Tempting Shiva

So the Flaming gorge was cool. Wyoming is empty. This post was longer but the app ate it. So now you get this abbreviated piece of crap.

Any good road trip has at least one day where all you have to do is go from point a to b within a certain amount of time with plenty of extra. Today is that day for me. I have 4 extra hours in my schedule today, so why not explore. I think instead of taking the direct quick route to Jackson, WY I will take the long convoluted route.
There are no drawbacks to this plan, of that I am certain.

It is snowing in Montana. This could be a problem. I will have to check on this again tomorrow as this might require me to push glacier till next week.

So to finish off the day, Bryce canyon was cool. It was quite different from the Grand Canyon. Sadly I only managed to spend an hour there. After that I headed east on RT 12. That was a great decision, it was nearly as nice of a road as the parkway was.
On the drive to Green River, UT (my revised stop point) I drove through Capitol Reef national park. A very nice drive, the road cuts right through the canyon. A 45 mile run across the desert and I was at the hotel.

So here is a pro-tip, when deciding to visit national parks, don’t try to see Lake Powell, Zion national park, Bryce Canyon and Canyonlands National park all in the same day. As a matter of fact, give all the parks at least a day. Today I spent about 30 minutes at lake Powell, then an hour at Zion and I just got to Bryce Canyon. It is basically 3pm now an it takes about 3 hours to get to the Canyonlands national park. Plus, I plan on stopping in Moab, UT so add another hour or so on to that. So what. I am saying here is that Moab probably isn’t going to happen.
I wish I had more time, I really do, and I might end up using one of my days next week to see Glacier National park instead of this week as to get there this week requires me to see Yellowstone on Wednesday and to use Tuesday to put myself in a position to do that. I am fairly certain that means I have to drive around 600 – 700 miles tomorrow to make that happen.
Lake Powell was pretty cool, absolutely huge. Very bizarre too, as it is a man made lake in the middle of the desert. Like I said before, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to visit it, but it definately looks like a place I would want to spend more time (if I had a boat).
I wish I had more itme at Zion national park, I didn’t even have long enough to get to the main canyon. But it was pretty sweet.
More to come later.

Today started almost on time in Alburquerque, NM. Once I was ready to go I started off for the Grand Canyon via Flagstaff, AZ. 4 hours and no stops later I was there. A quick lunch and I was off for the canyon.
It is absolutely huge. I had this whole joke lined up with my tiny backpack shovel about filling it in, but seriously, it’s too big to be funny. I spent about 3 hours there and I think I took 300 or more pictures. That is one place I plan on going back to.
Now for a minor rant. The Grand Canyon is located in the area of the Navajo reservation and while it is beautiful could they have ended up with a more useless area of land? I mean really, what do they have there other than a ton of space and desert?
Additionally, does anyone know how to tell what time it is supposed to be out here? I have 3 ways of telling time and none of them can agree.
Oh well, night time in Page, AZ. Oh and some pictures.

So once again I didn’t start as early as I wanted to. 5.5 hours late to be exact but who is counting. The drive though west Texas was fairly uneventful, however I am quite lucky that I didn’t leave any later as I drove past Texas motor speedway and there is an Indy Car race there tonight.
It is amazing just how flat west Texas is. Really, it’s flat.
New Mexico is much nicer landscape wise, but damn, there is nothing here.
Mileage today was horrible due to a rediculous headwind and the terrible gas down here (90 octane max). Well, that and a speed limit of 75 mph.
So the day ended in alburquerque. Could have gone further but 1 there isn’t anything for another 100 miles after and 2 god the sunset is blinding.
Hopefully I can get to the grand canyon tomorrow morning. Well time for pictures.

Sine the past couple of days haven’t been that exciting, as I am just relaxing, I figure it’s a good time to close out week one. This is something I’m not really sure how to do at this point, so let’s just look forward to the week ahead.
Tomorrow I leave Irving tx for Arizona. I have about 1000 miles to cover in order to reach the grand canyon on sunday morning. After that, I need to average 440 miles per day in order to get to Dan’s place by next Friday. With all the national parks I have planned to visit I am not entirely sure how I am going to keep to the schedule. As a worst case I will have to skip something and the hit it on my way back east.
So even bigger things are coming.

Thunderstorms are very wierd things. Incredibly tiny but immensely powerful. Where I am going with this is that I ended ip having to drive through one. Luckily there wasn’t any hail so it ended up being a free car wash.
The Mississippi river is huge, let’s just get that fact out of the way now. What makes the mind reel though is the size of the area it can cover during a flood.
Not much else, ended the day in Irving tx so it was a rather long drive for the day. The good news here is that I know I can make the drive from Irving to Flagstaff in one day.
First however, some time to relax.

Sadly I am through the mountains. All that remains for the day is the sprint to Texas. I will get there tomorrow, the gps says I could be there by 10:45 pm if I don’t stop. Right, so anyway it’s just a long drive hoping to avoid the supercells.
As a bonus the speed limit is 70 mph. Oh well, lunch break over back to driving.