It
is not so much the 600 miles in one go that dominated the first day, as the
impressive thunderstorms which all at a sudden took charge over the scenery -
and forced me to turn off my AM radio. For a Californian fellow such as me, not
by choice nor birth but by necessity I should stress, driving into a "dark
something" in the middle of the afternoon is not quite what I would call an
everyday occurrence. The rain itself was also not what the Californians would
call "rain" - i.e., a drizzle - but more of a binary state: faucet on
or off. In the middle of nowhere and with the windshield full of no longer happy
bugs it was quite amazing that each time the faucet was about to be turned on
there was a gas station with the appropriate squeegee.
I
have spent several nights in one or the other Motel6 across this big nation, but
the beds seem to be getting smaller and smaller, at least for 6'1" people
like me. After a short sleep (by all means), with speed limits well within the
"reasonable" bounds, i.e. 70 or above, and with "reasonable"
enforcement of the same, i.e. none, I soon entered Zion Natl. Park and shot my
first rolls of Velvia and filled my 1st Flash card.
This
was the first time that along with my box full of film I carried a Zip drive.
The invention of power inverters shall be hailed, since Toto (Rebecca's
PowerBook which also traveled with me to
Australia) doesn't have an internal Zip. Once in a Zion campground there was
no thunderstorm to take pictures of. This brought me early to tent so that I
could follow the good old yet shocking tradition of getting up early when on
vacation.
Being up at 5:30 is quite something. I made again some shy attempts at color night photography, and my first impression was that things went really wrong. But this didn't deter me from grabbing my hiking gear and hike to a place where I expected a spectacular sunrise. The sunrise was between the sun, the ranger, and me, until later the masses crawled out of their tents and, more notably, RVs.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Soon
I was able to join the line before the road tunnel which is usually two-way,
unless one of these obese American RVs has to pass through. Peacefully I was
standing right in front of the crosswalk (AT, not ON, please note. Big trap for
foreign speakers, as I had to notice on the CA driver's test). A group of French
speaking individuals were crossing the road in a very solid march, in a way no
German could have done better, and suddenly one pointed out "oh, regard, il
a une quattro!" and pointed his thumb up. In what followed (and what
optimistically inclined citizens could call "a dialogue in French") I
explained that the puddle under the car was a normal function of the thing
called "climatisation".
With the sun now high in the sky I returned to the campground to eat and to take care of an appointment. I didn't get to see that much of my neighbor at the campsite until his departure. The neighbor had "Jesus saves" and such all over his RV, and just before his departure he did a prayer - and then took off straight through the road labeled "Don't Enter - Wrong Way". I'd be praying, too.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
My
appointment with was with the friendly campsite host, Dean Jones. He took me in
his adventurous vehicle through the service road, off limits to others, saying
there was beautiful scenery for photography. At this time of the day the
photography opportunities were not so big, but half an hour with this unique
fellow was worth being up at noon anytime.
The
afternoon was dedicated to the trip to Lava Point, and the "en
passant" visit to Grafton, a ghost-town. While I didn't see any ghosts,
there was not that much else either, so in a sense ghostly after all. The car
spontaneously changed color from blue to red, and the high-quality thunderstorm
that hit me at Lava Point could not undo this change. Most impressive was the
change in ambient temperature, though: I noticed that the A/C had suddenly
stopped blowing, happily achieving the pre-set 22.5c. A glance at the outside
temperature gauge revealed that we just experienced a drop in entropy, from 33c
to 9c, in about two minutes. Also, after a 15-mile downhill drive, the trip
computer was predicting quite an impressive range - better than any diesel
engine... Well, then, ready to move on to Bryce...