From Bryce Canyon National Park to Rockville outside Zion

We arose early in Torrey so that we would have plenty of time to get to Bryce Canyon National Park, where I had been told about half a day was really enough to see the basics of the park; then the plan was to drive to our accommodations outside Zion National Park, perhaps with a brief visit to the highly recommended Kodachrome Basin State Park.

Our drive took us through the Dixie National Forest – we could see the green that must be produced over the course of the year by apparent rain clouds that we had seen at Capitol Reef the day before but which almost never, I gather, drop their load in the National Park.  Thereafter we were into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  I had hope somehow to be able to spend sometime in this area, and as we drove through the exciting landscape I doubly regretted the schedule I had made for ourselves.

In the end, though, Bryce took much more than half a day.  On our arrival, we decided to walk the Navajo Loop and Queens Garden Loop trail.  Here is the “Wall Street” area seen from the rim before we began our hike

Overlooking "Wall Street" in Bryce National Park

and here some fantastic hoodoos seen along the trail

A Day in Capitol Reef National Park

We woke up early in our room at the Broken Spur Inn in Torrey, ready for a full day of hiking and other sightseeing in Capitol Reef National Park.  I give Broken Spur good marks – not luxurious by any means, but good value for the money.  We breakfasted there both days – Nancy had a breakfast steak this morning that was especially tasty.  The place has a covered pool that is larger than your standard inexpensive hotel pool, along with a hot tub, but we did not use either because we were too busy in the parks all day long.  And not only were there windows that open, but despite the heat of the day, in the afternoon and evening there was a cooling breeze that gave every reason to keep the windows open instead of relying on air conditioning.

On the way into Capitol Reef, we drove past Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock in Capitol Reef National Park

stopped for a quick look at the Goosenecks overlook, standing hundreds of feet over Sulphur Creek, then headed to the visitors center to pick up maps and get some advice.  The park features an early Mormon settlement called Fruita (FROO-TUH) that still maintains orchards containing hundreds of trees, and the guidebooks reported that the orchards are generally open for free “pick your own” sessions, with a small charge only for tourists who want to take their picked fruit out of the orchards.  Unfortunately, the ranger that we asked reported that a late freeze had destroyed the apricot crop and most of the cherries, so the orchards were closed.  And our top choice hike for this park, to the Hickman Bridge, featuring not only a large natural bridge but an archeological site featuring ruins of houses of the Fremont people, who lived in the area from about 700 to 1300 AD, was closed because of a rock slide near the beginning of the trail.  The Visitor Center did have one excellent feature — three stacks of poster boards on which descriptions, dried examples and photos were mounted for the various plants and flowers to be found in the park.  On our way back out of the park, we were able to identify several plants that we had seen in Capitol Reef, and even some that we had seen in the days before.

For our first hike, we chose to enter Cohab Canyon, requiring a quick climb up several switchbacks to reach the canyon entrance atop a bluff overlooking the Fruita valley

Entrance to Cohab Canyon atop bluff overlooking Fruita valley

Then we were into the Canyon, where we were free to walk into narrow slot canyons as far as we could go (generally, not very far)

Many of the walls were pocked with small holes, similar to what we has seen in the smooth walls in Arches

Small holes in walls along Cohab Canyon

Small holes in walls along Cohab Canyon

and we walked by free standing formations such as this one reminiscent of Balanced Rock

Rock formation in Cohab Canyon

Near the end of the walk, just before turning around, we climbed up a side of the canyon for this nice overview of Fruita

Overlooking Fruita from a spur on the Cohab Canyon trail

We saw lots of this bush, later identified for us at the Visitors Center as the round-leaved gooseberry

Roundleaved gooseberry in Cohab Canyon

Then, we retraced our steps out to Fruita and sat down for a nice picnic lunch of leftovers from the day before.

Next, we took the scenic drive southward, following the small road that was originally the main route through the Waterpocket Fold, enjoying the cliffs towering overhead

Near the southern end of the scenic drive, we parked and walked into the Capitol Gorge, which Mormon pioneers had followed in the mid-1800's.  The features of this Gorge including petroglyphs from the Fremont people

and the Pioneer Register, where Mormon pioneers had etched or painted their names on the rock in 1871

The otherwise excellent Lonely Planet guidebook cautioned us not to be “confused” by the names of USGS surveyors that had been etched into overhanging rock 40 years later “vandalism by today’s standards.”

Names of USGS surveyors carved into the rocks of Capitol Gorge in 1911

I couldn’t help being struck by the irony, calling 100 year old names vandalism while 140 year-old-names were a historic treasure than helped make the hike worthwhile.

Leaving Capitol Gorge, we headed back up the Scenic Drive to hike into the Grand Wash.  As we began our walk, we could see the Cassidy Arch high above, the former hiding place of outlaw Butch Cassidy

Cassidy Arch, high above the Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park

Along the walk, we found this boulder showing a ripple pattern in the sandstone, oft-discussed in Arches National Park although we had not noted any examples

Eventually, the walls of the canyon around us, maybe fifteen to twenty feet from one wall to the other while the walls went up several hundred feet -- delicious to be feel so small, and besides the shade provided a welcome respite from the sun that made our walk  blazing hot as well as dusty and dry

Grand Wash narrows down

Welcome shade while hiking the Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park

It was because of this closed-in feature of the Grand Wash that the guidebooks and signs at the beginning of the trail all warned that if there was any threat of rain in the area, the trail was to be avoided because of the danger of flash flooding.

After we left the Grand Wash and began to drive back for our last walk of the day, we saw these gathering clouds that looked very much like rain, and we were glad that we were out of the wash. 

In the end, there was no rain – we saw clouds like this later in our trip, near Zion, and again we were sure that rain was coming (and again, we were mistaken)

Our final walk of the day was to see Fremont petroglyphs on a wall along the Fremont River.  These are the ones we saw from the wooden walkway

I’m not sure whether there were any others further down the walkway; there was a tree down blocking the walkway, so we could only get to part of it

This wall was across SR 24 from the petroglyphs

We drove back into Torrey and tried dinner at the Capitol Reef Café.  The place had been recommended for good cooking with an emphasis on local ingredients.  I was unimpressed – again I tried the trout, but unlike at Café Diablo the evening before, it was dry and overcooked.  Indeed, I tried trout again in Springdale while we were visiting, and Café Diablo was the only place that kept it tender.  Fish can much too easily be overcooked, and it has taken me years to learn to do it right; Capitol Reef Inn did not pass this test.

From Arches to Capitol Reef, by way of Goblin Valley

We woke up early for our walk through the Fiery Furnace, hoping to check out the Windows site within Arches National Park on the way.  But first we stopped for breakfast at the nearby Jailhouse Café, a place that serves ONLY breakfast, and so named because the building was the town’s original courthouse and jail rolled into one.  We were sorry we had not had breakfast there every day! the venue offered pleasant outdoor seating and a good menu – Nancy liked the whole wheat waffle and I was especially taken by the ginger pancakes with apple butter, which was so good and served in such plentiful quantity that I was having leftovers for lunch the following day.  The wait staff repeated a phrase which I have come to identify with Utah – instead of telling me that she would take my bill and credit card whenever I was ready (rather than my having to take my check up to the cash register), she told me, “I’ll be your cashier.”

Then we drove into Arches, stopping first at the Windows. 

Window in Arches National Park

But we had lingered so long over breakfast that we could not visit them all, not to speak of checking out the arches across the road, but rather hurried up to the Fiery Furnace so that we would not be late for our ranger-led tour.  And what a tour it was, easily one of the highlights of the entire vacation.  The Fiery Furnace is a medium sized maze of formations including arches, fins, spires and other features, and bears its name not because of high temperatures — in fact, the hike moves in and out of a cooling shade – but because, our ranger guide told us, some of the rocks in the formation glow a fiery red at sunset.  Entry requires either reservation for the ranger-led tour or acquisition of a special permit.  It was not clear to me how groups entering the maze would have found their way through some of the exceptionally narrow spaces

Arches National Park, Canyonlands and more!

The temperatures can get beastly hot in southern Utah during the summer time, even as early as the second week of June, when we were visiting, so we were anxious to get an early start.  A breakfast place called Love Muffin was right next to our Moab motel, but it did not open until 7 AM, so we headed down the street to the Pancake Haus where we were able to order a filling breakfast. 

Then we drove into the park and stopped at the Visitor Center, hoping against hope that there might have been a cancellation for the one ranger-led activity that I had really been hoping to try – a tour of the Fiery Furnace.  When I first started making reservations for this trip, two months before, there had been tickets available for Friday, June 7, but it was five dollars less per person if we could provide the number of an interagency senior pass, so I put off making the reservation until Nancy and I could obtain those.  Penny-wise and pound foolish, all tickets were gone by the time a I checked again six weeks before our trip; and I had been kicking myself ever since. 

Miraculously, though, I found at the Visitors Center that an extra tour had been created for Saturday morning, June 8, so I quickly signed us up.  Our plan had been to start driving toward Capitol Reef National Park in Saturday morning, but this opportunity seemed too good to pass up. (More about that in the post about Saturday’s hikes). We learned later that the Fiery Furnace guided ranger hikes were booked up all the way into October – so, a word to the wise, reserve this tour early!

We then headed out for our secondary choice for the day, a hike through the Devils Garden.  After a relatively easy walk –largely flat, although the ample sand made the going a bit rougher –   we arrived at our first destination, Landscape Arch (a second arch that we would see late in the hike, Partition Arch, can be seen on the far right side of the photo)

Landscape Arch

Fin on the Double O Arch Trail

At this point, the hiking got harder.   We were determined to make it up to the Double O Arch, if not further, but we were nervous about hiking over the first fin on our path, so we opted to work our way up the slot on the side – big mistake.  I almost got stuck on the way up and as I tried to turn around to pull Nancy after me (on the way back down, it was apparent that it would have been easier just to haul ourselves up the fin).  The walk to Double O Arch required us to cross more fins, but they were a yard wide and only about 25 to 30 feet above the surrounding areas, so it was not at all intimidating.

And the view afforded from the top of the fins was excellent

Our first day in Arches National Park

Nancy and I flew to Salt Lake City yesterday, and drove down straight down to to Moab Utah.  We stopped for lunch in Price, eating at the only adequate Farlaino’s Café – despite an Italian flag in the door, it was a generic American  restaurant with a smattering of Mexican dishes (I had a burrito, which was fine) and Italian dishes (Nancy had a sandwich with homemade sausage which was also OK). 

We arrived in Moab, a generic town consisting of a highway turned into Main Street as it went through town, although the red-rock walls towering high over the edge of town were nice to look at.  

We had reservations at the Bowen Motel, good value for very little money compared to the other places I had checked when making reservations.   But after four-and-a-half hours in the plane and four hours in a car, we were anxious to do some walking, so we unloaded into the hotel, put on our hiking boots and headed into Arches National Park.


Our ultimate destination for the day was to hike to Delicate Arch to see the sunset, but sunset was more than four hours away so we worked ourselves up to that by taking two flat walks.   Park Avenue is the first hike after the park entrance – a walk about a mile long surrounded by enormous “fins” (huge thin walls, such as this one)

24 hours in Cleveland -- a fine meal plus immersion in rock-and-roll nostalgia

I traveled to Cleveland early last week to do a CLE talk about practical considerations in litigating online free speech cases.  The crowd was fairly small but putting together the talk was a useful exercise in thinking more systematically about the tactical and strategic issues I face every day in selecting the cases that will make a difference in the legal protections for speech, and then helping my clients prevail both in court and in the marketplace of ideas.

I flew in Monday night and met my brother-in-law Eric and his friend for dinner – they took me to Crop Bistro, a nouvelle American cuisine restaurant in a giant serving room with 37 foot high ceilings and large murals at either end — it used to be a bank.  I had a delicious “cherry bomb” appetizer: a plum tomato stuffed with chorizo and cheese, encased in a wonton skin, then fried.  

Cherry Bomb at Crop Bistro

Two nice salads were the roasted beets (red and yellow) and an asparagus salad

My grilled Tasmanian salmon was cooked just right and served with quinoa good, but the desserts particularly stood out:  “fire and ice” was sweet white chocolate but served in a sauce flecked with red pepper, one of my favorite combinations.

After the talk ended the next day, I headed over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; my hosts were kind enough to pay for my ticket, explaining that they were glad to show off their city. But Cleveland’s main claim to rock and role fame is mainly that Alan Freed, one of the original rock-promoting DJ’s who was eventually drummed out of his profession as a result of the payola scandal, got his career started in Cleveland (at first I was annoyed by the lack of acknowledgment of how his career had ended, but if you got all the way to the final exhibits, where there was a section entirely devoted to Freed, the museum was ultimately fairly candid about how his career ended, even if full of excuses for what he did). 

The museum is housed in a striking I.M. Pei building along Lake Erie

although most of the exhibits are below ground level.  I had been in the Hall of Fame fairly soon after it opened as I recall, when I was attending a TDU convention in Cleveland in the mid-1990's.  It compared well when I visited Seattle's Experimental Music Project on a work trip about ten years ago.   But I remembered little from my first visit, and I gathered that the main exhibit area had recently been renovated.  

Motown display case at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The museum has a fine collection of memorabilia (clothing, guitars and other instruments, handwritten lyrics and musician contracts -- even some of the wreckage from the plane in which Otis Redding went down), organized sometimes by artist or genre, sometimes by recording company; some of the bigger names had their own display cases, or even multiple cases.

There were several banks of interactive terminals that let you compare musicians with their influences and the like, but I had relatively little time for the museum so I spent next to no time checking them out.  The highlight of the museum has to be the audio clips and video of performances and interviews.   The collection begins with the many roots of rock and roll in jazz, blues, gospel and country (for me, the roots collections were best part, as well as a pointer toward more music to which I should be listening) but also continues close to the present. 

There was so much there that although I had close to three hours before I had to head back to the airport to catch my plane home, I felt I had had to rush through particularly at the end.  I am not sure I could have spent a whole day there to take the collection in all at once; by the time I left I was feeling overwhelmed, but there was easily a day full of things worth seeing. One criticism – the various exhibits are packed so close together that the sound from one set of clips was often clearly audible in adjacent viewing areas.

NCAA Tournament Trivia Contest

For those who think that public interest lawyers never have any real fun during the day, I provide this exchange between two of my colleagues

One of my colleagues, Scott Nelson, sent out this contest last nght.  If's cheating if you look at the answers before completing the quiz yourself.

Tournament Trivia Time! (Round one.)

1. What is FGCU?  What happens if you order it in a sushi restaurant?

2. What tournament competitor (men's) is based in the worst city?

3. Which school is better--Bucknell, Butler, or Belmont? Are they actually different schools?

4. Which team's mascot shares the same first name as the mascot of a defunct toothpaste commonly found in NYT crosswords?

5. What is a billiken?  And what does an iPad's spell-checker substitute for the word "billiken"?

6. which two teams are the Gaels? Why?

7. Which team is named after a car?

8. would it be possible to have a final four consisting entirely of Aggies and wildcats?

9. which team has the best name? the worst?

10. Do you think anyone went to Northwestern State thinking it was Northwestern? Or vice versa? Can you pronounce the name of the city where Northwestern State is located? how about its sister city? How about the town where Northwestern is located?

Bonus question: Harvard? Wtf?