Vacation, day 5

[sauergeek]

We succeeded in waking up early. The noisy door ceased being an issue as evening wore on; I suspect that it just got left cracked open overnight -- the door by default stuck slightly open instead of closing all the way. This probably saved our sleep. However, people did start forcing it closed (which was noisy!) shortly before 7 AM. This let us get up in time, shower, pack, and check out, all before the ranger talk. Breakfast would have to wait until afterward, though.

The ranger talk was by Ranger Bob[1]. His chosen subject for the morning was "bravery", in the form of the four Civilian Conservation Corps[2] companies[3] that worked on improving the Grand Canyon during the Great Depression. The stone walls[4] along the rim, the current form of the Bright Angel trail (including all its rest houses), and a number of Grand Canyon Village buildings are all results of CCC work. He also mentioned that the CCC could not get funding to build needed fire towers along the rim of the canyon, so instead they chose tall trees to build platforms on, complete with ladders and metal umbrellas titled "lightning deflectors". He described how people would then sit on the platforms, over 100' off the ground, and have to deal with the tree swaying as much as 6-8' in a good wind[5].

Breakfast was at the El Tovar hotel dining room. The dining room is a magnificently fancy place; a quote in the menu jokingly derided it as "the most expensively constructed and appointed log house in America". I ordered French toast. jiapa got the eggs Benedict. We each also ordered the Belgian hot chocolate.

The French toast was three enormously thick (nearly an inch each) slices, each cut diagonally in half, with blanched toasted hazelnuts on top, and a strawberry. I was able to finish only two of the three slices, and most of the hazelnuts. I regret to say I did not eat the strawberry. The French toast came with butter and real maple syrup. It was uniformly cooked, and remarkably light for the sheer volume of food involved.

The eggs Benedict were excellent: two eggs, each perched on a slice of Canadian bacon, in turn on half an English muffin, with Hollandaise sauce over all. It came with three sauces on the side: Tabasco, ketchup, and something called Arizona gunslinger (a hot sauce described as having less bite and less vinegar than Tabasco). I think I need to try more eggs Benedict in the future.

But the hot chocolate. Mmm, the hot chocolate. Our waiter described it to another table (with two small children) as "the best hot chocolate in the world". I would not want to bet against him. jiapa initially ordered some to warm up after we stood outside in the wind and cold for an hour at the ranger talk. I sampled it, and promptly decided that I wanted an order of my own. You get a teacup with a good layer of small chocolate chips in the bottom, and a large dollop of whipped cream on top of the chocolate chips. The actual hot chocolate milk comes in a small teapot. There is enough hot chocolate milk in the teapot for a little over two cups full, but if you are slow in demolishing the whipped cream, you can stretch the teapot across four cups. Pour the hot chocolate into the whipped-cream-and-chocolate-chip-filled cup. The poured cup is immediately drinkable: it is hot enough to be warming, but not so hot that it burns your tongue. This hot chocolate is so far above Swiss Miss, you probably can't even see Swiss Miss from here. The chocolate stands out above the sugar, yet the hot chocolate is sweet. There is no grit whatsoever in the hot chocolate. This is how hot chocolate should be. If you ever find yourself in Grand Canyon Village and it's cold out, by all means stop in the El Tovar dining room during breakfast hours and order the Belgian hot chocolate. One or two orders of this hot chocolate could be breakfast all by itself.

After breakfast, we stopped by Lookout Studio[6] and Kolb Studio[7] to look around and check out their views. Both had excellent views from their observation points, but I think I was still overloaded with canyon views from yesterday. I took a few pictures anyhow.

With our brief tourist excursion complete, we headed south on Arizona Rt. 64 out of the park, and picked up I-40. jiapa discovered that if we stayed on I-40, we'd be able to cut through Mojave National Preserve, so we decided to push Hoover Dam off until Saturday. Most of the trip today was downhill, with only scattered climbs of any distance. We stopped in Kingman, AZ[8] for groceries[9]; we also stopped in Needles, CA[10] to stop by the Mojave Desert information center there. The ranger at the information center recommended that we look at the Granite Mountains on the way in, check out the Kelso Dunes (apparently singing dunes, a geologic rarity), visit the newly opened Kelso Depot building, and then have dinner at the Mad Greek restaurant in Baker, CA. We'd already decided on the Mad Greek for dinner from our guidebooks, but getting a recommendation from a park ranger over 100 miles away from Baker cemented our decision.

The stretch of desert in and around Needles is amazingly green right now, with a lot of plants blooming. We saw flowers on yuccas (the only plant I can readily identify other than Joshua trees), small yellow flowers on various bushes, and, at the information station, red fan-shaped flowers on yet another bush of some sort.

We eventually exited I-40 onto Kelbaker Road, one of only a few paved roads that goes through Mojave National Preserve. The Granite Mountains were on our left as we drove in. We found the Kelso Dunes road -- a dirt road -- and drove ~3 miles to the parking area. We heard from other people there that the dunes were in fact singing today, and started our walk in. On the way, we saw various tracks: some clearly some sort of canid, others faint enough to be unclear if they were dog or cat, some that were probably kangaroo rat (and I have pictures of those!), and some that were some kind of bird[12]. However, we did not get all the way to the dunes themselves: we hadn't realized it was an hour each way to the dunes. Long before we got to the singing part of the dunes, we were getting sore, and the light was starting to fail. Walking in extremely fine sand[13] is difficult, especially with shoes on. However, from where we did get (which was just under half an hour in), we could see that the desert looked solid green once you got clear of the ultra-fine sand of the dunes themselves. It's bizarre to think of a desert as capable of being that green -- but I suspect that only shows how inexperienced I am with deserts.

After we gave up on making the dunes, we hopped back on the Kelbaker Road and arrived in Kelso shortly after 5 PM, only to discover that the Kelso Depot building closed at 5, instead of 4 as the ranger at Needles had told us. Drat. We just missed being able to see the inside of the completely restored building. Instead, we got to see just the outside, including the completely restored lawn that Union Pacific had put in place when they built the depot in 1905[14]. Per the story from the ranger back in Needles, that lawn got Union Pacific more favorable publicity than all their advertising combined.

We departed Kelso after taking some pictures, and headed to Baker, CA. It was just past sundown as we got into Baker. I've been following a half-tank rule for gas on this trip: once the tank gets below half full, I start looking for a gas station. We'd gotten to half at Kelso, but there are no gas stations along the Kelbaker road in the preserve. We were just under half a tank at Baker, so I filled up there. I'd never had to buy gas in California before. The price is over $2.80/gallon, with major brand stations at $3.00/gallon! Good grief, is gas expensive in California.

As planned, we had dinner at the Mad Greek restaurant. Both of us ordered their schwarma. The schwarma was good, basic, Greek food, spiced and served much like gyro meat, but prepared in-house. It came with rice, which was well-seasoned. The serving sizes were just about right. To drink, we had the house lemonade. The lemonade was potent, which I appreciated: I favor strong lemonade. We got baklava to go, as we were too full to eat it then. We also got some spanikopita and tikopita for breakfast tomorrow.

Our Death Valley hotel is the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel, in Death Valley Junction, CA (population: 10). Death Valley Junction was formerly known as Amargosa, before a borax mining company built a company town here. The hotel was built when the borax mining industry was strong; attached to it was a social room. After the borax ran out, the town was largely abandoned -- at one point, it was down to a single filling station. However, Marta Becket, a Broadway dancer, then in a traveling company, broke down near the town (around here, 30 miles out is "near"). While her car was being fixed, she found the old hotel and its crumbling social room, and fell in love. She initially rented the place, and later bought it entirely. Over several decades she has renovated the hotel and turned the social room into an auditorium. She now puts on shows of her own devising, every Saturday from October to May[15]. She is the writer, lead actor, director, etc. of all the shows. She has also decorated the inside of the hotel with her own paintings, which I have pictures of. The New York Times did an article on the hotel in 1999[16]. The place is absolutely dripping with character, and is easily the weirdest hotel I've ever stayed in.

Tomorrow: into Death Valley!

1. Yes, he called himself Ranger Bob. His name on his nametag was Robert, though I have lost his last name. On the way down AZ Rt. 64, we saw an adopt-a-highway sign stating that this stretch of highway had been adopted by Ranger Bob. I like to think it was the same person.

2. The CCC was a FDR Depression-era project to provide (what would now be college-age) single men with jobs that would teach them direct on-the-job skills, give them more formal education (40,000 illiterate men taught to read and write!), and provide for their families back home.

3. In the military, not corporate, sense.

4. One of the stone walls, in a spot that is visible from what was then, and still is now, the dorm for female employees in the village, has a stone shaped like a heart in it. Ranger Bob said he wished he knew the story behind that stone. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the stone.

5. I pointed out that my grandfather had worked for the Michigan forest service building fire towers in the northern part of the lower penninsula. When talking about the towers, my grandfather complained that the towers he built, and then sat in, swayed alarmingly in strong winds too!

6. Lookout Studio is a building built hanging over the rim, which provides a nice view from a higher angle than what would normally be available. It was originally built as a competitor to nearby Kolb Studio; it is now a gift shop.

7. Kolb Studio is a similar building to Lookout Studio, though further west. It is formerly a photo lab as well as the home of the Kolb brothers; but is now a book shop.

8. Of Route 66 fame.

9. We got beef jerky, granola bars, candy, and three gallons of water, all in case of car trouble in Death Valley or the Mojave.

10. No, we did not see Spike[11] in Needles.

11. Snoopy's brother.

12. However, based on a video I saw later at Death Valley, the tracks may have been made by a large insect.

13. The dunes themselves are made of extremely fine sand. The surrounding area is made of a coarser sand, with bits of gravel in it. There's a distinct change in the quality of sand underfoot, and a similar change in the plant life at the same point, as you walk toward the dunes.

14. Union Pacific apparently regularly got postcards from people exclaiming about the well-kept, green lawn in the middle of the desert. There is a natural water source at Kelso, which is why there's a train depot there in the first place, and why it's not completely ridiculous to have a lawn there, even though it is in the middle of a desert.

15. Unfortunately, there is a sign out front, "All shows cancelled until further notice due to Marta's injury". The counter worker said that she fell off a chair while trying to reach something high, and pulled a muscle in her back. However, she seems to be recovering nicely.

16. "Talk about a one-woman show", April 6, 1999, pages E1 and E4. She was 75 at the time.