Archive for June 10th, 2008

First off, thanks for all the comments on the previous installment, you lovely people. If I could, I’d give you all a big fat hug for sticking with me to read this mush, so virtual hugs for everyone!

End of Day 9 – Yellowstone, MT

If you’re as unenlightened as I was about the geysers of Yellowstone, check out this photo of a geyser when it’s not spouting. I had no idea they were such a beautiful blue:

And this is how it looks when it goes off:

There’s this cool area in Yellowstone where you walk among a grouping of geysers that go off randomly. You have to stay on the boardwalk though, because it’s boiling water all around. Unexpected and weird….exactly what I live for.

Days 10 & 11 – Zion National Park

In the morning before leaving for south Utah, I ran an hour around West Yellowstone. I dressed warmly because it was sleeting outside (in June!) and found a snowmobile trail near the hotel to explore. It was another high altitude run, so slow going but by now, expected so ok.

One day-long drive later, we get to our hotel in Cedar City, UT. It was the closest place with vacancies near Zion Park. Now we know for next time to book stuff way in advance when you’re doing the park thing. I should mention we had brought a tent for the trip with the idea to possibly camp, but between the crazy temperatures and rental gear availability, we stuck to hotels.

Zion National Park is good and bad. The good is Kolob Canyons, a smaller area north of the main park that’s absolutely beautiful and not at all high traffic. The bad is that cars aren’t allowed in Zion park proper, so everyone takes shuttles to the hiking spots, which is great environmentally but meant more crowds of people than we’d experienced anywhere on the trip. We kept saying “and this is just the beginning of June, can you imagine this is August?”

Speaking of unexpected, in a tiny town before Zion Nat’l Park we passed this Ostrich ranch. They could probably hear me in Idaho yelling “Stop the car, stop the car!!!”

Here’s my squinty self in another tiny town right after the ostriches, Virgin UT, with our spiffy little rental.

While in Virgin, it’s customary to visit their only store and fondle the Native American Indian security guard. It was in the guide book, I swear.

Day 12 – Kolob Canyons & Las Vegas

The hotel had a treadmill so I got my last vacation run in, then we returned to Kolob Canyons for a final 3-hour hike before hitting Vegas again. Las Vegas is an especially unpleasant place to be after a total submersion in Nature, but a fitting end I suppose.

Home

Back to reality and one more foot/ankle crap update. It was on the mend, but with a single swimming kick on our first day in Vegas, it hurt again, so while on the road I made an appt with Matt’s wonderful podiatrist for this afternoon.

Hallelujah!! Diagnosis is an inflamed bursa sack in my heel. The doc said I probably was dealing with two separate things as I’d suspected and what’s left is this. It’s no biggie, I can keep running, just ice afterwards and do some exercises.

Nice byproduct is that I brought my running shoes and he was surprised by the lack of wear on the 300 mile pair, so I’m good to go till 500 miles. That should save me some cha-ching. He also said that while I’m a heel-lander, I shouldn’t change my gait unless it’s causing me problems and I guess bad photographs aren’t exactly “problems”, so maybe I’ll finally relax on that score.

And that, my dears brings me back in front of a computer again, on a 104 degree day in Philly. The desert was so much cooler!

I hope I can keep this feeling of spaciousness and perspective from the trip for awhile. I was in a rut when I left and now I feel refreshed with the world. Lucky for us, America is huge, gorgeous and always open and summer camping in the East will be heaven.

With that, I leave you one last road picture from the Wild West: