TRAVEL: Back to southern Utah again Vegas and Zion

LAS VEGAS

A next morning meet-up point with Jane and Lanny, my brother and my dear sister-in law Jane. An evening dinner and stroll at Bellagio.  The mood is festive, driven, streaming international family groups all going some place important to them.

An evening is Las Vegas is a premium experience in ambivalence.  Seduction, delight of novelty, twins with high moral dudgeon over the supreme waste of humanity's capital. 

It was particularly acute at dinner. Our Chinese restaurant, Noodles, served the best Asian fusion cuisine we've ever had. No gambling appointments seemed available at our table, not the usual Vegas casino dining experience.

Our sincere Asian waiter conveyed our compliments to the chef and I believed they were really pleased in their achievement.  Why do I have to go to Las Vegas to find such a good pure thing?  Why are they there instead of in a neutral zone in which I won't be compromised by guilt?

The Bellagio, I recall, redefined Vegas class when it opened.  It was quite ghastly, the faux-italianate lobby and garden areas overloaded with mass paper craft Chinese and Asian floral garlands, trees, kites. A wonderful floral fragrance was fresh and pleasurable.  And service so good, amidst the throng, concierges assisted us, and we found a lovely Parisian pastry shop with a chocolate fountain.  Quite fun. The chocolate dipped fried Twinkie John had the next day in 
Springdale was better, though.  

The next morning, on to Zion, one of our favorite places, for two warm sunny days.

Springdale is a lovely non-restuarant franchised  town, plenty of franchise motels, however, nice to stay in to visit the incomparable Zion.  The canyon walls are close and distant at once, making awe an intimate experience.

The formations are named by devout Mormons from Biblical references, and it is so perfect, my head dips and a small silent prayer goes up.  God is still "up there", in my so limited comprehension of Zion and environs.

The river is a quintessential western canyon stream-riverbed.  As the canyon narrows, it draws you in, a celebration of time no museum can endeavor to present. Water, wind, sandstone, minerals.  Geology's art materials, conformed by variables so complex
the mind struggles to follow the progressions and regressions of each, and the scientists prognosticate yet.   

Jane and I are hiking the river now, on a warm day with our feet and legs in 45-degree water, strangely not very cold.  I guess a nature high discards worry about discomfort as an unworthy backstory.  Except for bragging rights.  

Narrowing canyon walls as we hike against an insistent current, and on sandbars that give a change of resistance necessary to apply in one's steps.

How lovely the rivulet waterfalls that slide simply down the canyon sides.  Children trudge across to stand or lie on them, giggling at the tickling water entering the backs of their shirts. An excellent idea.

It's wet, it stays wet, as long as there's flow from above, and moss, ferns and mineral algae stains create yet another vegetation climate contrast.  Maidenhair ferns overhang in such dry chaparral country - would anyone have guessed it was possible?

The Narrows of the Virgin River - rated as one of the world's ten best hikes.  Since I've only done 2 of the ten, I really can't comment, except to say "love the one you're with".

The sturdy hikers, looking like Italian great-grandmothers walking up a street in Cortona.  

Jane is clearly the foolish Auntie Mame figure here, and I am close to the dignity and slyness of Maggie Smith's paternal grandmother of Downton Abbey.  We are perfect together.

The sun works hard to enter the canyons, and mostly can't. One hops from north to south, east to west, looking for lighting that will serve a camera lens.  Good luck.  The contrasts are the reality here - harsh, changing, abrupt.  The sun falls behind the canyon wall, and it's dark, somber, like walking in Venice trying to find...your hotel, restaurant, etc., but instead, find another wonderful square or plaza with another magnificent church to enter and gaze upon.

Flora of the West...a lovely amazing footnote of quizzical encounter - what does this plant tell about its reasons for existing in this place, now?  Why its perfect relation of form to environment? A growing plant is always saying yes.

yellow salsify

A bold thistle-like plant along the Virgin River in a place where the canyon widens and chaparral gives way to higher elevation ecology.

shooting star

Under a trickling waterfall, an anomaly that really is not, merely a function of the reality of variety that all renounce in favor of abstraction, classification, and deductive reasoning, revealing the fallacy of generalizations.

prickly pear cactus in bloom

The marvel of a cactus flower - a rose overstated, the intentions similar.  Protect the seed; injure those who intrude without care.

Jane and I, the intrepid ones, drive out of Zion together and hike the view trail looking back and into the canyon.  A delightful and sad aloha.

What would become a more familiar expressive rock formation - this is the "Checkerboard", an exposed bare sandstone cliff that has been eroded by both water and wind, dividing it into rectangles and squares.