Posts Tagged ‘rocks’

Balancing Rock, Arches National Park, Utah

I got here early on a beautiful summers day and already it was starting to get seriously hot. I had a lot to do that day so I didn’t stay too long but it’s not a big place so I got to see most of it. It’s a starkly beautiful place, very little vegetation and surreal rock formations all around. The red of the rock and the deep blue of the sky stays imprinted on your brain for a long time.

Balancing Rock View

[singlepic id=51 w=360 h=285 float=center]

Looking through my photos from last year earlier today I realised that I hadn’t written a lot about the Roadtrip I took from Seattle to Los Angeles last year. I’ve mentioned it, but haven’t really done it justice given the adventure it was, so over the next few days I’ll post some pictures and tales of what happened.

After leaving Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks, I headed south towards Utah and Arizona. I had no real route planned, but the Grand Canyon was down there somewhere and I wasn’t going to come all this way and not pay it a visit so I based my navigation on this, using it as a target. I left the campsite at Grand Teton, 5 days after leaving Seattle, nice and early and drove south.

[singlepic id=50 w=320 h=240 float=center]

Through Jackson and onto Alpine, Wyoming where I stopped for some breakfast and then ever southwards, briefly touching Utah, then back into Wyoming where I made a slight detour to head through Evanston. After Evanston I entered Utah again where I would stay for the next day or so. The Northern part was fairly green and hilly and after some dull Interstate I crawled through the traffic in Provo, third largest city in Utah and home to the Church of the Latter Day Saints Missionary Training Centre.

I’ve not had many happy experiences with Mormons so for this reason I decided not to stop in Provo (although I enjoyed the billboards advertising Modest Clothing, Next Left!) and carried on over the wonderfully named Soldier Summit, through Helper (names after the Helper locomotives based there, used to help freight trains through the the mountain pass) and stopped for the evening in Green River, 470 miles from Grand Teton.

Green River wasn’t particularly accurately named, I saw nothing green and no river, I had definitely reached the desert at this point, miles of dust and rock, not much else. In the morning I headed to the Arches National Park just outside of Moab.

[singlepic id=45 w=320 h=240 float=center]

The arches, created over thousands of years through wind erosion are pretty spectacular, and the wide open space, hot sun beating down and red rock combine to create a special place, even taking into account the large number of tour buses (and tourists) sharing the space with you.

[singlepic id=46 w=320 h=240 float=center]

But the highlight of the day, and probably the highlight of the trip came later in the afternoon as I left the town of Mexican Hat in Utah and headed toward the Arizona border. I knew what was coming, but it still managed to take my breath away.

[singlepic id=47 w=320 h=240 float=center]

Monument Valley is one of those places you know even if you don’t know it. You’ve seen it before – scenes from some of the most iconic Westerns have been shot there, but the one that stuck out for me was the scene in Forrest Gump where he stops running. You see the same view as you drive towards it (photo above).

[singlepic id=48 w=320 h=240 float=center]

I had thought about spending the night there, they advertise a campsite (it’s part of Navajo Nation and the tribe run the site) but when I got there it was more a rocky car park than campsite so I spent a couple of hours taking in the view and as any good Western should end, rode off into the sunset.

This post was originally published in May 2009 Confused?
Many times on my travels I’ve found myself in a well-known place that I somehow never imagined I would get to. Uruguay, Tierra del Fuego, Rio and blow me if I haven’t added and crossed off another legendary place to my list. After Uyuni we headed north through La Paz, Lake Titicaca (another place on the list actually) and arrived at Cusco in Peru. Before coming here and meeting other travellers, pretty much the only thing I knew about Peru was that Paddington Bear came from the deepest and darkest part. Really couldn’t have told you much more about the place. Not so any longer. The home of Inca Kola (the wikipedia article describes it as yellowish-gold in colour, don’t believe them, it looks like bottled piss), pisco sour and baked guinea pig, is also home to one of the greatest tourist sites in South America, a place where everybody, and I mean everybody, you meet here has been.

I speak, of course, of Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. Not lost anymore I can tell you, but still not that easy to get to. The main route is through Cusco, a very nice little place, once the capital of the Inca Empire, and from Cusco there are over 350 tour agencies ready to strip you of your gringo dollars and ship you up there in some form or another. We opted for the 4-day Inca Jungle trek (not to be confused with the Inca Trail which has limited numbers and is booked up for months in advance). This involved a 40km downhill bike ride (my kind of road), 2 days of walking to get to Aguas Calientes and then on day 4 the trip up the mountain to the big old pile of rocks itself.

Dawn, Machu Picchu

On the day in question, we were roused from our beds at some ungodly hour in order to get the first of the buses up the windy road to get there in time for dawn. At 0530 sharp a veritable army of buses turned up and filled with sleepy backpackers and set off for the entrance. They don’t miss much the good folks running Machu Picchu. In Bolivia I’d paid $7 to go from Villazon to Sucre, a (hellish, admittedly) bus ride of 13 hours, and here I was stumping up the same amount to be taken up the hill for 20 minutes. But buggered if I was walking.

So anyway, we all got in at around 6am, one of the first groups to get through and we basically had the place to ourselves for well over an hour. It being such a familiar sight (and site) I was prepared to be somewhat underwhelmed. For some reason I had an image of a South American Stonehenge in my mind with only one viewpoint (the one everybody knows), and barbed wire everywhere to keep the gum chewing hordes at bay.

All of it

Well, it was nothing like it. It was like a huge archeological playground, we were free to wander around, clamber over walls, steal rocks (only kidding folks) to our hearts content. I was blown away, seriously. It’s essentially stuck on top of a mountain itself sitting in a bowl of higher mountains. A highlight, not just of Peru or my trip, but one of the most amazing things I’ve seen and done in my life. I loved it.

More Peru pictures from the whole trip can be found here

Early Morning Shadows