It’s day 15 of the trip, going back to Vancouver tomorrow. I’m sitting at a Mcdonald’s (again) at Page (Arizona) having a Bacon Ranch Salad (not something that I’d usually order but I did for some reason) and it isn’t bad at all! I just finished the Lower Antelope Canyon tour from Ken’s Tour, wandered inside the slot canyon for about 3 hours. It is actually one of the highlights of the trip, and it didn’t disappoint! Great place with lots and lots of interestingly shaped, curvy canyon walls and I had to walk inside this really narrow space, sometimes as little as half a foot across. Sand poured down from time to time, hitting my arms and camera hard, pretty cool.Took tons and tons of photos. The $26 really worth it. I’m going for the Upper Antelope Canyon in an hour or so (3:30pm), not sure if it’ll be a lot different from the Lower one, guess I’ll see. This time it’ll be guided and it’s only going to be an hour long.

Guess I’ll continue from where I left off from my last post. After leaving Bryce Canyon I headed to this place called Calf Creek. It’s about an hour drive and then I arrived at the Calf Creek Recreational Area. There were a couple trails, lower and upper creek, I went for the lower creek trail. It was a pretty straightforward trail, took about an hour and half to reach the end. I picked up a guide from the trailhead and there were numbers along the trail and you could refer to the guide for the description of the numbered area. The trail wasn’t particularly interesting but at the end of it, it was SO COOL. I got to the Lower Calf Creek Fall. It’s as tall as a 20-30 story building, really magnificent. The pouring down force was so strong that the water was splashing outward so even though I stood like 200 meters from it I could still feel it hitting my body. It was so refreshing in the super hot weather, it’s like an air conditioner from nature. I spent half an hour there taking pictures, sitting around, had a sandwich for lunch, saw people getting wet/ kids swimming in the pond of water created by the fall. I didn’t want to leave at all since it was so nice, but I did after half an hour of stay. The hike back was so frigging hot and awful 

My next stop was the Capitol Reef National Park. Again it wasn’t too long of a drive, about 2 hours or so. Okay, the entrance of the park was the most awesome/picturesque out of all parks that I had been to so far. Bloody red, enormous sandstone (or whatever stone, think it’s sandstone though) emerges from the earth spanning like thousands of acres. How could anything possibly be so cool (making me want to see the pictures again right now) The park was gorgeous, countless photo ops. I went to a couple of the most popular trails like the Hickman’s Bridge - enormous arch high up on a mountain, pretty steep trail to hike, Capitol Gorge Trail – walking inside the bottom of some canyon with super tall rocky walls on both sides, Grand Wash Trail – similar to Capitol Gorge with different scenery. Also checked out some petroglyphs – ancient rock arts drawn by Indians – pretty mysterious and cool. Went to a couple view points, with the panorama point being the most memorable and impressive. Giant red stones standing not too far from you, kind of reminded me of the Egyptian pyramids replacing the yellow with bright red. The lower parts of these stony hills looked like veins, or fingers, that crawl on the ground almost looked like they were trying to get you – they have to been seen to be understood.

The next morning I drove to the Goblin Valley State Park. It was a longgg drive and it was confusing as well, as to where to make the turn from the highway into this narrow passage – the guide or road sign didn’t really say where to turn so I had to pay so much attention or I’d miss it. Just the road that leads to the park was like 10 miles long, pretty crazy. There wasn’t anyone else at all too. In fact there were a few places that I went to during the trip which hadn’t too many people (or none) around, and this park was one of them. Kind of weird. Guess was because of the weekday thing, or could have been the long drive into the park. Anyway the drive was so worthy as the park was super cool. You can’t really see what’s going on in there till you park and walk into the park. The moment I went in I was like, holy shit (I literally said that at a few places when I couldn’t really believe in what I saw, this place was one of them, and also said that at the Capitol Reef park, the Subway hike at Zion, the Calf Creek fall…can’t remember the rest for now). Thousands of “goblins”, big and small, scattered around the huge flat piece of land. I actually got to walk into the area and explore. When I was there there were only a few people and a group around, it was really quiet which made it even cooler. I felt like I was a kid, wandering around the nature stone sculptures almost like playing hide-and-seek. The small ones were like my height, there were some mid-size ones that were like twice as tall as I am, and the bigger ones were about 20-30 feet tall. They were really cool, bright orange in color, each one of them was totally unique. Most of them formed in groups, while some just stood there alone quietly. There were probably thousands of them and I spent around 2 hours there taking countless pictures as usual. It was pretty hot though, I had to hide behind some huge “goblins” to take rest and cool down.

It was the same day that I drove to the Arches National Park, probably the most famous among all of the parks that I was visiting – I heard that Indiana Jones and a couple other popular movies had scenes that were shot here. The park was the smallest among all the parks but the drive inside he park itself was actually the lenghthiest – about 18 miles from the entrance all the way to the last view point (Devil’s Garden). There were countless viewpoints here and lots to see, and I’ve spent 3 days here (just enough). The highlight was probably my first night of stay at the Devil’s Garden Campground, a really popular (had to reserve few months in advance) campground that had a super nice setting – nice and private area with natural sandstones close to the site also with huge area where you can probably set up 20 tents without a problem. Oh yes, I was like holy shit when I saw my site, as delightful as a kid that was given a XBOX 360 for birthday present. I actually got to check out the night sky at this site without having other people look at me like an idiot, just because it was so private. The only drawback was that there was no shower facility so I had to wipe clean my body at the end of the day. Anyway. Another highlight (lots of highlights) was the Devil’s Garden Trail. I got to see lots of very cool arches like the Landscape Arch (world’s largest), the Double-O Arch, and some other cool arches. The hike took about 4 hours as I got to the last point of the hike which was the “Dark Angel”, a stone monolith that stood up 20 stories tall. Other than this, also went to “The Windows”, which were two huge openings on stones and I actually got to walk through both of them. The BEST hike at Arches was the guided tour – a hike guided by a ranger that I had to reserve two days in advance. It was on my third day at Arches. We had a group of 30 people, meeting up at the Fiery Furnace viewpoint. The hike was into the super confusing Fiery Furnace area, which were a huge number of “fins” that pile up closely and it was because of that the hike would have been extremely confusing to navigate inside it without a guide. People actually got lost numerous time inside it.

It was a very hot day but the guide was very nice as he led us to cool spots quite often, and he was very talkative and it was very informative. We walked through extremely narrow space, sometimes had to slide down using our butt, and at some point we had to walk side ways moving our bodies in unusual way, making it a very interesting walk. The guide told us a lot about the dessert being very fragile even though it “looks tough”, especially the crypto-something organisms that live in the sand to retain moisture and to support the sand so that it doesn’t flow away – always follow the trail and never step on them. Also learnt a lot about arches that are actually formed by water not by wind – water sip through the rocks and cracks eventually loosen the mud stone part of the structure leaving the sandstone (harder part) intact, thus creating holes. Potholes, holes on the ground that were formed by rain water staying at a certain area for a long long time. Micro-organisms live in it, like waterbears and tiny shrimps, worms…etc. Even if the holes become dry out it’s not a good idea to step into it.

This is day 12 of my 16-day Utah trip. I didn’t think that I’d be writing during the trip but today I’m done with all my hikes and having a break so I’m going to write some. Sitting in a Mcdonal right now (in Moab) and having a Angus burger meal (#13) and just had my Coke refilled (not sure if it’s ok or not but did it anyway)
Can’t really write anything in detail now since I wasn’t recording my activities daily, but I’ll try.
I flew to Las Vegas on the first (Aug) via US Airways and the flight was pretty good (despite the fact that reviews for this airline were pretty bad). Got off the plane pretty swiftly, waited a bit for the baggage and I was on my way to the car rental place. Had to take a shuttle to the “centralized” rental place which was pretty cool. Since I got my car reserved ahead, it was super easy to register and all that, even though I thought it’d cost something like $500 USD (says the online reservation) but the car insurance was another $500 rip off, so the total came to around $1000 Had to do it anyway. Got my car quickly after getting into the lot, thought I’d get an American sedan (bigger/cooler looking one) but all I saw were Hyundai’s. Stupid looking, tiny, silver Hyndai Accent. Well at least it looked pretty new (had only 500 miles on it). When I drove out it was SUPER HOT, worse than baking, so had to max out the air-con, drove to some convenient store and picked up pack of 12 bottle water (smart move), some muffins and food for lunch, and headed towards my first destination - Zion National Park.

Got to Zion pretty quickly. When I drove into the park I was totally awed by the beauty and how sublime it looked, couldn’t wait to get in and start my journey. Can’t really remember what I did first or where I went first…etc, but Zion operates a shuttle (in summer months only) which takes visitors in and out the park. The place I camped at (Quality Inn RV park) was pretty close to the shuttle station so I was pretty happy (and the Zion Adventure Company was just across the camp site, where I had to rent stuff for water hike). I went to a couple view points (same for every national park that I went to, they all have view points that you can just drive to without any hiking), but the highlight was “The Narrows”. I rented hiking shoes specifically designed for water hike, and also a really long wooden stick to assist the hike. It was a “water hike” where I had to literally walk in the water/stream for many hours. It was really fun as it was something that I’ve never done before. Water level was about knee level most of the time, ocassionally went up to the belly. I had my right hand holding my DSLR camera (E-3) most of the time since it was quite difficult to take it in/out my backpack, while holding the wooden stick on my left hand. It was more difficult than I thought to walk around in water, sometimes I had to cross over rapids which was rushing really fast and I could barely move. The stick helped a lot though and without it I could have fallen into the water a dozen time (I did once only, lol) but there were people that did it without any stick, not even sure how they balanced themselves. Just as the name says there were numerous places they were really narrow, like 20 feet across and the walls on both sides went up super high, maybe 500 feet or more. Took lots of pictures of that. There were insteresting rock formations and vegetations along the way too. It took me around 5-6 hours to finish the entire hike (couldn’t go further at one point since the water would go up to my chest and my backpack would be soaked). It was truely unforgettable.

Had another super memorable hike in Zion - the Subway. Apparently I overestimated myself, like my fitness level…etc and also I wasn’t well prepared (ran out of water). So I spent almost a day doing this hike. It was hiking upstream (along the stream), but there wasn’t ANY trail, so I had to figure my way out somehow, which included climbing up/down 6 feet tall rocks (they call it boulders, prehistoric ones), trying out different routes when I couldnt go further, walking in the water (in bare feet since I didn’t know I had to so I just took off my shoes/socks hanged them on my backpack) on super slimy/slippery stones, walking in sand under direct sun (super tiring), using both of my hands to manuver my body so that I could jump across rocks of different sizes…..these are just some highlights. When I was about half way to the end point I knew that I was running out of water (I brought 2L!) I was pretty freaked as I was super thirsty due to the heat, stress, and exercise. There were a couple groups that I came across and I had asked almost all of them for water purification tablets but none of them had it. I was SO LUCKY when at one point I bumped into the guy that was lining up in early morning for the Subway hiking permit with me (yes this hike requires a permit and only 20 people are allowed per day) He was really nice that he used his water filter to pumped about 2 L of water from the stream into my water pack, he even offered to do the pumping! I was literally saved, and was able to move on. I saw dinosaur tracks on the way (as said in the guide book) it was really cool. After about 4 hours of trial and error, I reached the entrance for the Subway where there were countless super pretty red-coloured waterfalls. I finally got to the Subway but I was SO exhausted that I couldn’t force myself to go further INTO the place (I really should have though, it was very pretty inside). I laid at the entrance, had an energy bar, some water, rested for 15 minutes and started to head back. People call it feeling of solitude but I felt alone, and somehow helpless. I was just hoping that I could make my way back, with my worn out body and scratched legs/feet. Anyway as expected the way back was different. There was no way to memorize the route you use to get in. I scrambled around using the same trial-and-error methodology to find my way out. I was soooo exhausted that I was literally just dragging my souless body around. It had been a long time since I actually experienced this kind of fear. I didn’t want to be stranded there at all. I finally made my way back, but the last 1 mile was crazy steep climbs and I thought I couldn’t make it. I had to take a minute rest around every 5 steps that I make, and at one point I even had to lay down and “sleep” for about 20 minutes. It was around 7pm when I finally was able to make my way back to the car, took off the socks and shoes right away, drank SO MUCH water, and started to head to the closest restaurant to have some food. I went to the closest one literally (ended up being a fairly pricey/high-end one), sat down, ordered a coke right away (ended up ordering 3 cokes and 1 sprite), a smoked salmon salad, a chicken breast main, ended up to around $30 USD. I had never at any point in my life drank four huge cups of pop all at once. Anyway I had to take a full day off the next day due to the energy lost and fear and all that. It was truely crazy.

Good that I had this experience early in the trip, learned a lot from it like not going to force myself into difficult hikes, making sure that I always bring enough water, also trying to bring less stuff with me so that my pack could be lighter therefore easier to walk…etc. Time to leave Mcdonald now since some stupid people sat in front of me for no reason and I dun want to sit close to them. Going back to my camp site to keep writing.

Got back to the tent…so hot even though it’s cloudy. Anyway, in Zion I also *tried* to do the infamous Angel’s Landing Trail. I was there on the first day, not sure why but I failed it.. Half way up the steep slope I was out. I guess I was not in the right condition, it was my first day there afterall. Wish I got to the top as everyone says that it was awesome view up there. Anyway.

I usually cook myself for dinner, with the gasoline grill I bought back in Las Vegas (guess I can’t bring it back home since it wouldn’t be allowed on the plane ) The first couple days I had the camp food (dry freeze ones) and they were actually quite yummy. Later on I learned to buy some canned soup and ready-to-eat microwavable food as well. Also I do laundry maybe once per two days or sometimes once per day, with the $1 foldable water holder I got from a dollar store. Ohhh, one shit thing that happened on the 2nd or 3rd day, was that due to the strong wind, my tent was literally blown away! I was away from my site when it happened, and a super nice guy helped secure my tent to a picnic table with some ropes. When I was back to my site I was FREAKED. Tent was torn apart, the fly had a 1-metre wide torn up opening, and the tent itself had a few holes here and there. I checked the stuff I placed inside the tent and luckily they were still there. I rushed to the closest store at Ruby’s Inn and bought some duct tape and an axe (they didn’t have hammers). I spent like an hour to “fix” the tent with the duct tape, under direct sun, and re-setup the tent and tried to hammer all the stakes super securely to make the tent super strong. From this and on I have always been really careful setting up the tent, so far it’s been standing up pretty good in the wind.

After Zion I was off to Bryce Canyon National Park. Just 2 hours drive I believe, got there without a problem. This place was real beauty. I drove to a few view points like the Sunset Point and a few other view points. The views were stunning, full of the so-called “hoodoos” which were eroded red-colored sandstones piling up closely spanding a huge huge area. I’ve never seen anything like that before. But as usual I ran into some shit problem on the 2nd day. I was trying to do the Queens Garden trail, but somehow I missed the trailhead and went into the Fairyland Loop trail. The Queens Garden trail was supposed to be quite easy and I chose to do it since I still wasn’t fully recovered from the Subway hike at Zion. On the other hand, the Fairyland Loop trail was a strenuous one. Well I don’t know if I was lucky or screwed, the views I got from doing the Fairyland trail was CRAZY good. I got to actually walk around the hoodoos and stood up high from the ground, saw some really grand-looking white hoodoos as well. I was okay during the first half of the hike, taking so many pictures while awed by what I saw. After 2 hours or so, I figured that I was doing something wrong. This wasn’t the Queens Garden trail at all, I could tell from looking at my GPS. I didn’t bring a map for the Fairyland Loop trail so I didn’t know when or where was it going to end. I got super tired again, even though I was still full of water. I asked a couple where would the end of the trail be and they said it’s another mile to the Fairyland viewpoint where shuttle bus would stop (The shuttle bus could bring me back to my camp site). So I hiked to the viewpoint, but then realized that the shuttle would NOT stop there. Asked around and a lady (looked like a tour guide) said that the easiest way to get back is to walk alone the paved road (for cars) and it’d bring me back to the visitor’s centre where I can board the shuttle. It’s a 4km trip….but then I had no choice so I was walking and walking like a dead soul. After around 20 minutes of walking, out of surprise a guy stopped his car and asked if I need a ride! I was so happy and jumped onto the car, keep thanking him and learned that he was looking for his son. We picked up his son Andy along the road after a few minutes of driving, and the guy dropped me off at my camp site. My life was spared again by nice people

That was the highlight from Bryce Canyon NP. Other than that I did drive to a few viewpoints like the Natural Bridge, Bryce Point (best view around there! with some stone formation called “Grottos” which looked like huge doorways), Paria View, and some other ones. They were all stunning and made me take 8000 pictures. I also tried to went into the park to Sunset Point and Bryce Point at around 10:30PM to see the hoodoos being lit up by the moonlight. It looked real scary, even though I wasn’t able to capture the views with my camera.

One thing that always freaked me out was that I always worried about locking my car keys inside the car. It’s so stupid that, even though they gave me two keys, they are held with a keychain that was soldered and there’s no way I can seperate the two keys. If I forget my keys inside the car and then lock the car I’d be 100% screwed. I’m a careless person so this is very likely to happen to me, even though it still hasn’t… This car that I got is really piece of shit. It accelerates super slowly, and then the steering is just weird, like when I turn it the car would just drags abrutly making it super scary. Also the brake sucks had to really press it for a super long time to stop the car. Also there’s no centralized lock, so I have to make sure all four doors are lock every single time when I walk away from the car! One good thing though was the air conditioning, it cools up real quick which was really helpful in this extremely hot weather.

I have to had to Moab to get some more iced tea or other drinks now since tomorrow I’d be camping at the Needles Outpost which looks like a super remote/hopeless place and I don’t think I’ll be able to get any tasty drinks/food there…lol. I’m going to write more if I have time tonight, but I doubt it since I have to get up at 3AM tonight to hike to the Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park to photograph the sunrise.

I’ve really been spending most of my time planning for my upcoming trip to Utah. Why Utah? Because it’s the heaven for serious photographers! I’ve pretty much finished planning out the main route, and did reservations for all the camp sites (will be camping for the entire trip…not even a single night of hotel stay…to keep the cost down). All of the camp sites provide hot showers, and most of them provide electricity (so I can recharge batteries for my cameras) and water, except for maybe two nights or so I’ll have to survive without electricity.. guess it’ll be fine. Anyway I’ll be travelling to five awesome national parks:

and it’s going to be a 2300km drive, for 15.5 days.

Today I went to Walmart to check to see if they carry any cheapo camping gears before I pick up some pricier ones at Mountain Equipment CO-OP. I bought quite a few items like rain jacket, LED lamp, flip flops….etc. (see receipt) Will be heading to MEC in a few days to get a decent tent, a hiking rod, and some other things that I will need.

Went up Whistler today for snowboarding. Went up with Angela, her sister Kim and her sister’s husband Kelvin. Daryl was supposed to come but he was sick so he couldn’t. We got there real early around 8:30am, it was already pretty crowded. I bought an Edge Card online for $69 which was kind of like a discount card for Whistler…it includes a free lift ticket plus you get discount when you buy ticket next time. The weather condition was okay, not too sunny and very cold; luckily I brought my face mask with me so I was okay. It brightened up a bit later in the afternoon though. I think I’ve only been to Whistler once last year, plus I was really bad at boarding last year so today was pretty much my first trip there that I actually “learned” how to board “properly”.

We went up to the Blackcomb Mountain first, did a couple run, then met up with Kim and Kelvin. We then did a few more runs together and took the “Peak2Peak” gondola (new in 2008) which was a 10-minute ride that brought us from the peak of the Blackcomb Mountain to that of the Whistler Mountain. The ride was really cool, the cable car was large (I think it would fit 30+ people), and the ride was very stable and quiet - must be some pretty high tech kind of mechanical design.

We had lunch after we got across. The cafeteria was really huge (never been there before) and offered basically any kind of food that you could imagine - pasta, rice, salad, bread, cookies, sandwiches, soup….etc. and it was PACKED. We got our seats after about 10 minutes of searching.

The condition of the snow was pretty bad I’d say. It was okay near the top of the mountain, where you could still find a fair amount of soft/fluffy snow, but when we got to the lower part of the mountain it was hard packed. My snowboard wasn’t sharpened so it didn’t really have any traction against some of the “icy” areas and I fell down a couple times. Butt and the lower part of the hand hurt really bad as the ground was hard If it wasn’t that icy I would have fallen way less often…:(

It was a fun day though and money well spent. I was pretty exhausted at the end of the day (we did a super long run from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom, with only 2 or 3 rests) as I pretty much maxed out my stamina since the other guys were really good and I had to make sure I wasn’t too slow or I would lose sight of them…

I was on Air Canada flight AC 007 for 13 hours. When I got on the plane I was pretty surprised that I was assigned this seat that is right at the emergency exit….so much leg room Also was pretty happy to see that this personal entertainment system with a pretty huge LCD monitor that you can tilt whatever way you want. Found my favorite shows too like Mythbusters, How it’s made, Daily Planet, Mega World….etc (see picture I was eating my meal while watching Mythbuster, pretty cool). I was given a whole can of coke too while on some other airlines they only fill up your cup. The meals were okay, nothing facny but did the job. Also found some classical music that I could listen to. Too bad the earphone was so quiet even though I’ve maxed out the volume.

There was a super annoying Chinese guy that was talkin with his friend in friggin Chinese right in front of me. He was speaking it loud in Cantonese with occasion bad words, just plain annoying. Was hoping that he would go away soon but he ended up standing there for a good one hour..

Anyway, the view from above the sky was amazing as usual. I think I was above Alaska, and Russia…etc. There were amazing icefields and mountain range filled with snow. Strange enough I was able to see the ground so clearly while usually layers of clouds would be blocking your view to the ground.

I’m still packing up even though I’ll be on the plane in about 12 hours. I don’t think I’m going to bed tonight so that I can sleep on the plane…it’s a 13-hour flight afterall.

Also watching the XJapan 2009 Countdown Live at Akasaka Blitz. The show can be watched here. I’m watching 09 now (there are 10 videos) and they are playing their new song I.V. (ending theme for Saw IV) It’s nice to hear something new from them, and a new piano solo from Yoshiki. The bass solo in this song is AWESOME.

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