In which Sid and Doris see rain, land slips and Alpine pastures on the way to the Grand Canyon
We are woken at 4a.m. with a text to say that flash floods are expected on our route and that no one should travel that road until 7:45am unless fleeing a flood or evacuating as required by the authorities. And when we get up it is raining, but just rain.
The Best Western breakfast is a dispiriting food on styrofoam plates in a room with the charm of a prison refectory. We resolve to find better in future. Free and convenient is not as good as good.
It is raining and there is water in the footwells. Why do old cars smell like wet dogs?
We are on time for our appointment at Big O Tyres but they decide after all that they are not able to help and instead suggest Doris make a call to Leon’s Alignments.
Leon is the dude and after a quick road test he generously puts the JJG on the ramp ahead of more organised customers who had already filled up his diary for teh day. He is very knowledgeable with many observations about the build, and when we get back to the issue of the steering and suspension geometry he finds that the front wheels had 5/8″ toe out. This would explain the scrub and some of the handling foibles. He gets 1/16″ toe in and we ask him to put the scrubbed ones on the back with the undamaged rears on the front.
Both Leon’s workshop and the Big O feature deer heads on the walls with details of who has “taken” them – all quite recently. Leon also provides light reading in the form of American Frontiersman magazine (“Wanna start your own gun shop?”), while next door to the Big O there had been the option to do indoor axe throwing or to top up your ammo supplies and/or buy extra guns at ACE hardware. “We’re not in Kansas now” says Doris, accurately but unhelpfully.
We are on our way out of Cedar City at 10.50 and straight up ‘flash flood road’ where the prohibition has already been lifted. As we go up we can see where road gangs have bulldozed away landslips and cut away fallen trees this morning. We stop to look at water coming off the mountain like a torrent of copper-coloured paint. Standing by the river we can hear the boulders being bullied along under the water. This is not a landscape to mess with.
We video’d it for a few seconds to try and show you what it was like, as the pictures don’t do it justice. You can hear the thumping of the boulders under the rush of water.
We climb slowly, as without a run up the JJG will not build revs. When we can get a run up we do and then climb at 50mph or better. As we climb we see signs in quick succession Flooding for next 20 miles; fire restrictions in effect; no fireworks (so they know our car); and snow plowing daylight hours only. Which should cover most eventualities.
We summit at 9,910′, surprised to find very pretty Alpine meadows and Swiss chalet architecture in Utah.
Then some verses from Look What They’ve Done to my Height Ma as we descend to stop in Kanab, a Mormon town. But far from joyless as there is a bunnery where Sid guesses the baker is Belgian trained. Real croissants. quiches, flammenkeuchen and slightly lumpy palmiers. Better than breakfast.
An information board reminds would-be off-roaders not to use 40 year old Jeep Cherokees. There is always something useful to be gained from stopping to look at information boards, as Doris has repeatedly told Sid.
We climb up into the spectacular red desert and the straight roads at the JGG’s speed give us plenty of opportunity to look at large scale nature.
Doris has spied the opportunity for some high desert glamping, very expensive but does seem to offer quite good glam. We turn off to drive a mile or so up their gravel road. The tents look solid and glam while offering space and shelter. It is raining on and off with occasional force eight gusts. Sid and Doris do the secret sign that says OK then and we start to check in, negotiating the star-gazing tent for the price of the Deluxe. And then they start to add $120 of ”service fees” not mentioned on the website or in earlier discussions. Sid and Doris make the secret sign of Oh, no, that’s not going to happen. The trip back down the piste road confirms that the JJG is not suitable for off Tarmac forays, so we have learnt something useful.
We head for Page, a town founded in 1957, whose raison d’etre is to service the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, the power station and then the tourists who come to enjoy Lake Powell behind the dam, which still has some water and more coming down today. Sid and Doris dearly love an engineering feat and head for the closed visitor centre to see the vertigo-inducing views of the dam and Glen Canyon Bridge. The dam was inaugurated (unless you are P for Poppy you don’t open a dam do you?) by Lady Bird Johnson in 1966 so was designed about the same time as the JGG.
We are not $$$$ glamping but have no appetite for the hundred miles to the next hotel-enabled town. The Best Western Lake Powell View Hotel in Page has a view of the whole desert we have just crossed, and costs about 14% of the tent. And from Bonkers HQ here on the terrace we see more rain coming.
All you can think of as you look at this extraordinarily inhospitable view is “What on earth did the pioneers think when they saw this?! How about: Oh no. No way.”
We walk up into town to find a dimly-lit information plaque about Fr Escalante after whom the mountain range on the right of the view is named. We are on the Old Spanish Trail which was established for pack trains only to link Santa Fe to Los Angeles – it didn’t become a route suitable for wheeled vehicles until much more recently.
And then to our delight Doris finds the Bonkers Italian restaurant where they are happy to welcome Sid and Doris Bonkers – who do not let on these are noms de plume. The owners have Neapolitan roots so quite Italian and the only Bonkers element might be the helpings, but then the dudes next to us had been building a boat launching slip so maybe needed the calories.
We promise to take Mr Bonkers to have his picture taken at the restaurant and send on the pictures.
The Old Spanish Trail was a long walk from Sante Fe to LA, without glamping, and more than one pioneer came over yet another range such as the Escalante Mountains and signaled to their spouse, “Oh, no, that’s not going to happen.”