89 and 89a are are as meaty with digestible scenery as any highway circle is in the southwest.
Traveling into Page there is a sign, easily missed, pointing to the west , a turnoff from 89 going to "Horseshoe Bend."
If, fellow traveler, you come this way, take that detour as it will bring you to quite a spectacle, a horseshoe bend of the Colorado. To be sure there are many of these bends in that meandering scalpel of a river, but this one is pretty special.
For one thing, you can easily kill yourself with one false, or determined move. It is the kind of drop that allows you to "get there from here." The contrast of green water and orange red rocks, Navajo Sandstone, is probably present at hundreds of overlooks, but here you can clamber over wind sculpted slabs and boulders and explore lava-pies that look like they were laid, plopped, dumped by Babe, Paul Bunyon's Blue Ox.
" Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny-tiny baby blue ox jest a hopping about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of he was too short to see over the drifts.
Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and took the little blue mite home with him. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox."
It is a place of frozen time or a place of eternity unfolded, it is a place where "all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before."
Lava-pies belched out of the Earth long ago and far away..look out!
what a scene it must've been to see this splurt of molten rock land here, and hear its sound, sizzle, steam, sputter, spit then its glow before dying on the surface of the planet whose innards rejected it or sent it out on its own journey.
A journey from the center of the Earth.
You walk a little farther, and you come to the main attraction.
Near the bottom you can see part of my shadow. No rails, no nothing for "protection" here. It would seem that the area just speaks for itself. There were people, well, there were a couple of young guys, and me, who belly-crawled to the edge and hung our cameras over to get THE shot of the horseshoe. Don't tell our mothers we did that. No females did that when I was there. I can only guess that the daredevil ignoramus gene is dominant and/or sex linked.
It's about a quarter mile from the parking lot to the edge, through sand as deep and fine as any beach, so bring water.
I hop back on Stella!, and she protests a little more with each succeeding restart, but I can always coax her to carry me on, and we head south on 89, now over familiar territory on our way to Lee's Ferry Road.
When you're in Page, you are actually on top of the Vermillion Cliffs, that step in the Grand Staircase. So, coming and going brings you up and down the face of the Vermillion Cliffs. I never tire of seeing them.
.
and looking the other way, the face of the cliffs near the top.
Lee's Ferry Road follows the valley of the Colorado. It is the place where John D Lee ran his Colorado river crossing, significant because, until the early 20th century, Lee's ferry was the only place, the only means, to cross the Colorado for 260 miles. It's pretty damn scenic also with, in addition to the cliffs and mountains, very large and oddly shaped boulders festooning the arid landscape along the way to the end of the road.
At the end of the road, I came across this group,
who were embarcking on a 16 day float down the Colorado. They were loading up their supplies and just about ready to shove off. Most were middle aged and white. Most had done this before. I was informed that this was a "minimum impact" trip, meaning leave only footprints, albeit wet ones. It also meant that theey left nothing behind. NOTHING.
Oh, yeah, we don't leave anything behind.
Really?
Yeah, we even carry out our waste.
What?
Yeah, we carry it out also.
I asked how they pack it away and was informed that plastic bags were the answer. I admit that my mind did a bit of a tumble about this. I hoped that they were not biodegradable plastic bags, and then that, non-biodegradability, kind of flies in the face of (I'm sorry for that image) the No Burd (with a T) Left Behind policy. Just switching one site of pollution for another? Yeah, I thought about all that, but what I said was:
Eeewwwwwwwww!
This lady
said,
Oh, it's really not that bad!
I said 16 days? Not that bad? That would make it onto my short list of bad things!
and she laughed
I then added that she must be easy to shop for and both she and her husband laughed, and we parted, each bidding the other well.
I headed back toward 89a on Lee's ferry Road and decided to take a few pix at the Navajo Bridge over the Colorado.
As I am parking, I see a woman roaming the parking lot with a laptop. I mistakenly think she is from the visitors' center taking some sort of survey. From a distance she looked to be Native American, but when I got a better look she was Asian, Asian accent. She sees the fleur de lis sticker on my side case, The LSU sticker, puts 2 and 2 together, and arrives at a solid 4. She starts quizzing me about the recovery of New Orleans, the corruption of city government, the state of the levees, the displaced people, what is the population now, and all with a big smile on her face. She knew so much about the underbelly of the city, I asked if she had studied it...evasive answer, with another question. I try to quiz her...Where are you from?
Grinning, I am here.
Ok, where is your residence?
Here
You don't live at the visitors center.
No, I live in my car, and she gestures over to the cars in the rest of the lot.
Why are you asking me all these questions, and as she did she in entering my answers, I think, into her MacbookPro. I am thinking that she is going to hit me for some money, now, and beginning to think I have found a real crazy, or not? It did cross my mind that she was only crossing the country, finding adventure and logging it into her MacBookPro. Everything I asked she turned around into a question for me, we covered a lot of territory, from the state of the city, to making money, she needed it and I suggested a life of crime, to which she added that she could not get caught, and I suggested becoming a member of organized crime. It had somrhow come out that I was Italian and she suggested that I could get her in. I asked her name. Her response?
What is your name ?
ready for this I answered John, Now what is your name?
She opened a bit, just a little crack and said Soon, pronounce like Sun,
Like the star?
Yes,
I want to take your picture, I said.
I want to take YOUR picture! she said
This "conversation" went on for easily 20 minutes, but I started to drift over to the bridge and she began to follow me. She wanted my real name and my email address.
I was not about to give her my name, other than John, but I did give her my email address and as she entered it
she wanted to know why it wasn't my "
[email protected]?"
And for a very brief time I held the information strings...
Because it's not that,
But why?
Because it's not
And then I added look it up, see what it means.
My everyday email is scylla@ whatever . com and I was a bit surprised she didn't recognize "scylla." Again I told her to look it up, and as she entered it, she labeled me in her MacbookPro as
"BMW Guy."
Aside--from Wiki:
In Greek mythology, Scylla (play /ˈsɪlə/ SIL-ə; Greek: Σκύλλα, Skylla)[1] was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite its counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice versa
Scylla was a horrible sea monster with four eyes, six long necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her body consisted of twelve tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail and with four to six dog-heads ringing her waist. She was one of the children of Phorcys and Ceto. Some sources, including Stesichorus, cite her parents as Triton and Lamia.
Traditionally the strait has been associated with the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily, but more recently this theory has been challenged, and the alternative location of Cape Skilla in northwest Greece
Looking back at the encounter with Soon, and no followup email has surfaced, I am a little puzzled by her. She was obviously well educated, aware, but was she crazy, schizophrenic, or just really talkative? Don't know. But I suppose I'll possibly find out one day when I appear in her round the world adventure memoir and I am BMW Guy.
Time will tell as it does in this time-rich land.
Oh yeah...the Navajo Bridge...
where sanity reigns
The most profound graffiti I have ever encountered...ever.
There is a Joan Baez song,
Diamonds and Rust
I'll be damned, here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you decided to call
And here I sit, hand on the telephone
Hearing the voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
Well we both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Yes we both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
But Rust equated with Eros is something else, beyond, parched, lifeless, long since dead. The roadkill of memory, desiccated, dusty, ready to cease existence with a less than stiff breeze.
Rust-Eros 412
How depressing is that?
Do I want to end it all here? On the Navajo Bridge, on 89a? It's a far drop, instant, no pain ,a thrill til the end and the emerald beyond.
Jolted back!
Maybe a day at a time, crawl then walk, baby steps, Blue skies ahead? and then...
HAYDUKE LIVES!
There is another day, another road to travel, another crazy, another
another
another
Days Inn or Super 8 or, well, let's just leave it at that, no wait...Comfort Inn.
And on that night, my last in Page, I dream of Fern and her Ho-Made Pies, but cannot (yet) bring meaning to that dream...