Canyonlands...a mini Grand Canyon

Canyonlands National Park. One of Cam's favorites. One of my least. Or rather, his favorite hiking and mine, well, could have given some of it a pass. The scenery was great--the layers upon layers upon layers of rock was cool..especially when you could see it from the viewpoints in the car. Hiking however, was another matter...long, hot, lots of sun and wind exposure, and not that much to see because well, you can't see the canyon as you're walking up to it.

Isn't this beautiful? Ahem, this is from the car.

Another cool view

There's a hiking trail here?!?

All joking aside, it wasn't that bad. There was some really nice parts to the dessert walking, such as the ultra cool flowers.

One of the best parts of Canyonlands was the campground we spent two nights in. It was inside the national park, only ten sights, and pretty remote. We had to bring all our water with us, though because we wer car camping this wasn't a problem. The stars at night were unbelievable. It was peaceful, romantic, and a perfect finish to the bulk of our hiking trip in Utah.

Cameron, loving his canyons

From Canyonlands, we busted a move to Salt Lake City. We were on schedule to meet Brady (Cam's best man) and his fiance, Naomi, as well as a couple of their friends in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta for our final weekend.

Arches, arches everywhere

Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are both outside of Moab, Utah. Moab is a vibrant touristy town set up to be the base for all the hiking, mountain biking, and 4 x 4ing that goes on within these parks.

We only spent a day in Arches National Park, but it was pretty interesting. Amazing how you can see so much orange rock over a few weeks and still see differences between it!

Can you spot the arch?

Cameron, loving his arch

Landscape Arch

Our day in Arches consisted of a driving tour, plus a nice three hour hike through the park.

Escalante...a grand adventure

Packed up the tent, grabbed the hiking shoes, did a load of laundry and drove along scenic highway 12 to our next destination: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. You may ask yourself, "why would Meghan and Cameron be so excited about a monument?" because I also asked myself this, before I understood. Escalante is not the kind of monument you think of...which for me, is a statue. Instead, it is a huge swath of land that has been designated by the President as a protected park area but it doesn't yet have National Park status. This basically means that there isn't quite as much development in the area, it is slightly fewer visitors, no printed park maps, and huge amounts of backcountry.

We grabbed our topo map, spoke to a few locals and were off into the dessert for a bit of very beginner canyoning and a 3 day/2 night backpacking trip. Canyoning is a big thing in Utah, and there are people who get into doing some pretty serious slot canyon adventures. This requires a combination of hiking and rock climbing. Of course, our experience was limited to hiking, and a bit of fanangling through crazy corners and high ledges.

Tight squeeze! And this isn't as narrow as it got...

Meghan-Indiana Jones-Muhle works her way through the narrowing rock walls

Lovin' the slots!

All in all, we were in the two slot canyons for about an hour...can't imagine huge-o trips that the hardcores do! I have to admit, I was a bit nervous starting out at the idea of being in such a small, cramped space but what you can't see in our pictures on the twenty boy scouts that are also there..if they could do it, so could I!

We drove from the slots further into the monument (thanks DJ, you did a great job on all the dirt roads) to our trailhead for Coyote Gulch. This multiday hike is well known in the area, and a favorite because of the great scenery. We walked in along a dry river bed until we met water, and spent the remaining time hiking through the river.

First night camping. We drove to the trailhead late afternoon, ate dinner at the car, and hiked in only a kilometre or two before setting up camp.

Cam is loaded down and enjoying being in the river instead of the dry river bed we'd previously been following--we left behind the deer flies when we reached the water.

Our base camp for two nights. From here, we day hiked to the end of Coyote Gulch.

The sweeping rock was honestly awe inspiring.

Hats off to mega-fun. Nothing beats hiking in Coyote Gulch.

Coyote Gulch was a big highlight of not only our time in Utah, but also the trip overall. We had such a peaceful time being in the backcountry and neither of us had done so much hiking in a river before. Plus, we celebrated Cam's big 3-0 in the backwoods and had a big pizza dinner (at a restaurant with a reputation for having the best pizza in Utah) and a beer when we got out of the dessert.

Next plan was the head east towards Arches National Park.

The sky was gorgeous as we left Escalante. Big storm rolling in, but the lighting was terrific

Zion and Bryce

We arrived in Utah with an intent to spend as much time as we could hiking..and hiking we did! The national parks in Utah are absolutely fantastically wonderful, and we thoroughly enjoyed the last three weeks of our trip.

Zion National Park was a great time. It's one of Utah's most popular parks, and the main highlight is the large canyon that the park runs up. The cutesy little town of Springdale is at the heart of the park, and this is where we camped...with the park being so popular we learned that you can't just show up and expect to get a spot in the national park campgrounds; we were in a "nice" little RV park.

There is a shuttle system that takes you to all of the trailheads in the park and gives you an audio tour of the main sights. We spent four days within Zion, doing everything from the most popular Angel's Landing to a long day through high alpine down into the canyon, to an overnight hike in the northwest section of the park.

An overview of Zion Canyon. You can see the road snaking along the river below...this is where the shuttle runs.

The first big hike we did was on the West Rim Trail. We were dropped off at the trailhead and hiked one way, back to the south part of the part.

The combination of high alpine with the canyons in the background was just so cool!

At the end of the West Rim trail you could shoot off and do Angel's Landing. This is a view of the ridge that you hike along. There are chains along the route but that didn't make me feel any better. I waited for Cam while he hiked to the end.

This is the very reason I didn't go with Cam along the Angel's Landing ridge. Both sides were a hhhhhhuuuuuuuuggggge drop off, and there was only feet of trail on either side of you. Even as I'm writing this my hands are sweating!

After lots of day hiking we decided to do an overnight trip in Kolob Canyon. We had great weather, total seclusion, and a perfect couple days.

A view of Kolob Canyon, in the northwest section of the park. This is the view from the top of the overnight trail we hiked.

The trail had so many beautiful dessert flowers

These guys were everywhere!

Our tenting site was in the middle of nowhere-big canyons all around us, with a river just down the bank.

We hiked to the end of the trail to see one the world's biggest arches. Thank goodness this kind person gave us a clue of where to look (The little instructions say "ARCH ^ (look up)"), otherwise we might have missed...

THIS!!

We were sad to leave Zion but already have our next trip planned. Originally, we went to Zion to hike the popular Narrows hike. This is a two day, one night backpacking trip through a slot canyon made by the Virgin River. You do most (nearly all) of the hiking in the river and as you go deeper the canyon becomes more and more narrow, until finally barely any light can get in. Unfortunately the Virgin River was running too high while we were there, which makes hiking in it unsafe. Oh well, next time!

Bryce Canyon National Park was our next stop and very different from Zion. Where Zion had huge canyon walls, Bryce had "fairy chimneys". There was another shuttle system here and again, many trailheads to explore various areas of the park. This time, we were able to get into one of the lovely park campgrounds. We spent another four days exploring Bryce, covering many of the parks highlights on a few day hikes and then spending two nights in the Canyon bottom on a backpacking trip.

A view of Bryce Canyon's fairy chimneys

Short day hikes took you right into the heart of the coolness

Cool sandstone structures were everywhere, and were the main highlights of Bryce

Heading off for an overnight hike in the bottom of Bryce Canyon

From Bryce we started heading east to Escalante to explore more of Utah's hiking scene.

Thru New Mexico to Utah

We bee-lined from Austin to Zion National Park in Utah, which meant three day of very solid driving, mainly through New Mexico. While we didn't make many stops we took time to check out "Sky City", an acoma pueblo settlement. Acoma is the tribe of native americans in the area, and a pueblo is their settlement. Sounds cool, right? We were stoked to do the 1.5 hour tour of the ancient sky city and it ended up being the biggest dud of the trip. Kind of neat to see the old houses made of packed clay, set atop a dessert mesa (hence sky city) but the tour consisted mainly of being touted around to women selling clay goods outside their homes, feeling awkward for not buying it, and hearing about all the movies previously filmed there. Basically, we had expected an ancient city and had instead found a living tourist city.

This is a street in Acoma Pueblo, "ancient" mud houses

The cathedral

It's a really moving experience. The outhouses add so much.

Enjoying the mesas

The scenery throughout New Mexico was pretty cool, and just as you'd picture...we could definitely appreciate where Punte Norte, a local Summerland B&B, got it's decor.

Austin, beautiful Austin

We left the Mudbug Festival and our crawfish behind, and traded Louisianan's gumbo and jambalaya in for Texas' BBQ, tumbleweed, and cowboys. With only a few days in Austin before Bryce flew home, we had a jam packed time!

Before even arriving in the city, we caught an AAA baseball game, our "local" Round Rock Express team. The stadium was great, Bryce taught us how to fill out our score cards properly, and all in all it was a great start.

The Round Rock stadium

Enjoying the game

From the game, we got ourselves checked into our city campground and hit the road for our first Texan experience. Food. Our time in Austin consisted of a few main themes:

1. Food. Mainly BBQ.

2. Live music

3. Watching movies

Unfortunately, the only pictures we took centred around food, which to our defense, was a definite highlight.

Franklin's BBQ...a top rated joint. You have to be there well before noon to get any food at all--they are so popular the door shuts when food sells out

My lunch sandwich at Franklin's...beef brisket with coleslaw. Now can you see why it sells out?

Quite the spread of food at Salt Lick..coleslaw, beans, potatoes, beef brisket, sausage, pork ribs, and chicken. Phew!

Salt Lick BBQ...pure mass of pure deliciousness!

Topic #2, live music. Austin is known for an eclectic mix on the live music scene. Everything from country to rock to jazz to blues to reggae can be found among the numerous bar filled streets. This is one of the reasons Austin beat Vancouver on our personal list of "coolest cities to live". We had a good night out which finished with a rather late night at a bar that was just hopping. Hopping past the point of any bar I was in during Florida's spring break madness when Kuldeep and I were there in university. That says something.

Of course we also took in all of Austin's culture. The State Capitol was lovely, and the tour inside was awesome. We took in a big state museum which was fantastic and learned all about Texas' cowboy history.

Bryce and I lovin' the Capitol building

Topic #3, movies. Bryce follows a couple movie blogs and had heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. AWESOME! It serves dinner and drinks during the movie...and really good dinner to boot. There was the biggest, best movie seats you can imagine with a long table in front, and the servers were dressed all in black so as to not be disruptive during the film. You would write your order down and place it upright in a little holder so that they could come collect it. Nothing better than sitting back watching The Bridesmaids (we loved it--go see it!) and having a watermelon-seared feta salad with a glass of white wine....movie and dinner for $20.

The final highlight of Austin was it's great active/healthy living feel. The home of Lance Armstrong (and we checked out Mellow Johnny's, his bike shop) the city is chalk-a-block full of great cycling and running trails, people out everyday, all day working out. We managed to get out for three or four runs along the river trails through the downtown core, followed by a dip in Barton Springs pool. A seriously great lifestyle.

From NOLA to Austin

We left New Orleans heading west. Our first stop, a few kilometers out of town, was an old rice plantation.

The plantation tour was really interesting. It lacked much hard information on plantation owners, crops, slaves or anything much in general, and instead focused on the story of a few generations of one family. It was enlightening to hear more about some actual people from the period, rather than just numbers. The tour leader was a creole fellow a few years younger than us and he was an excellent presenter. He was very engaging, if not a little strange. I think the most interesting take away was that slaves were supposed to be treated differently, under France's Code Noir, in Louisiana than in the other southern states. I don't know if they were actually treated much better in practice, but there were rules and consequences surrounding slave abuse and separating slave families.

The Laura Plantation

From there we headed over to check out Avery Island, the home of Tabasco hot sauce. It was not too much of a detour and it seemed like a fun thing to do. Company tours had also been pretty good to us in the past. Tabasco ended up being a bust though. First we had to pay an entrance fee to get onto Avery Island (the only thing on Avery Island was the Tabasco Factory, so the free tour was a bit of a trick), then the Tabasco factory tour was ridiculous! The tour started with a woman describing how Tabasco is made. By some poor fortune we ended up being in a tour filled with a bus load of mainly french speakers so after each sentence the woman would stop and a fellow beside her would pick up and translate, the only thing being that he wasn't that good at it so half the audience would be chiming in translating for him. It was a confused din. Then we watched a video which basically said the same thing the woman said but with moving pictures, and was followed by some advertisements for Tabasco by a woman dressed in shoulder pads and a floral scarf. Bryce, being a fashionista, had a field day ridiculing her clothing. After the movie we all shuffled out of the auditorium to walk past a non-operating bottling line, which as can be imagined looks like a bunch of stainless steal machines. Then we left. The plus of the whole experience was getting to try the whole Tabasco line of products and getting free small samplers of four of them, which have been really great for camping. If anyone asks you to try it though, Tabasco sweet and spicy ice cream is not pleasant.

Meg on the Tabasco Express... The highlight of our visit to Avery Island.

That night we headed for Lafayette where we were hoping to meet up with Chef Joe from New Orleans, unfortunately he was busy catering an event and we couldn't get any time with him. We did check out a restaurant he suggested which turned out be just okay unfortunately. We were hoping he would hook us up with a funky hole in the wall local restaurant, but it ended up being a giant, high throughput Cajun theme restaurant. We then made our way downtown to see what was going on. It wasn't too busy a town and unfortunately we just missed a live concert downtown. We settled for a one man cover show and a few drinks on a patio instead.

We spent that night at a KOA beside a busy highway, one of the large interstate affairs, so we didn't sleep all that well and were almost thankful when the sun came up so we could get on the road. Meg and Bryce went out for a run while I did laundry and we made for our first stop, another National Park. The park was associated with the wonderful parks we visited in New Orleans so we had high expectations. Unfortunately they were not really met. Our first activity, which we raced to get to, was a ride down a bayou to learn more about Cajun country. New Orleans and the plantations were all Creole French. The original french inhabitants took on the name Creole French (in Louisiana Creole seems to basically mean, native to Louisiana, so there are creole French, creole black etc) had got there first and the Cajuns (an Anglicization of French Acadians) who had been expelled from Canada got the second rate interior land and swamps. The boat ride basically consisted of a fellow driving us slowly down a river/stream/bayou while he waxed philosophical about life. I think he had just read "Ishmael", because there were strong hints of agrarian vs. hunter/gather societies in almost all of his answers. Also, almost every one of his answers started with "10,000 years ago...".

Meg: "How many rice crops are grown in Louisiana per season."

Dude: "10,000 years ago... (10 minutes).. and then they grew rice... (10 minutes)... and then they brought over slaves... (10 minutes)... two."

It was actually much to his credit that the fellow always answered the question in the end. It almost got to the point that I started applauding when he finally got to the answer. I mean to digress so greatly with every question and still answer it in the end was an amazing feat. Half the time I didn't even remember what the question was by the time he was done. Meg started semi-rudely interrupting him in order to accelerate answers, since we only had three hours with him and we had many questions. There were also two other Cajun women on the trip who were able to answer questions in a more direct fashion.

Cruising the bayou.

After that mind boggling boat ride we headed up for what became another bit of torture, a video on the history of the Cajun people. The history itself was really interesting and pretty sad, but the video was ruined a bit by this little female voice that represented an anthropomorphic Acadia. She would pipe up now and again throughout the video expressing her deep devotion to the people of Acadia who eventually became the Cajuns. Usually while she talked she would sound pretty upset and there would be a strong sound of wind blowing. It was pretty over the top and took away from the video. The exhibits at the little museum associated with the National Park was really good though and helped fill in the gaps that were still missing from the philosophical boatman, and terribly upset video.

In all we had all but given up on Cajun related tourist destinations, they just weren't very well polished. Before throwing in the towel though, our final stop was checking out at a small town music hall . It was basically the Cajun version of the Grand Ole Opry. It was a live show broadcast on both radio and television and featured Cajun musicians and we were lucky enough to be there on a concert night. We arrived a little early, in time to visit another exhibit on Cajun history (which was identical to the one we visited after the boatman) and learn how pig cracklings are made (the big take away was, with great difficulty) and sample them. When the concert arrived we bought a bag of popcorn and sat down in our seats. With the start of the first song we were having a great time. The music was really lively and almost immediately old folks in the audience were up two stepping around. This, of course, got Meg going since she loves old people doing pretty much anything let alone swinging around a dance floor, but it added visual entertainment for Bryce and I as well.

Our fairly poor low light shot of the Cajun music program. If you look hard, you will see the woman holding a portable fan for her husband.

From there we headed north. We were aiming for Shreveport where the world famous Mudbug Festival was in full swing. Before we got there though we wanted to hit up some live Zydeco music. Sadly we had to skip the Zydeco festival that was happening in a neighboring town due to time constraints, but we figured we had to get at least a hint of it. The Lonely Planet indicated that the bar Slim's Y-Ki-Ki in Opelousas had live Zydeco every Friday so we plugged the address into our GPS and made our way there.

I can't lie, the evening started off weird and at no point did it start making sense. First we show up and the changeable-text sign outside the bar indicated that the evening entertainment was being hosted by Triple-D social club as a wrap up of some sort of trail ride. Not sure exactly what was going on we stopped by and asked the really friendly fellows at the door what was going on, whether there was live music and whether we should go get dinner. The answers seemed to be loosely that there was going to be a live Zydeco band, there would be some food served (Louisiana comfort food, red-beans and rice), and that imminently a bunch of people would come in from a "trail ride". We also asked if it was a public function since pretty much all the guys seemed to be wearing matching black t-shirts with something about triple-D on them. Though they seemed on the whole to be surprised we wanted to come, they indicated that the public was allowed. After a bit of pondering we decided to maybe go eat dinner, get a cheap hotel room (we decided to have a night out of the tent*), and then come back.

After some fried chicken we were back at the bar asking similar questions, and the answers were similar again. The band was coming on soon, there would be food, there was some kind of trail ride just wrapping up and the place would pack out any second. We were encouraged to get in soon as it would be difficult to get a drink at the bar soon. Another fellow outside chatted us up a bit and gave us the advice to maybe have a few drinks before we went in order to save money over bar prices. He was drinking in the parking lot as he said this. Being no spring chickens to the bar scene, this made sense to us and we decided to head back to town to get some beer.

Before we got on the road though a friendly person who introduced herself as Slim came up and talked to us (her business card actually had her full name as Sexy Slim, so she was being humble). She was the vice-president of a social club whose name I can't remember right now, but consisted of three words all starting with the letter D. Thinking I had put two and two together said, "Oh right on, triple-D, you guys are hosting the party." No, they were actually three-D, and their motto was "because we're larger than life and jump out at you". As she said that she made a little upper body lunge in our direction to demonstrate. We asked her a little about these social club things and it seemed that people in the clubs really did go riding around on horses and raised money for good causes. She invited us to head back down south for an event 3-D was hosting, but we figured we would remain loyal to the triple-D crowd.

We went out and got our beer and came back and had just opened our first can when we realized that we were the only people drinking in the parking lot. The fellow who had given us the advice must have been part of Sexy Slim's crowd and was off to a new party and everyone else was just milling about beer free or heading into the bar. We figured what the hell though, it wasn't every day you get to drink Old Milwaukee in a parking lot in Louisiana, and continued to have a few more discreetly.

Finally, it came time to enter the bar. From the outside it sounded like a DJ was playing some sort of club scene music, but the fellow up front assured us the band was on (at this point you may be aware, as we were not, that the fellows at the front felt that DJs are bands). We made our way and our first impression was, again, how all the men seemed to wearing the triple-D t-shirts (though the girls were sort of dressed up like they were in a booty-licious music video). We headed up to the bar, got a few beers, and settled in at the last table to check things out. The dance floor wasn't super busy for most of the songs, a few regulars who got up and grooved, but occasionally there would be sort of a club scene remixed zydeco song and then the floor would get hopping. There were two DJs, a really big fellow, appropriately (though hopefully not ill fated) DJ Titanic, and a smaller fellow whose name I didn't catch as he didn't too many shout outs. It was a cultural experience to watch people dancing and grinding away and we were enjoying ourselves. The highlight though was when one of the guys we were talking to at the start of the night came by and pulled us onto the dance floor for one of the popular songs and hooked Bryce up with the girl who was without doubt the hottest girl in the bar. It was really fun being up with everyone and Bryce worked his best moves and after the song ended we decided we had reached the night's peak and called it.

The next morning we were all feeling pretty good and excited for the event to come. After a few hour drive, we arrived in Shreveport where the Mudbug festival was going down. Mudbug's are crawfish, which seem basically to be prawn sized lobsters. We came all this way out of our way (Austin, our next destination was now well south of us, when we we started it was a little north-east) to the party mainly as an excuse to try crawfish as they are meant to be eaten. That is; freshly boiled, covered in some kind of seasoning salt and spread out on a newspaper. We tried them and in the end our takeaway was, pretty good, but a real pain to eat. The technique for eating the crawfish is basically to rip off the upper body and then, while sucking with a fair amount of effort, squeeze the little tail till the meat comes out. We proven to be poor at this task, but after speaking with our neighbours it sounds like we got a bad batch and our crawfish were too small for easy eating. By the end of our first dose though, we were pretty salted out, and really covered with mudbug juices and forgo a second effort. After trying a few other local carnival delicacies and listening to some of the local acts (Who were quiet good, with both musical tents hopping) we called it a festival and got on the road. We decided to make a few miles to Austin before the night fell.

Crawfish

In retaliation for Bryce absconding with my Mudbug wife (perhaps in the madness of the event) I am eating Meg

*Actually, I just realized that I never mentioned this before. Meg slept in the car every night except the first Bryce was with us. We had the illusion that we could all fit in our two man tent so didn't ask Bryce to bring one down with him. It turns out that we could fit, exactly, with no gap between any of us with Meg between Bryce and I with her head at the opposite end. As can be imagined Meg very soon overheated in Louisiana's hot night and Bryce and I awoke the first morning to find Meg sleeping on the ground outside the tent complaining of the bugs. After that she slept in the car where she was evidently pretty comfortable. Also, because Meg was the smallest she was in the backseat of a pretty overstuffed car, all in all, Meg was sort of a displaced person for a few days.

Meghan trapped beneath our cooler as the car's contents shift.