Petrified Forest National Park

                                          petrified wood in Petrified Forest National Park

Our goal was to reach Mesa Verde National Park today. W e didn't make it. Not even close. We got sidetracked by the Petrified Forest National Park. According to the AAA Tour Book, it was located 19 miles before we would come to Holbrook, which was the next town down the road from where we were. When we reached there, however, there was no turnoff and no signs about the park. I stopped to talk to a three-person road crew working at the nearest turnoff. They said they were from Phoenix and didn't know any more about the park than we did, but they took out their maps and one worker took out his GPS and we located the park - on the other side of Holbrook. With that information in hand, we soon arrived at the park, and it turned out to be well worth the effort and the delay (after all, Mesa Verde will still be there whenever we arrive.)

We stopped off at the Visitors Center to watch a short film about the park and then drove the one road through the park, stopping at several sites for a closer look at various features.
 

 At the first stop we took a short walk through an area with many large logs of petrified wood - trees which were covered with sand and silt and silica shortly after they fell, so that they didn't have time to decay. Over time, the cells of cellulose of which the tree is composed were replaced, cell by cell, by silica and other minerals, so that eventually all of the wood was replaced by stone, often brightly colored, in the exact shape of the original tree.

Our next stop was at an area called the Crystal Forest. Elise remembered this area from our previous trip. Then it was covered with small pieces of petrified wood which sparkled in the sun; now there were still many large pieces of petrified wood, but most of the smaller pieces were gone - carried away by souvenir hunting tourists, who successfully ignored verbal and written pleas and threats from the park service not to degrade the quality of the park experience by taking away the very thing they came to see. The park ranger at the Visitors Center said that they do get a fair number of letters from people who have felt guilty enough about taking away their "souvenirs" that they have returned them with letters of apology, but this is not nearly enough to replace the large quantity of wood still taken every month by shortsighted tourists, even though they are subject to being searched and fined or even imprisoned if they are caught.


                                          petroglyphs  at Puerco Pueblo in Petrified Forest National Park


 In the 1200's and 1300's there had been small groups of American Indians living in the park area of our next stop, Puerco Pueblo. Some of the stones from the original buildings still remain, but even more interesting,wet we were able to see rock drawings (petroglyphs) which they carved on some rocks near their settlements.
From Chinde Point we could look down over the area called Painted Desert because of the mounds of multicolored stone and volcanic ash.
It took us most of the day to see it all, so we only got as far as Gallup on our way to Mesa Verde.

We did have just enough time before it got dark to go into Gallup and walk around the center of the city a bit. The most interesting thing we saw there was a children's library in a very attractive building well stocked with books, CD's and computers.I don't think I've ever seen a whole library just for children before. The sad part of this visit was a sign posted seeking adoptive or foster parents for 2500 children in New Mexico without families. I wonder how many children there are in Pennsylvania without families.

We also stopped at a supermarket to do a bit of food shopping. Outside was a sign which said, "No walkers sold alcohol." I asked the cashier what the sign meant, and it turned out that the sign meant just what it said: if you were on foot and not in a vehicle, you were not allowed to buy alcohol. Apparently there had been a problem with people buying liquor and then drinking it on the street.
"How can you tell if someone has a car or not?" I asked the cashier.
"The guards at the door are supposed to be checking that," was his answer, but I couldn't help but wonder how successful they actually were at enforcing this.

        Elise is feeling a lot better, but it is quite cold at night around here, so we spent another very comfortable night in a motel.

Sick on the road

Elise was still not feeling well, so we decided to do any easy hike for an hour or so early in the morning and then go to the emergency room at the Verde Valley Medical Center branch in Sedona. The hike was pleasant and provided some great views. At some point, however, we evidently missed a turn and ended up finishing our hike at the trail head of a different trail at least three or four miles from where our car was parked. We could have taken a shorter walk back on the trail from which we had come, but this ran the risk of getting lost again. At Elise' insistence we decided to walk back by the road, so at least we wouldn't end up lost halfway up a mountain. We also stuck our thumb out at passing cars, and it wasn't long before someone stopped to pick us up. He was a middle-aged man from Sweden who had moved to this area in the Sedona suburb where we had ended up. He liked the area but said it wasn't so good for his four kids, since most of the residents in the area were retirees and the schools were also very poor. In any case he was going into Sedona and was willing to take us there. Elise and I then walked to the museum,where I left her while I walked another 20 minutes to get the car.

After a bite of lunch I got directions to the medical center and we drove there to get Elise checked out. The man at the desk said they would be happy to examine her, but unless we had good insurance we would be much better off to go to the Urgent Care Center a mile or so up the road. We weren't sure exactly how good our coverage was, so off we went to the Urgent Care Center. At the Urgent Care Center, they checked with our insurance company and were told that the insurance would cover Elise at an emergency center but not at the Urgent Care Center, so off we went again back to the emergency care center. Fortunately Elise was not having any kind of acute medical crisis - a person could die while waiting to get their insurance coverage clarified. They ultimately gave Elise a very thorough check-up -chest X-ray, urinalysis, blood tests, a nose swab - much more thorough than her annual physical. In the end they found that she was basically OK. No flu, no pneumonia, nothing more than a minor infection not even related to her cough. The doctor gave her 3 prescriptions, 2 of which she actually had filled and one of which she is actually taking.

We then drove off down Route 40 in the general direction of Mesa Verde. We got as far as Wilsonia and put up in a motel so we could be sure that Elise would get another good night's sleep to help her recuperate.
We had dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant frequented primarily by American Indian families and then called it a night.

A day in Sedona

This morning we set off for Sedona via Oak Creek Road, a road as full of twists and turns as any I've driven so far. Just a few miles from Sedona, we pulled off the road and took a short walk on a path through the woods. It was full of pine trees and had the wonderful odor of pines. I found it a welcome change from all of the red and white rocks we have been seeing for the past week or so. At one point we came to a little glade down by the creek and it was a pleasure to just stand there for a while in the shade of the trees and watch the water go by.


                                                             Main Street and hills beyond in Sedona, Arizona

 Describing Sedona presents a bit of a problem. After Zion and Bryce, and the Grand Canyon, I am running out of superlatives. I had hoped to save a few for Mesa Verde, but it seems I shall just have to repeat myself. The center of the town itself it just a couple blocks square with lots of stores selling expensive clothing and souvenirs - very yuppy. But what a place to build a town! From everywhere there are views of the huge red rock formations surrounding the town. Below the cliffs themselves there are trees and bushes providing the cliffs with a green base not present at our previous sites. The cliffs themselves, red with white rock above the red in some places, also have some trees growing on them, like soldiers straggling up the mountain with an advance guard that actually reaches the top.

After a light lunch of pastrami sandwich and a delicious slice of apple pie, we set off to find the Heritage Museum. We found signs pointing to it, but they never indicated the distance, so we ended up with a nice walk through town but never reached the museum.


It was a hot day, well into the nineties, and Elise was feeling worse instead of better, so we found what turned out to be a very pleasant motel for just $50.00 about seven miles from the center of town and settled in there for a long afternoon nap.

                                           Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona, Arizona

 We emerged from the motel around 5:00 (an hour earlier than in the surrounding states since Arizona is one of two states in the country that does not go on Daylight Saving Time). We drove to the Chapel of the Holy Cross, which was not far from our motel. I generally feel that in my various travels I have long since met my lifetime quota for looking at churches, but this one was definitely worth making an exception for. It is described as "Frank Lloyd Wright inspired" and is built into a high cliff. From the road we looked up and saw the back of the chapel surrounded by red rock. We then drove up to the front of the chapel via a driveway lined with a variety of cacti, some with clusters of small yellow fruit(?) to see the chapel itself. On the way we saw one man climbing on the rocks surrounding the building, just above the sign which said in five languages, "Do not climb on the rocks." Well, maybe he was just illiterate. The chapel itself was not large or ornate, but very beautiful. A plaque on the outer wall of the chapel told the story of the chapel's creation, from the initial inspiration of one woman, to the search for the site, and its final design and construction.

Afterwards we still had time for a short hike on one of the nearby trails, making sure we returned to our car before sunset.





                                          statue in Tlaquepaque Shopping Center, Sedona, AZ

Just outside the main center of Sedona is the very upscale Tlaquepaque shopping center. Most of the stores were closed when we arrived after 6:00, but it was interesting just to walk through the beautiful grounds decorated with trees and statues and to window shop. We did find an open art gallery and spent a little time browsing the paintings and other objects de art.

We ended our day by picking up a couple TV dinners at a small supermarket, and heating them up in the microwave in our room for dinner.



Sedona or Mesa Verde

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both..."
Robert Frost

Elise and I started the day with a  discussion about whether we should head southwest to Sedona or northeast towards Mesa Verde. We had each heard good things about both places but we had been to neither, so it was a tough choice. When the gentleman from Brooklyn/Boulder, who was at the neighboring campsite, dropped over to ask how we had weathered the night, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him if he had been to either of these places and if so, which would he recommend. He said he had a slight preference for Mesa Verde but Sedona was also too good to miss. In the end, we made what seemed to be the only rational decision under the circumstances - since it is unlikely we should ever come this way again, we would do both. Of course at the rate we were moving, we would be lucky to get home by Halloween, but we could deal with this later (if at all).

Eager to be on our way, we first took a nice long walk along the Colorado
River, which flowed quietly  a hundred yards or so below our campsite.

Our next stop was just a few miles up the road at the site of the Navajo Bridges. A fairly narrow two-lane bridge had been built across the Colorado River in 1929. Much more recently a new four-lane bridge had been built right beside the old bridge, and the old bridge had been designated as a walking bridge. We walked across the bridge and then browsed the stalls set up on the other side where Indians were selling their various craft wares.

At last we were off to Sedona. By about 5:30, we had gotten as far as the KOA in Flagstaff. We actually had reservations for a cabin at the KOA in Williams about 30 miles down the road, but the people at this KOA called Williams and the Williams people agreed to allow us to cancel our reservation without any penalty.
We did a food shop and bought some frozen fish, which I cooked up in the office microwave and we then ate in our cabin. It was a nice change from pasta and canned food.

The Grand Canyon and more

We awoke to a beautiful, invigorating September morning - a bit of a wind, a bit chilly, but with just a touch of fall in the air. A great morning to be on the road! Our first stop was (another) Red Canyon, where we took a short walk on the trail and enjoyed both the scenery and the day.

                                      

                                                             outside of  restaurant in Kanab, Utah

We stopped in Kanab, Utah for lunch. It was Sunday so most of what there was of the town was closed, but we did find an open one-stop-shopping gift shop and restaurant where Elise finally bought the watch she has been looking for during the past couple weeks. Then we went to the restaurant for two very large and delicious beef barbecue sandwiches and an excellent piece of cherry pie. We talked to the chef afterwards and he invited us back for dinner; he said that people came all the way from Canada for his beef brisket, and after eating his barbecued beef, I could believe it.

Our next stop was the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Even before we reached the canyon we had some great scenery to enjoy. There was a field of yellow from a grove of aspen trees, and not much further along, an even larger field of orange and yellow. It reminded me a little of the mosaic walls of the Reading Terminal Station of the subway in Philadelphia.
When we finally reached the canyon itself, we took a short hike along the rim of the Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail, which according to my old journal from our crosscountry trip in 1967, was the hike we took then. The Canyon probably hasn't changed very much, but since I didn't remember it at all, it was like a whole new experience, and the Canyon is certainly impressive if only for its immensity.
We didn't actually remain there very long, but headed back up Route 89 with the intent of finding a warm place to spend the night near Page if we didn't find anything sooner.

The drive through Glen Canyon and Vermillion National Monument was very scenic, with flat land on both sides of the road for a short distance and then huge red rock formations rising straight up beyond the fields. On top of the Vermillion Cliffs sat the Pariah Plateau, with the colors of the rock changing regularly depending upon the geologic era in which it was formed.

When we came to a sign for Lee's Ferry, I remembered that I had heard something good about it from one of our friends, and although I couldn't remember specifically what I had heard, we decided to turn in to that road and take a look. We quickly found ourselves in a narrow canyon with more tall colorful rock formations on both sides. There was also a sign indicating that there was a campground ahead. The canyon was no less impressive than the other scenery we had been seeing and although we had planned to stay warm in a cabin or motel, since it was still quite warm at 6:00, we thought we might at least take a look at the campground and perhaps spend the night in our tent.                                                                        
                                                            

                                          campground in canyon on road to Lee's Ferry

The campground itself was interesting and different. First, it was as barren and bereft of any plant life as the cliffs around it, even though the Colorado river flowed by just below. To provide some privacy, however, metal barriers about seven feet high had been built between the campsites. Metal awnings sheltered the picnic tables to protect them from the sun. We talked to a couple of the other campers, including a transplant from Brooklyn now living in Boulder, who assured us that the temperature at night would probably not go below sixty degrees, so we set up our tent, cooked up some leftovers from our food supply and spent a comfortable night sleeping in our tent for the first time in several days.

Bryce National Park - Indian Pow Wow in Panguitch, Utah


                                                    "Wall Street" path down trail to floor of Bryce Canyon

We still had one piece of unfinished business to complete at Bryce. We wanted to go down one of the trails to the bottom of the canyon. The "easiest" of these trails involved a 500 foot descent (equivalent to a 50 story building) in a little more than half a mile. We weren't too concerned about the going down; it was the coming back up that seemed like it might be a challenge. ("What goes down must come up," or something like that. ) In any event off we went. The walk down had all sorts of wonderful views of narrow passages between high cliffs ("Wall Street") and being up close to Hoodoos of all sorts of strange and interesting shapes.



                                                                    "hoodoos" at Bryce Canyon


At the bottom of the canyon we had a short walk on flat trail and then rested for a few minutes to just enjoy the view.
Going back up there were so many more great sites to see, including two natural arches of rock, that we were stopping very frequently to take pictures. As a result the climb back up was actually easier than we expected, and almost before we knew it, we were back at the top. Mission accomplished!

Then we were off to our main activity of the day. A few days earlier, when we had been in Panguitch, Elise had picked up a flyer about an Indian Pow Wow to be held today and we had decided to go.
We expected that when we reached Panguitch we would see some signs or at least flyers in local stores promoting the Pow Wow and directing us as to exactly where it was being held. This was not the case. We had to stop at a minimart and ask the cashier there about it. She did some checking and then directed us to a large arena at the edge of town. Even at the arena there were no signs, but sure enough, this was the place.
Inside the arena in the lobby,there were a few women (not Indian) sitting at a table collecting $5.00 a head and passing out a program of the day's events.
Inside the arena itself, there was a large central dance area. Around the dance area, there were several rows of folding chairs, a small area where the drummers and chanters sat, and a stage from which a master of ceremonies directed the various dance competitions.  Around the dance floor were booths which sold either food or Indian crafts.

                                           drummers and chanters, Pow Wow in Panguitch, Utah


There were no more than 200 people in attendance, almost all of them Indians from various tribes in the general area. This was the 6th annual Pow Wow in Panguitch, but there are also other Pow Wows at other locations during the year. The main purpose of the Pow Wows is to encourage native traditions, particularly in dance, and just provide an opportunity for members of the various tribes to get together and have a good time. "Outsiders" like Elise and myself are welcome, but the event is not intended as a performance for the general public - which I suppose is why the event was so poorly publicized.

The Pow Wow had been going on since yesterday.

When we arrived, they were in the middle of a dance contest, and this contest was followed by other competitions among different age groups and also featuring different dances to different songs. There were, for example, a shawl dance where women waved shawls as they danced, and a jingle dance where men danced in outfits with bells attached. The costumes of all the dancers were very elaborate, and I was told that they were generally made by someone in the family and passed down from generation to generation. The dances themselves were also passed down from family members to interested members of the next generation. The music was provided by a group of drummers and chanters.



                                          dancer at Pow Wow, Panguitch, Utah

 From my previous limited experience, I was under the impression that all Indian dancing was a simple touch and step to the rhythm of the music, but in fact although this was generally the basic step, there were many variations, lots of body movement, and lots of individual variations on a given theme. The dancers all moved individually, not in circles or lines.

The last dance of the afternoon was presented by a hoop dancer, who was not on the schedule but had asked to be included in the program. This was quite an amazing performance not like anything I had ever seen before. Working with at least ten hoops, he danced in and out of them and combined them in different shapes, all in time to the music.

The final event of the afternoon involved an honoring of Vietnam veterans who were present and a Grand March exit with a color guard bearing American and Indian flags and including all of the dancers.


                                          "Grand March" at end of Pow Wow, Panguitch, Utah "

Today was certainly one of our most interesting days on the "trail".

Art fair in Escalante

Our first stop today was at the Visitors Center for Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. They had an exhibit about the Paiute Indians, who still live in the area. I talked with the park rangers about the Indians current status. They said that most of them lived in a nearby reservation but otherwise their houses and their lives are not very different from the lives of the other citizens in the area. They do try to pass on traditions and ceremonies to their children, but it's hard to compete with TV, the internet, and other modern entertainments.
There was also a board with letters from school children saying how much they had enjoyed their visit to the park and that they were sorry they had taken little pieces of petrified wood with them and (probably at their teacher's insistence) they were returning the petrified wood they had taken.

I also chatted some with a volunteer who was working in the garden in front of the visitors center. The area she was working in contained a variety of native plants and there was a huge pile of weed grass at one edge of the plot that she had pulled out. It seemed like a lot of hard work on a hot day, but when I mentioned that to her, she said, "Oh,no, this is really a labor of love."

                                                               music stage, art fair, Escalante, Utah

Our main activity for the day was the arts fair in the little town of Escalante, Utah. It was very different from art fairs closer to home. First, it was all contained within two wide streets that were closed off in the center of the town. At most there were no more than a couple hundred people present, so it was very uncrowded and relaxing.

There was an exhibit of paintings from various artists in the three- state area in one building. The paintings were being offered for sale via a silent auction. Across the street was a building where people were selling Indian jewelry, other craft items or homemade pies. Next to the building with the paintings a stage had been set up and there was musical entertainment provided by a series of local musicians. The musicians sang mostly folk songs we knew and/or liked.

We made our contribution to the local economy by buying a couple of hamburgers sponsored by the local elementary school. I'm not sure how good the school is. I gave the fifth or sixth grader a ten-dollar bill to pay for my $2.50 hamburger, and he needed a lot of help to give me the correct change. I followed the hamburger with a delicious piece of homemade peach pie. At the painting exhibit we put in a bid on one of the paintings of hoodoos from Bryce Canyon; later, we found out that we were the high bidder/only bidder on that painting and we are having it shipped to us. (Check our walls next time you visit us. We'll have it displayed somewhere.)

Around 4:30 we took a break and went to the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park and took a short hike on one of the trails where we saw a number of pieces of petrified wood.

 

                                        buying peach pie, Escalante Art Fair 

 We then returned to Escalante just in time to get in on the potato dinner being served at a pavilion as a benefit for the local Lions Club. For $10.00 each we received a large baked potato topped with chili and cheese and olives and tomatoes, a soda, and a very good fudge brownie topped with ice cream. I ate all of mine and we took away half of Elise' for another day.

Finally, we went to the high school auditorium to hear and see a slide presentation about John Wesley Powell, who was the first explorer to map this region in 1869.

And from there back to our nice warm cabin and a good night's sleep.

Hiking in Kodachrome State Park

Our new plan for sleeping in the tent on cold nights was a fiasco! Elise woke up in the morning with a really bad headache and nausea. I immediately applied first aid by rushing her to the nearest restaurant for the healing balm of a cup of coffee, but even this didn't help. We drove back to the campsite, which by now had  warmed up considerably, and Elise stretched out in the tent and slept.
When she awoke, she was considerably better, and we were able to do two short hikes at Kodachrome. The Angels' Palace Trail took us up and down among the hoodoos and had some wonderful views similar to what we had seen in Bryce. The second trail was a nature trail which identified some of the flowers and trees in the area. I can now identify rabbit brush, which is a bushy yellow flower that seems to grow almost everywhere along the roads, roundleafed buffalo berry, which has pale green leaves also on a bushy plant, Indian paintbrush, and the yucca plant.

Our next priority was to find a place to sleep for the next few nights until we reached a location where the elevation was lower, the night temperature was higher, and the price wasn't extravagant. After checking at a few places, we finally settled on a cabin in a KOA "Kampground" . For $50.00, it came with a bed, a desk, a porch with a swing, a picnic table, a  view of surrounding cliffs, free WIFI, and most important, a heater.
I made us a spaghetti dinner at the picnic table and we called it a night - a very comfortable night in a warm  room. I probably wouldn't have done this if Elise didn't absolutely require it, but I'm not complaining. 

Bryce National Park and Kodachrome State Park

We got an early start on our day in Bryce and drove up to Sunrise Point to watch -  guess what. It was a partly cloudy morning, and we were not sure we would actually be able to see a sunrise.  As it turned out, however, we were well rewarded for our effort. First there was a thin bright light, like a flourescent sign, outlining the clouds at the horizon. The light gradually spread not from low in the sky to high, but from right to left. I had never seen anything like this before but it turned out that this was just the beginning. While I was still admiring what I was seeing, the sun itself began to appear above the layer of clouds at the horizon until it was completely visible. After that it came and went as it rose and played peek-a-boo with the clouds above it. It was a great sunrise!

                                                  Minnie and Vinnie

Our next stop was Kodachrome State Park, not far away and with scenery similar to Bryce's. Our hope was that since this park was about 1200 feet lower than Bryce, it would be noticeably warmer at night and allow Elise to sleep comfortably in the tent. The park ranger at the Kodachrome Visitors Center made no promises but we were hopeful. We found a nice large campsite with a good view of the hoodoos and set up our tent.



 We didn't stay long in the park. We just had time to drive to the meeting point for the coach tour of the northern part of the park in time to buy a couple hamburgers for the road. The tour was quite interesting with great views of objects both near and far, and there was time for us to get out of the bus and walk around looking at and photographing the great scenery. (It's almost as if seeing something doesn't really count unless one has photographed it.) Alas, we are not exceptions to this phenomena. In addition to all of the rock formations, we also took pictures of Minnie and Vinnie, two ravens who hopped around and posed for us at one of the vistas.

The day was cold and windy and there were even a couple of brief showers, but the showers always came when we were in the bus. The driver/guide was informative and responsive but the best part was that once he had told us what we were going to see next, he told a fairly long story about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who had lived in this area. The distance between vistas was fairly short, so as we approached each vista he would find an interesting place to stop the story and then continue it again once we were back on the bus. He was an excellent storyteller and his story was a great addition to the trip for me.
After the tour we spent an hour or so at the Visitors Center where I worked on a blog, Elise took a rest, and then we both saw a film there about the geology and history of Bryce.

We ate a pizza in the little town of Tropic, and it was already dark when we returned to our campsite in Kodachrome (so named because of the colorful nature of the rock formations and not because of any connection with Kodak). We found that the wind had blown our tent off of its stakes, but it didn't take us long to restore it to a usable condition even in the dark. Our plan was that Elise would start off with me in the tent, and if she got too cold she would move to the back seat of the car. I might join her in the front seat depending on how cold it got. At about 2:00 AM Elise moved to the back seat of the car. At about 4:00 AM I decided to join her in the front seat. I also ran the car heater a couple times during the next few hours until it was time for us to get up around 7:30.
So how did this work out? Be sure to read tomorrow's blog!

First day at Bryce National Park

"Foremost workers of stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."
David Thoreau

Today we were up and out early to drive through the eastern part of Zion on our way to Bryce National Park. It was a short trip that took a long time because they were doing a lot of roadwork on this section. On the way .we passed through a one-mile tunnel through a mountain, which was quite an engineering feat when built in the Thirties.

Just outside the park, we stopped at a viewing turnoff and did a short walk on the trail down to a canyon to take one last look at all of of the wonderful colors and shapes in Zion.

We also stopped briefly to admire the "Checkerboard Mesa," a rock formation with both horizontal and vertical lines carved into it, so that it resembled an extended checkerboard.

We stopped in Panguitch ("big fish" in an Indian language), a small town which, although we didn't know it at the time, was once the home of bank and train robber Butch Cassidy. Our "mission" there was much more mundane - it was time to do laundry. We found a a laundromat at a motel and while the clothes were whirling and swirling, we did a little shopping along Main Street, where Elise almost but not quite bought a new watch at a gift shop featuring Indian crafts.
 

"hoodoos"  Bryce National Park, Utah

 Bryce almost defies description. We've never seen anything like it! If you've been to Bryce, there's no need to go to the moon or Mars. From the rim of the Canyon - about 8,000 feet above sea level - one looks down on a huge plain of pillars, which are called "hoodoos". They have all been sculpted by nature over the millenia, and they are of an infinite variety of shapes and sizes;  with just a little bit of imagination one can see in the hoodoos a variety of figures both human and animal, scattered across the area like chess pieces set up at random by a young child.

There are steep paths which enable the ambitious hiker to go down and walk among the hoodoos, or one can merely walk along the rim and observe them from above. We just did a short rim walk today but hope to do the easiest of the trails down to the canyon floor (and back up) before we leave this area. There is a free shuttle which takes passengers on a half hour ride along the southern portion of the park to the various trail heads, and there is also a free shuttle which takes passengers around the rim in the northern half of the park for three hours with a driver who also provides a running commentary about each of the stops along the way. We made a reservation for tomorrow to do the three-hour tour.
Just before sunset we did a short walk on the rim from sunset point to Sunrise Point and back.

At night went went to an astronomy talk by one of the park rangers. Talks by park rangers are almost always both informative and interesting, but this was in a class by itself. He had interesting slides and interesting information, both of which he  presented  with a lot of energy and a lot of humor so that it was a very stimulating hour. Afterwards we went out in the parking lot and looked at some stars and the moon through telescopes that the rangers had set up. I have looked through telescopes before and it's always a bit disappointing. Stars which look far away to the naked eye still look far away through the telescope.

Road signs you won't see in Philadelphia:
    SLOW Prairie Dog Crossing
    Controlled fire: do not report (Controlled fires in the forests are now considered a part of forest    
        management to keep the forests healthy and allow for new growth.)

A note from Thursday, August 3, Milt and Elise' crosscountry trip of 1967: "Elise very unhappy this morning because of the cold."
This was definitely a case of deja vu. The temperature dropped to the high thirties and this was a bad night for Elise. In addition to the cold she is still fighting, she was cold most of the night and didn't get much sleep. She was not a happy camper. We will have to develop a new "cold night plan."

A day in Zion National Park

Today was the first day since we left Los Angeles when it has been cool enough to be out and about during the middle of the day.
As we left our campsite, we spotted three mule deer browsing for breakfast  in the campground. They walked away when they saw us, but they didn't seem particularly concerned about us.
 

                                             Elise at rest, Weeping Rock Trail, Zion National Park


 We took the free shuttle to the Weeping Rock Trailhead and did a fairly easy half mile walk up from the canyon floor to a place where water was dripping down through the sandstone. Apparently the water starts at the top of the cliff and over the course of very many years gradually makes its way down through the sandstone until it comes to rock which it can't penetrate. Then it leaks out and drops down to the earth below.
After this we also took a somewhat longer walk up the mountain. We got about halfway up before we were hiked out, but that was still far enough to get a great view of the canyon below as well as the huge rock formations all around us.

When we returned to our campsite, we were surprised and pleased to note that our tent was still standing in spite of the strong wind blowing, because someone had apparently seen it in a state of disrepair and firmly reanchored it so that it would remain standing. It may have been people from a neighboring campsite to whom I had loaned a hammer the previous day or perhaps a park ranger. We never did find out who the good Samaritan was.

                                                               Our guide at Emerald Ponds, Zion National Park


 At 5:00, after a short nap, we went on a guided hike to the second of three emerald pools with a park ranger. She was a woman in her early fifties who began by telling us how she had decided that she wanted to be a park ranger when she was in her forties. She first got herself hired as a shuttle driver and then for four years also did volunteer work in the park until finally they hired her as a ranger. Like most of the park ranger tours, this one was quite good, and she had obviously put a lot of work into preparing to lead this hike.
One of the most interesting things she told us had to do with the "tumbling tumbleweed" which breaks off from the root and then tumbles around dropping off its seeds along the way. First of all, it is not even a native plant but was brought here accidentally, probably on someone's clothing. We are a nation of immigrants - plants as well as people. Another story was about a woman who rented a big warehouse and then filled it with tumbleweeed, which she rents to movies requiring a western background or to individuals to decorate for a celebration of some sort. I suppose this is a variation on making lemonade out of lemons. We also saw a small snake along the path, which is the first snake we've seen on this trip.

In the evening we went to the lodge for an interesting slide presentation of scenery that is famous at other parks but can also be seen in Zion.

Arriving at Zion National Park

We drove to Springdale, which is just outside Zion National Park, and found a private campsite with showers and WIFI.

Just down the street from the campsite was a free shuttle that took us into the park to the Visitors Center. From there we took another shuttle, which took us through the park and allowed us to see most of the major sites.  The bus also stopped at trail heads, so passengers could get off, walk around the area and then get back on a later bus. There was a recorded narrative on the bus which talked about what we were seeing along the way, and the driver also called out the stops and told a bit about what was at each one.
 

                                          "The Three Patriarchs" Zion National Park, Utah

 The scenery in the park is magnificent - not so much different from what we have been seeing the past few days, but on a bigger scale. There is also more variety because of the water from the river and other sources. Coming back on the shuttle, the driver's description of the trail at the last stop sounded really good and also easy enough for us to handle at the end of another hot day. It was called Pa'rus and followed the Virgin River. The river looked more like a creek than a river, but apparently it flooded during the rainy season and moved very swiftly, so that it was the primary force in carving out the valley during the past several thousand years.
 

                                                               Zion National Park, Utah

     Along the way we stopped off at one of the Park campgrounds. It didn't have showers or WIFI, but it was much woodsier than the campground we were at. We also chatted briefly with a couple who had a camper with two solar panels sitting beside it which provided their secondary power . The world may be changing slowly, but it is changing.

Elise is still coughing some but seems to be getting better little by little.

St. George - on the way to Zion National Park

Lise served another good breakfast on the front patio. I sat with everyone but didn't eat anything since I had decided to fast for Yom Kippur. I felt very virtuous - and just a little hungry -  fasting while everyone else ate that good breakfast.
Lise and Yoni invited us to stay an extra day to give Elise more time to recuperate, and even tho it is said that fish and guests stink after three days and we still had one day left, Elise claimed to be feeling better, and I felt a need for us to move on if we were ever to get home before Halloween, so we bid Lise and Yoni a very fond farewell, reprogrammed my GPS, and set off for Zion National Park.

We got as far as St. George, which is on Route 15 about 20 miles or so from Zion, and decided to stop at the Information Center,which was in a big building along with a gift shop and a convention center. The convention center was hosting a gun show; there was a sign outside which said "No loaded guns permitted." I'm not sure if that meant that the sellers or the buyers or both were not permitted to bring in loaded guns, but in any case we passed up the convention and went straight to the Information Center where they did have a lot of information about Zion and also about St. George. Contrary to the corollary to Murphy's Law which says that "When you are traveling, any big local event will take place either shortly before you arrived or shortly after you have left the place," St. George was actually having an international documentary film festival that very week.

 We found a nice campsite in Leeds, a little further up Route 15, and then went back to St. George to see one of the films that seemed particularly interesting. It was a documentary which featured reminiscences of a Romanian Jewish lady who had been a communist and a member of the Resistance in France during WWII. She was part of a women's unit whose job was to talk to German soldiers in Paris and demoralize them about the war and also recruit German soldiers as spies. The film was  interesting and dealt with an aspect of the war with which I was not familiar.
We had a hard time finding the theater but still got there in time to have a nice dinner first at a nearby restaurant - an excellent salad bar and soup for just $5.99. We ate so much that Elise couldn't even eat the free popcorn they gave us at the movie.

A day with Lise and Yoni

We started the day with a delicious breakfast of bagel and lox, fresh fruit, and some of the datenut loaf we had brought with us.Yoni and I then went to the post office to pick up a new camera he had ordered, and along the way he gave me a good education on the nature of cameras and how they work. We also swapped hitchhiking stories including one where he and a friend had been stripped naked and had guns pointed at their heads by the men who picked them up. The men eventually left and Yoni and his friend made their way to the highway where two women had eventually turned their car around to come back and pick them up and take them to a police station. Now that's a couple of gutsy women! My hitchhiking stories were a lot more routine - thank heaven!
The four of us, and for a good while just the three of us because Elise needed to just lie down and rest, spent most of the day just talking together and it was  very pleasant and relaxing. This was the most time that Elise and I had ever spent with Lise and Yoni, and it was a pleasure to get to know them better.

                                                        Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas, Milt and Yoni


At around 4:30, Yoni drove Elise and me out to the Valley of Fire, which is just one more area of beautiful red and brown mountains carved by nature into magnificent sculptures - a bit like a modern nonrepresentative art version of Mt. Rushmore. The view was especially beautiful at sunset, which is when we were there. We stopped at one point and took a short walk out onto the desert toward the mountain range in the distance. Coming back we saw another bridal couple taking pictures. It seems that in spite of all the difficulty people have staying married, lots of them are still giving it a try. It was a fairly long drive and we didn't get back until well after 8:00.


                                             Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas


While we were gone, Lise prepared a delicious chicken dinner of which I ate a large portion since I intended to fast the next day and thus observe at least some aspect of Yom Kippur.

It had been a full day, and we called it a night shortly after our late dinner.

On to Las Vegas (Henderson)

Today Elise and I got into our old breakfast routine that had carried us through our previous crosscountry trip. First, Elise has a cup of coffee while I make myself oatmeal, juice, and a slice of bread. Then we break camp and travel some or do some sightseeing; then we stop at a restaurant where Elise orders a full breakfast of which she eats half and I eat the other half. A happy arrangement all around.
This morning we visited the Shoshone Museum, which displayed various artifacts that helped to tell the history of the area.
For breakfast we stopped in at the local cafe. It was our intention to eat on the porch of the cafe, but the flies drove us inside. They were small, but they badly outnumbered us. Once inside, the Spanish omelet we ordered had some special sauce on it which was very tasty.


                                                                         Chinese date farm


The highlight of this area is a family date farm which features date milkshakes. The farm was originally started by an immigrant from China around 1900, and one day he just disappeared. A mystery never solved.

We knew the farm was somewhere off the main drag and went looking for it. It involved going off of the secondary road we had been driving on, to a smaller road past a couple of not very fancy hot spring resorts, and from there to an even lesser road and finally to a gravel road that turned and twisted between high brown cliffs until we finally emerged at this store where they sold date bread, date cookies, date milkshakes, and other canned foods. There was also a large room filled with various and sundry chatskas for sale. Behind the store was the date grove with a number of date palms. Most of the lower branches were covered with cloths, apparently to protect the dates from getting too much sun. It was quite colorful seeing this grove of trees all "decorated" with cloths of many colors.
Of course we each bought a date milkshake, which consisted mostly of vanilla ice cream with a spoonful of chopped dates. Quite good on a hot day, but not as exotic as I might have expected. We also bought a loaf of datenut bread and some date cookies for Yoni and Lise, whom we expected to see later that day, and a loaf of the datenut bread for ourselves.

Our trip to Henderson took us through Redwood Canyon. (more beautiful desert scenery) and was generally uneventful, except that our GPS lady kept telling us to turn left (or right) toward Los Angeles (which she pronounces like in Spanish, Lohs Ancheles). At one point I stopped and reprogrammed her, but the little lady in the GPS was quite insistent and consistent, so we just placed ourselves in her hands, and sure enough she got us to Lise and Yoni's, whose house we would never have found on our own; she did not take us by way of Los Angeles, for which we were grateful. I don't know how that little lady knows so much!

Lise and Yoni live in a beautiful house with a view of the mountains. At the front of the house is a very large indoor patio with a private guest room.  At the rear of the house is an outdoor patio and a large yard with varying flowering plants, a hot tub and a putting green,  We were glad to see Yoni and Lise and also glad to have such fine quarters after our time in Death Valley. It was especially nice because Elise had developed a bad cold complete with cough and runny eyes and nose and needed a comfortable place to recuperate.

Yoni and Lise took us to the strip in Los Vegas for a very good dinner at a fancy French restaurant.  We walked some along  the strip, and the only place I have ever seen so much neon is along the walking street in Shanghai. It is definitely in a class by itself. Atlantic City is no more just a smaller version of Las Vegas than Philadelphia is just  a smaller version of New York. Garish is the only word that even begins to describe it. There is, among other things, a replica of the Eiffel Tower, half the size, but still plenty large. There is a fountain that pops up every fifteen minutes or so that makes Old Faithful in Yellowstone look like a piker. There is noise and a large crowd of people everywhere. There were 5 women still walking around in their wedding gowns. There were people passing out playing cards of young women scantily dressed and in provocative poses which say "Full Service. In your room in 20 minutes. Call (phone number)" and the price. I'm not sure exactly what "Full Service" means but it doesn't seem all that mysterious. The most amazing thing on the card was the price - just $35.00 seemed dirt cheap for a "full service" visit.

Death Valley National Park

Elise and I started off our day by doing a walk through Golden Canyon. In fact, we started it twice, since the first time I had to go back and get the canteen I had left at our campsite. Even so, we started walking before 7:30, when it was still relatively cool. The canyon was beautiful with high almost lifeless cliffs of various shades of brown on both sides of us. Apparently the rock does not absorb water and the little rain that does fall on it only serves to wash away whatever soil might form. In spite of all that, we did see a few plants and even a small lizard scampering around. Mother Nature just does not give up!

The walk was about a mile and fairly level. Near the end of it, there was a trailhead for Zabriski Point, one of the higher peaks in the park, but only another mile and a half from where we were. We started to climb it and got up to just below the peak, when Elise decided that we had done enough. We paused long enough to enjoy watching the sun rise and light up the mountains around us and then headed back down. We missed a turn coming down, but apparently all paths from Zybriski Peak lead back down to the Canyon, so we ended up not too far from where we had begun. This was somewhat of a relief since the park brochures warn of the importance of carrying enough water and include cautionary tales of people who made a wrong turn on a hot day and died in Death Valley. In any event we were back at our car by 9:15, when it was just starting to get really hot.
Later on our way driving out of the valley, we took a side road that went to a lookout with a
good view of Zybriski Peak. There were lots of cars and tourists, unlike the path we had walked, where we didn't see anyone else.

 

                                             pond in Ash Meadow Nature Preserve in Death Valley

 
Our next stop was the Ash Meadow Nature Preserve at the edge of the park. We did a couple of short walks on boardwalks - the first one to a pool, a beautiful shade of blue and containing small light blue fish ((pupfish) that exist only here. I have to admit that the fish themselves were not very impressive - only about an inch-and-a-half long and looking more like tadpoles than anything else, but the view as a whole was quite beautiful. The walk on the second boardwalk also took us to a natural spring, and just to come upon water anywhere in the desert is an impressive sight.

We camped that night at an almost empty campground at the edge of Shoshone, a town with a gas station, a general store, a museum, an area joint elementary school and high school and not much else. The town is named after the Shoshone Indians who used to live in the area. I asked the lady at the museum about them. She said there weren't many left. Why was I not surprised?
One of the nice features of the campground was a swimming pool with water from an underground hot spring. The water was so warm that even I went in and enjoyed it, even though I'm not usually very enthusiastic about swimming..

A day in Death Valley National Park

                                                        Death Valley National Park, California

 The road through Death Valley National Park was almost otherworldly, not at all the flat desert that I expected. There was flat desert, but there were also high brown mountains with little or no plant life and a variety of shapes. A really stark landscape and although people had told me it would be hot in September, it wasn't just hot, it was HOT!

When we reached the Furnace Creek Campground, almost all of the sites that had any tree shade were marked reserved, but we did manage to find one and set up our tent. There were hardly any other campers in the park - neither tenters nor people in RV's, but we assumed that that was because it was still only 2:00 in the afternoon.


                                             a hot day at the Death Valley National Park Visitors Center                                          

It was well over 100 degrees, more like 110, too hot to really do anything, so we spent a good bit of time taking shelter in theVisitors Center and Museum learning about the geology and history of the area.

 Later we took a little nap in our tent, which was in the shade but still plenty warm.
Aafterwards, we were sitting on the porch of the store and gift shop when we were joined by a somewhat heavyset lady with two front teeth missing and a bottle of wine in a plain paper bag. She was the cleaning lady for the campground. She had worked in Florida until a hurricane seven years ago wiped out the place where she had been working. She seemed quite happy with her present job which gave her free housing with solar panels that enabled her to sell electricity back to the electric company. It was somewhat hard to understand her with those front teeth missing, but she was a cheerful soul and a pleasant break from the heat.

Just before sundown we went on a drive through Painters Drive to Painters Palette to see all of the different shades and colors of the rocks depending on what minerals were dominant during what periods of time. At Painters Palette, we just sat for a while and although it was a very desolate place, I wanted to see what life might be surviving there in spite of the lack of water and the intense heat. In the course of about twenty minutes I found:
. . . . 3 kinds of small brownish flowers 2 of them were just a few inches high and the third one was about a foot high
. . . .a very pale green plant
. . . . .a reddish brown plant
. . . . several large pale cream-colored bushes about two-and-a-half feet in diameter
. . . . several other bushes the same size but with pale green leaves
. . . . a fly and two dragon flies
Mother Nature just doesn't give up!

At the Visitors Center, I asked about all the reserved signs at the empty campground and was told that someone had just flipped up the reserved signs and that in fact the campground was as empty as it appeared.
The campground had no showers and only hot water, and Elise said that although she liked hot weather, she had finally met her match at Furnace Creek. We decided to get up early the next morning, hike through Golden Canyon and then move on.

On the way to Death Valley

We again started our day with a visit to Elise' sister at the nursing home. Her sister was much more talkative than yesterday, but the bad news was that much of the talk had to do with paranoid delusions.
We left Los Angeles around noon and were happy to be on the road.

We were headed for Death Valley National Park and soon arrived in the Mojave Desert, where we were surrounded sometimes by flatland covered with tumbleweed and other plants but just as often by high hills and mountains, all brown or in some cases multicolored from different layers of minerals, and mostly bare except for occasional patches of green from scrubby trees and other plants. It was quite dramatic and certainly a change from Los Angeles. There were occasional signs of human habitation along the way but these were small - a gas station, a general store, occasionally a post office. There were signs warning of cattle crossings but we didn't see any cattle.

At about 5:30, we finally came to a campground at Panamint, which was only a collection of tourist services - a gas station, some cabins, a restaurant, and this campground. From a distance the campground looked like "primitive camping" at its most primitive - that is, no showers, port-a-potties for bathrooms, tables, and firepits and not much else, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that although the campsites were as bare and treeless as the surrounding desert, there were, in fact, showers, flush toilets, and - to my amazement -even WIFI - all for just seven dollars a night!
Temperatures during the day were up to 100 degrees, but at night the temperature dropped to the midseventies -quite comfortable. Elise and I took a short walk to admire the wonderful scenery all around us and then called it a day.

A day in Los Angeles

We started the day with a visit to Elise' sister at a nearby nursing home. She is limited to a wheelchair, is delusional and somewhat paranoid, and is difficult to understand because she speaks in such a weak voice. She had some doubts about whether or not we were who we said we were and she cut our visit short after about 15 minutes. Very sad.

From here we went to the beach at Santa Monica. The most interesting thing there was just as sad or even moreso in a less personal way. A peace group had planted over 4,000 crosses as well as a few stars of David and Muslim Crescents in the sand as a memorial to those Americans who had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There were also pictures of some of the wounded wearing various prostheses for missing arms or legs, and there was a sign which noted that more than one million Iraqis had been killed and that if there were crosses for each of them, they would fill the entire beach.

On a more cheerful note we then walked along Third Street which is a walking street with major stores on both sides and various works of art and street performers in the street itself. The best of the street performers were a flautist and a young woman singer with a lovely voice. My favorite work of art was a fifteen foot long dinosaur covered with ivy.
On the way there, we also drove by Beverly Hills, home of the rich and famous. I was sorry I didn't have my camera with me. There was a homeless person on a bench resting right next to the wall of one of the many mansions in Beverly Hills. The contrast would have made a very dramatic picture.

In the evening Elise and I went for a walk on Sunset Boulevard near our motel and stopped in at a huge dollar store the size of a large supermarket and picked up almost all of the food supplies for the next leg of our trip, a couple frozen dinners, which we ate back at the motel, and a new hat for me.

Back in Los Angeles

I believe that so much happens to most people living today that almost anyone's life would be worth a good novel or at least a novella. Having said that, however, I must also concede that some people's lives are more interesting than others. I met one of those people today while waiting in Denver for my final flight to Los Angeles.
A young man probably in his mid thirties sat down next to me in the waiting area and we started talking.
We began with his disappointment about having flown all the way from Los Angeles to Denver in hopes of buying a good condition 1970 car. (I can't remember the make and model.) He found too much rust on the car and didn't make the purchase, so he was just going to stick with the rebuilt 1959 car that he currently owned.
He then talked about  his job as an aircraft designer of military planes for Lockheed Martin. He had previously worked on new models of the U-2 (Some of you might remember that an earlier version of this spy plane was shot down over Russia and the pilot (Gary Powers) taken prisoner.) He spoke about some of the things that the planes he worked on could do but every few sentences would be punctuated by "Well, I can't say any more about it than that (because the information was secret)" He was really negative about President Obama for cancelling a contract for a new presidential helicopter after almost four billion dollars had been spent in design and development; he said that a new helicopter would have to be built anyhow since the present one would be obsolete soon.

He mentioned that he had been born and raised in Montana and really missed it. When I mentioned that I had recently been to Glacier National Park, he said that he had been there many times. When I told him that it had been really chilly when I had been there, he just laughed and said that he was often outdoors when it was as cold as eighty below zero. (This may have been an exaggeration. I don't think even Eskimos leave their igloos when it's that cold.)
He also told me about an experience he and some friends had had snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park when the temperature was well below zero. It was getting late and they were heading for home when they encountered a herd of bison walking down the road in front of them. They waited a while, but it was getting colder and darker so finally he and his friends slowly weaved their way through the herd until they were able to safely ride home.

Along the way he also mentioned that he had had a brain tumor several years ago and that doctors had removed a tumor as big as a golf ball and surrounding tissue from his head, but he had fully recovered and after a recuperation period of three months, he had returned to work. I remembered that my father had had a brain tumor when he was sixty. He, too, also recovered but he was never able to return to work.
I was just returning from a storytelling performance in Philly, but today my new acquaintance was the one with all the good stories.

Back to Philadelphia

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley
And leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy,"
Robert Burns

My plan was to leave the car at a parking garage near the airport, return to Philadelphia today by plane, and then fly back to Los Angeles with Elise on Saturday, the 11th.
Here's the story:
Several years ago I received a phone call from a professor at Penn who wanted to know if I had any stories that would fit into his curriculum. It just so happened that I did have two stories that met that criteria, and he liked them so much that he continued to invite me back every year to tell the same two stories to his new class. One of the stories was a wedding story, and a few months ago he asked me if I would tell this story at his daughter's wedding this summer. I explained to him that this would be impossible since I would be traveling from late July through October. A month or two later he called again and said that he would really like me to tell this story at the wedding, and he would pay for my transportation back and forth from wherever I was if I would come and tell this story. I was about to explain that I still couldn't do it because I had no idea where I would be on any given date. The only fixed time in my itinerary was the weekend of September 11, when Elise was to fly out to Los Angeles to finish my trip with me.
He then told me that the wedding was scheduled for September 10, so it seemed that it was possible for me to do it after all and I agreed to do it.

I made all the necessary arrangements to leave LA on Wednesday the 8th, and on Tuesday evening, I set my GPS for the parking garage where I planned to leave my car until my return three days later on the 11th.
Unfortunately the little lady in my GPS evidently had ideas of her own. After a 10 minute ride, she announced, "You have now arrived at your destination."
I looked around. I was not on the street I had requested. I was not near the street I had requested, which according to the clerk at the hotel was about 40 minutes from the hotel, not 10 minutes. I then tried punching in the intersection nearest to the parking garage. The GPS said there was no such intersection. Finally I punched in just one of the two streets of the intersection, and the GPS did take me there. Unfortunately, I still had no idea where the cross street was.
The only good news was that I had left the hotel at 6:30 AM, so I still had hopes of getting to the airport somewhere around 8:00 or at least 9:00 for my 10:00 flight.
Then I got lucky. I found a guy leaning against a pole in a parking lot of some company and asked him if he had any idea how to get from where I was to where I wanted to go. He did. He said, "It's a long way from here, but just follow this street that you're on and you'll get there eventually." Filled with renewed hope , I set off, and sure enough after driving a few miles, I found myself at the parking garage. What a relief! I was at the airport by 8:15.

I thought it would be clear sailing from there, but this was evidently not meant to be my day for clear sailing. My plane was to take me to Milwaukee from where I would make a connection to Philadelphia. At about 9:30, however, they announced that the plane needed a new tire and that it would be leaving an hour later than scheduled. This meant that I - and a lot of other people as well - would not be able to make the connecting flight. As a result there was a long and very slowmoving line at the airline counter as the two flight attendants took people one at a time and found other transportation for them. I was near the end of the line and got into a long conversation with a young Afro-American woman who was also going to Philadelphia. We had plenty of time to talk about anything and everything. The most interesting part, actually, was her explaining about a childrearing system which she was using with her 2-year-old. The basic concept was that instead of giving the child toys that did things, one should give their child materials with which the child could do things, and the adults should pretty much practice a certain amount of benign neglect to allow the child to figure out what to do with the materials. This would encourage the child's creativity and self-reliance.
While we stood there, the plane was delayed another 45 minutes until the new tire arrived and they could put it on, not that this mattered to us, since we had already missed any chance of making the scheduled connection in Milwaukee.

By the time we finally got to the front of the line, the airline attendant said that they would put both of us on a US Air plane that was flying direct to Philadelphia at 1:15, just a couple hours from then. HURRAH! That was a good deal! And by the time we walked to a different terminal and stopped for lunch, there was hardly any waiting time before we boarded the plane. At lunch my new friend, who had had her water bottle for which she had paid four dollars confiscated when she went through security, went to Starbucks and requested that they replace the bottle. Evidently they weren't too responsive, because although I was standing somewhat away from the counter, I saw her break down in tears. When she rejoined me - with her new bottle of water -I asked her if the tears were an act, but she said, "No, but the lady wasn't very nice when I first asked her and so I just lost it. Sometimes that happens when I get upset. I lose it, but then I get it back."

On the plane coming back I sat beside a lady who was reading a Kindle, the computerized library from Amazon. I asked her about it and she enthusiastically explained all of the various things it would do - or at least all of the ones she knew about. As if bookstores aren't having enough trouble competing with online booksellers, now there's the Kindle, which does indeed seem to be the future of reading, at least for heavy readers and people who like to read while traveling.

I made a good connection with the train at the Philadelphia airport to 30th street station but then had a long wait for the train to W. Mt. Airy. I got home around 11:20, tired but happy to see Elise and to sleep in my own bed.