The Rocks

We have been venturing through a land of rocks and mostly thirst. The first cacti show their thorns and lizards scuttle in the sun. Yesterday and for the last few zillion years water and wind have been plying their slow arts to this corner of humungus Utah. From the salty flats around Salt Lake City to the granite and sandstone of Bryce and Zion Canyons we have once again offered our camera in awed appreciation. The days are hot and the nights cool with bright sun and stars crisp.

Bryce has the "hoodoos", all manner erosion stacks tanding in multi-coloured regiments,
their hues shifting with the hours. We had a splendid day of
clambouring around in the dust and columns, surrounded by any number of tourists, most of whom carried that glassy-eyed visually gob-smacked look.

From spectacle to splendour a mere few hours drive away in the shape of Zion Canyon, surely one of the world's most spectacular rock formations. At least in the hands of climbers who come here to bask in the towering faces of red rock. The Virgin River cuts its way from a high plateau through the hard Kayenta formation and through to the Navajo
Sandstone where the underbelly of long ago opens the canyon up to the flats below. Yesterday was a day of fording the Narrows from its source above for 25 km through a narrow canyon, filled with icy water and dappled light from on high. Our takkies (trainers) offered yeoman service, our feet burning last night from the re-perfusion of too long in icy submersion. But one of the most exhilarating days of walking in my life- dimensions stretched, senses revised, legs used, eyes glassy and tired 2 minute noodles the food of the gods.

All-American Folks

Our count of friendly Americans increases each day. As we've trickled down into the more populated parts of the States, we've engaged with our camping neighbours more meaningfully. The result of this is that we met Dan in Grand Tetons, Dennis and Karen in Bryce Canyon National Park and Lawrence in Zion National Park.

Dan is a banker from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who is doing an open-ended road trip and camping for the first time. We met him at our campsite in Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons and persuaded him to endure the 20-mile long loop up Cascade Canyon and down Paintbrush Canyon via Solitude Lake.

Dennis is from Colorado and Karen from South Africa (one of only three Saffers we've met so far). They have been on the road in their RV for over a year with no sign of stopping. They are travelling with two cats aged 14 and 17. We shared a bottle of vintage white (theirs) and freshly baked breakfast muffins - never be too disparaging of RVs when you're offered hot muffins from the oven.

Lawrence is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina (where we will be for Thanksgiving with our friends Erin and Jeff) and now lives in Seattle. He works as an equipment tester for our favourite US store, REI. Recreational Equipment Incorporated beats the pants off Cape Union Mart. We met Lawrence in the queue for a campsite here at Zion. He'd been backpacking (overnight hiking) for four days and was in need of some real food. He shared our chicken stir-fry and bestowed gifts of his test equipment on us. We now own a set of hiking poles, a topographical map of Zion, a magnesium, no-matches fire-lighter and, my favourite, a jetboil. Ooh, toys! South Africans, prepare to be awed by our style on the next hike up Table Mountain.

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Road Trip by Numbers

Well, folks, we've just left the heights and the bears of the Rockies behind and hit the dust and the heat of Utah. Coming to you live from Salt Lake City is our Road Trip by Numbers...

number of Vienna sausage dogs rescued from car wrecks and drunken owners in Alaska = 1 (both sausage dog and owner were in better shape than they should have been)

number of people giving Mark the bird for driving at the speed limit in national parks = 2

number of 30+km day-hikes completed with which Mark hopes to instill a love of hiking in his wife... with = 3

number of nights slept in our tent = 26

number of nights slept in a bed = 25

number of nights slept in lovemobile = 4

number of grizzly bear sightings = 11

number of black bear sightings = 5

number of possessions assumed lost and returned/recovered the next day = 3 (1 wedding ring, 1 folding table, 1 butter pat - stories on request)

number of miles driven = 7214

number of types of precipitation hiked in = 4 (rain, snow, hail and sleet)

number of friendly border officials = 6

number of unfriendly border officials = 1

number of feet of highest point hiked to = 10700

number of books read between us = 8

number of mice stowaways in lovemobile (eating our food)=1

number of friendly Americans= many

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Yellowstone

Arriving washed out by endless miles of Montana and roadworks, accompanied by dark thunder clouds, we sidled up to our drenched campsite. A new day brought a happy throng of RVs and geysers cheek-by-jowl. Dennis from Ohio plied his charms with Robyn and Marge from Missouri alighted from out of her terrestrial ship, squeezing all manner of earth's wonders through her lense. Today the sun shone on all of us. That is through billowing clouds of steam, walls of sulphur and across resplendent ponds of thermophillic bacteria adding their colour to the cauldrons of the deep.

Old Faithful beats to a temperamental clock - a futile sprint across the wasteland offering no horological reward. But dusk brought unexpected eruptions and high above Old Faithful's realm, we watched the sunset through smokestacks of vapour. Remote from the tailend of a season that saw 3 million wander wide-eyed across the roiling plain.

Rocky Mountain swimming

‘You never regret a swim.’ This Mark Richards proverb has been proved time and again on our journey through the Rockies. Two particularly memorable ones will now be expounded upon.

We left Edmonton on a scorcher of a day with a rather wobbly start for our car (turned out to be dodgy fuel we were sold which had been watered down). But the Canadian Rockies embraced us with their munificence and coolth and we were soon oggling glaciers again and feeling quite at home. We camped that night in the wooded Icefields campsite of Jasper National Park. There was not much rest for the wicked, as our true destination was Yellowstone, 1000 miles or so away. Lunch that day was in Banff National Park on the shores of Bow Lake. It was a blue-bird day – to borrow a term from the Alaskans. The sunniest day you can imagine bestowed happiness as we skirted round the edge of the turqoise glacial lake and found our lunch spot. I had been resisting the urge to leap into the azure waters since we began our walk and now submerged myself with relish. We both shot out without our usual fulfilment of 3 submersions. Man, glaciers can leak frigid waters. The sidelong glance of a nearby fisherman expressed our hunch that we should have realised that.

The second thrilling swim occurred the next day after we’d camped just outside Banff National Park and partaken of Tim Horton’s doughnuts for breakfast again. It was another gorgeous day and we were driving around Flathead Lake, Montana. As we entered the town of Lakeside, I spotted a pretty jetty and bouys demarcating a swimming area. And…there was no-one there. The thrill of knowing that it is Monday morning and you’re the only couple of loafers lucky enough to be off school or work at 10:30 in the morning with a sparkling lake stretching out to a far shore in front of you is exquisite. It took a fair amount of cavorting about to convince my other half to come and join me without fear of frostbite.

The swimming has continued to be glorious as the following Yellowstone blog will reveal.

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Alaskans

"Congress passed a law that no mosquitoes could enter McKinley National Park." (Old Sourdough, 1931)



Watching a great tide of resistance to Barack Obama's attempts at healthcare reforms typifies so much of the spirit of the American psyche and nowhere is this more evident in that vast piece of the earth called Alaska, home to the ancestors of some of the most resilient and independently-minded people of this planet - and not least entrepreneurial if only for titbits of gold and reservoirs of oil. The spirit of a hundred thousand sourdoughs remains.



It calls forth today any number of camouflaged yahoos on ATVs whooping it up with their guns in the middle of the night (Knik River camping) to hardy folk plying lives in the teeth of frigid winters and mosquito borne summers. Nature in its extremes is unavoidable. It is fed on, played in, marvelled at, cowered before and lived in in a way that most of us are at far remove from. Swimming against the stream verges on obligation. Not so strange that Sarah Palin crept out of this woodwork to most Alaskans shame. But amongst them are people passionate about preserving a piece of glorious planet and living as far away from Washington while they're at it.



"There is one word of advice and caution to be given those intending to visit Alaska for pleasure. If you are old, go by all means. But if you are young, wait. The scenery of Alaska is much grander than anything else of the kind in the world and it is not well to dull one's capacity for enjoyment by seeing the finest first." (National Geographic Society President Henry Gannett, Member of the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska)



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Clean living and chipped teeth in Edmonton

By the time we finally arrived in Edmonton, having circumnavigated the city due to highways in North America being named with multiple names to confuse the foreigners, we were rank. Wet, smelly in body and clothing (especially shoes) and DIRTY. But this did not deter our relatives who welcomed us and our laundry with open arms at 11pm. South Africans, remember that legendary Skip soap-powder ad where the youthful son arrives home from jolling overseas and his mom says, ‘You know we thought that bulging back-pack was full of presents, but it was jam-packed with dirty laundry!’ and then holds the Skip box up to the camera with a plastic smile? We were that prodigal son and the Nunes were the present-less family.

The next four days consisted of laundry, catch-up time with the Nunes, sitting in the sun (ooh those Arctic-frozen bones were happy), more laundry, partaking of the conveniences of modern Western life (such as all-you-can-soak-up hot water streaming out of a metal pipe), even more laundry and Mark getting another tooth fixed. Yip, another one. We’re wondering if our travel insurance will cover 2 dental emergencies in 3 weeks. The man showed characteristic fortitude and endured his 3-hour wait with the ‘people’ at the city hospital with good grace. He then showed characteristic delight at a good deal when reporting that this tooth repair cost a third of the Fairbanks one. One for state-subsidised health care. This episode delayed our departure for Jasper National Park by a day, but this proved a fortuitous eventuality as we sneaked a family Saturday morning with more juicy bites and chin-wagging with Jen, Abs, Michael and Timothy.

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South to Edmonton

The love-affair with Alaska had to come to an end. We bid farewell to Patrick in the early morning light at our road-side campsite just outside of Anchorage and began a four-day trek to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We drove for 3 solid days and spent one day languishing in the hot springs and the rain at Liard. The 7th of September went by in a blur of one driving, one sleeping. We were revving our motor at the gates of the campground at Liard Hot Springs at 5:15am and we pulled sluggishly into the Nunes' driveway in Edmonton at 10:45pm. Granted, we lost an hour due to the time-zones, but it was still the mother of all drives. It's like driving from Cape Town to Joburg and then turning around immediately and driving back and then turning around immediately and driving back to Beaufort West. Aish.

The highlights along the way included whizzing past a doleful bison plodding along the highway, buying doughnuts from Tim Hortons (Mark's been fantasising about Hortons for most of our trip so far) and these cinnamon buns.

The Nunes (Mark's cousin Jen and family) have received us warmly (20 degrees C today) and cleanly (4 loads of washing done in one day!) and we've been enjoying a good catch up.

Onward to the Ice Highway of the Rockies and then back into the States for Yellowstone.

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All things bright and beautiful

Alaska, the Last Frontier, is crawling, buzzing and flapping with all sorts of amazing beasts. You never can tell what's around the next corner. After a short nap (no comment, Mark) on our trip from the Arctic back to Fairbanks, I woke up and cried, 'Hey look at that donkey on the side of the road!'. Familiar with my semi-comatose state on awakening and the strong possibility that this was a hallucination, Mark cast his eye lazily towards the hard shoulder. 'That's not a donkey. That's a female moose!' And sure as eggs, on making an about turn, I verified that it was indeed that morose-looking creature, which despite its bulk, was vanishing into the suburban forest on the outskirts of Fairbanks.

While on the Discovery, we were amazed to learn that Prince William Sound's temperate rainforest has a greater diversity of wildlife than its tropical counterparts. See pictured some Alaskan critters that we've ticked off our list: moose, brown bear(grizzly), black bear (pic courtesy of Patrick, see http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/ for more of his wonders), Pink salmon and Dall porpoises. And not pictured are bald eagles, a long-tailed jaeger, Dall sheep, sea otters, caribou, humpback whales, Silver salmon, trumpeter swans.

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Holy Cow! Calving glaciers and their icebergs

Probably the most awe-inspiring element of Prince William Sound for me (and this is a hard decision to come to given the competition) was watching glaciers calve into the sea. These monsters shave off at the end of their journeys leaving behind bobbing icebergs of differing sizes.

I had an exciting linguistic moment - bear with me here - when experiencing calving glaciers. I rushed to tell my fellow passengers that the glacier was calving. 'Carving?' came the response. 'No CAHVING' I said, yankeefying my accent to be understood. It makes much more sense to differentiate between 'calving' and 'carving' when pronouncing the words. I mean, why is that 'r' there otherwise?

We were privileged enough to kayak amongst the icebergs and, on the last day, get a little bit closer...

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Prince William Sound on board Discovery

Sometimes you just land with your bum in the butter. Most of this year feels like that for us, but nothing exemplifies it more than our trip on the Discovery in Prince William Sound.

For 6 days, we plied the waters of the sound which was made famous by the damage it sustained from the Exxon-Valdez oil spill of 1989. It is beautiful beyond the singing of it (to steal a phrase from my countryman, Alan Paton). We were treated to up-close encounters with humpback whales, spawning salmon, black bears, eagles, otters, seals etc... It really was an interlude in paradise.

We were joined by our friend Patrick, who clicked away constantly, and 10 other passengers who were great company.

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Big glacier, big family

We arrived in McCarthy in the dark after travelling through dark trees and with Daniel and Rob and the quad bike weaving our way through rain and forest. Tim at the parking lot regaling us with McCarthy tales and moaning about the septuagenarian on the only pay phone having long conversations with his Philipino bride who has not come to this end of the road. But in our warm house replete with 4 (of the 7) Koenig children we had a bountiful welcome and warm room. To awake with one of the better views in the world out over the Wrangell wilderness and the twin Kennecott and Root glaciers throwing up their mounds in icy embrace. There is only so much adult hiking ambition that can be entertained when towed about by four children in the mountains above McCarthy- especially when attached to the hip with a length of rope. We, all of us and Boomer the dog (ex-sled dog of limitless running capacity), fumbling our anarchic happy way across a very big glacier.A day (after night of Robyn wrestling with her bear fears) dawned with the prospect of some serious glacier exploring under the trusty guiding of Jacob Schultz, spending his summer guiding in the Wrangell-St. Elias Park (the biggest in the USA). To the Ice Fall was our mantra and 30 km later we had coming as close to patting one of the highest icefalls in the world (lots of excesses here- it’s a big country) as you could hope. On the way, armed with our crampons and ice-axes, we peered into holes of blue with deep endings far away from our feet, drained glacial lakes with stranded icebergs and moulons (sp>) carrying waterfalls to rivers in the dark. Always not able appreciate distances and perspective as mere hillocks of ice and mountain play with your brain and bring on that old feeling of smallness and insignificance.A day ending with a wild wet ride on our quad bike through long dark avenues of tree and flying mud, creeping into our sleeping bags just shy of midnight, exhausted and hungry, but enough marvel in our eclipsing brains for deep dreaming.