Our Southwest Travel Adventure
Two Paradise Valley Estates residents, Dick Feaster and Dick Lubman, took a two-week driving tour of several national and state parks in October. They covered Utah, Arizona and California on their trip. In this series, they share some of their pictures, relate impressions of each park, observations about traveling in the age of COVID and some of the interesting people they met along the way. This is their first article.
There we were at 30,000 feet following US 50 when the GIB (Guy-in-Back) said, “US 50 doesn’t go to Salt Lake City!” How could we have missed it in Ely, Nevada, when the road we were on went straight through town? (There was a right turn just as we went into town neither one of us had seen.) This was the beginning of a very interesting two weeks when we wanted to get out of Dodge (PVE) to avoid the California smoke. It was going to take more than this detour for us not to enjoy the trip.
Well, now that we have your attention, let’s get on with the rest of the story. We decided to get away for a couple of weeks and visit national parks in Utah, Arizona and California; some of which neither of us had seen. We will give you a brief overview of the trip in this post and will share more tales in the future, including some of the more than 6,000 pictures we took.
Our first major stop was at Arches National Park with hikes to the Delicate Arch. (The one on Utah’s license plate.) We also saw Mesa Arch, Corona Arch, Dead Horse Point, Landscape Arch, The Needles, Canyonlands, and stayed in a yurt for two days before heading to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; and a coffee house where you would not expect one — we stopped!
Other encounters were with bicyclists, fall color (especially Aspens and Cottonwood trees), buffalo (yes, buffalo), Zion National Park, Las Vegas, Kings Canyon in California, hikers with bicycles going over the Sierras, the electric generating plant utilizing mirrors to heat water to steam, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, banana splits, and John Muir.
In all, we put 3,000 miles on Dick F.’s car and came back no worse for wear. On the trip, people were generally good about wearing masks and social distancing. The only interesting point on the COVID-19 situation was that some small population counties had local ordinances not requiring masks. Fortunately, there were not many people around, but they seemed to be overlooking the fact that many people from different parts of the world were passing through. A few days after our return, we both tested negative for COVID-19. We hope you enjoy future episodes of our adventures. We did!
