Where Angels Land

On the second day of our 44-day road trip, Amy and I arrived in Zion National Park.  We had three nights and basically three days to see one of the most beautiful spots on Earth.  The towering sandstone cliffs are stained with iron to give the mountains an amazing red glow.  I describe it as a Yosemite in full color.  The canyon country around Zion has amazing red cliffs, but Zion has the most stunning cliffs of all and the trails to support it.

I’d heard about Angel’s Landing Trail being one of the best hikes in the world.  After doing it, I rank it right up there with half dome, Everest and the San Juan’s of Colorado.  Angel’s Landing is only about 5 miles round trip, but the last half mile up requires chains to keep you on the mountain.

The trail was too intimidating for Amy who has some vertigo, so she hiked another trail shown on the map above to Emerald Pools.

The Angel’s Landing hike had about a half mile of casual walking before it started ascending the 1,500′ cliffs.  The trail was wide and steep and lots of other people were coming down.  I started at 3pm to avoid the crowds and miss the hottest part of the early June day.

The series of switchbacks worked right up the mountain and I had to stop many times to catch my breath from the steep grade.  After about a mile, I entered a very steep and deep canyon called Refrigeration Canyon because the sun rarely reaches the canyon floor.  The slot canyon was cool and breezy and rather flat.  Angel’s Landing was on the right and a whole other mountain was on the left.

After a while, I hiked up Walter’s Wiggles – some tight switchbacks seen below.  The sun hit me as I climbed out of Refrigerator Canyon and I was sweating again and making good time.

Walter’s Wiggles

The trail was still wide and safe, so I was wondering what all the fear of the trail was about.  Then we reached a flat area known as Scout’s Lookout.  It’s a nice plateau with 1,500′ drops to the Virgin River canyon floor.    It’s Wile E. Coyote country for sure!

Scout’s Lookout is a nice flat area before Angel’s Landing.

After I made it across the high plateau, a small offshoot trail went to Angel’s Landing.  This is where the men separate from the boys – or something like that because a lot of beautiful women kept going.  I could see the chains and this sign.

Don’t fall off the cliff…

I looked up at people coming down a rock face holding on to a loose chain.  The chain was attached to metal posts pounded into the rock face.  I realized what all the fuss was about.  The chain is the only thing that keeps people from tumbling off the mountain to their death.

I started hiking up and some people were stuck in the trail.  I’d seen similar behavior on Half Dome where people would not let go of the chain.  They were paralyzed and not moving forward.  To keep going, I had to get close to them, reach around them and grab the chain on the other side of them.  Luckily there weren’t too many people doing this, so I made quick work of getting up the precarious ridges.

I saw many other people turning back with white knuckles and fear in their faces.  I’ve never been too afraid of heights and love looking down great distances, but even this hike was too much in places and my heart pounded at some of the gaps between the chains.

You need to hold on to that chain.

That’s a 1,000′ drop on the other side of the chain!  5 people have died on the trail with the last victim falling 1,000′ in 2009.  You don’t want to stumble up there.

I think I blocked out a lot of the hike until I made it to the relatively flat top.  Here’s a picture from there:

Quite a few people were up there and no rangers were there to enforce the rules of not feeding the animals.  This guy had this chipmunk crawl up him multiple times to get that perfect shot.  While I was watching, one of those little buggers jumped on my back and it made me jump.  my sudden movement scared all the other chipmunks and this guy was mad because I interrupted his cinematography.

This is my favorite shot from the top.  Right after I took it, I was uploading it to Facebook when some other people asked me to take their photo.  I said sure and set my phone in my lap.  They got into position and then I forgot about my phone.  When I got up, my phone fell onto the rocks and started skidding down the mountain!

People heard my phone skidding and bouncing and started yelling for help for my phone.  I’d seen a phone skid down half dome to it’s death, and people seem to relate to the fear of losing their phone.  The phone/camera/organizer/ bank teller/GPS/on and on is the most important thing people use all day long.  Losing my phone is a very painful experience and I prayed that I wouldn’t lose mine off the 1,500′ cliff!

Luckily, the person I was taking a picture of was in the skid path.  She stopped the phone with her foot as it was sliding to it’s death.  The slide scraped up the cover and the screen almost broke, but my screen protector worked and the protector chipped instead of the screen.

When I got back to the main trail a half an hour later, I decided to hike up the main trail a little farther.  When I got up there, I realized that I hadn’t used my tripod or selfie pole to take some pics.  I set it up and got some good shots and then saw the time elapse mode.  I knew I had to get a cool shot of the people coming down the chains while the clouds blew by.  Check this one out!

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I’m so impressed that I can take this HD time elapse video with my phone.  What a powerful tool.

The whole hike took about 4 hours.  I highly recommend it to lift your spirits and get to some life pondering moments.  I felt a good sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and my only loss was a scraped iPhone.

The Angel has Landed!

From LA to Vegas

Hello everyone!

Amy and I are on our 44-day road trip to kick off our year of travel.  We’re taking a break from the work we’ve been doing for 25-years and want to start new careers in travel.  We’re not sure where we’ll end up, but we have a long time to get there.

On May 27th, we left Santa Monica and the first stop was Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.  We took a beautiful hike on First Creek Trail through cactus and into the desert canyon.

Cholla cactus with mountains in the background.

This was our first day on the road and I trained for my July backpacking trip by packing many things into my backpack including chairs and a gallon of water.  the hike was pretty easy, but the 35 pound pack made it feel like I was hiking up a big mountain.

We hiked until the trail stopped in the canyon.  We sat and Amy wrote in her journal for 10+ minutes.  We are making the trip a spiritual and contemplative journey as well as an exciting vacation.

It was getting late, so we headed to Red Rock Casino and had a great meal while watching LeBron advance to the Championship for the 8th year in a row.  He’s amazing.

We stayed in an airbnb for $35/night and then cruised the strip.  We started in the county center and Artists District.

Keep Memory Alive Event Center
How can you pass up the Elvis Wedding Chapel?
I hear the Holiday Motel was beautiful 50 years ago.  That’s the Stratosphere behind it.
Doesn’t this pink Cadillac look good in Vegas?

Finding Meaning

I’ve been on the road for four weeks with Amy and things are going great!  We are at her mother Di’s house right now and I’m getting to know Di and the rest of Amy’s family.  They are very special people who have made me feel at home.  This will be home until we hit the road on Friday.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make this blog more than just my travel log.  I want to do more than just take a year long vacation.  I’m looking forward to rising above great day-to-day activities and find meaning in my life and help others find theirs.

This search for meaning has really hit me hard for a couple of reasons.  First off, it hit me because meaning can be an existential crisis according to this article in the New York Times.  The article discusses how suicide is up 25% since 1990 and how a lack in meaning in people’s lives might have been a reason for many of the suicides.  I’ve also heard of four suicides (only one unsuccessful) since I’ve been in KC, so the topic has come up quite a bit.

The second reason is that I’m retiring next month and I’ve heard that other people have gone into depression and lost meaning in their lives when they quit work.  I think that I haven’t attached too much meaning and self-identity to my job, so I’m not too concerned about retirement leading to depression for me, but I do have more time to dedicate to something with meaning.  I want to give back to the world.  I want to be constructive instead of destructive.

Meaning or purpose in life is so important and I can be impetuous in decisions that I make.  I am rather decisive and that can lead me to make decisions before I have all the facts and opinions.  I want to get this one right and have profound meaning and purpose in my life.

When I retire, I have the great opportunity to figure out what I want to do and then do it.  I’m taking a year to travel and figure out what I want to do.  I have a few ideas to start:

  1. Become a Travel Writer – This has been my main idea for a long time and I can do this while I do other thing too.  It mainly comes down to if I want to travel so much as I get older.
  2. Travel and Report on Spiritual Places –  I have some plans to go to some great spiritual places this year (mainly Esalen and Kyoto). Visiting these places could give me a good feel for if I want to spend more time in these special places.  In late July, I’ll be going to Esalen to reach my full potential on a 28-day retreat.
  3. Help gifted children – I have had this dream of helping intellectually gifted children who may have trouble relating to other kids and getting along in life.  My high school physics teacher K. Perry talked about helping gifted kids and it made sense to me.  If we can help some very gifted kids, then maybe they can do some amazing things.  Maybe I can inspire some kids by leading them on some international travel.
  4. Creating or Living in an Intentional Community – This could be an easy path to find people who want to live the good life with me.  I’m not a good salesman, so why not live with people who want to change and live with purpose?

That’s my thoughts on how to bring some meaning into my life.  Let me know if you have better ideas or what has brought meaning into yours!

Kind regards,

Scott