ZION NATIONAL PARK - UTAH

We woke up bright and early the next morning and headed for Zion National Park. We were to be staying in Springdale for 2 nights, at the southeastern gate. You actually get to drive through a section of the park to get to Springdale.

The landscape changes so dramatically, so quickly, you really feel transported to another universe altogether. Like when Liv Ullman emerges from the tunnel in Charles Jarrot's schlocky, Bacharach-soaked 1973 remake of "Lost Horizon" and first gazes upon the fabled Shangri-La. Never mind that they shot that in Malibu State Park. Perhaps what makes Zion so impressive, aside from the sheer elevation of the cliffs, is that the rock formations vary so wildly. Tall roughly-hewn orange cliffs in one direction, and circular checkerboard stone sand-dune shapes in another. Grey and white cliffs as well. Sometimes a combination of all of the above. This blend of dramatic landscapes personifies the term "shock and awe".





The first morning, in true Bootcamp Bevan style, I woke up at 4:30am to hike the notorious Angel's Landing trail. Anne was fast asleep. Angel's Landing is renowned for it's treacherously steep slopes and deadly drop-offs. Despite a couple fatal falls every few years, it's still a big attraction in Zion, and gets very busy during the afternoon. This is why I woke up so early. I wanted to do it alone, and I wanted to do it first. I was the first person on the trail. I was hoping to reach the top before the sun crested the valley.

The first half of the journey is a very intense series of paved switchbacks, taking you up up up in a short amount of time. It's a serious workout for your lungs and heart.



Eventually you reach a short clearing and a dramatic cliff edge, looking straight down in to the canyon to the north of the landing.



From here you can see the challenge ahead: A long, thin spine of a cliff that sticks out in to the middle of the valley from a crevice in Cathedral Mountain. The first thought that pops in to your head is "they can't be serious!".



It is insanely steep, and quite narrow at times, with 1000 foot drops 5 feet on either side of you. They have installed chains to hold on to in the more precarious parts, but they do little to calm your nerves. On top of that, it was particularly windy at 630 am. I had no way of knowing just how windy it would get but I was too excited to turn back.



I reached the top just as the sun broke through. I was ecstatic, and overcome with uncontrollable laughter at the thrill of having defied death. An exaggeration on my part, no doubt, but that is honestly what it felt like. It is definitely up there on a short list of the more epic moments of my life.



The view from up there was bananas.



Later that day we hiked a 2000 ft ascent to an overlook view of the whole valley. I took only a few pictures along the way, spending most of the time just trying to catch my breath. We saw some big horn sheep frolicking on the rocky slopes towards the summit, but I was too far to get a good shot. They had bushy white tails and were smaller than I had expected. More like goats than big fat rams.





When the sun finally goes behind the mountain, the color really comes out of the rock. It was astonishing.





It was in Zion that I began developing my new theory about Germans, which I shall present forthwith:

RANDOM OBSERVATION 01
Germans are everywhere. You cannot go to one vacation spot on planet earth without a third of the people being German. "How can this be?", you ask. How indeed.

Germany has a reported population of about 82 million people. Or so they claim. Evidence would seem to suggest it is closer to roughly one third of the Earth's population. So, more like 2.83 BILLION people. How else could they occupy one third of all vacation spots? So where exactly are they hiding these legions of tall-socks-n-sandles-clad, pot-bellied adventurers? Hmmmm.

Then I remembered our old friend Hitler. The Fuhrer, as I recall, was a card-carrying member of Germany's "Thule Society", a mishmash of wealthy occultists and volkisch who embraced the Hollow Earth theory first proposed by Edmond Halley in 1692. The Thules used some Tibetan prophecies to support their beliefs, and it is said Hitler himself ordered a naval expedition to the Antarctic in order to find the secret portal to the world within. At the Nuremberg trials, Admiral Karl Donitz is reported to have boasted of completing this mission, and having secured for the Fuhrer "an invisible fortification, in midst of the eternal ice." Sounds pretty badass. Sounds like he read one too many Superman comics as well.

So maybe the whole Gregory Peck as Mengele cloning thing worked after all, and like Saruman's mines in Isengard filled with freshly-hatched Uruk Hai, Germany continues to breed a race of jabbering tourists beneath the earth's crust, periodically dispatching them to locations throughout the globe where breakfast buffets abound. Makes sense to me.

Not that there's anything wrong with Germans, mind you. They're lovely.

That night we stopped in at Springdale's only asian restaurant, Thai Sapa, for some home-cooked Thai food. I made the blunder of demanding that they make my red curry chicken spicy.
"Not American spicy…" I insisted "Thai people spicy!"
"You sure? Okay we make spicy for you"
Man alive was that some spicy fucking chicken. I was paying for that for days. But it was easily the best meal we had eaten on the whole trip. Getting out of NY, you realize just how lucky you are to have endless great food options at your fingertips. Not so much in the Southwest, especially in places catering to tourists. It was the same menu everywhere you went, and most of it was very mediocre. We both gained 5 or 10lbs I'm sure of it. Oh well. When in Rome.

RANDOM OBSERVATION 02
Girls in Utah do this thing where they make their hair big and tall in this half-dome shape, but only in the back - like a little round tumor on the back of their skull. After 3 or 4 days, this stops looking trashy and starts looking weirdly sexy.

After two nights we again got up early and hit the dusty trail, heading for Moab by way of Bryce Canyon. Anne started calling me "Bootcamp Bevan" due to my fondness for 6:30am departures. These rigorous vacation tactics were handed down to me from my father, who used to have us leaving at 4am for family roadtrips. I still remember waking up already in the car, still in my pajamas, halfway to Chicago. I learned from the best.