M-D Griffs RV Life

 We’ve been to Hoover Dam 3-4 times over the years but it never fails to take our breath away! If you’ve never been there, here are a couple of pics to demonstrate its size and beauty: The lake is extraordinarily low now as you can see in the pics but that’s a result of the drought over the past few years. One amazing fact is that the dam is pyramidal shaped. It’s 726 feet high and 660 feet wide at its base! The “new” bridge was built in 2010 and it’s 1700 feet downstream from the dam and is 886 feet above the Colorado River. All in all, the Hoover Dam is an amazing structure that has been doing its job superbly for over 80 years!

 The last time we spent much time in Las Vegas was in 1984 when we were on the way to LA for the ‘84 Summer Olympics. It’s been a long time but a little Las Vegas goes a looooong way in my book! Anyway, 36 years ago Fremont Street was just a few low-rent casinos in downtown LV. The city decided it needed upgrading sometime in the ‘90’s so a glittery roof was built over maybe six blocks of Fremont, the homeless were shooed away from the area, and now it’s second only to the LV Strip for casinos, neon lights, and hotels. Here are a couple of pics I took of the FSE: You can see how the lights on the ceiling change colors.  There is also a new casino that just opened there called the Circa. The hotel won’t open until later this year but we wandered around some and saw this screen for the Sports Book: It’s kinda hard to see in this picture but the screen is THREE STORIES TALL! You can see the chairs and tables at the bottom of the pic plus a guy standing there. It’s open to three levels of

 After a week in St George, UT, it was time for a change! We chose to come to Las Vegas to do a little shopping, eat at a few more places we’ve been missing, and, of course, to see all the bright lights in Las Vegas!  The first thing we did was to locate not one, but TWO Columbia Sportswear Outlet Stores. We each scored a new pair of sandals and a lightweight jacket. Last night we went to the Strip mainly to watch the Bellagio Fountains. Here are a couple of pics from different sides of the fountains: We also took a couple of pics of New York, New York and Diana with a friend at Caesar’s that are at the top of the page. Tomorrow night, it’s the Fremont Street Experience.

 Zion is a magnificent NP! The part of the park that is accessible by road is very limited. We drove the Mt Carmel-Zion road last Thursday to get a feel for the park and yesterday we rode our bikes on the other road into the park. It’s called the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. It goes about nine miles from the Visitor Center to the end of the road at the Temple of Sinawava.  Here are a couple of pics of us along the road: The route is lined with almost vertical canyon walls Of different shapes that reach thousands of feet.  Here are more of these canyon walls: Did we like Zion? Of course! The scenery is out of this world and displays a number of different geological periods deposited over millions of years.  Is it our favorite NP? No, we preferred Bryce Canyon partially because of the crowds here. Zion is the closest NP in UT to the large population centers in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and even LA so it’s a super popular destination. Plus, Zion is close to Grand Canyon NP and the Grand Canyon is

 We drove to St George to be closer to Zion NP but discovered a new treasure trove-Restaurants! The first one we went to on Friday was an In ‘n Out Burger, yesterday was Panda Express, and today was a FDE-Fine Dining Experience at Costco! Ya gotta understand we’ve been 5.5 months near Durango, CO, in Page, AZ, and several small towns in SW Utah so our eating out options have been very limited! We still have Chipotle, Five Guys, and Cracker Barrel to go.  We drove to Zion NP last Thursday afternoon to try to get information on visiting the park but we didn’t take any pics yet. One of the things we learned on our quick visit last week is that private vehicles aren’t allowed on the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. Shuttles run up and down the 8~mile drive but it’s flat so why not ride our bikes? That’s the plan for Monday and Wednesday this week. I’ll be posting pics along the way.  I was rereading about our hike into Bryce Canyon last week but realized I forgot something! Hiking OUT of the cany

Well, we learned another new word at Bryce Canyon! It was “Monocline” at Capitol Reef NP and it’s “hoodoo” at Bryce Canton NP. It seems that a hoodoo is a tall, thin spire of rock that sticks up from a dry basin. Hum, did you notice that this short definition DIDN’T say they protrude from a CANYON! The def can’t say that because we were told and read repeatedly that Bryce Canyon is NOT a canyon in the typical sense.  It seems that canyons are formed from the bottom by a river eroding the walls over time. The big one, the Grand Canyon, was carved by the Colorado River over a period of a few million years. Bryce Canyon was carved by water, snow, and wind flowing and running down into the earths opening. Anyway, it’s very unique geology. Here are a couple of pics from the rim looking down into the “canyon” at the hoodoos: Today we took a 2.9 mile hike down into the so-called canyon. The hoodoos are much taller than they look from the rim. The 600 foot elevation drop DOWN was a piece of ca

We got in seven miles of trails today in Capitol Reef. The first was 4.5 miles out and back on the Grand Wash Trail. It was very flat and followed a canyon that was 50 to 100 feet wife and from 200 to probably 500 feet high. The layers of the sedimentary rock varied from red to gray to tan to black to brown. The second trail was 2.5 miles to a 133 foot natural bridge but this trail has a 400 foot elevation rise so it was shorter but more challenging.  We were hiking along on this family-oriented trail and saw two strange things: First, we saw a couple hiking this rocky trail bare footed. I commented on this to the guy, who was in the lead, and then saw the woman wearing nothing above her waist! Maybe in CA or even AZ but Utah? Here is another pic of the wash:

 On the Alaska Highway during the summer of 2019, we learned a new phrase-Frost Heave. That when a section of the permafrost melts and a massive dip is created in a Highway.  Today the new word we learned is Monocline. I know very little about the geology of earth’s surface (!) but the best definition I’ve been able to find is that a Monocline is a wrinkle in the surface of the earth!  Capitol Reef NP’s defining feature is the nearly 100 mile long “wrinkle” named the Waterpocket Fold. If you want a deeper explanation, it’s Deposition, Uplift, and Erosion. It’s extraordinary geology as these pictures show: We’re hiking the Grand Wash and Hickman Bridge Trails tomorrow. We’ll post some pics tomorrow night.

 Today we drove from Page to here. There isn’t a lot here EXCEPT we’re 27 miles from the entrance to Capitol Reef NP. We’ll be here three nights, then to Glendale, UT which is closer to Bryce Canyon NP. Three nights there and Five nights in St George, UT because it’s closer to Zion NP.  Two days in Capitol Reef NP, two days in Bryce Canyon NP, and then 3-4 days in Zion. At least this is the plan for the next week and a half! I was reading more about the Grand Canyon today and I realized we’re truly 5%ers! What does that mean? Here are two descriptions:  First, only 5% of the visitors to Grand Canyon NP visit the North Rim. This probably has a lot to do with large population centers like Phoenix and LA being much closer to the South Rim and the inaccessibility of the North Rim. Second, only 5% of the visitors to Alaska drive the Alaska Highway to reach Alaska. 95% of the visitors either fly to Alaska or take cruises to Alaska up from Vancouver, BC, Seattle, or other West coast cities. T

Antelope Canyon is closed so the next best thang is Buckskin Canyon about 40 miles North of Page up in Utah. From Highway 89, it’s an eight mile drive on a dirt road and a 1.7 mile hike to the canyon. Here’s a pic of the 1.7 mile hike back to Buckskin: And THIS is the shallow part of the slot canyon! Once we reached Buckskin, it varies from 50 to 80 feet straight up the canyon walls. Here are a couple of pics of the main part of the canyon: There are warnings everywhere about the flood danger when you’re in the canyon! At first we sorta questioned it until we reached the point where there was a huge pile of wood debris about 40-50 feet up the canyon walls-this made believers out of us! It’s almost hard to see in this pic but you CAN see the logs and wood above the head of the ol’ man! Look at the top part of this pic closely: Two things were especially interesting. The first is that part of the slot canyon were so narrow. Catch this The other interesting fact is that we had to slide do

Good News about Page, AZ is that it’s close enough for a day trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon! We’ve been to the South Rim several times, and even ridden mules and hiked to the bottom of the canyon, but never been to the North Rim . . . . until yesterday!  Before I give you our impressions of the GC, here are a few facts to put it into perspective for you: The canyon is 277 miles long, from five to 18 miles wide, and a little over a mile deep (actually 6,093 feet).  To describe the Grand Canyon as awesome and magnificent is a HUGE understatement! It is beyond description by words in our language! British author J. B. Priestly wrote “It is useless to try to describe the Grand Canyon.” One famous quote attributed to humorist Will Rogers is when he called it “The most awesome cleavage in the earth’s crust.” Theodore Roosevelt said of it “Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Pretty powerful words! Trying to take a picture of the GC is very,

Diana and I at Horseshoe Bend  It’s been a looooong time since the last post on this blog but Diana and I are on the road again!  Here is a quick update since the last post: - We spent most of November and December, 2019 in Aubrey, TX. We spent time with Our daughter and her family at Christmas, followed through with all those doctor appointments for my broken knee and thumb, and had physical therapy on the messed up thumb. By the way, I accidentally pulled the pin out while drying off after a shower! - The first few months of this year were spent hitting two national parks in NM and the two in TX.  - White Sands NP was just made a NP a month before we got there in January earlier this year. It’s 275 square miles of brilliantly WHITE gypsum that is called sand. - Carlsbad Caverns NP is always startling! We walked down through the natural opening the first day and walked through all the caverns that were open to the public. The next day we took the elevator down to go on a guided tour w