

The Utah State Capitol

Posted on June 7, 2022 by admin

Back in August 2011, I wrote: “Among the National Statuary Hall Collection — each state gets to place two, except Virginia, which gets an extra one for Washington — I spied Ronald Reagan, Jack Swigert, Caesar Rodney, Kamehameha I, Dwight Eisenhower, Ephraim McDowell, Huey Long, Hannibal Hamlin, Samuel Adams, Gerald Ford, William Jennings Bryan, Po’pay, John Burke (of North Dakota), James Garfield, Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Washington and Jefferson. I looked in vain for Philo T. Farnsworth, since who wouldn’t want to see him?”

Yet when I saw the lanky statue of boob-tube inventor Philo T. Farnsworth in the Utah State Capitol last month, I was sure I’d seen him at the U.S. Capitol more than 10 years earlier. Memory’s that kind of trickster.

Philo’s among a number of Utahans honored in the capitol, both as statues and in paintings. Curiously, I don’t remember seeing Brigham Young there, who is (unsurprisingly) the other statue in the U.S. Capitol from Utah. Must have missed him.

Utah being a late-blooming state (1896), its capitol is an early 20th-century edifice, designed by Richard K. A. Kletting, a local architect who did a lot of Utah projects.

The capitol has an expansive lawn. When we were there, we watched a man throw frisbees and two dogs catch them in mid-air, again and again.

Speaking of tricky memories, before visiting the capitol this time, I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen it in 1980. I got a good look this time.

Detail inside the dome. Note the seagulls in the sky.

Lots of nice detail in the building. Some allegories.

Some display cases on the first floor depicting Utah history, including one calling the state “America’s Film Set.”

One exhibiting beehive items.

Beehives are worked into the architectural detail, too.

Now I’m sure I didn’t see this place 40-odd years ago, because even after that long I’d remember such a magnificent capitol.

The Road to Salt Lake City

Posted on June 5, 2022 by admin

On the afternoon of May 20, we drove from Canyonlands NP to Salt Lake City by way of U.S. 191 (including a short stretch of I-70), U.S. 6 and I-15. The reds and oranges of southern Utah were soon left behind for a more monochromatic sort of desert.

We stopped briefly in Green River, Utah (pop. a little less than 1,000), to find a bathroom and change drivers. I also spotted something unexpected in the small but green O.K. Anderson City Park.

An Athena missile casing, a relic of the nearby Green River Test Site, where the Air Force shot off 141 such missiles from 1964 to 1973, all aimed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (though one hit Mexico once. Oops).

“The program was developed to study missiles’ re-entry behavior and test anti-ballistic missile defenses through the simulation of the full flight dynamics of an ICBM within the confines of the U.S.,” notes the sign near Green River’s missile. Later (until 1975), the Air Force tested 61 Pershing missiles from Green River and trained U.S. and West German troops on their use at the site. Bet that was a plumb posting for the Germans.

Also in the park: a memorial to Bert Loper, whom I’d never heard of. A pioneer in whitewater river-running. Died at 79 on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon doing exactly that.

Further north, we made a spontaneous stop in Helper, Utah. Originally a railroad junction, and supposedly named after helper engines kept there by the railroad, Helper thrived on coal mining for many years — it is, after all, in the aptly named Carbon County.

Main Street in Helper.

Mining still goes on in the county, but these days Helper seems to be evolving into an arts and tourist town, presumably having been discovered by hipsters from Salt Lake City, only 100-plus miles away. Mormon hipsters? Why not? With the way SLC is growing these days, it’s probably producing more hipsters than it needs locally, and so can export them to Utah towns with colorful histories.

But Helper isn’t going to forget mining. Not if Big John has anything to say about it.

The fiberglass miner has been standing in Helper since the 1960s. He’s in front of the Streamline Moderne municipal building, built by the WPA.

Main Street Helper has examples of both buildings renovated for our time —

— and those with that potential.

At one end of Main Street is a handsomely restored Conoco filling station.

A sign on the door says the place is listed on Airbnb, so you can stay there.

Helper is also home to the Western Mining and Railroad Museum, which was closed when we passed through town. But some of its exhibits are outdoors, on a small lot nearby: mining equipment.

Further north from Helper, at a rest stop on U.S. 6 — Tie Fork Rest Area — is one of the more elaborate historical displays I’ve ever seen at such a place.

Go for the bathroom, stay to look at the locomotive and the other displays about railroading in Spanish Fork Canyon, which unsurprising involved hauling a lot of coal.

We made it to greater SLC in time for dinner at a place specializing in Korean-style fried chicken. We had a number of inexpensive options for dinner, because we were in a college town.

Provo, that is. We took a drive around the BYU campus, a sprawling presence at the base of the Wasatch Mountains: 560 acres with more than 300 buildings. Got the barest glimpse. At that moment, finding and feasting on Korean fried chicken was the priority instead. Travel is like that sometimes.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Posted on May 27, 2022 by admin

Back to posting on the last day of May. Memorial Day and Decoration Day coincide this year, which won’t happen again until 2033.

“Throughout the 19th century, white settlers considered the Monument Valley region — like the desert terrain of the Southwest in general — to be hostile and ugly,” notes Smithsonian magazine. “The first U.S. soldiers to explore the area called ‘as desolate and repulsive looking a country as can be imagined,’ as Capt. John G. Walker put it in 1849, the year after the area was annexed from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. ‘As far as the eye can reach… is a mass of sand stone hills without any covering or vegetation except a scanty growth of cedar.’ ”

Tastes change. I imagine Capt. Walker’s reaction was entirely reasonable for his time, considering he and his men came by horse and mule, carrying everything they needed, living meagerly and fully aware that their surroundings could kill them all too easily, or at least make for days of uncomfortable misery, whatever season it was. Monument Valley was a vivid ordeal for them, not a notion fostered by cinematic entertainment.

We have it a good deal easier here in the 21st century, and am I glad. All it took for us to reach Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on May 18 was a roughly two-hour drive from Page, Arizona, by Toyota horseless carriage along paved two-lane roads through the Navajo Nation.

My main concern that morning — and we got up fairly early — was that I didn’t know for sure we’d get in. The park’s policy for visitors is, first come, first served, and there’s a limit to the number of people who can enter each day. Even on a weekday, I imagined joining a long line of cars waiting, only to be turned away.

Nothing of the kind happened. We got to the entrance booth with no one ahead, paid $8 a head, and got in to the place known as Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii in Navajo. First stop, a fully modern visitor center.

The wind whipped the four flags in full motion: Utah, the Navajo Nation, the United States and Arizona. I wasn’t familiar with the Navajo flag, but I am now.

Something I didn’t know until we entered the park and saw a number of private roads leading off to residences in the distance: people live in Monument Valley, unlike in a national park or monument. I expect ranching and running tours are their main occupations, along with selling the products of Navajo craftsmanship to visitors.

For $8 a head — an absolute bargain, if you asked me — you get to drive around a 17-mile unpaved loop road in the park, dusty and red as Mars, but only occasionally bumpy. The road doesn’t venture that deep into the park, which measures nearly 91,700 acres. Longer treks by foot or horse or jeep are possible, available only with Navajo guides, and no doubt offer rich rewards to those undertake them.

Even so, the drive is incredible, passing formations of astounding size and shape and contour and color. It’s easy to see what enamored John Ford about the place.
Speaking of the director, the park honors him with a spot called John Ford Point.

As well it should, since he put Monument Valley on the map, as far as the more receptive imagination of the 20th century was concerned, though naturally he wasn’t the first outsider of that period to visit — the likes of Zane Grey and (of course) Theodore Roosevelt came earlier. Harsh terrain, still, but the material progress of later years allowed later visitors the leisure to appreciate the place in a way that Capt. Walker could not.

Ford must have known he had a cinematic treasure in view when he had the cameras first deployed here for Stagecoach. The world clearly agreed.

Of Ford’s many forays into the valley, Smithsonian has this to say: “The shoots were usually festive, with hundreds of Navajo gathering in tents… singing, watching stuntmen perform tricks and playing cards late into the night. Ford, often called ‘One Eye’ because of his patch, was accepted by the Navajo, and he returned the favor: after heavy snows cut off many families in the valley in 1949, he arranged for food and supplies to be parachuted to them.”

Though it wasn’t the first place we visited on the drive — in fact, it was nearly the last — the instantly recognizable view from John Ford Point is going to go first here.

Because later movies and commercials returned to this particular view so often, the other marvels on the road aren’t as famed or recognizable. But they’re equally worth a good look. Just a sampling below; there was something remarkable just about everywhere you look.

Aside from the rock giants, the terrain itself fascinates, its colors so unusual to those of us from greener places.

Color that the road itself shares.

Without color, the contours emerge vividly; Ford must have appreciated that, too.

We left the park that afternoon, but even as you drive north from Monument Valley on U.S. 163, it has one more gift to give, if you’re paying attention. I almost wasn’t. As we drove along, we noticed people ahead, standing in the road, taking pictures. They got out of the way before we reached them, but I wondered, what are they doing there?

Then it hit me, and we stopped at the next pullout in the road, maybe a fifth of a mile away, and looked back. A view almost as famed as that at John Ford Point, and certainly as arresting.

That isn’t quite the “Forrest Gump Stopped Here” place, but I wasn’t about to go back where those yahoos had been standing in the road just for that (unlike Stagecoach, it isn’t a movie I like very much). In fact, I wouldn’t have remembered the view was made famous in that movie, either, but some other people had stopped where we were, and I overheard them talking in German about Forrest Gump.

U.S. 89A

Posted on May 26, 2022 by admin

Much excitement yesterday afternoon around here, when the village alarm sirens went off around 3:30. Moments before, my phone told me of a tornado warning, both in English and Spanish. I was advised to seek shelter.

Instead, I took a look out of both the front and back doors. We had rain at that moment, but very little wind, and the clouds weren’t particularly dark. The sirens quit, but started again a few minutes later. I listened and watched a while.

Another warning came and went, but the wind stayed low. It might have been a reckless impulse, but nothing I saw made me want to seek shelter, which in my case would be the lower level near the bathroom, but with the bathroom door closed, because there’s a window in there. Still, I watched the skies more closely for a while. I understand that while a funnel cloud had been spotted over the northwestern suburbs, for whatever reason it never came to the ground and stir things up.

Our most recent trip was a driving one, despite the cost of fuel. I have the receipts in front of me for buying gas five times. They helpfully list the price per gallon, regular each time.

St. George, Utah (May 15): $4.599. Page, Arizona (May 17): $4.789. Blanding, Utah (May 18): $4.659. Moab, Utah (May 20): $4.689. Salt Lake City (May 21): $4.569. According to AAA, the national average for gas a week ago (May 19) was $4.589, so we were paying slightly more than average (which today is $4.600), but less than at home. A year ago, the average was $3.035, for an increase of about 51% since then.

All together, we paid $147.63 for gas on this trip, which would have (roughly) been about $100 had we taken the same trip a year ago. So that’s about $50 that Mr. Putin owes me. I suspect he’s going to stiff me on that charge.

I didn’t like paying a premium for fuel, but it was completely worth it. Some of the drives were extraordinary.

Such as the one from Page to the Grand Canyon and back, especially back, because getting to the park was the main focus in the morning, and we didn’t stop. On our return, which was in the late afternoon of May 17, we took a more leisurely attitude, and took a look at things along the way.

U.S. 89 out of Page is a good drive through a red desert landscape, generally following the Colorado River, which is mostly invisible, far below in Marble Canyon. The drive south from Jacob Lake, Arizona, on Arizona 67 through the wonderfully alpine Kaibab National Forest to the park entrance, is also good.

But the best road that day by far was the two-lane U.S. 89A, which connects the other two, U.S. 89 and Arizona 67. As visible in the map, it skirts Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

On our return, we headed east on 89A from Jacob Lake (where 89A meets Arizona 67), which is in the forest at that point: through a fine aspen, spruce-fir, ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper woodland. Nice, but the road is even better is when you reach the edge of the Kaibab Plateau. There’s a place to stop and see the Vermilion Cliffs and the desert flatlands below.

The thin black line is 89A. From the viewpoint, the road heads down toward the flatlands, leaving the Kaibab Plateau. As far as I can tell from the maps, the highway is the border of the monument, or very close to it. In any case, you see the cliffs looming not far away. They follow you for miles down the road.

“Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is a geologic treasure,” says NPS signage along the road. “Its centerpiece is the majestic Paria Plateau, a grand terrace lying between two great geologic structures, the East Kaibab and the Echo Cliffs monoclines.

“The Vermilion Cliffs, which lie along the southern edge of the Paria Plateau, rise 1,500 feet in a spectacular array of multicolored layers of shale and sandstone… these dramatic cliffs were named by John Wesley Powell in 1869, as he embarked upon his expedition of the Grand Canyon down the Colorado River.”

Earlier explorers were here, too. In 1776, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante came this way, though they had to turn back to Santa Fe eventually, so harsh was the terrain.

In our time, there are a handful of lodges on 89A in the shadow of the Vermilion Cliffs, but little else in the way of human artifacts, at least until you come to Navajo Bridge, which takes the road across the Colorado River at Marble Canyon.

Rather, two Navajo Bridges: in my picture, the original bridge on the left, and the modern bridge on the right, both steel spandrel arch bridges. The historic bridge was dedicated in 1929 and represented the only crossing of the Colorado for many miles, effectively joining the Arizona Strip with the rest of the state. The wider bridge opened in 1995, and the older one was repurposed as a pedestrian and equestrian bridge.

Naturally, we went across it.

The view of the Colorado from the pedestrian bridge.

The historic plaque.

I looked up the Kansas City Structural Steel Co. There’s a newish company of that name, founded in the 1990s, but the one referred to on the plaque seems to be this one, whose work was in the early 20th century.

There are warning signs as well.

I supposed it means a survivable sort of jump, as with a bungee cord, which no doubt lunatics do sometimes, or at least used to.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History